More Lister’s

Now this is going to be a lightning quick post, already 21:30, the first full day back at work and a house full of family and dogs means there’s little prospect of anything ‘deep and meaningful’ 🙂 As if there ever is 🙂

Anyway, back to yesterday, Tuesday or ‘rushing day’ as I call it, Tuesday’s are always a rush, rushing at work to get everything finished for my ‘back to back’ and rushing at home to get everything finished for wifey. It was a nice enough day with enough sunshine to boost the serotonin and just enough rain to prevent the lawn being cut.

The day started with being unable to rouse the boy for school, or at least being unable to do it without having him walk about like a half shut knife so we left him in bed where he stayed for an extra two hours. My son is not lazy, is good at getting up and wants to go to school but I refuse to send him half asleep. Fortunately we received word later in the day that the council had at last seen sense and granted him a place at the hostel. The effect of this news being like a great weight being lifted off our shoulders and more welcome than a lottery win.

It’s taken since July to achieve and we could not have done done it without the support of several doctors writing letters, two councillors fighting our corner, the area education chief, school and community council. Thanks to all that helped, it is REALY appreciated.

It’s a gas

I can’t really remember doing anything major as Tuesday is more of a ‘buttoning up’ kind of day but the first thing that springs to mind (via my camera) is repairing my neighbours gas leak.

   

This, with the aid of some washing up liquid I traced to a corroded connector on the regulator. Of course it needs a new part and of course it should be fitted by a CORGI installer but this is Arnish and we’re not exactly on the ‘beaten track’ so I had to improvise. After all she arrives tomorrow and without gas she’s no lights or cooker.

 

Not exactly pretty but a little work with a hacksaw, new washer and much PTFE tape had it sorted, testing with more washing up liquid revealed no leaks so I wrapped it all in ‘Denzotape’ and put it back together. It will do just fine until the new part arrives and if it blows up she can sue me 🙂

 

No ‘day off’ would be complete without trekking over the hills messing about with the lunatic hydro scheme, so just in case I can’t get ‘plan D’ to work. Plan D being the purple route that I did on Friday which is a modification of the yellow route which is a modification of the green route 😦 Just in case that turns out to be unworkable we, the Dude and I looked for an alternative, coming up with the black route down a steep gully and ending up in that spot above. To be honest for the amount of cable that it would save I’d be tempted to go for the red route (plan A) it’s more direct for the penstock, more accessible and visible from the road, or at least the outlet would be with binoculars.

 

Anyway after all that we went to retrieve the trusty Honda priming pump from the loch

which was considerably rougher than the sea

and was not without incident 🙂 whoops!

It was also not without the reward of some fine views over to my mates house at Torran.

Wednesday

The first full day back on the Loch Striven had the misfortune of being the first day that I’ve set off for work with the lights on, well before sunrise which was at 7:06. It was also the most miserable morning we’ve had in a long while with a strong south westerly and lashing rain.

Though that didn’t stop the clam diving boat Donna Marie poking her nose out and looking for a sheltered corner to work.

My day was spent investigating an oil leak on the aft main engine, which I found but could do nothing about until the engine was shut down for a while.

Lunch break had me driving over to see Simon at http://www.raasayengineering.co.uk/ for Calor gas and a look at his Lister’s that are for sale (or at least they were, think they’ve been sold now)

Two fine 1933 CS18/2’s that used to power Raasay House via some DC generators.

Rated at 21HP at 1000RPM these two beauties would make a fine CHP plant http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generate-your-own-energy/Micro-combined-heat-and-power-micro-CHP for someone with a good supply of chip fat, lard or waste cooking oil 🙂

 

Anyway, that’s it, I’m off to bed I’ve already spent more time on here than I should, so I’ll just leave you with the weather, of which there was plenty 🙂