Very quick one tonight because firstly I’m wrecked and secondly I’m researching solar hot water systems to power the new bath I’ve just fitted today. Well, I say new it’s £600 worth of ‘P’ shaped bath and a toughened glass shower screen that’s been languishing in the garden shed for over 4 years! I bought it when they were all the rage in a sale reduced from £900 and have just got around to fitting it. Which is criminal really because my old cast iron bath had to be seen to be believed. It was in pretty poor shape 20 years ago when I moved here and I swear the previous owner had been using it to dip sheep and wash paint brushes but I was poor then and thought I’d have a go at cleaning it, after trying all the usual cleaners, soaking it in bleach and scrubbing it with vinegar all to no avail I purchased some stuff that was gauranteed to do it. I can’t remember it’s name but you diluted it and let it soak in the bath for a specified time, sure it cleaned it OK but left the surface of the bath like orange peel. This had the advantage of making the bath very ‘non slip’ but the severe disadvantage of being very difficult to clean and leaving your bum feeling like you’d been sitting on sand paper! After putting up with this for several years my second ploy was to paint it with ‘International’ 2 pack yacht paint which was fine for a couple of years until it started to lift and leave huge flakes of very hard and sharp paint lying in the bottom of the bath. I never intended fitting the new one today, it just started off as removing some of the paneling off the old bath whilst it was a bit damp outside and evolved into a full blown plumbing nightmare from which there was no return.
I had intended to fit the bath before I went back to work on Wednesday and had indeed purchased all I thought I’d require from http://www.screwfix.com/ to at least get the bath fitted and the shower working ready for tiling on my next week off, years of experience have taught me never to start a job like this on Saturday when all the plumbers and builders merchants close at lunch time but did I take any notice of ‘mr experience’ ? what do you think. Needless to say the resulting lack of vital components added several hours on to what should have been a straight forward job. The job was made even harder by several small but important bits that were missing or lost in the various moves it made around the shed during the last 4 years.
Though eventually I got it in enough to have a bath and my first ever shower at ‘The end of the road’
OK I know the taps are in the wrong place but the right place ( in the middle of the bath ) struck me as being the ideal spot for catching your dangly bits on as you were getting in and out of the bath so I put them at the end where the shower screen is. It will probably take me another 20 years to finish it but we’re getting there 🙂
Life at the end of the road 
Well it fits in there perfectly.
A nice touch of luxury,well done for getting it in and working.
Comment by George Kershaw — March 21, 2009 @ 10:44 pm
Morning George,
Perfect fit ! it was half in inch too long at one corner 🙂 like Ed our house suffers from ‘right angle deficiency’ All I need now is a good floor covering, what are you doing next weekend 🙂
Cheers, Paul
Comment by lifeattheendoftheroad — March 22, 2009 @ 7:03 am
Well, I’m impressed. 4 years. Nope, can’t quite match that. I only managed 18 months with a replacement (second hand but good nick) bath waiting in the living room for me to get round to fitting it. It’s been in most of a year now so maybe it’s almost time to think about the tiling. Don’t want to rush these things. Show screen’s been waiting about 3 weeks while I scratch my head about the not quite totally vertical wall it should attach to.
Comment by Ed — March 21, 2009 @ 11:02 pm
Morning Ed,
At least in the shed it was out of sight out of mind as far as wifey was concerned, don’t think I’d have got away with 2 weeks in the living room. Come to think of it I don’t think it would have fitted in our living room 🙂 Can’t say I’m looking forward to the tiling as I’ve never done any before 😦
Good luck, Paul
Comment by lifeattheendoftheroad — March 22, 2009 @ 7:00 am
Oh how I would love to come up and do your bathroom!
That would be neat, lol.
Tiling is a doddle just get the tiles,adhesive,grout,a cutter,and those little spacers and of you go.
I have only done it once before and was apprehensive at first but it was so easy, dunno what I was worried about!
Comment by George Kershaw — March 22, 2009 @ 11:22 am
“P” shaped? Hmm ahh…. now thats an interesting bath, can’t say “The Rage” ever reached Tasmania, hope you’ve got enuf HW to fill it!
Comment by Donald — March 22, 2009 @ 4:42 pm
Hi Donald,
Probably never caught on in Taz cos of the outrageous amount of water it takes to fill it 😦 Having said that we plan to use it more as a shower in the spring when water is scarce. The rest of the year we could fill it twice a day no problem 🙂 well apart from the odd time our supply freezes up 😦
Cheers, Paul
Comment by lifeattheendoftheroad — March 22, 2009 @ 8:29 pm
The tiling is the easy bit. I am passing in a couple of weeks time (going to St Kilda) if you need a hand 🙂
Comment by Simon — March 22, 2009 @ 6:43 pm
Hi Simon,
I’ll send an SOS if I’m struggling 🙂 Have you any room in your car for 3 St Kilda sheep? if so could you take our three back there!!!!!!
Cheers, Paul
Comment by lifeattheendoftheroad — March 22, 2009 @ 8:41 pm
I am hoping to land and get to the top of Soay so I could possibly take them home. If you can sort them a free passage on the Uig – Tarbert ferry I will consider putting them in the roof box on my Nissan Micra !!
Comment by Simon — March 22, 2009 @ 9:15 pm
Hi Paul. Martin mentioned your blog-site to me. Nice to see you ar still as resourcefull as ever! I bet it realy “tees” you off having to send a car to a garage! I had to do the same a couple of years ago, it was my sons Megan which would only run for a few seconds then die but had all its vital signs there. After much Injecting, pumping, compressing, sparking, and general messing I had to bite the bullet! I borrowed a Trailed from a chap on Oak st. Accy. and hooked it up with to my LPG Rangie. £200 pounds later Fixed!
