It's that time of year again

With the rapidly shortening days around the equinox, my SAD hit me again. At least this year I noticed it quickly, instead of spending a month wondering what was wrong with me. On top of this, for the last week or so the weather has been miserable. The clouds surround us, blocking out the sunlight and filling the air with moisture. Everything is dark, cold and damp. This doesn't help. So, um, sorry for the recent lack of blog posts.

It hasn't all been bad. This morning we had a few hours of sunlight, which lifted my mood enough to put these together:

Flyers for our next (and last) gig

On Friday a friend of mine posted some pictures of mushrooms on facebook, wondering what they were, and sent me a private message with their location, in case I was interested. I couldn't be sure from the photos, but they did look like ceps, so I went to see, and...

Cep, with cat for scale

... they're huge! That's not a trick with perspective, that mushroom really was that big. Unfortunately, it was also rather full of maggots, but they weren't all. My drying rack is now full of sliced mushroom - if only the humidity was a little less than 100%

I made some progress with the solar panels, then stopped when it got difficult. I'll tell you about that when I get back to it. Right now, the need to creosote woodwork does not sit well with the presence of mushrooms trying to dry in the same space.

I have harvested the sugar beet - a smallish barrow load (I haven't weighed them yet). This doesn't feel terribly positive right now, because the next task is to clean them.

Filthy sugar beet. They're not all this big.

One positive side of all this damp weather is that when the clouds do break, we often get very nice rainbows.

Mushroom paté

Having dried some mushrooms to a crisp for storage...

Jars of dried mushrooms. Ian says the chanterelles look like small, dried octopi

... I got to wondering what I might do with them in this state, apart from rehydrating and adding to stews and suchlike. As a first step, I tried powdering them, potentially for using as stock. It turns out that a pestle and mortar makes short work of this job. I haven't yet tried it, but I imagine I could make a pretty good smooth mushroom sauce from this powder.

Today, I had another idea. I had an open tub of mascarpone cheese in the fridge, which I'm quite partial to at the best of times. I took a large dollop of that and mixed it with my powdered mushrooms - about half and half cep and chanterelle - and, um, that was it. It took quite a bit of mixing, and the result is a fairly firm paté, as the dried mushrooms absorb moisture from the cheese.

Mushroom paté

Wow, this is sublime! Of course, the crucial part is finding the right mushrooms in the first place (and note that this is only suitable for mushrooms that can be eaten raw), but once they've got as far as the storage jar, this is a very easy treat. I'm counting this one as a success.

Mouli review

I spend quite a lot of my time pushing stewed fruit through a sieve, especially at this time of year, when there's so much fruit in the hedgerows. It's very hard work and I've broken several sieves in the process, so as the most recent victim parted company from its handle, I wondered whether it might be time to invest in something that's actually designed for the job of pureeing fruit whilst leaving skin and stones behind.

Discussion on the selfsufficientish forum had alerted me to two possible options, a mouli and a passata maker, originating in France and Italy respectively, the latter being designed for processing tomatoes. I sought advice on which would be best, and found that our local cookshop had a reasonably priced mouli for sale. I discussed it with the shopkeeper, and neither of us thought the screen fine enough to sieve out blackberry pips, so I went back to the forum to ask and, reassured, returned and bought the mouli. I do love that shop - I wish I could afford to buy kitchen equipment for often, but perhaps it's just as well I can't, for the sake of my cupboard space.

Anyway, here's the new gadget:

Mouli, in pieces

It comes apart into three pieces, or five if you count the spare screens with different sized holes. There's a bowl part into which the to-be-pureed food goes. In the bottom of this is a disk/screen with holes in, and this is held in place by a third piece, which fits into the bowl and includes a spring to hold the screen down, a blade (not sharp) to push the food against the screen, and a handle to operate it. This might be clearer if you see it in action:

Stewed damsons in the mouli. I chose the medium screen for this.

One feature of this particular mouli is that it doesn't have legs on the bottom for standing it over a bowl, just hooks at the top. This means that if fitted over a bowl, there isn't much room for the puree to come out at the bottom. Luckily, it fits very nicely over a ten litre bucket, though it is a little difficult to find a comfortable working height.

My first attempt was stewed damsons, as shown in the picture above. The stones are relatively large, which I find difficult to deal with in a sieve. Recipes often advise taking the stones out before pushing it through a sieve, but that takes ages. So how did the mouli handle it? Brilliantly! This is definitely the right tool for the job. It's still a manual tool, so it's not effortless, but it's a lot easier than the sieve, and it does the job very effectively. I found that the handle needs turning in both directions; clockwise to push the mush against the screen, then anticlockwise to lift it away again. It's also necessary to use a spoon to push stuff down to the bottom, especially as it gets drier.

