Well, that's the mole sorted out then

Not sure which cat caught this little blighter, but it won't be giving us any more trouble.

That assumes that the mole hasn't been caught by Mardi sunbathing somewhere and brought it over for the kittens.  Fingers crossed it's the one in the veg beds.

Tortilla with a mole.  A good sized one too.  Small rat sized.  Much much bigger than a vole.

snow tyres

Fitted the snow tyres Continental (ContiWinterContact TS 850, €135 for 2) today on the front axle.   9mm tread.  Took the P6 (4.3mm NS, 4.4mm OS) swapped them left to right and put them on the rear.   On rear tyre is now the spare, and the other is in the garage.  (5mm ns >5mm os)
Seems the picasso eats the edges on rear tyres, and it's not adjustable.  The old rears have rounded shoulders.  Old fronts are pretty good.

Skis

It's that time of year I find the skis and wonder why I didn't clean them and wax them before I put them away.
So I've filled a rook of holes, removed all the burrs and rust and put a very  pretty layer of purple wax on them.  All we need now is snow...

A tidy garage ..

...is the sign of someone with too much free time.

Winter is rapidly approaching and early starts to go skiing mean I need to get the car in the garage.  The push bikes are the biggest pain, but a friend suggested hanging them by a wheel, which seems to work.  If I have oval wheels in spring, I'll be in trouble...

Tortilla home

4pm.  Got a call from the vet to say Tortilla can come home.  On a bank holiday too!

Sick kitty

Well, Porc Noir is all fine, but Tortilla will need to stay at the vet.  Her swelling was not kittens but a ruptured bladder.

Kittens to the vet to be fixed

Porc Noir and Tortilla went to the vet today to be fixed.

FZ6S headlight continues

4 hours to strip the front end off a bike.  Still, as least I can change the lamps if I need to without removing the entire assembly, unlike someone's FZ6N light.

Saga continues with making of brackets, and painting part of it black, where it had scratched off.

Carte Vitale

A major milestone for me.  A carte vitale.  

did an update for both cards at Tournay pharmacy 22/11/13 ~10.30

FZ6S headlight

Bought a fz6s headlight, damaged off ebay.  Arrived yesterday.
one side (left as looking at bike) a few deep scratches, but ok, other side well abraded along the top half.
tried a bit of jif on both sides, but no change.  Left the left side alone.  Cleaned lenses with IPA as there was a lot of glue on lhs, a little on rhs.
right side
used 1000 grit paper to get uniform hazy finish over the damaged area
jif seemed next most abrasive, so plenty of that on damaged area
chrome cleaner
tcut
clean in water
spray furniture polish
the untouched area might have a coating which means you can see the difference if you catch it in the light

Looks pretty good and uniform.  Now I just need to glue some lugs back on and fit it.
€130 saved for a couple of hours work.

col de soulor

About 180km round trip/ 3.5 to 4 hours, via Lourdes.  Went from Pau side.  Fantastic deserted road up to the top, 1474m.
Didnt have the camera, but it looks like this

Logs for winter

As the nights draw in and become cooler, my thoughts turn to trees.  To burn.

Since last spring, the remainder of the 2 stere of beech we bought in December 2011, has been stacked against the house in the dry.  These are 50cm logs, typically split into quarters from 50cm diameter trees.  As the log burner can only take 25cm logs max, the chainsaw, axe and elbow grease come into play.

4 hours later, 1 neatly stacked pile of thin 25cm logs is next to the front door.  About 0.75 stere.  The wood store has over 2 stere from a tree given to us by Emele in early 2011, plus a crate of tinder oak pieces.

year 0. Jan 2010.  Gas.  Brr.
year 1.  2010/11 bought 2 stere.  Used about 1.25 stere
year 2.  2011/12 cold winter.  bought 2 stere.  Used 2 + 0.75 (previous year) - 0.75 stere (left over) = 2 stere.  
year 3 2012/13 warmish winter, but long.  Used nearly all the 'tree' in the woodstore, which burnt quite readily.  About 0.25 stere of beech left, stacked by the front door.  So say 2-0.25 = 1.75 used. See blog late 2013 for info on the timber.  Currently ~6m3 in wood store, say 7m3 stacked in trees.

More firewood

7 car load, or about 2 tonne/stere of timber brought back from the forest today.  And an hour of tidying up.  4.5 hours in
The pile is over 2m high in some places.

Where's the dish gone

Satellite dish. It was a fairly bright white colour, which up against a bank stood out a bit.  So a pot of olive green paint later and it's a bit better.  Needs a little brown to fully camouflage it.

Spain here we come

Went to Spain with Graham and Di on the bikes.  170km to Ainsa for lunch, and then back via a view point, which is almost the back side of Gavarnie.  Left at 10am, back at 6pm.

FZ6N headlight

Another ebay bargain.  This time a FZ6N headlight.  Brand new and 1/3 of dealer price, or 1/2 discounted price.  A mere €230.  And the difference between the LHD and RHD?  A polished, cast aluminium (I think) reflector, which is not supplied as a spare.

