Mostly lemon based

Category: I’m a mechanic me…

  • And winter commeth

    It’s starting to get cold outside, and the ‘heating’ such as it is is something I’m becoming increasingly fond of. The gas fire in the lounge is really quite nice of an evening, and curling up beside Kathryn ‘n reading or watching telly, or a film is about the nicest way to pass an evening. But, there is one thing that goes with the coming of winter…

    …car problems.

    Brick seems to have heard the call of the winter somewhat early and has had a little bit of a quirk with his brakes for the last few weeks. That is, namely, that pressing them leads to smooth application of the brakes until about half way down when the brake pedal will sink about a quarter of an inch with very little effort and the brakes will come on incredibly hard. It seemed that flicking the brake pedal upward (it would stick slightly down) would remove this tendancy, but it seems to be getting worse and worse at a rate which means I’ll have to fix it rather than wait for the service. I’d been intending to do that this week but it’d got lost under the battle to get the radiators in (2 out of 3, the third needs stripping and painting before it can be fitted), then all the heating-plumbing is done upstairs. It’s just fitting taps ‘n the shower mixer now for the other plumbing. Mmm.

    But this morning we got the ‘won’t start’ quirk back. Fortunately I recognised it quickly, but I’m now at a loss as to what’s causing it. The voltage seems correct at the coil, so the resistor clearly is working correctly… bypassing everything does work, but it’s a touch tedious. And the coup de gras today; a while ago the clutch-end of the clutch cable disappeared through the plate into which it is mounted. For reasons best known to themselves the cable appears to be slightly smaller than the original and the hole into which it is meant to rest is big enough that it goes ‘whoosh’, straight through. My lovely local garage sorted this by sticking a nut on the end of the cable so it can’t go through the hole. As if to torment me, today as I left the railway station having dropped of my beloved, the other end of the cable went *chunk* though the top of the firewall and approached the pedal. Fortunately, it still had enough length in it to work, but it remains irritating.

    Far be it from me to suggest that this cable is not correctly manufactured and to utter a rant about the quality of modern parts. It would never occur to me even to consider suggesting such a thing, but now I have to disassemble the clutch cable mechanism and see if I can persuade the bloody thing to go back through the hole and sit, correctly, on the correct side of the firewall. I’m meant to be tiling, but I’m just steeling myself for a cold day outside covered in oil. Whether oil is worse than tile glue is something you may debate (yes, is my opinion incidentally), but it’s not something which makes me happy. Especially when I’ve forked out the first 50 of around 150 – 200 quid to have brick’s engine converted to unleaded.

  • There goes plan A

    So, this day had a plan:

    – Buy petrol, drive to work.
    – Work.
    – Home.
    – Bank (more financial sorting, there is definite positive monetary direction happening)
    – Home, sort paperwork
    – Dinner
    – Continue to sort paperwork
    – Sleep

    That *was* plan A. Plan B, which was apparently what the world had in mind was:

    – Go out, start car, put foot on clutch, have foot go straight to floor. Panic, briefly, run into the house, grab bike gear, beg and plead bike to start (it does, impressively only on 3rd try; especially given it’s not been ridden for (over 2) months), ride to work.
    – Work.
    – Get changed, ride bike home
    – Home, top up oil on bike.
    – Bank (good, but taking longer than expected)
    – Home, foof with car for an hour before realising that either (a) a bit of the clutch cable retaining mechanism has gone walkies between here and Place-of-Work or (b) the hole it’s meant to sit in has enlarged slowly, allowing the cable to slide through it.
    – Ring garage, arrange for them to collect the car tomorrow (though they can’t look at it ’til friday).
    – Scoop up paperwork and attempt to sort it…
    – Decide I am owed takeaway by the world, seeing as there’s no food in the house and I now have no car to go and get food in :(

  • Dolls in pram ≠ Brick

    So, today was a bit insane. At least, I thought it was insane.