My next attempt was mashed potato, as I've heard people say how much nicer it is made with a mouli (I'm skeptical). Optimistically, I wondered whether I might be able to boil small potatoes with their skins on then have the mouli extract the skins as it mashes them. No, it doesn't. Oh well, it was worth a try. I also found that, for a meal-sized quantity, transferring the potato to a metal mouli, and then into another container, cooled it a lot. On the other hand, if you have a quantity of blighted potatoes that you want to mash in large quantities to freeze, it's just the thing.

Mouli'd potatoes, through the largest screen

For the third test, another batch of hedgerow fruit for fruit leather, this time crab apple and blackberry. Can a mouli really sieve out blackberry pips, even using the finest screen?

Fruit leather, drying on the rack in the conservatory

Yes. Yes, it can. At least, I haven't found a pip in the pulp I've sampled so far.

EDIT: Now the leather is dry, it's clear that a few pips got through, but I still think it's not bad.

A few blackberry pips got through

The only problem I've come up against is that this gadget processes such large quantities (the one I bought is big; smaller ones are available) that I don't have enough baking sheets to spread the pulp out on.

As you can probably tell, I'm very pleased with my new gadget. It takes more washing up than a sieve, but with just three parts it's not too bad, and it more than makes up for it in labour saved. It might even make it worthwhile to pick haws, as I'm curious to try hawthorn ketchup.

Spud harvest

At some point when I was looking the other way, my potatoes got blight.

The dead stems of the King Edwards are there, in amongst the weeds, if you look closely enough

We had a spell of cold, wet weather, which probably encouraged it, and I don't suppose those weeds helped, either.

Still, all is not lost. I dug up three bucket-fulls of spuds. I haven't weighed them all yet to see how this compares with previous years, but I think it's quite a bit down. Still, it's a lot to process all in one go. Why bother processing? I usually just put them in sacks in the store room. You see, the thing with blight is that if it's infected the tubers - and with that rain it's sure to have washed onto them - they rot in storage. I found a few rotten tubers in the ground, but most were fine. The only sign of blight was tiny brown spots, in some cases only visible when I peeled the potatoes. They're perfectly good for eating now, just not for storing.

You can't see the blight, but I know it's in there

If I want these to last, I need to do something with them. I have plenty of freezer space, so that's the obvious option, but raw potatoes don't freeze well. That it, they freeze just fine, but then go black and slimy when you thaw them, which is less than appetizing. They need to be at least par-boiled if they're to be frozen and thawed to an edible state. I thought I'd go a little further. If I'm bothering to wash, peel, chop and par-boil three buckets of spuds, I could put in just a little more effort so that I have something ready to put straight in the oven (or possibly microwave) when it comes out of the freezer.

We usually eat potatoes in three forms: Mashed, roasted, or chips (fries). I've been making frozen chips for several years, having figured out how to do it in response to a previous blight incident. I hear that mashed potatoes freeze well, so I boiled them up in large batches and deployed a new kitchen gadget for mashing them, of which more in another post. As for roasties, well if Aunt Bessie can do it, surely I can too? I usually par-boil them then roast in oil in the oven. For freezing, I par-boiled then applied the hot oil in the frying pan.

Trial batch of to-be-frozen roast potatoes

I tested the theory with a small batch of King Edwards, which cooked from frozen in about half an hour and were pretty good - perhaps a little dry, but we usually have gravy with a roast dinner, so that's not really a problem. I'm not sure whether the Desiree will be as good - they seemed less crisp when cool, as they went into the freezer, but hopefully they'll crisp up again when cooked.

This is a work in progress. I tried bracing myself to do the whole lot at once, but it seems that I don't have sufficient stamina for the job. With all that hot oil and fat, it takes a lot of concentration. This is tiring! Also, with the harvest moon this week, I've been harvesting other veg too. The stock of frozen peas and green beans is increasing, and I cut my first ever cob of sweetcorn.

First sweetcorn

Hm, not quite what I'd hoped for, but better than it might have been, and it was tasty.

Wine yeast experiment

On the 'ish forum, we were discussing different kinds of yeast that can be used in brewing. Last year I used lager yeast (from a beer kit) throughout the year, keeping a bit from the bottom of the bucket after each brew and using it to start the next one. This year, not having a beer kit to hand, I looked at sachets of brewing yeast, decided that a pound for a little sachet of yeast was a bit excessive, and bought bread yeast instead, which is much cheaper. I think at least one person in that forum conversation was a bit horrified by my inappropriate yeast!

