Category: General

So, the solar company said “it’s looking positive”. Apparently our house’s roof is much more strongly pitched than was apparent from the Google streetmaps view, meaning it possibly has enough surface area to squeeze the minimum 10 panels on (required for ‘free solar panels’). Our garage, it seems, is too shaded – although he felt that with microinverters it would possibly be worth doing, but it wouldn’t be free.

He couldn’t take measurements, which is a shame (because the roof’s not boarded), but he’s taken photos and measured the outside of the house, and well, we’ll see.

He will be e-mailing me later.

Mitsubishi tweeted an e-mail address at me, so I’m waiting to hear from them about whether there’s a fix for the iMiev’s Level 2 charger issue. I’ve also heard that some iMievs are part of a recall (potential for a failed solder joint) , so I’ve sent in the ‘is it part of a recall’ form on the website and filled in the reply paid postcard saying it’s ours now. And now, with the sun high in the sky, is time for me to obtain FOODSTUFFS!

So, after some delightfully 30 degree heat night shifts (our department is currently running a daily average temperature between 29-30°C (that would be 86°F)) I came home to our positively cool house (running in the high 20s) to an e-mail from the first company I’ve mailed trying to get free solar panels saying ‘No’. The irritating thing is it’s the same as the previous e-mail that said ‘no’. It doesn’t say “We acknowledge your comment about the garage but it’s not enough space/we don’t install out outbuildings/we are morally opposed to banana based installations”; which would be useful in trying to determine if the answer really is ‘no’ or if it’s “we can only be bothered to look at google maps, and since that picture doesn’t show a building, we’re assuming there’s no building there”.

Now I know that I’m trying to get a thing for free that’s costly, but it would be useful to know. With this in mind I’ve asked another company, and been a little more explicit about what’s there and that it’s wired with a 40A supply (not a 13A bit of electric string like a lot of people’s garages).

So I’m waiting on that.

ETA: They rang back and said ‘we can pop around tomorrow at 11 and look at the site’ which is pretty nifty. It’ll be an answer, at any rate.

I’ve also spent a little time on the electrics situation. So, we’re switching to Economy 7 for our electricity (apparently not a thing outside the UK). This is because charging the car on our 100% green tariff is pricier than I/we’d like. Of course, it does allow us to drive along on waves of smug, but given that our income doesn’t really match our lifestyle, a cost saving seemed wise. It’s still 100% green, but now it’s pricer during the day and cheaper at night. To this end I’ve bought a DIN rail timer switch and a separate circuit breaker – this is either for the car charger (if Polar ever get back to me) or for a timed socket (if they don’t)**.

Of course, the thing about a timed socket or car charger is that we then need to persuade the CABLED iMiev to talk to a Level 2 charger. There are a couple of ways this might happen. First, and most desirable as far as I’m concerned, is that Mitsubishi might fix it. However, Mitsubishi seem to be as recalcitrant about answering tweets or providing direct online support as most other car manufacturers. They don’t seem to realise that twitter is an excellent tool* for building a fan base. Basically, I’m hoping that it’s actually a firmware issue – and the car can be upgraded to talk to a Level 2 charger. I suspect however, that this is not the case. The car’s old enough that the standard for the L2 charger wasn’t ratified, so it may not even have the wiring in place to work.

In that instance, there’s another two options. Fix one is to install an aftermarket level-2 charger controller. This is probably the most desirable and not terribly expensive at only $40. Second is a much cheaper fix, which is a bodge that lies to the charger using a little switch that makes the charger *think* it’s getting the information it’s meant to get (basically, you drop the voltage enough and it’ll turn on the charger).

Option 2 is about 5 quid in parts and potting compound, but is very much a bodge and slightly worries me in the sense of ‘well, yes, but what if they update the firmware in the chargers and make it more intelligent’.

As I’m still waiting to hear from Mitsubishi – well no decision so far. If I haven’t heard by tomorrow I guess I’ll book the car in at the dealer and say ‘oi, tell me what’s up’.

[ETA: So I heard from Mitsubishi who very nicely said ‘e-mail us and we’ll see what we can do’ or words to that effect. Now waiting to hear a reply to my e-mail]

However, I’ve been driving said wee beastie around and it is quite lovely, if slightly disconcerting to a long-time ICE driver. It’s the quiet. Having had so many slightly ropey cars – silence is the ‘something is very wrong’ indicator – but I’m getting over it. I’m getting to enjoy the fact it’s the gentle sound of the wind and little else. It’s listening to the chugga-chugga of everyone else around you and feeling like you’re sat in the near-future. It’s knowing that you don’t have to fill up at a petrol station.

