Almost living in the country

Exwick is quite close to the countryside, and it seems they do things differently there.  For example, in the Sears household, we have domesticated electricity, which we keep out of harm's way on the roof, and we let it out gently into the house through little holes which are so tiny that it can't all come out at once, so that it doesn't cause any trouble.

Tiny holes - quite safe.

 But walking just up the road to the amusingly-named hamlet of Nadderwater, I came across this rather different approach.  Here they keep their electricity in a dog-kennel sited in a hedgerow, right next to the road.

Electricity kennel

Beware of the 'letric!

I was pleased to see that they had put a lock on it, because I wouldn't like it to get out on its own and come running down Exwick Hill past our house without being on a lead. I imagine their semi-feral electricity must be quite ferocious if they have to keep it outside like that.

I must remember to ask the postman if he wears a pair of Faraday-cage socks up there.


It's very nearly next year now, so I can wish a Happy New Year to both my readers!  Well done for making it this far; I salute your endurance.  2018 is already guaranteed to bring more unfinished projects; they are starting to pile up already...

Vacuum cleaners - an unsolicited reviewvertorial

The Sears household has a chequered history with vacuum cleaners.  I remember splashing out on one a while ago which I recall being rather expensive, but I thought "Well, it's worth getting a good one, it will be a well-designed joy to operate and last much longer, and Jackie likes it (in the shop) so everyone will be happy in the long run".  It was a tow-along style, featuring switchable power settings (rather than a cheap but annoying slider gizmo to let some extra air in, which,  in my experience, always gets opened accidentally and spoils the max. suction I almost always want).  Somewhat bizarrely though, it had an ultrasonic connection between control (on the handle) and the main body.  This worked OK unless you towed it along round a corner, and then the off-switch didn't work, until it got line-of-sight to the body again.  It wasn't excessively noisy though, and I quite liked it, so I was a bit miffed when I found that it had suddenly been replaced by a VAX jobby.  Even worse, the old one had been mysteriously "disappeared", despite still being in good working order.  Can you imagine the effect on my delicate psyche?

The VAX turned out to have with a few irritating features.  Most irritating was a big, foot-operated on-off switch than you had to press exactly squarely, exactly in the middle or it didn't work.  Also, it was very noisy indeed.  And the dust emptying process didn't work very well, leaving a big clod of stuff stuck in the transparent cylinder; if you tried to shake it out whilst holding the handle, the whole thing fell apart and into the bin.

Worst of all, it didn't actually work very well on our wooden floors, preferring to slide the bits of stuff around in front of itself, rather than vacuum them up.  And so it had to go.

This time the House of Luuurve came to the rescue, by providing us with the opportunity to try out their recently-acquired VTech cordless units.  Yes, you need two, because one is only an upright floor cleaner, and the other is a hand-held with all those little brush and nozzle attachments you need.  And how wonderful they are.  The lack of mains lead is indeed a joy, the performance is exceptionally good, and the upright has a gizmo for emptying the dust collector which really works.  You unclip the part, put it over the bin, open the bottom and slide the magic slider gizmo; the crud falls neatly out, and that's it.  Great!  Still a little bit noisy, but overall, jolly good. So we bought ourselves a pair.

GTech hand-held - mmmmm!

Sadly, the first time Jackie used the hand-held, she dropped it.  The main nozzle/snood thingy attaches with a locking sleeve (green)which unlocks by pulling it away from the body.  Unfortunately this means that it you inadvertently grab the thing by the sleeve whilst trying to attach a brush (or something), the weight of the body itself causes it to unclip and drop off.  Even more sadly, this happened while she was standing on the back of the sofa, attending to the previously little-cleaned pelmet of the patio doors.  The drop given was six feet, and the the result was almost fatal - mostly it wouldn't switch on, then it wouldn't switch off.  Bugger.

Wishing to minimise the distress that this sorry episode was causing, we phoned up VTech to see whether they would take it in for repair.  Instead, they diagnosed on the phone that the switch module had probably broken, and offered to send us a new one, free of charge.  Excellent!

When it arrived, sadly it didn't fix the problem.  Bugger again.  Back on the phone - and this time VTech offered a complete new chassis, next day delivery - which would be Sunday.  Still no charge - doubly excellent!