So far, I've had excellent heather ale and elderflower champagne from that yeast, but I none of the wine is ready yet, so I don't know how that will turn out. Since wine yeast is bred to tolerate higher alcohol concentrations, the bread yeast is likely to give up the ghost at about 12% abv, possibly before all the sugar's fermented. This is fine, as I'm not aiming for strong wine, but there is some concern that as it struggles in the toxic, alcoholic environment, it might produce off flavours.

In the interests of science, and taking advantage of the abundance of blackberries, I decided to make a second batch of blackberry wine, this time investing in a sachet of wine yeast. For my record, here are the details:-

• Two 2 gallon batches, each made with 8 lb blackberries and 2 kg sugar.
• The first batch uses bread yeast, previously used for mugwort ale and washed in sugar and water in between. The second batch uses half a 5g sachet of Young's red wine yeast.
• For the first batch, berries were picked on Sun 17th and Mon 18th Aug (4 lb each day); fermentation of 1 gallon started on Sun.
• For the second batch, berries were all picked on Tue 19th Aug and fermentation started that day.
• The first batch went into demijohns on Sat 23rd Aug and the second batch on Mon 25th Aug (late in both cases)

I now have four demijohns of blackberry wine bubbling away.

Blackberry wine, or at least potential blackberry wine

By chance, I used two different types of airlock for the two batches, so I can use that to identify them. The ones on the left, with the old, one piece airlocks, are the first batch, with bread yeast. The ones on the right, with the new, two piece airlocks, have wine yeast. I'd only just filled the second batch, so you wouldn't expect it to be frothy yet, but in the buckets, it did seem that the bread yeast was a lot more lively. I suppose it's bred to produce bubbles, so maybe that's not terribly surprising.

These will stay in the (relatively) warm kitchen for a few days before I take them down to the cooler store room. I might even take the first batch down first, to keep everything as similar as possible. Then we'll just have to wait and see what happens. I will conduct blind taste tests, and I'll let you know the results in a few months.

Mushroom season

Autumn arrived here last week. One day it was warm and sunny, the next there was a distinct chill in the air. We can't complain, because we've had a glorious summer, but it's a bit early, and it was very sudden.

I've always loved autumn, and now I have another reason to love it: Mushrooms! There's a field near our house where the occasional field mushroom can be found. Coming home with a couple of these last week, I got chatting to a neighbour, who told me where he used to pick field mushrooms in great quantities, about thirty years ago. A few days later, I set off in search and sure enough, found field mushrooms. Not vast quantities, but a reasonable haul. I ate quite a few fresh and dried the rest.

Field mushrooms on the drying rack.

They were drying pretty well on the rack in the conservatory, but then the weather changed. Surrounded by humid air, the dry mushrooms started absorbing moisture again. Luckily, this only lasted a couple of days before the sun came out again, but I didn't want to risk that happening again. Once they were nearly dry, I brought them in and finished them off in a cool oven, which only took a few minutes.

Look what I found the other day:

Cep

Isn't it a beauty? Over a couple of days I found four of these. One went on pizza (not the best way to appreciate its delicate flavour), two went into mushroom tarts that I took to a party, and one is drying.

This morning I went out again, and found all of these:

Basket of wild mushrooms

That's two more ceps, two greencracked brittlegills, two redcracked boletes, and three blushers. Not bad for twenty minutes' foraging. The ceps have joined the other one on the drying rack, and the rest I chopped and cooked with a few lentils, spring onions (I don't have any of the other kind at the moment), celery and a bay leaf. This should make a good mixture for padding out meat in stews or pie fillings. Of course, it would make a pretty good veggie stew in its own right, but my husband is not a veggie. Don't tell him I'm feeding him mushrooms, will you?

Solar panels - Controller, mark 2

The postman brought an exciting package yesterday morning:

An SD card module, a liquid crystal display, some bits of wire, and a tiny little Arduino Nano computer (copy)

This meant that, first and foremost, I could replace the borrowed computer in my solar controller, and solder it all together so the wires aren't so prone to getting knocked out of their sockets. If possible, I'd like to use the little piece of strip board that I already have, rather than buying any more (yes, I am that tight with money). This makes the design quite tricky, as there's not much space to play with. I took a photo of the existing circuit...

Solar controller mark 1

... and edited it.