It’s also sometimes resisting the temptation to go ‘Whoosh’ away from the lights in a terribly childish, ‘ooh, it’s quite quick’ way.

And it turns out that with a bit of practice I’m not nearly as awful at putting the (as yet unnamed) car in the garage as I was the first time. Nor is it nearly as snug as it seemed to me the first time I did it. Although I’ll be happier when we’ve moved the central line of boxes.

* Kyocera, in contrast, answered (helpfully) my tweet about a 10 year old printer. Also said if their suggestion doesn’t work to get back to them…which I must (a)try and (b)almost certainly get back to them.

** I also need to sort out a timer for the dishwasher, because it’s old enough to be a totally mechanical timer.

So today, at the godforsaken hour of 4:30 am I got up. I expect Nikki got up earlier, because she had to treck across Bristol to meet me at 5:30, but at any rate, ignoring that, at 4:30am I arose, washed and wandered downstairs where I stared balefully at the cereal thinking ‘but I only ate dinner at 21:30’. Having decided that even my nurse’s stomach wasn’t really in the mood for food (basically it kept saying it was full), I supped a fine cup of Two Day Coffee, drank some juice and dinked on the internet until Nikki arrived.
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So we’ve had a delightful couple of days. Well. A busy couple of days. Friday we caught up on some cleaning, then on Friday night headed down to Cornwall to see my mum. The weather on Saturday was stunning. Seriously, it was proper summer weather and we piled into Chester and headed down to my mum’s fave swimming beach.

Down on the beach I actually did the holiday thing of sitting and reading (I’ve just this morning finished Terry Jones’ Evil Machines which I was happily reading on the beach. Whilst I won’t say it’s his best work, and honestly, the ex-python still seems to struggle writing believable women, it was an entertaining little romp and I was quite happy to have read it – I’m off into Metroland next). Anyhow, once the sea was slightly less full, and somewhat closer, I used my mother’s old swimming costume (my mum had lent me and Kathryn costumes) and we wandered into the sea. I’m not the strongest swimmer in the world, but had great fun with my breast stroke. Although there was a bit too much breast at one point, as my loaner ancient and de-elasticated costume decided to make a break for freedom. Thankfully I was facing out to sea, and a quick grab and the wardrobe malfunction was rectified. Kathryn then used her headscarf to tie the straps together a bit, and lo, I was safe to swim.

It was fantastic. Quite simply, it was fantastic.

Then we lazed on the beach for a bit, drying off, before heading home for Fish and Chips and a very long drive home. Not as long as if we take the new iMiev; nor to be honest as long as it’ll feel in the minor, but hey.

Today we’ve spent nearly all of the day sorting the garden – after a pleasant breakfast with Nikki, Kate and Kids at Jika Jika – although their Eggs Florentine is exceptionally salty (Kathryn’s dish – but we do cook with almost no salt). Their Eggs Benedict was very nice though.

On the way back we stopped off to collect 3 bags of topsoil, then having got home, changed and back into the cars we took them both over to St Andrews to collect more top soil. That done in the sweltering mid-day heat, we dragged it home and back out of the cars before taking a break for lunch and to let some of the noon-day sun wash away. At this point I set up the second of the iphone time-lapse apps I’ve bought, and set it to take photos of our garden works…

So where’s the time lapse you ask? Well, clearly I’d misunderstood, because I thought it took time lapse photos; what it actually does is after a few moments in time it lapses into senescence – dying rapidly afterwards. 37 photos it managed. At least LapseIt managed to take all the damn photos. O-lapse or whatever the hell it’s called managed 37 before dying for no indicated reason.

Is there a reason why iPhone apps are so unable to give any kind of error message. Most of the ropey ones I’ve encountered do seem to just ‘quit’.

Anyhow, we worked like dogs on the garden today. The one tiny patch that’s meant to become lawn has been raised up a fair bit – and edged so that we can fill the edged bit with gravel (that which I’ve not filled with rubble) and then pop some nice pots on top of it. The trees have been hacked down from the bushes they were growing up inside of. The grass has been cut, many of the beds weeded. The massive wooden planter/trough has been emptied of soil and moved to it’s new location. The dead bits of tree that were in that location have been moved to the site that will be where the greenshed will be. When we build it.