    I’m not sure why, but the nurse in charge decided I should be 1st in in Resus. This was actually good, in a lot of ways; because I much more enjoy and am much better when I’m thrown in at the deep end.

    But it was scary++ because, well, not only do I have only a limited clue as to what I’m doing; but also I’ve got next to no Emergency skills. I can’t take blood (although hopefully I can do my assessment this week), I can’t give IV’s unsupervised, I can’t cannulate, and I can’t plaster….

    So it was a bit interesting. I got very good at saying “could you possibly…”

    And “no, but I’ll get someone who can”.

    Thankfully someone much more experienced came in for the Trauma call (a chap with extensive burns). And I stuck to my chest pains, and self-harmers. I did meet a genuine bona-fide gangster; at least according to himself… I must admit when he self discharged I really didn’t care that much…

    After my shift I drove home, although there was a brief pause because Brick randomly decided he didn’t like the rust syrup masquerading as coolant, and thus spat it out. I’ve only seen a car-spitting-out-coolant-old-style once before (Nikki’s Mog) and it’s quite impressive. There was steam pouring (and I do mean pouring) out from the bonnet, from the back of the bonnet (where the vents are) and when I opened it there was a whoosh of more steam. So I shall *change* the coolant before heading up North; although I shan’t flush it.

    It seemed fine after slopping some fresh coolant in so it was probably a stuck thermostat. But I shall be paranoid’ly observing it.

    I finally, incidentally, got my shot in for Snapshot Hunter; ‘ve stuck it below, and I’m quite pleased with it… I’ve got a whole bundle more from the weekend with Kathryn, but I shall maybe upload them tomorrow.

    And to take you into the evening, here’s some links: Funny. Scary.

  • Demonstrable progression

    So, I mentioned the oil leak, but I didn’t mention the coolant. The coolant in the Viva appears to be made by a careful process of combining iron oxide and stale water, and then leaving it standing for; say; 5 or 10 years.
    This is obviously less than ideal. i have, in fact, since I had the car, been intending to flush the cooling system with some coolant flush and then change it for nice fresh shiny coolant. I may even do it twice.

    However, doing so before the trip to the Lakes whilst it seems in many ways a great plan (big stressful journey) invites my paranoia gremlin to pop out. See, last time I took Rebecca to the lakes, and just prior to the trip I flushed the coolant. The car then developed a leak (presumably some shifting bit of rust free’d it) and then in desparation I threw rad-weld in. Rad weld combined the remaining rust to clog up an already knackered coolant line and I got a very dead engine.

    So, paranoia says ‘don’t fiddle with it, it’s working’. So I’ve decided not to. Who can say if it’s the right decision. But since the coolant will probably have to be drained for the oil-leak-solution then I may save it for then.

    Completely unrelated to that is the fact that I made Raspberry and Apple crumble. Well. We’ll see if I made it, if it’s hideous I’ve just wasted nearly 500g of Raspberries. Sadly since they were picked at the weekend, quite a lot of them had gone manky. I think actually it’s because a few of them were just beyond perfectly ripe; and having turned into moudlyberries they were in close contact with many other berries. In the end I think almost 1/4 were inedible. Or at least, I chose not to trust them. Hence it becoming Raspberry and Apple crumble.

    I’m just waiting on dinner coming out of the oven; then the oven needs to cool down a bit; and then I shall have pie!

    Well, crumble.

    It’s weird to cook after so long not cooking. And nice. I miss having a nice kitchen; but frankly I’ve got sod all to complain about really. In fact there’s been some good house news; the woodworm is apparently not active enough to be worth treating. He reckoned it’s an old infestation with some residual activity; basically. And that all houses this age will have that kind of level of activity; most of it where you can’t see. Given the doubled joists, it’s not worth treating it, apparently. I may treat the bits I can still get to,  anyhow.

    I’ve also started grouting. I’d forgotten that I really don’t enjoy grouting much. How I could forget this I’m not sure, but I had. Still, about 1/3rd of the floor is grouted, the last tile is cut and down… So, all is good.