The chassis arrived as expected, but by this time the battery was flat and it wouldn't charge in either chassis.  We went back to the House of Luuurve to experiment using their one, and confirmed that our only remaining problem was that our battery was now defunct.  Guess what?   VTech sent us a new one - free of charge.  And collected all the old bits.  And so, we are restored, and happily cleaning the parts our previous vacuums couldn't reach.  Awesome.

This level of customer service is peculiar to new companies trying to establish a reputation, and it doesn't last forever.  Eventually the competition gets stiffer, the margins get thinner, the bean-counters take over, and all that remains is an internet forum where customers can moan to each other.  But it is a joy while it lasts.  Buy a VTech today!

Sensible project, but why now?

The latest exciting project is one which I have been meaning to do for a while, but not quite getting it together.  Basically, the garage roof leaks, due to too many people walking around on it (to trim the overhanging hawthorn tree) without using ladders (which live on it anyway, so there's no excuse really) as duckboards.  That and the fact that it's probably 50 years old by now.

So this presents a couple of problems:

1. The old roof is made of corrugated sheets made of asbestos cement, which is actually very stable and not scary at all, but nevertheless you have to treat it like nuclear waste to get rid of it - double wrapping each piece in polythene sheet, taping it until it's airtight, labelling it, and putting it in the council's asbestos skip yourself (they won't help you with your nasty asbestos, even if you ask politely) and paying them £10 per bag for the privilege.  Or you could just fly-tip it for free, of course.
2. The roof is supported by metal purlins across the width of the garage, but they are about 1 metre apart.  Most roofing materials need much more support than that to avoid sagging.  Also, the purlins are fairly weak - especially the one which has been sawn down from a fabricated beam into a single piece of 1" angle iron to make room for the up-and-over door to operate!  So building a proper structure on top seems a bit heavy.
3. I'd like to get rid of the condensation problem which occasionally turns the garage into a cold drippy place where you wouldn't want to keep anything, really.

The roof.  It actually slopes down towards the camera, not sideways. Honest.

Corrugated asbestos cement - pah!

 On the outside, my roof mostly has a protective layer of disgusting black gunge and unexpected miracles of nature, which further eases the handling task of removing it.

Black gunge - yum!

 The solution to the new roof seemed to be metal profile sheets with foam insulation built in between two skins.  This is pretty rigid, fairly light, and very insulating. The only problem is that the people who make it aren't interested in little garages (maybe if you wanted to cover your local Sainbury's...) and would want to deliver it on a huge vehicle which could never get anywhere near our house, and charge for bringing it from the Midlands.  Hmmm.

Alternatively, get some second hand from Ebay, and collect it yourself, using a rented car trailer, towed behind the camper van!  Ideal.  For some reason, the camper van has a tow hook (it boasts a claimed 70bhp remember).

And so I met a bloke called Jonathan in Bratton Clovelly who is redoing his barns, and apparently buying large random lots of this stuff, and selling on the bits he doesn't want.  Except that he had already sold the bits I wanted.  But he would be getting some more next week.  And then when the day came to collect, both Leo and I had had violent vomiting the night before, and were settling into being drearily ill for days.  And so another week went by...

Eventually we get the stuff back here (it turns out 70bhp is plenty for towing a car trailer, as long as it doesn't have a car on it), so that I could measure it up properly and buy the correct length J-bolts to hold it down.  Which I duly ordered, and some more time went by until they turned up - the wrong length.  They charged me for the 160mm bolts I wanted, but sent 180mm ones, which just won't do.  So I got in touch, and agreed to just return the bolts, and keep the spat washers and nuts and top hats, and here we are, still waiting for the right bolts to arrive.

Meanwhile, winter is about to set in, and it's about to get very cold.  And it's dark most of the day.  Which is a pity, because the weather has been perfect for a while.

Meanwhile, I made a thing to hold the panels flat on the sloping drive out of an old bookcase which once belonged to Aunt Mabel (long deceased) and scrap bits of Dexion, which was nice. 

The blue thing tied on to the far post is to protect passers-by from the sharp edges - it's a foam "bone" which allows you to strap windsurfers on top of each other on your car.  I gave up windsurfing more than 25 years ago, by the way.  The truly eagle-eyed will have spotted a couple of windsurfer masts amongst the hang-glider frame tubes on the garage roof.  After all, you never know when things are going to turn out to be useful, do you?

Anyway, it's another ongoing (read: unfinished) project.  There will be more, I promise.