Snow me down
The snow over last weekend has made progress slow. but Norwegian Wood sure looked pretty clad in snow!
I got tarpaulin covers over my nice new joists and was loathe to remove them as rain and more snow was still hovering in the back ground this week, but on Monday a bath”room” in a kit of parts arrived. The bathroom or flat pack shed as it is more commonly known was sourced from a company in South Wales who decided that they couldn’t deliver up to us; but Mark was happy to go down in our Toyota pickup with one of the trailers to collect.
He arrived on our doorstep at 6.45am Monday morning to get the truck and was back by lunchtime in spite of the snowy conditions. He pushed off to continue his normal days’ work delivering portable loos whilst I got the trailer unloaded.
After the floor for the Hafod dome is complete this flat pack will be transported across the field to be erected adjacent to the dome for the bathroom. I want the floor in first so I can get the levels between the two correct with no steps to trip the unwary in the middle of the night.
To complete the floor I have had to cut a number of the joists to create “spacers” to fit between the ends of the joists. Each has to be cut to a precise length and at suitable angles. There’s 15 of these and in spite of the rain I have got all but 3 cut and fitted. The main joists are spaced about 1200mm at their tips and because the floor boarding has to be supported at a maximum of 600mm centers I’ve added in some extra supports known as noggins (unless you are north of the border) in which case they’re dwangs.
There’s a further 15 of these at 800mm long and 15 at 600mm long. The end of each of these has been cut to be a snug fit into the shape of the TJI joist which gives the whole frame work a lot of extra strength. I’ve spent a couple of days in the shed getting these all cut and have about another days work to complete the set. Still it is dry inside and working keeps you warm.
I managed to get 2 birthday celebrations to finish the month. With various cards (but no gold watch) in the post on Wednesday we had a home cooked meal of steak, fries and salad. We periodically get for the deep freeze, half an organically reared Welsh Black Steer from a local farmer, so a couple of rump steaks came from our stores.
Then on Saturday K got some leeks in from the garden and using our potatoes plus some sweet potatoes produced some really tasty soup for lunch plus a litre or two to freeze. Then to round things of we had an Indian takeaway in the evening from the newly refurbished local “Spice Hut” in Rhayader. Must be tough for them. They moved to new premises in July 2020 having been shut for months and got reopened in the summer and now can only do takeaways. Food as always was excellent and a nice bottle of red to wash it all down. First time we’ve had a takeaway since last July so it made a nice change and no washing up!!
I’ve been tuned in to a brilliant guitar player called Martin Harley for some years now. We first met him when he was playing locally in Presteigne and have become groupies and seen him perform at various UK venues. Although not so obvious on all his records he’s world beating slide or bottle neck player on any stringed instrument especially on his live gigs. He made a great recording playing at the Union Chapel in London in 2018. He’s now playing in his back garden and waiting to get back on the road.
We had the album on to accompany last night’s repast.
Renewable energy/Power generated this week.
PV power 9.8 Kwhrs
W Turbine 24.7 Kwhrs
Total renewable energy 34.5 Kwhrs
It’s a pity the moon doesn’t power the PV as we had a massive full moon here the last few nights.
We still had to have the genny on a couple of times this week, but as the days are longer now the solar PV will soon start to power our “grid” 100%. The days get longer by over 2 minutes each day now so by the end of February there is over 10.5 hrs of sun; in December it’s under 7.5 hrs ignoring cloud cover. Roll on spring.