  • There’s good news and uh, some bad.

    So, the good news is that I’ve started making, albeit small, inroads into the chaos in my endeavour to make the house bearable when Kathryn comes back. It’s hardly be welcoming if it still had a Kate-sized hole on the sofa where I’ve been sitting surrounded by bills. I’ve even cleaned the stairs – it was quite horrendous how much shite there was on them. Seriously, it was revolting. Granted it was mostly sawdust and plasterdust, but still.

    Obviously, in my posting frenzy you’ve had the ‘lookie, tiles’; but I have pictures (you’re all thrilled, I can tell)….

    See, tiles!

    I also have proof that there’s a shower door in my bathroom; or at least, a shower door in someone’s bathroom, but I maintain that this is mine and that I put it up. Believe me, no one else would want to claim that they put it up…

    Anyhow, because I took it, and also because it slightly freaked me out when I realised how badly worn it really was, here’s the Viva’s clutch cable (I imagine you’re all barely able to contain your excitement at this point)…

    Yes, it’s frayed. Really frayed. If that had snapped it could have lead to embarassing ‘crunch’ type noises; although I’ve been awfully careful the last week not to sit with my foot on the clutch, as I might be wont to do if I was expecting a light to change… I’m quite proud of that shot, actually, it’s a really nice bit of macro photography, if I do say so myself (and I do). And it stands out really rather well against the aluminium carpet strip. That, incidentally, is my pile of metal that’s waiting for me to make a run to the tip. That run is approaching with some enthusiasm now, as my entire front garden is full of woodworm eaten floorboards.

    So, continuing the good news; the hoover survived. The builders used my Aquavac/Goblin (with my permission), however they neglected to mention that they’d run it ’til the bag split and the entire filter inside gummed up. I’m hoping it’s not toast in motor terms, but it doesn’t smell of burned motor. The filter at least saved it from sucking an entire base full of crappy builder’s rubble through its motor. And in other good news, with substantial effort I managed to retrieve the box-of-filing from the pile of crap. Having cleaned the filing cabinet (it’s still somewhat oily inside), I then spent a “cheerful” hour transferring stuff from the box into the cabinet. The box contained everything that *was* in the cabinet from a looong time ago. I have become aware that I need a shredder, again. I can theoretically shred up to 2002, now; and I can dispose of lots of old utility bills. And looking at how much paperwork I’ve got, that would be really quite useful.

    Anyhow, I’ve not yet started making inroads into the evil that is the ‘to file pile’ (which is in two parts):

    It’s amazing how much paperwork I’ve accrued in 6 months. Obviously there’s buying a house, two jobs, moving, purchasing endless appliances and bits for the house…. Lexx is out, incidentally, because I did the tinyest bit of sorting while I was shifting boxes – and found Lexx 1.0,  which means I now have all the Lexx videos. I think I’m going to sell them because, quite frankly, I can’t be arsed with video anymore. I loved the first season of Lexx, but never really loved it as much after that first season; the original actress (Eva Habermann) was fantastic…and not that the second actress wasn’t good, she just wasn’t Zev.

    Anyhow, so, that’s the good news.

    There is however some bad news.

    The house has woodworm, live doing stuff woodworm. I’d kinda disregarded the woodworm upstairs on the basis of my monitoring station downstairs being, well, unaffected. See, I’d read (somewhere) in my research that the lifecycle was around 3 months – having repeated my check I now find ‘a year’ is more accurate. But anyhow, I’d assumed after 6 months of staring at my masking tape that there wasn’t any activity and I was now safe. Unfortunately, I’ve now found two dinky little round holes in it, so I shall be calling in a woodworm company forthwith to see about fumigating the house. This is, how shall we put it, rather upsetting. At least the joists upstairs were doubled, because I know some of them floorboards that came out were completely rotten, so one must presume some of the joists are infested badly too… Ach.