The catalitic converted had collapsed internally and was completly blocking the exhaust. You live and learn! The Rangie has gone the way of the rust worm and I am on a Jeep Cherokee, LPG of course. This has a under floor tank and is much more use because of that. That is just the preamble Wht has prompted me to witter to you is th talk of Solar water heating. For about the last ten years Lesley and I hav been using it at our house in Spain. It works great, only when the sun shines. Our system is a Rayosol. http://www.rayosol.com There is a roof mounted double skinned insulated five hundred liter hot water tank directly gravity fed by three tandem mounted, black copper flat panel glass boxed panals.
This will, in full sun, heat up to 55degC in three hours. It has only once packed up and that is because we are in a hard water area and it got Limescaled up. The Plumbed who ripped us off for it (an electricien from Glasgow) had not included a softener. Esential inclusion for any form of water heater in a hard water area. I flushed the system with the correct acid with much fizzing and gluging. Then retro fitted a potash vessal, no probs since. With our sucess there I have looked into Solar heating here
but I can not get it to make sense The greenhouse type panals we have in spain need good Sun! The fancy tubes that look like huge old fashioned radio valves can they really get hot under a grey sky?? Then there is the problem of frezing, When British weather can hit sub Zero randomly some nights for 6 to 7 months of the year, that means the system has to be glycol filled and hence indirectly heat the water through a heat exchanger. Either to cold to exposed, heavy/ ugly having it all on the roof, so the tank and exchanger is lower than the panals and you now need an electric pump. See where its all gowing you are going to spend more than you save. With your land you might be able to locate it where it will gravity feed and have enough head for the shower but if som animal with a mind of its own decides to investigate those fancy glass tubes – bang goes the bank balance and I dont think you have a home grown “Quantative Easing” plant at either end of your road!
Have a look at Ground source heat pumps. We use the Air source type four house heating in Spain. They work well on all but the coldest days having an efficency of about 4:1 down to +5degC then they tail off and will not heat if the air outside falls to below -5degC. With ground source water you should be able to get 5:1. then there is more capital outlay depending how you choose to get the heat out of the ground.
Some thing for you Mull over in that warm engin room having your cuppa. Glad to see you are all doing well.
Best Regards Peter & Lesley
Comment by Pete Bassett — March 23, 2009 @ 12:00 pm
Great to hear from you Pete,
I was a bit dubious about this solar heating carry on at this latitude until I saw a 20 tube system at work near Kyle with all the data for Kwh produced for a year. OK there was precious little between November and February but the rest of the year it made a very significant contribution. Lots of info here http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index.php and it looks pretty straight forward. We have perfect ground here for ground source heating ( deep black and peaty ) also I have miles of MDPE pipe but we don’t really have the spare electrical capacity to run it ( yet 🙂 )
Cheers, Paul
Comment by lifeattheendoftheroad — March 23, 2009 @ 8:34 pm
Hi there Simon,
You travel free one way if your carrying livestock anyway 🙂 so I’ll leave them in a crate at Sconser marked ‘St Kilda mail boat’ 🙂
Cheers, Paul
Comment by lifeattheendoftheroad — March 23, 2009 @ 8:51 pm
Hi Paul,
Just to say I enjoy your blog and found it particularly useful after the fire when I could refer ‘Friends of Raasay House Community Company’ to it to see your pictures.
Your boy is not the first baby to have his nappies changed on the ‘Conqueror’. The boat belonged to my husband and I just after we married and came to Applecross and I was crew (fishing for prawns) for a couple of years, until a few months before our eldest son was born in 86. We never took him fishing but he regularly went to Kyle by boat. The boat was called the True Love when we had it, which may seem a bit soppy, but it was called after Ali’s grandfather’s boat, which fished out of Applecross many years ago. Where did it go after you sold it.
Regards
Alison (project officer, RHCC)
Comment by Alison Macleod — March 24, 2009 @ 1:13 pm
Hi Alison,
glad you enjoy the blogg and I’m delighted to hear that my 9 year old boy was not the only wee person to have a nappy changed on the Conqueror/Truelove, though I bet your 23 year old son will now be cringing at the thought 🙂 She was called the Truelove when I lifted her off the bottom and I have to confess at not liking the name. I can’t say that I liked the name Conqueror much better as it sounded like a 60′ boat but a chance meeting with the brother of the original owner made me use it. He said “Conqueror, that was the name of my grandfathers boat, it was lucky for him, it was lucky for my brother so it should be lucky for you” or words to that effect. So Conqueror it was and she served me well. My son spent the best part of 18 months at sea on her with myself and ‘Willy Eyre’, he could climb a pier ladder at two years old count scallops at a very early age is good with knots and has great sea legs. Happy days, she’s still on Skye over at Struan on the west side.
Cheers, Paul
Comment by lifeattheendoftheroad — March 24, 2009 @ 7:45 pm
Truelove is not a lucky name for a boat. She was on the bottom twice when we had her too, and the next boat we had, a new build called Truelove 4, came off the mooring in an easterly gale when we’d had her for 14 months and was never seen again. The bait table was found on the shore below Dun Caan. We have not used the name again.
We didn’t like the name Conqueror, though we knew why she was called it, because that was the name of the sub that sank the Belgrano at the start of the Falklands war.
Glad to hear she’s still alive and well.
Alison
Comment by Alison Macleod — March 25, 2009 @ 2:36 pm
Hi Alison,
They say it’s unlucky to change a boats name. I had to laugh after I’d brought her up off the sea bed twice and put her ashore at Arnish for repair I excitedly showed her to a diver friend of mine. “I know that boat” says he “I’ve lifted it off the sea bed twice” !!!!! It was not a good omen, however she went on to serve me well for years.
Cheers, Paul
Comment by lifeattheendoftheroad — March 26, 2009 @ 5:11 pm