Fitting is a pain as it looks like this light was an after thought on the design.  The bulb wires rub badly against the frame when you turn the bars.  Even with a few mods, it's marginal

Finished the steps

Cut the rest of the steps, laid the slabs, and grouted all of yesterdays slabs.  long day.
Yesterdays mortar is still soft, meaning 2 slabs got wobbly from being walked on.  These autumn days slow things down.

paving the front of the house, wood store and more steps

Cut some stone with a diamond blade to make risers for the steps.  Only 4 steps this time.  Cut 1 step into the bank, and laid the rest of the slabs alongside the shed

Fire Hearth

After over 3 months of deliberation, the colder and darker evenings have turned our thoughts back to the hearth for the fire.  Constraints on the size and colours of tiles mean we have to compromise on the size.  A tad too small, but maybe  a small rug will protect the floor if burning logs throw themselves out of the log burner.

More paving

Another 25 slabs from Bricodepot, and a trolley load of plants from Jardiland.

I kind of liked the clay.

Moving the satellite dish

We were getting complaints.  From the space station.  They could see our dish from there.

It's only 1.2m.  According to the Astra 2 foot print, we are OK on a 0.9m, but I'd noticed new services on 1N which were moved over recently are less than 100% signal.  Could just be that the transponders are cheaper/weaker on certain non-mainstream channels.
So about 2 years ago, we had a spare pipe sitting at the top of the drive and I decided to quickly mount the dish there.  I say pipe, 450mm diameter, 50mm thick, 1m long concrete.  About 150kg.  I have been looking at alternative locations, but nothing really worked, until we had a tidy up at the rear of the house and found an area 4 x 4m which I could squeeze the dish into.  The rear had been a bit of a dumping ground for a while. 

This is one of those really annoying photos.  The satellite dish was plumb in the middle of the shot at the top of the drive.









You can just see the house wall on the right of the picture.  The 150kg 'pipe' was quite easily rolled into position.  However, thanks to the newly layed paving, this job was much harder, as I had to roll it up hill first, then along the bank and down, all in an effort to avoid crossing new paving.  The pipe was dropped into a hole and filled with small stones from the adjacent pile.  The estimated combined mass is 300kg.  The recommended concrete mass for a dish this size is 150kg.

Must dig some more holes and bury some more stones..

25 paving slabs put to good use

I'll have a lot more respect for the people that lay steps in the future.  This paved path replaces the fred flinstone one that ran up the slope here for the last 2 years





Viewed from the rear of the house.  The shed is on the right.
The path running to the right will continue to the drive/garage.

Kitchen / lounge finishing

Retrospective entry.
Receipt for marine ply under kitchen floor bought today, so must have filled/sanded lounge 2nd.
1.  remove kitchen to lounge
2.  fill paint tile kitchen
3 re-install kitchen
4 move lounge stuff to B2
5 fill paint lounge
6 relax.

say jan 2013 noticed grout on tiles nearest book case cracked for about 1m, parallel to joining strip
22/12/13 tiled/wooden floor producing load crack around 2pm and again around 6 as it expands/shrinks in the sunshine.

Ash floor

About 37m2.  Fitted in the car, just.  2.42 x 200 x 13 Kahrs woodloc 55

installing the immersion heater

In a wild fit of engineering enthusiasm, I realised that our surplus energy could be harnessed into hot water.  However, as we use an on-demand gas boiler for that, it meant a capital investment in an immersion tank, and the ability to switch between the 2 systems

A pressure reducer was soon fitted as we at 6 bar, which is fine, but the tank then dribbles water away as it heats up.  The reducer, down to 3 bar, means the tank no longer wastes water in expansion.

New water heater

Bought a new Addax on-demand gas water heater today.  Should be plenty good enough to power a couple of showers.  Went to buy the largest 14l/min (1.9kg/hr), but ended up with the 11l/min kW model as the flue diameter was too big on the large one.  Will fit a changeover kit too, as the gas flow is huge flat out. (1.6kg/hr)

Got a wood allocation

Not sure of the date, but it around now that we got a share of the local woods to cut down.
An area of around 4000m2 and we get 2 years to chop the trees and get them home.
The area borders a main road, and my plot has a forest track down the side good enough to park the car when dry.  There should be around 15 stere.  Looking at the other 12 plots, we're about average.  The better plots are far less accessible and will need a tractor to get the wood out.  We've got a lot of good trees along the road which will need to be pulled down with a tractor. Time to make friends.

Electricity

Today the team to install the meter turned up.  They also terminated the 25mm2 cable we'd pulled through, and turned on the juice.
A week later, someone else turned up to program the meter.

used 75m of 10mm rope (2 x 30m, 1 x 15m) to pull 67m of cable U-1000 R2V 2x25mm2 noir (€371), which was ordered on 23/12/11 from materielelectrique.com - 2m surplus.