    And finally, on a rather smaller scale, things continue not to improve on the laptop front… it’s still doing pretty well, given that it’s 8 years old, but at some point I fear it is going to have to be replaced…

  • On the dangers of prevarication

    But first, some news. Wow, those US lesbians with their gangs, and their guns… soon there’ll be no men left…. what do you mean it’s entirely made up?

    Anyhow, on to the topic de jour, prevarication. I got Brick serviced by a very nice garage who I’m actually planning to use again to sort out the oil leak *and* sort out the wheel bearing, because, frankly I’m done doing car maintenance for a while. I have the house, the job and the bike all calling for more time than I have; so the car, the car can be done by someone now I’ve got a garage I trust. And I trust them more now.

    See, on the list of advisories it had ‘heavy oil leak’ (which is true), and ‘rear brakes low’ which is probably true, and ‘Clutch cable needs replacement – badly frayed’ (along with the wheel bearing being ‘slightly noisy’). So I ordered a wheel bearing and a clutch cable… And they sat in the lounge, then they sat in the corridor. And I prevaricated. Did I book it in *now* or next week? Should I do it myself? I prodded at the do it myself option and didn’t like it, so I left it…

    Today I finally decided I would do it myself. Remarkably there was no swearing, even when the circlip disappeared down behind the ‘carpet’ on the driver’s side. There were several utterances about how insane Vauxhall are. But 2.5 hours after I started the car has a new clutch cable. And not a moment too soon; I see now that they weren’t joking when they said ‘badly frayed’. Of what appear to be 8 or 9 strands (each made up of many smaller strands) only two were intact, and the cable looked terrifyingly thin. Next time they tell me something’s in need of replacement real soon now, then I shall believe them :-)

    So, maybe I should order some brake shoes, but that really *is* a job I could and should do myself. *sigh*.

    Not today though, because once I’ve had this cup of tea over here, I shall be commencing the tile-a-thon in earnest, brand spanking new RCD in hand (or at least, plugged in). And roll of kitchen paper for my nose which has either taken offence to the dust (I suspect, ‘cos it was lousy yesterday), or has rediscovered hayfever because today it’s hot-like-woah. Actually, that’s not *strictly* true, because it is in fact bearable outside. And inside almost pleasant. But the weather is being it’s usual inimitable and unpredictable self; having gone from cold-wet-torrential rain over the past few days to tarmac-meltingly-hot sun today.

    I’m hoping it’s dust, because new filters are en-route for the dyson (and actually looking at them, that might explain it’s lack of suck, but I still feel I should give it a once over) and a pack, an entire pack of bags for the Aquavac/Goblin. I never had this problem when I used the Hoover Junior all the time; it just worked… ‘cept when it needed a new belt… ‘course it did cover the room in dust, but hey.

  • Frack me, it didn’t leak.

    That’s not to say it won’t start leaking in the future. But at this moment… *goes to check again* the only thing that’s leaking is one of the compression isolation valves which I threw on to test whether the pipes leaked. I am astonished. I rock.

    My house is, however, now home to a hideous cludge:

    Yes, that is in fact a hack to get water from downstairs to upstairs before I start attacking the downstairs plumbing. Clicky the picture for a couple more progress shots…

    The other thing I did today was go down and charge my mum’s Enfield. It turns out she can’t get the charger connector on, which is somewhat of a bugger; although I might try slathering things in silicone lubricant, since I’ve got some, and see if she can then. But it’s very stiff, even I struggled. This did, however, involve rearranging the garage; the best (albeit temporary) solution we’ve managed to reach is having the car half in / half out.

    This obviously won’t really *do* as it’s meant to go on charge for 8 hours from flat (although it took only an hour and a bit today to switch off). Having poked and prodded around the car some more I’ve discovered that it doesn’t appear to have it’s original controller; which is somewhat of a surprise, and that it comes with the front cover of the log for the research project of which it was part. Anyhow, more Enfield and related pictures here. My mum’s already talking about getting more range and fasterness with bigger / more modern batteries and a better controller. She’s not even *driven* it yet!

