Dudley’s here :-)

Well it’s 6:00AM and the wind has been steadily freshening throughout the night, not that I heard it, half a bottle of red wine and triple glazing had me soundly snoring till just recently. However the wind is coming straight off the sea from the north west, my batteries are fully charged and a look at my weather station https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/IKYLE21

tells me all I need to know.

Well I’ve just been outside to check everything is where it should be and it certainly looks like a day to be in the shed. At least it does when I finally get fired up, breaking my number one rule of ‘never drinking alone’ last night has left me with a sore head and sapped my enthusiasm Still, it was busy day yesterday, I got soaked to the skin and felt I’d earned a wee glass. Only trouble being my glass holds half a bottle and I’ve not had a drink in a while. Serves me right hey

Hydro woes

Wednesday started off just peachy

 

a full moon over the Storr and a few hinds grazing nearby.

 

Being a Wednesday Bonzo and I took the wheelie bins to the end of the drive for the binmen and then went for our morning walk. The bin lorry only comes up when I ask it, which is normally once every month or two. I see little point on dragging a ten ton truck up the already knackered road every week just for a bag or two of rubbish. I take my recycling down when I’m working and have plenty of wheelie bins for storage of everything else. Though I gotta say that the one and only thing I miss about not having a stove in the house is no longer having an incinerator for prawn shells and the like. The bin can get a bit whiffy in the summer if I don’t deposit my fish guts back in the sea

  

Walking along the track to Calum’s old house it was good to see and hear my old croft and house being worked at last. The rushes cut and the sound of cockerels being music to my ears. 

 

Once the walk was over I loaded up the Honda with my 2” water pump to get my hydro turbine primed. Then it was down to the Powerspout itself to clear a blockage in one of the jets.

 

The first image shows nothing coming out of the top left hand jet, the second one after I had removed a small stone.

A medieval toilet

Next it was along to Brochel to see how the battery bank was doing there. The poor sunlight that had seen the buoys at Sconser fail being a little concerning.

  

However, all was well with the batteries at 95% but I set the Victron controller to run the generator for an hour and went for a wander round the castle.

  

And here’s me worried about my bins getting smelly, this is where you went for a dump ‘back in the day’

Harris hydro turbine

After seeing all was well at Brochel I went over to Torran to check up on the ‘off grid’ system there, where I discovered they too had a hydro issue. The Harris turbine that supplies this property along with 1100W of solar PV had stopped working

 

It has three different sized jets and the smallest (the one in use) was blocked.

  

My diagnosis of a fish or newt causing the trouble was confirmed when I took the turbine off its base to investigate. I figured it wasn’t a stone like what had blocked mine cos of the smell, it was pretty whiffy but I soon had it back up and running.

Mr Lister

As with the system at Brochel I gave the generator a run whilst I was at it. The back up for this property being a Lister ST2 7kW Startomatic.

Leaving Mr Lister running I went home for lunch around 14:00 when it just started raining. An hour later the whole of the north end was awash

I only fried up some spuds and eggs but when I came back out of the house my generator shed was flooded

  

Water was pouring off the hill due to some blocked pipes in the burn to the side of my croft. The pipes being choked with windswept dead couch grass.

Luckily I soon sorted the drains out but my trip to Torran to turn off Mr Lister was rather wet

  

On time :-)

I’d have been hard pressed yesterday morning to guess what was coming weather wise but a quick glace at the forecast foretold with great accuracy what was in store. Pretty much grey and dry without much wind until 13:00 when it arrived with a bang from the SW. Along with came the rain, sadly apart from feeding the pigs and walking Bonzo I missed the mainly dry morning.

https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/IKYLE21

Being glued to my office chair doing my VAT return for the driest part of the day

Though I had started that at ‘stupid o clock’ long before it was light let alone wet

Golly gosh, almost 7:00AM now, ‘fell asleep at the wheel’ last night around 22:00 and awoke around half an hour ago after sleeping like a log No doubt after feeling elated at my previous day’s achievements. My VAT return submitted a full two weeks early Great progress made on my hydro turbine despite the weather and a splendid roast dinner to finish off the day.

Sweet potato, leek, halloumi, sun dried tomato and olive served on a bed of 5 year old tortilla wraps I’d found in one of my freezers Just making use of what was left in the fridge before I go away tomorrow. Though I gotta say the tortillas from 2017 were a bit of a mystery, don’t remember buying those Anyway, it was pretty darn good, must get more sun dried tomatoes from Lidl while I’m away regular ones are pretty 5hit3 this time of year.

Hot stuff

 

This morning when I arose I was somewhat surprised to see the green ‘pump running’ indicator light illuminated on my temperature controller. Upon investigating the graphics on my MTDC controller indicated that the store’s circulating pump was running. This is a pump on the store that circulates the water within the store if it gets too hot. You see that red thing with the blue wire going to it in the image, it’s connected to a pipe that goes from the bottom of the 1500lt water store to the top and when the water temperature reaches a certain value the pump starts up to move the hot water at the top and replace it with cooler water from the base of the store

It must have been pretty windy during the night cos the top of the store was 80 degrees when I got up and the bottom was 57 degrees though it’s getting cooler at the top and warmer at the bottom as we speak. I guess it’s more a reflection of living alone and not using as much hot water as I used to but it’s the first time ever I’ve seen that working, better go and have a shower

Progress on the Powerspout

After ‘wasting’ the best part of the day in my office wrestling with paperwork I finally turned my attention towards the Powerspout hydro turbine and it’s manifold.

  

The bent 50mm pipe still had a bit of a curve in it so I loosened the clamps fitted some wedges under it and stuck a heat gun up the end.

  

This seemed to do the trick nicely and I completed assembly up in my workshop by fitting the automatic greaser and adding a stainless steel support to the manifold.

 

Then just as the rain was really lashing down I headed down to the Secret Cove with my burden.

 

It wasn’t easy lugging the boodly thing down there but I did it without incident, well apart from falling on my ar5e once or twice. Typically my helpers arrived too late to be of use

 

Anyway, after several trips to and from my workshop with forgotten tools, screws and measurements, I finally got the base solidly mounted.

 

Fastening it at around 90 degrees on top of the original.

 

Now all I have to do is connect the water and electrickary  both of which require a little thought. The penstock doesn’t quite line up and will need supporting and this turbine will rectify the current here rather than up at the house like the other so I need to sort out my + from my –