A plan for mark 2

Having got this far, I checked which Arduino pins I'd need for the SD card and LCD, and moved things around a little to free those up. This morning, I took a hacksaw to stripboard, heated up the soldering iron (I was going to write, Got out the soldering iron, but in all honesty, I never put it away), and applied solder as per plan. After moving things around, I found that I don't need the cut off piece of stripboard yet, but I will later.

Solar controller, mark 2
(photo rotated for comparison, which is why it looks a bit odd)

I'd like to have the sensors on plugs, so that I can unplug them if I need to take the controller out of the cupboard, for example to add extra bits. For the time being, I have short leads soldered to the board and I've twisted wires together to attach the sensors.

It's all connected up now and it seems to be working. The pump came on as soon as I switched everything on, but that's what I'd expect if there was no signal from the controller*. The real test was whether it would switch off when required. After toying with the idea of taking the glass off the panel to cool it down, I made myself a cup of tea, then took the tank sensor out of the tank and held it against the hot cup. A much more sensible test, and it worked. After that, it clouded over, so I didn't get to hear it switch on again, but so far so good. I'm now studying how to add the display and SD card, so I'm afraid you haven't seen the last of these posts.

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* I've wired it up to default to on to give me a manual override. If I plug the two parts in separately, I can switch the controller off and the pump on, if I want to. Obviously, I could also switch both off, if necessary

Solar panels - Controller, mark 1

For pumped solar panels, i.e. any that are positioned above the hot water tank they're supplying, it's necessary to have an electronic controller to turn the pump on and off as needed (unless, as we discovered with the basic panel, you're prepared to monitor it fairly closely yourself). This is a fairly standard bit of kit, and nicely packaged controllers with graphical displays can be bought for around £90 upwards. Less pretty, but just as effective, versions can be bought for about a third of the price.

The option that appealed to me most (i.e. the cheapest), though, was to make my own. Those nice people at REUK not only sell controllers made to your specification, they also provide instructions for making your own. I'd had this webpage bookmarked for some time, but when I checked back a couple of weeks ago, I saw that they have a new design. Instead of a simple comparator chip, the heart of the new design is an Arduino computer. Having spent much of my childhood helping Dad rig up various gadgets to our BBC computer, how could I resist having a tiny computer controlling my solar panels? REUK even have a nice tutorial explaining how to do it.

Arduino is an open source project, so whilst the official boards start from €12.00 + tax - which is pretty cheap for a computer - it is possible to get copies that are even cheaper. This is legitimate, provided they don't claim to be the real thing (though I think the Arduino folk would prefer people to do interesting things with their designs, rather than just making cheap copies). There are many variations on the Arduino board available, so I was a bit bewildered by the options. I girded my loins and set about reading, in the hope of learning enough to understand what I needed.

Luckily, there was a shortcut available. My friend Anita was visiting, and commented that her husband Dave would love my solar panels project. Ah... Dave... he's pretty hot on electronics, isn't he? Does Dave know about Arduinos? Yes. Why don't you come over for a chat? I did just that, and Dave was not only able to add the voice of experience to my deliberations - That one doesn't have enough pins... That one's good value, and it has a free cable with it... That LCD package has extra stuff with it, you can get the basic unit much cheaper... and suchlike - he also had several Aduinos, and was happy to lend me one to play with, along with a breadboard (thing for plugging electronic bits into to make temporary circuits) and the half-dozen components specified in the REUK circuit.

I went home feeling much more confident, and the next day I ordered temperature sensors (4 - I might as well get a couple of spares, while I'm at it), a power supply, and a relay from REUK, and an imitation Arduino board from some place in China. I also ordered an LCD display and an SD card socket from the place in China, because it would be kinda cool if I could also display the temperatures and record data, and neither was very expensive.

The items ordered from the UK arrived in a couple of days, and it was a fairly simple matter to plug a couple of temperature sensors into my borrowed Arduino, and the Arduino into my laptop, and get my first Arduino Sketch working. I was transfixed by the little light on the board, as I warmed up one of the sensors with my fingers to see the light to on, then cooled it by blowing to see the light go off. I could have watched if for hours.

It's all very well watching a little light go on an off - that shows the computer is doing what I want it to - but that doesn't help much with my solar panel. The next step was to rig up a couple of temperature sensors to some long wires (salvaged from the old washing machine. I know wire's cheap, but connecting pieces together gave me useful soldering practice) and put one in the panel and the other in the thermal store (tank). Connecting these up meant moving the control board into the cupboard. This required it to have its own power supply, as I could no longer run it off the computer in there, so I connected that up as well.

