Monday, May 31, 2010

Making shapes

Between the kitchen and the rest of the house far years there has just been a rough hole in the wall which has been there since we arrived. well with both sides now finished it’s time to finally put the last piece in place the arch itself. DSCF3348So we built the arch former from ply and small bits of pine. DSCF3350Once the former was complete then came the task of fitting it into the opening.DSCF3355 we screwed two boards across the bottom of the opening.DSCF3358 Then the arch former was fitted between them and secured in place.DSCF3363 Rebar has been put in to give the arch added strength. Note also that the other side has already had the boards fitted.DSCF3366 We poured the concrete in and added the extra boards as we went along.

DSCF3370 With all the concrete poured in and the boards fitted it was time to cross fingers and pray that we had got the concrete where it was needed.DSCF3393 The following day it was time to take of the outer boards and see if we had in fact managed to get the concrete into the right places. As the photo above shows it looks like most of the concrete is where it needs to be, with just a few bits needing some surface patching…

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Watering 2.0

Our efforts at using gray water to water our veg has hot been that successful, the first year worked ok , but after that it stopped working. The main problem is the gray water has not been filtered so that it clogs up the drip watering feeds etc.

After some web research and book reading, we cam across a method using plastic pipes with drilled holes to distribute water. These are buried in the veg plots and should provide adequate irrigation.

so we purchased some 20mm plastic pipe and added the holes.

DSCF3342 Pipe being drilled.

DSCF3347 All the bits ready to be assembled.

The pipe sections are 2m in length and have aprox. 20cm risers added so that they can be berried below the surface.

The water is derived by 16mm plastic irrigation pipes with a tap for each buried pipe. The main problem at the moment is getting all the taps balanced so that each of the berried pipes gets the same amount of water.

So far the system seems to be working but the real test will be through the summer.

DSCF3352 The new irrigation system with some very young corn plants…
will it work?

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Battery Box fail…….

There I was happily pottering around the house when I heard this sudden crash and thud from somewhere around the house. “Now what has fallen down!!” After 10 minutes of hunting I could not find a thing that had fallen..

Well about a hour later I was hanging up the washing and spotted the following:

Compressed Battery Box

What seems to have happened is that the plastic in the storage box that we used to cover the battery 3 years ago has degraded to the consistency of prawn crackers and finally collapsed.

DSCF3345

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Look out…Look out…..Weather about….

One morning as I was going about my normal  morning routine I walked outside an was suddenly surprise to spot the following.DSCF3339 Yes that is a water spout. It’s a little mini tornado that appears over the sea, we do see them sometimes when the conditions are right. They disappear quite quickly and don’t make it to land and also it is very rare to spot one touching the sea. which if you look at the picture below you can see this one does.DSCF3336