A pretty good job (considering)

Been a proper peachy day today and I made it back to the old ‘Loch Striven’ after my bout of flu, I’ve ceased calling it ‘man flu’ cos now mrs C has it. Admittedly she’s not moaning and groaning like I was, she’s still managing to cook for me and she made this splendid job of Shona’s temporary house.

Now compared to how it looked in yesterdays post and considering that I couldn’t even lift the kettle when I had the flu, then I think she’s done OK. In fact top marks I’d say. I have a tremendous respect for the ‘fairer sex’, I’ll never understand them because they’re wired up differently but their resiliance  and fortitude never cease to amaze me.

Back to work

Having a phenomanaly accurate body clock means this mucking with the time twice a year really messes me up even so I love it when the clocks go forward as it really feel like spring is here. It’s just one of the years little milestones that I look forward to like the cuckoo that should be here in a couple of weeks or so.

The day passed pretty quickly on the ferry and I managed to get out at lunch and check out what ‘grumpy digger driver’ was up to.

He looked like he’d been busy moving caravans to the site he’d leveled for ‘Balfour Beatty’ to house the harbour workers.

I think he knew I was coming and hid so I went off and filled my trailer up with rocks for my car park extension. I did do other things like check out the space age hen house and arrange an exciting trip for the Dude and I on Wednesday but I really must go and spend some quality time with the saint that is my wife.

A sign at last (for ‘Calum’s road)

Had I not been studying my diary last night for 18 years ago and spotting an entry that said ’29th march BST’ I wouldn’t have put my clock forward so my mum and the Dude would have been well displeased. As I’m going back to work tomorrow and mrs C is in and out of bed all day with the lurge then we all decided that Dude would be better off at my mum and dads for a few days. It would give him chance to bag another Munro or two and give us a bit of peace (only kidding) Leaving my invalid wife in bed I went out feeding only to notice that all of Shona’s considerable pile of fresh bedding had vanished, upon investigation I saw she’d burst open the barn door dragged all her bedding inside and made a lovely nest. As the barn at this moment is full of many things easily destroyed or eaten by a curious pig I swept out the bedding and screwed the door shut! that’ll show her who’s boss!!

There she is sulking after I locked her out. All this put me in such a rush for the ferry that I didn’t even notice the sign until my return.

In fact I nearly jumped when I saw it and as I’ve been dying I’m not absolutely sure when it went up. It wasn’t there on Friday morning so I suppose it must have gone up on Saturday as I think the council supplied it and the community council erected it. Anyway I’m sure this will be it’s first public showing days ahead of the WHFP and it’s long over due and at least now I won’t get lost on my way back from the pub!!!

A battery charging and a seal changing day

When I arrived back home mrs C was still in bed and me knowing how ill she was and knowing the way to her heart and how to make her feel better than any amount of chocolate could decided to change the door seal on our washing machine. It’s a Bosch ‘Classixx 1200’ and I’ve been putting off changing it for weeks because I made the mistake of consulting t’internet before attempting it. There are pages of stuff written about how hard it is, DO NOT let this frighten you I did it in an hour with 2 star keys having disregarded everything I’d read. Take top off (2 screws), I took control panel off (3 screws) but think it was uneccessary, remove old seal, taking note of position of spring clips and orientation of seal. Wedge drum as far back as possible with 2 of Dudes shoes, fit seal, fit spring clip, remove shoes, fit front clip, re build.

Being off the grid, making our own electricity by wind and as a back up by ‘Lister’ diesel genny then a fair bit of maintainance is required. The main back up ‘ Harry’ the HR2 gets done every 500h or every year whichever comes first. ‘Twinny’ the ST2 and ‘old faithful’ the SR1 get done when I feel like it as they’ve not been run in anger for years, though I fire them up once a month to make sure all is well and keep the valves free. I plan to start running them for longer under more load as running them light loaded glazes the bores. I’ve loaded them up in the past with flood lamps or fan heaters but it’s always struck me as a waste so now I’ve started doing it with battery chargers onto my various banks. This means I can time my genny checks to coincide with lack of wind and put some juice in my batteries at the same time. Despite the wind today I did it anyway as I wanted to try out the new 48v charger I’d just got off ebay.

That’s it bottom left and it will do 12/24/36 and 48v batteries @ 30/30/25 and 15 amps respectively so at least the genny is doing something useful now.

As well as putting some juice in the main house 48v 1000ah bank ‘Twinny’ was topping up the 12v 500ah bank, his own batteries, ‘old faithfuls’ and an odd one I had lying around. After topping them all up with distilled water cleaning the top and terminals checking and recording the S.G. (specific gravity) I left ‘Twinny’ to it for a few hours and just enjoyed being outside for a while.