Bouncing batteries :-(

Eleven and a half hours sleep yesterday and I’m still whacked I did fully intend to go back outside after dinner to go and finish my ‘battery task’ but went for a wee lie down after some roast ham and spuds and fell fast asleep

Anyway I’ll just try and recall the days events, shouldn’t be too hard, it was pretty much the same as all the other days, fencing, fencing more fencing and some hen house fixing

I’ve still got loads to do but I’d decided that trying to rush it all and get it finished before going back to work would be foolish. I’m probably going to spend the rest of my ‘able bodied’ life living behind this fence so I might as well do it right and make it last So with  that in mind the first thing I did was remove two posts that were short and replace them with much taller ‘deer posts’. A dip in the ground here meant that there would be a large gap under the fence  that would need filling with wooden boards so the square deer posts would make that job easier too. Of course I’m just not tall enough to reach the ‘Cybermans head’ 

 

so I reversed the quad up to them to stand on

By late afternoon all the new fencing that I’d decided to do before returning to work was done and I borrowed Lachie’s telehandler to make light work of removing some of the old.

 

Of course the ‘wee dug’ just had to get in and help

That done it was time to load up the new ‘Rolls Surrette’ batteries and take them over to the old schoolhouse at Torran. A job that needed extreme care as the track has deteriorated quite badly over the winter despite much work by myself and the boys.

To play it safe I took the eight 400ah 6v batteries over in two trips leaving the Dude to make a start on cutting the grass there http://www.uniquescotland.com/raasayschool/index.html

These eight would be replacing the twelve ‘series’ wired two volt cell that provide the 24v DC required for the Studer inverter that runs all the 230v AC appliances.

This Swiss pure sinewave inverter is a fine and reliable piece of kit but is a bit of a nightmare to program, fortunately it has a ‘flash memory’ whatever that is so does not lose its settings when ‘powered done’. Just as well because its manual is beyond me

The new batteries would have to be wired in ‘series and parallel’ to get the required 24v and after working out a suitable configuration for the space available I went home to make some cables. Unfortunately, as stated previously, I fell asleep

Diagram of ‘series parallel’ wired batteries from http://www.solarray.com/TechGuides/WireDiagrams_T.php

 

Still, I must have needed it for I slept (fully dressed) right through until 7:00am, whereupon, after painting wifey’s hen house I headed to Torran to start changing the batteries.

All of which did my back a power of good

So, feeling pretty pleased with myself I loaded all the old batteries into the trailer and headed slowly home.

Very very slowly in fact, but it obviously wasn’t slowly enough as the trailer flipped just 10 yards after setting off

Now I should have just stopped there and unloaded half the batteries but as they were now covered in acid I decided to just right the trailer and carry on even slower.

 

 

Hmmm, that was on a flat bit at about 2mph, time to walk home and get water to wash off the acid and protective clothing me thinks

Eventually I got them home and power washed everything down before going to see how Lachie and Angus were getting on with the new shed.

Very well indeed I discovered

 

and a little later, even better

 

 

Think I’ll skip building the house and just move into the shed

The rest of my day was spent sorting out my VAT return, or at least registering for the compulsory ‘online’ carry on. I know it’ll be easier once its set up but I made a ‘cock up’ of it on Saturday so had to wait until today to speak to a person. That is of course after you’ve spent ten minutes talking to a friggin machine and pressing option one. Fair play to HMRC though, when I finally got through to Gary he was most helpful and sorted me out in a jiffy

I’m at a loss as to what I did next apart from getting my trailer ready to shift some oil, cutting some wood and giving hen house number two another coat of paint. Anyway, what ever it was it was done under a clear blue sky on the warmest day in a week or two, the wind having finally gone out of the north. Of course this probably means that it will start pishing down shortly (as forecast) so I went for a last look up to the shed to clear away anything that might not take kindly to water.

 

Aint that just a lovely spot

Anyway, that’s it, it’s well after 23:00 now, the wind is freshening and the heating on in the porch due to the ‘dump loads’ switching on. The rain won’t be far away so I’m off to bed

Almost a success :-(

I never finished last nights effort because it had been a long and exciting day, and judging by the way I feel right now I’ll probably not finish tonight’s Still, I’ll have a go at picking up where I left off, which if I remember rightly was just heading down the west side of Raasay aboard the PS Waverley, a short history of which can be found here http://www.heritagesteamers.co.uk/waverleytitle.htm .