    Still, the MOT’s booked, so hopefully we can get down there and get that done :)

    I also took a few random flower shots, so you can get them here…

  • Adding physicality to the abstract of a concept.

    So, I’ve had a busy day. Really busy; no; busier than that. But before I get into that; you – people – go watch Hot Fuzz, it’s very funny. Saw it yesterday, laughed lots, really a very silly film.

    Yes.

    So, today. Well, first up because I’m too late for Snapshot Hunter (I’m really fracking *bad* at getting the shots in on time) here’s what would have been my entry:

    And yes, I do indeed need new chain gators for my MZ. Well spotted….

    Anyhow, so, on with today. Today was long. No, seriously, it was long. The concept was: Collect van, collect trailer, fly to mum’s, collect money, fly to Bristol, collect Nikki, fly to Wales, collect the car, frly back to Bristol, drop off Nikki, fly back to my mum’s, drop off the car and the charger, fly back to home and drop off the trailer (before they shut) before finally, ideally dropping off the van before *they* shut.

    It didn’t quite work out like that. I was a bit late arriving at Bucks Car Hire; but then I don’t see the point in sprinting there for 0830 when both times I’ve been there for 0830 they’ve been….shut. So we commenced the day at 0845. Not too bad.

    Then I filled up with derv, well, filled the van up with derv, not myself. Uuuh, and collected the trailer. I had a bit of a chat about using the trailer; despite my lovely licence being adorned with many exciting things I’ve not *actually* driven with a trailer before (although I’m entitled by my licence to drive a fuck-off-big-van with a fuck-off-huge-trailer; not just a little dinky van with a trailer, which is what I did today).

    Anyhow, so van hitched to trailer and fun and games explained I headed out to Bristol.

    And without too much trauma made it to Nikki’s house. Although to get the trailer into their courtyard I ended up unhitching it. While I was just about working out how to get the trailer where I needed it with it hitched, a lorry turned up and rather than sit in their way for a few hours I just unhitched it and moved it.

    Having collected Nikki, and somewhat fatefully, Pepper we continued on down the motorway to Wales.

    Now, I haven’t got any photos of the car in Wales, there are several reasons for this; one is that it was pissing with rain as we loaded up the car, and, well, I got quite wet (although, for reasons I shall come to, I was already a bit damp) and thus was in a hurry; another is that Nikki had her camera, which is somewhat better resolution than mine, and she was merrily snapping away, but the main reason is that I came to understand with a real deep, physical awareness, what the phrase ‘as sick as a dog’ actually means.

    I’ve travelled in vans with Pepper a grand total of twice. On both occasions poor Pepper has been sick. Last time Pepper was sick on the floor, but today, Pepper was sick…. on me. Mostly, thankfully, on the van. But also on my bag (now in the bin…) and also on me. Nikki (who I thank from the bottom of my heart for coming and helping) works out today that if you feed Pepper not too long before a car journey he’s sick! Gaaah! ;-) You have to bear in mind that I didn’t have a change of clothes… and so rushed in to meet the very nice chap selling the car, who kindly showed me to the outside toilet where I scrubbed at my trousers with soap and attempted to rinse the worst off; while Nikki attempted to clean the van.

    Unfortunately, for the rest of the trip, the Van smelt of dog-sick. At least, until we got back to Bristol where I forgave Febreeze for all it’s sins; and sprayed it merrily all over my trousers and the van seat. I’m hoping that after 3 doses the smell will be weak enough to pass off as non-existent.

    Anyhow, so, we got the Enfield onto the trailer without too much difficulty, and even more impressively, the charger into the van…

    The Enfield charger kinda dates the car. In many respects the enfield is not far off modern city ev’s; in fact, it can easily be made *better* than a lot of modern city EV’s, but the charger is a good old fashioned fracking huge transformer in a *BIG METAL BOX*. It needs to be set up correctly for the batteries in my mum’s EV, anyway, before we do anything with it. So I need to talk to our resident EV guru.