But of course, because the timelapse didn’t work, you’ll just have to take our word for it.

There’s more to do, but tomorrow I need to spend some quality time down in the garage making it possible to get a Mitsubishi iMiev in there…

So, the problem with my brain is that

1) it likes shiny things
2) it’s lousy at money management
3) it is endlessly optimistic about the ability of me to earn ‘more’ to pay back loans ‘quicker’.

To buy the EV – based on scratchy basic sums – would save us, potentially, around 2000 over 2 years (less the cost of servicing and assuming Kathryn commutes in it, oh and excluding the electricity cost – but then Nikki reckons £50 for 1400 miles in her Leaf).

If Kathryn doesn’t commute in it, it still, I think, works out around 1000 cheaper, based on the car-costs for last year.

But all of this is based on the cost of the Volvo not changing – but it’s had *lots* of work – so it could be that over the next two years it’s beautifully perfect and hassle free. On the other hand, it’s approaching an MOT. And last year’s wasn’t traumatic. So this one might be.

I hate sums where one of the figures is so potentially wrong. I hate it particularly because to replace the car with an EV is borrowing a scary quantity of money. It’s weird to spend that much money on a modern car. I know I’ve spent way more on Rebecca, but that was…different. Possibly foolish, but different. And I still adore the minor.

Of course, buying an EV means that Rebecca will essentially be retired except for long journeys, or when Kathryn’s out and about and I need to go somewhere further than cycle distance. Which is an odd thought. I would, as I’ve said before, love to complete her EV conversion. But the amount of money that would cost is prohibitive.

But because of the problems of my brain, and Kathryn having similar problems, we need to talk to someone to whom I can’t do the convincing. Which means that this evening we’ll be talking to Kathryn’s mom in the hopes that sanity might overwhelm my shiny desire. Ironically the company from whom I have the ‘consolidation and house improvement loan’ which I’ve been quietly paying off (although apparently not at the rate I thought I had been) offered me a “wouldn’t you like to owe us more money” loan which is, actually, about perfect for this purpose. And by extending the loan repayment period I can essentially get the car without spending any extra money each month – which hopefully means that we could pay off the loan quicker with the money saved by having an EV.

Of course, one financially easier solution would be for me to suck it up and start servicing the Volvo at home, but I don’t think that’s likely to happen in the near future.

It’s all far too complex for this little sleep.

Anyhow. Given the sleep deprivation I’ve piled on the small tasks – the tax return is done and ready to go, the bathroom’s cleaned, the stairs swept, the dishwasher’s loaded, I’ve varnished the wood for the kitchen lights (I wasn’t going to but the thought of how much oil will soak into that wood meant that we decided on a coat of my nice semi-matt varnish)

I think I need to have more frames / minute – but hey, it’s fun to play with.

Also, I’ve finally made my GPS Tracker work. It’s sat in the car, and after some playing, is reporting it’s position. I ring it and it texts me back with it’s position. In *theory* it’s meant to be able to use GPRS to actually feed back an address, but that doesn’t seem to be working… I suspect I’ve set it up wrong. But it does on ringing SMS back an accurate position, which is quite (very) cool. I may sneak the charger. Unfortunately, whilst it comes with a ‘car charger’ you’re not (I think) meant to leave it on charge for ever and ever. I’m unsure if it’s clever enough to switch the charger off when the battery is fully charged – and the manual is Engrish enough that I can’t actually work that out.

Still, it does what it says on the tin (or box, in this case), and it was much cheaper than a lot of the other ones on the webs, so hey.

Anyhow, my brain’s at that stage where it’s only sorta-kinda-working, so… I think this is probably enough for today :)

Well, technically we’ve been back a few days and I’m having that occasionally unnerving experience of how fast I can spend money when I want to. Whilst we were away (tedious holiday post with far too many pictures coming up*) I picked up two dirty great chunks of driftwood from the shore of the lake on which we spent a couple of very nice**** nights.

These are to make the lights in the kitchen, which have been waiting, painfully, for ‘the right bit of wood’ to come along. Actually, the bits I really, really, really wanted were unreasonably heavy. If we lived in France I’d’ve been sorely tempted to take half the beach home. As it was I had to force myself to put down my original choices on the basis that ‘if I can’t carry them both, I can’t reasonably attach them to the ceiling’.

Anyhow, having brought home the free bits of wood, I’ve now ordered miles of expensive three core braided fabric coated wire, a dirty great length of braided stainless steel wire, and then I’m going to do evil things involving light bulb holders and such from our local hardware store. At least, that’s the general idea.