This is a picture off the above website of her being launched at A&J Inglis’s yard on the Clyde in 1946.

With the incoming tide sweeping us southwards we were well ahead of schedule so the captain took time to hug the steep shore of Loch a Sgurr before skirting around the little island west of Fladda called Grian a Sgier (the sunny skerry).

 

 

Now the home to many birds including terns, gulls, oyster catchers and even the odd goose Grian a Sgier was once used to graze ‘sow mouth’ sheep during the summer. Sow mouth being a condition where the lower jaw protrudes further out than the upper meaning the sheep cannot eat the coarse grass and heather so well.

It is very aptly named, for often when all around is in cloud or rain Grian a Sgier is bathed in sunlight, something I’ve witnessed myself on many occasions.

Our next minor detour was into my ‘home port’ of Loch Arnish for a look at ‘Calum’s road’

and even Calum’s house,

 

though you can only see the roof and chimneys

We did however get a good view of the western end of ‘Rainey’s wall’ at Tarbert.

The rugged red gneiss of the north soon gave way to the gentle slopes south of Inver and all too soon we were expertly moored to the Raasay pier.

 

 

 

Back to reality

After almost two days of none croft related doings I arrived home at my beloved Arnish around 16:00 and wasted no time in getting ‘stuck in’

 

stuck into to replacing the duff batteries on my ‘beloved’ that is

I know, I’m really sad when I get excited about changing batteries on my truck but me and the ‘Old girl’ have been through a lot together and I like to take good care of her. Unable to get another pair of ‘Exide Maxxima’ batteries delivered for a reasonable price I’d opted for a couple of ‘Optima’s’ from Paddock’s http://www.paddockspares.com/scp/PERFORMANCE/Optima_Batteries.html . With enough lights to illuminate the north end of Raasay and a 9500lb winch that can draw 200 amps without breaking sweat I need good batteries and these ‘Spiral wound AGM’s’ are the dogs danglies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRLA_battery#Absorbed_glass_mat_.28AGM.29

Of course with most things in life, and just about everything connected to my Land Rover this simple operation took me several hours

Right up to sunset in fact

Saturday

Unusually for me I didn’t surface until after 7:00am, even more unusually I was not the first up on what turned out to be the hottest day of the year so far, a full 19.9 degrees in fact at 15:00 With roof and house still in need of painting I opted to leave that and get on with sorting out a ‘back up’ water supply for my mates ‘Harris turbine’ at http://www.uniquescotland.com/raasayschool/index.html . The Harris hydro turbine performs faultlessly for over 95% of the year drawing water from a 600m long pipe from Loch nan Dubhan over 100m above sea level. However during the dry spells it can get a little iffy so over the last few months we’ve been laying an extra supply to the much higher and deeper Loch Airgh na ha-Aon Oidhce (loch of the one night shieling).

This means almost an extra 400m of pipe and 20m of head but should maintain a year round reliable supply to the house.

Most of the UPVC pipe had been laid and glued so it was just a matter of attaching it to the MDPE pipe and teeing into the existing pipe with a couple of valve to isolate each supply. A simple task were it not for the remote and inaccessible location high above Torran.

 

First job was to make a filter for the end that would go in the loch,

then assemble ‘the team’, Charlie, Molly, Ruby and my boys pal.

It’s a long trek up there, a mile on the quad then a half mile hike but pretty soon we had the new pipes teed up,

then I coupled up the final joint between the UPVC and MDPE, leaving the glue to set whilst we went home for more couplings and forgotten tools

Returning after lunch Ruby assisted with inserting the pipe and filter in the loch

 

The four month old Charlie however had to be carried back

Once all the pipe was connected and the water flowing we shut off the supply tom the turbine and opened the one into Loch nan Dubhan.

The idea behind this being to bleed the pipe of air as well as ‘back flush’ the intake filter from the lower loch, a plan that worked a treat.

All would have been well had it not not been for a burst in one of the UPVC pipes about half way up to the higher loch   Further investigation revealed that the pipe had been damaged prior to fitting so we removed the inlet from the loch and called it a day.