    And lo, here is the Enfield sat on a trailer:

    And from the back…

    And yes, that’s Nikki untying the Enfield…

    And here’s a slightly better shot of the car, once it was unloaded…

    Apparently they kept changing the design of the interior, certainly the location of the dials and gauges seems to vary enormously from car to car (here’s the three shots (1) (2) (3) of the dash of the other Enfield I looked at, the for-restoration one)

    And finally, here’s the front. It’s been slightly modified in so far as it’s got a grille from a Rover stuck on; with the rover badge replaced with an Enfield logo. I can’t quite decide what I make of it (the original look is here).

    Unfortunately, it needs a new horn and a new MOT. But hopefully, we can get it all sorted quite quickly. However, what is bad is that having played a little with it; one is more tempted by the sickly one. Which, fortunately is being stripped for spares; otherwise I’d be tempted to do something silly.

    At any rate, I didn’t get back to home until about 7:30, by which time I was pretty tired, but I did do one more useful thing before collapsing on the sofa…

    ….with the rather nice dinner my mum very generously left for me (and the desert. Home grown strawberries, some raspberries and a nectarine all chopped up and with cream. Nyum).

    And now, now I intend to sleep.

  • Corraling chaos. Again.

    So, this morning’s plan was simple, if somewhat busy:

    – MOT Cherry
    – GP
    – Return Keys
    – Tax bike
    – Go to pharmacy

    See, easy. Timing was slighly of the essence, with the MOT being at 0800, and the GP at 0920, and the van keys needing to be back by 10.

    But I decided to do things a bit…differently. In the end, the MOT went spiffingly (we won’t mention what I forgot to do when I changed the front disk, because frankly it’s terrifying; but the bike passed. I shall not work on vehicles when I have hayfever again). Because it was on the route back I stopped and dropped off the keys on the way back, which seemed, to me, to be a good idea… I wasn’t counting on Bucks Van Hire’s relaxed approach to opening hours. When I went to pick up the van they opened about 15 minutes late; and the same today. I arrived at 0832, and they didn’t end up opening until 0845; despite what their sign says.

    That delay meant that as I pulled into the road, a Pallet*brand* delivery truck was sat; the guy at my front door posting a ‘we tried, you were out’ note through. I pulled up and shouted, “I’m here” and then thought better of it – but it was too late. I wasn’t *expecting* a delivery today. I’d been expecting one all day Friday; in fact it’d stopped me doing various things because I couldn’t go out, because… I was waiting for a delivery.

    So, with 25 minutes to my GP appointment we set to unloading the van; in and up the stairs went my new shower door; the extra interesting the extra interesting bit being maneuvering it into the spare room, which is currently devoid of a lot of it’s floor. I expected it to come disassembled, but I was wrong (oh, so wrong) and it’s arrived as one huge lump of shower screen. This is in many respects good, I don’t have to assemble it and it probably seals better… but the bad side is it’s fracking huge and I have to deal with it by myself…

    Anyhow, with 15 minutes to spare, I got the bike taxed (‘cos I’d rather not drive Brick with the flickery oil light – and as I said before, I couldn’t get the oil sender out; don’t you just love being able to tax vehicles online?) and I headed off to the GP. I met a very nice GP who gave me Fexofenadine (without my prompting) and will send me to a local allergist who can refer me to the Sublingual Immunotherapy Allergy Clinic to which I’d very much like to go.

    I then flew to the pharmacy who amazed me by having everything in stock – I’m now trying the Fexofenadine for the first time, although I only hope for it to work tomorrow, really. I’m carrying the eyedrops in reserve. I’ve arranged for the Viva to be serviced. And, y’know what? I’m feeling quite good. I mean, my hayfever’s not brilliant, but it’s not awful; at the moment anyhow; and again, contrary to expectations, this morning has gone quite well. I worry, though, about this afternoon. First day back at work after a week off; it’s always traumatic.