Anyhow, since we bought a ‘new’ (1930’s) bookcase**** from a charity shop on Friday, which is due to be delivered in a time window that starts in 30 minutes, I guess I should nip upstairs and have a quick shower…

* If I could do a slide show night for you all, you know I would**
** But at some point I got rid of my 1950’s slide projector, for reasons related to the fact it weighed approximately the same as our house***
*** And some of you are in the wrong country, although we could do it using google hangout or skype or sommat ;)
**** And cold, I’ll grant you.
***** Actually it’s one of those bow fronted display cabinet things. Not that we have more books than you could shake a (large drift wood) stick at, oh no. Nor of course did we buy books in French, not that we speak French (although Kathryn’s working on that with the help of books and comics in French. I’ll work on it later…).

So, yesterday, despite sleep deprivation and a near overwhelming tiredness I attacked the bookcase that was waiting to go up in the office. It doesn’t really match the rest of the office shelving, it doesn’t match anything in there, quite frankly, but it was the best I could find in our price range and ready in anything like in time. See, with Kathryn’s dad coming over I wanted the box shelf up above the desk. Only I don’t have a box shelf. I didn’t, as it happens, have any kind of shelf ready to go there. And having asked at the wood recycling place I found their lead time on just planned/sanded timber is four weeks. Kathryn’s dad arrives in just over 6, and the idea of me trying to cut, sand, varnish and fit a box shelf having got the wood with only two weeks (where I’d be working full time and doing a course for work) filled me with that vague dread that can only be associated with knowing that it would not work.

I could foresee him and his partner arriving, and the room being still filled with junk.

So I searched, and eventually accepted that ikea are cheaper by miles for these shelves. Indeed box shelves are ridiculously expensive, as a general rule. What we ended up with aren’t really box shelves, actually, but Kathryn was so uninspired by the ikea box shelves that we decided to get something a bit different. Actually, thinking about it, I probably should have rung our kitchen-maker and asked him, but hey, didn’t think of that then.

Anyhow, so I got the shelves, and started to assemble them and then realised that, well, really they should be cut to fit our picture rail, because they have that kind of shape at the top that suggests that the top edge should align with the picture rail. So I prepared to break out the jigsaw. Also, I realised (unfortunately whilst I was assembling them) the hanging method supplied would require cutting in to our picture rail. Now that is simply not going to happen. We’ve gone to great lengths to save our picture rail, even saving a chunk so that we could put it back in the corridor on the new section of wall. Even our kitchen still sports a picture rail.

So after some hemming and hawing, I decided to support the shelves with dirty great lumps of wood which, I decided, I would paint white. Later.

And thus, this was achieved:

And fairly quickly turned into this:

As a bonus, here’s some of our ‘top shelf’ reading matter… (although, to be fair, some of ’em are games…)

There was some swearing, of course. There was a hole into a brick which appears to be made of adamantium. Even the ‘decent’ masonry bit was laughed at… It sounded like a lump of steel, but the metal drill bit was just mocked mercilessly*. In the end, I just moved a bit and drilled a new hole, although not before some wailing and gnashing of teeth over damaging our beautiful wall.

Also, during my ‘tired’ episode I managed to kill our printer. For various reasons I had around 150 pages to print yesterday, and wound up the spring on our venerable Kyocera FS-1030D and set it printing. Off it went. Of course, in preparation for this I dumped a pile of paper (which I’d just found) into the drawer. To do this I moved the printer across on it’s little shelf so it was up against the shelves next to it, because otherwise the drawer fouls the leg of the desk. Unfortunately, I didn’t move it back.

It turns out that the printer will quite happily kill itself before admitting that it’s overheating. It stopped printing with a paper jam, and when I took the paper out, it sat twiddling its little status lights in a status light sequence that’s not in the numpty manual.

Eventually I found the service manual and discovered that the status lights meant ‘fuser thermistor (and thermal cut out) failed’. I googled the spare part. $120 dollars! The printer was only $25. Then I remembered the spares printer, and that, as I recall failed with some kind of drum/motor error. So this morning I stripped the two of them down…

Rather than switching the thermistor (because I’m a lazy toad) I just switched the entire fuser units over, and lo, the printer doth work. Thank the lord, because I needed that paper today, and lo, it is printed.

Also, side point, I love Kyocera for making the manual available. I just really wish they had a mac version of the application to configure the network card in it.

* Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries…