So my little three week non-departing-vacation is over. It’s time to look back at what has been achieved at chez us. I have finally, after nearly 2 years of prevarication, wired up the security lights and alarm repeater on the garage. The garage was alarmed (heh) but had no alarm box on it, so you couldn’t tell when you’d triggered it from inside the garage. Inside the house it was clear enough, but since 2/3rds of the aim is to persuade anyone breaking and entering to leave, ideally rapidly, then having a dirty great siren going off on the building is probably helpful.
I also finally put up the ‘security’ lights. They’re more ‘access’ lights, really, given the feeble light output from the 30 LED arrays inside the security light casing. But rather than wasting 100s of watts, they waste only a watt or two, which makes me much happier. And they also make finding the keyholes in the padlocks and gate somewhat easier.
I have also completed insulating under the sections of the house I can reach with the Innotherm recycled denim insulation. I am unutterably grateful that I used that, not glassfibre, considering how hideous a job it was even with that. I miscalculated staggeringly, ending up with 4 extra rolls that are currently looking for a home (just waiting to see if our local house renovating friends need them, otherwise if anyone on here wants them, lemmie know*). The actual job was made worse by the plastic coated wire I was using to retain them not coming on a spool (it’s actually garden wire) – and becoming one of those special tangled knots of wire. In daylight, sat outside, it’d be naught to untangle. Irritating, but that’s all. As I struggled in the narrowest space, tangled between the incoming water supply, gas lines, the main run of our ethernet and phone cables, covered in a layer of filth, a mixture of too hot and too cold, I ended up swearing a blue streak. With only 3 sections left to insulate I couldn’t even get enough wire out in one go to fix up one section. Eventually, I managed to get the frustration out of my head and slowly pick the wire apart. After that it went fairly smoothly.
The other persistent irritant was the staples I started off using which kept jamming. So I’d manage a few staples and then be picking the staples out of the gun, the strip having disintegrated into five sections of a few staples each. Each of those would then disintegrate into single staples… I’m not sure if it’s the age of the staples (they were my dad’s, actually, I suspect bought for a similar purpose many years ago). But changing to much longer staples (better for retaining the wire anyhow) seemed to fix that problem.
Anyhow. It’s done now, and the floor is definitely warmer. The house also actually seems to stay warm with the heating on. The lounge is still drafty, though, so we’ve smothered that in rugs. Many rugs. More to come.
Outside I’ve cleared the overgrowth in my yearly purge of the area between our land and our neighbour’s, the brambles and lyme trees felled and ready to go through the shredder. They’d be in the shredder now if it wasn’t raining. Although I really should get a new blade for the shredder. Hopefully it’ll cope with this… I’m also considering adding a chainsaw to our collection of rarely used power tools. I was going to get a hedge trimmer, but actually, a chainsaw would probably be better given the thickness of some of the things we want to take down.
It would also allow us to trim down our neighbour’s hedge, before she sells the house, thus making our garden have light again. She’s fine with us doing that… so… however, it does rely on the weather being a little less inclement.
What I have done, albeit not finished, is the deck. I need a few more pallets to take it to completion, and a few days without rain, and to sort out my circular saw’s battery pack. Oh, and to spray it with the deck oil that I just ordered. But otherwise, ‘s all good. And I’m quite pleased with the way it’s looking now:
Although I have been wandering around humming “Sittin’ on the Dock (of the bay)”, and occasionally going for ‘Aye Aye, Captain’ comments. Incidentally, the edging strips aren’t actually attached yet. They’re waiting on me finishing the vertical sections, which is waiting on a few more pallets.
The autofeeding screwdriver was a mixture of ace and terrible. I don’t think it’s meant to be used pointing downwards vertically (since it does say it’s a drywall autofeeding screwdriver) but it kind worked. And the autofeed screws largely did their stuff, but I think a combination of the cheap driver and the cheap screws led to sufficient misfeeds that it probably didn’t take much less time than doing it by hand. It felt like less time though, when the battery was working. However, the battery took 3 hours to charge and about 20 minutes to die. I think I’ll keep it though, because whenever we decide we want to do something again, the autofeeder shall be given a new shiny battery and better quality screws and it shall probably be way more useful. Ironically, the cheap/crappy Argos battery ‘drill’ proved it’s worth as the screwdriver for when the autofeeder quit – even though it irritates me that they had a picture of it that bore no relation to the object I actually picked up (specification subject to change. Feh).
Anyhow. So that was all good, in the end. Oh, and for those who might have noticed, I straightened up the stairs. I knew they were wonky (level, but off straight) due to the fact the ground, old stairs, the deck, everything has its own version of level. I’d tied the stairs into the deck at a point where it’s definitely not level, because it fouls some randomly poured concrete that’s insanely hard to get up. Having realised that it was going to irritate me forever that whilst the stairs were level, they looked crooked, I unscrewed a few bits, and had great fun putting them back in ‘by eye’ so they look straight. Yay.
I have also picked 47 billion apples (and 3 pears (some bugger had already raided the pear tree)) for the making of both English and American cider:
On Friday we’ll have the rental cider press, so expect howls of anguish. Especially if works out as badly as the slow-cooked tomato sauce, the recipe for which produced something I’d describe as ‘burned flavour’. Sufficient sugar makes it sort of edible, but I’m largely inclined to throw the whole lot away. Thankfully they were shop-bought tomatoes as we never had a glut. We’ve got a small batch of our own tomatoes to make into chutney with our green beans tho’, which should be good. :)
Finally, I set up The Electric Minor Project website. The main aim of the website is to drag in some sponsorship for the conversion (to fund the purchase of batteries) and promote the conversion. I’ll be on the Transport Evolved podcast tonight to talk about it… (1900 BST). Assuming our Net Connection plays ball.
Uh, so that’s it.
* They’re 4m x 400mm x 70mm with a rating of 0.037WmK.