    And then I can get on with the bathroom tomorrow afternoon….

  • Contrary to my own expectations

    After a solid hour of lying, eyes embedded in various bits of pillow, I declared that my eyes were better enough and that the weather had cooled enough for me to endure the outside world; or at least, if not, to achieve something inside.

    Fortunately for me, clouds were scudding across the sky, and the sun hid behind them; so I headed out to Halfords to find me a new bike battery (the one on the bike is quite definitely not well – to be fair it’s well up to replacement, I make it at least 4 years old, and it’s been flat (for long periods) more times than I can count) and, well, I’d rather not spend days relaxing waiting for the RAC/AA. So, yeah, that and some spray paint to spray the welding on Brick.

    So off I toddled, and I came back with, amazingly, a bike battery and some spray paint.

    I’m not sure when playing with hideous chemicals became un-fun, but frankly, filling the battery was less enjoyable than I care to recount, sulphuric acid as I recall being quite unpleasant. At any rate, it was filled, charged, and attached to the bike. The bike now has working brake, indicator, and other lights, a new brake disk (which I can’t bed in, because without an MOT…I can’t get tax…and I can’t ride it anywhere to bed the new disk/pads in. Poot).

    Uh, and the car? The car has been spray painted. Quickly, not particularly tidily, and y’know what, I’m going to ring that garage and get them to sort out the oil pressure switch and if it needs it, pump. And y’know what else? It was still bloody hot out there.

    At any rate, in between doing these jobs I also nipped to B&Q and got the junction box, because I wanted to extract the wiring from the bathroom-to-be (currently still a spare bedroom :-) ), this involved removing the socket from that room.

    I now have some plastering to do.

    And I remain unimpressed with the standard of the ‘professional’ rewire. Although at least, the guy who did it has daubed on the many cables that go into the junction box where they go (I need to correct one of them now!). The new junction box is to maintain the ring main, without the socket. I may be able to dispose of it when I’ve got more floor up; I’m hoping so; but at the moment it’s a neat solution.

    I’ve also switched the light switch in the spare bedroom from a wall-switch to a ceiling mounted pull-cord. At some point soon it’ll become the bathroom (I think, when there’s plumbing in there); and so before that I’d like to get all the wiring in… I need some hazard zone 1 lighting though. While I was in B&Q I did have a bit of a stand by the air-conditioners. I am weak, but not quite that weak. Wait until I’m working nights and have to sleep in the heat of the day…. then I’ll be weak.

    Anyway, I also got a concrete specific drill bit, so that pipe should be out of that damn wall quicker than you can say ‘uh, get out the damn wall you evil pipe’. I also got some grey pipe; so it will ‘match’ the other soil pipe. Although I *think* I needed some solvent too, because it’s a solvent joint at the soil-pipe end. But hey, that’s a job for another day. I do need to work out how to remove the globe-taps though, I presume they’re threaded – and that the doojit that attaches to the lead pipe is separate? Anyhow.

    Yeah, can you tell I’m not sleeping well at the moment? With the vague wandery posts? Right. So, what I did do though was work out that the pipes, the copper ones, for the heating, they are not quite as long as would be convenient. So I will probably cut them in a slightly odd place, so I can avoid having two joins next to each other. Uh, and I raised a lot of floorboards. Well, not ‘a lot’ perhaps. But several. There’s now just two between me and all the floor that needs to come up being up. That’s the positive. The negative is that I need to take up the floor I laid so I can put the heating pipes in; that’s what comes of improvising something to do. What I should do is plan. Or more accurately, write down my plan.

    So, tomorrow sees the bike back for a second MOT; and hopefully a pass. And then the keys back to the rental place, and then the Kate for a Doctor’s appointment.

    I’m sure you’re all thrilled by this information… :)