I do still need to connect it to the computer if I want to change the program, which proves a little more complicated than you might imagine. The only shelf in the cupboard is rather high, so I have to stand on a chair to reach it. It's also rather cluttered, so there isn't space to put the laptop down, and then I need two hands to connect the micro USB cable to the controller board, preferably without knocking any of the other wires out of the temporary circuit. I had to ask Ian to come and hold the computer for me.

Solar controller connected to temperature sensors

Although it's not very clear in that photo, there are two LEDs on the board, a green one that indicates when the power's on, and a red one that I'd programmed to indicate when the panel is at least 6°C (I've since increased that to 10°C) hotter than the tank. So far so good, but this still required us to switch the pump on an off, and the LED wasn't very easy to see, what with the shelf being so high.

The next step was to connect the controller up to the pump, via a relay. This part was a bit scary, as it brings me into contact with mains voltage (not literally, apart from that time I went to tidy up a stray strand of wire without turning everything off first). A while back, Dad gave me a soldering iron, some solder and a little bit of strip board. I think he meant me to use that to practise on, but waste not, want not, I went straight ahead and used it for the real thing.

A slightly wider view of the controller in the cupboard,
now with relay attached, to the right of the controller.

So there it is, doing its thing. It really does, too! We've had sunshine and showers for the past few days, so I've been able to listen to it turning on and off all on its own, as the sunshine comes and goes.

This part of the project has been almost disappointingly easy. With nice clear instructions from REUK, I haven't had to figure anything out for myself. I'm looking forward to my own Aduino-copy arriving, together with the display and card reader. When I have records of what the temperatures are doing, I'll be able to tweak the settings and see what effect that has. With my spare temperature sensors, I'll be able to look at things like how much heat is lost between the panel and the house, and how much difference insulation makes. In the meantime, though, I must get on with building the next solar panel.

Thoughts on the 5/2 diet: Fasting is not for me.

At the beginning of this month, I reviewed our poor diet and decided to give the 5/2 diet a try. This means severely restricting calories - fasting - on two days of the week, not necessarily consecutively, and eating what you like on the other five days. Yesterday was my sixth fasting day, having missed one when relatives were visiting.

It wasn't too bad to start with. Of course I was hungry, but nothing I couldn't live with. I tweaked things slightly and by the third fast it seemed quite do-able. I reduced my breakfast slightly (it's usually about 600 calories on its own) and delayed it until midday, allowed myself three cups of tea throughout the day, and ate a high-protein snack, such as a boiled egg, at about 6pm. There were periods of intense hunger between for about an hour prior to eating, but I thought that as I got used to it, that would get easier.

Actually, it didn't; it got worse. I found I was spending more and more of the day feeling painfully hungry, completely fixated on food, unable to concentrate on anything, and seriously irritable. Furthermore, I didn't like the effect it was having on me the rest of the time: I turned into a dieter.

I have never in my life been a dieter. My mother believed that we should listen to our bodies' signals about when and what to eat. She encouraged us to try new foods, but never forced us to eat things we didn't like or to finish a plate of food if we were full. She didn't keep sweets in the house, and cakes and ice cream were special treats, so our food choices weren't completely unrestricted, but we had a lot of choice in what we ate. I have grown into an adult who, from time to time, craves spinach (or nettles, if that's what's available).

One comment about the benefits of the 5/2 diet is that it teaches you what it feels like to be hungry, so you can distinguish it from wanting food for other reasons. I couldn't relate to this; I know what it's like to be hungry, and I mostly don't eat for other reasons. I don't want to sound holier-than-thou about this, and I do eat food just because it's delicious, but I can take a large bar of chocolate from the cupboard, eat four squares, and leave the rest sitting on the table in front of me.

This changed when I started fasting. On non-fast days, I felt drawn to food in a new way. I've observed this in friends, but I've never before felt the compulsion to eat food just because it's there. What I learnt from fasting was not what hunger feels like, but the desire to overeat, because you never know when food might be in short supply again, so you'd better build up your reserves just in case. OK, that second part isn't conscious, but I assume it's the survival strategy underlying that desire.

I don't like being a dieter. I eat when I'm hungry and I stop eating when I'm full (or sometimes before, if I didn't prepare enough food). My food intake is not completely unrestricted - I'll resist eating something so I can use it for dinner tomorrow, for example - but I don't force myself to feel hungry. I live in a world of relatively plentiful food and I'm well adapted to it. I'd like to keep it that way. My experiment with fasting ended with an ice cream in the middle of yesterday afternoon, and I felt so much better for it!

Solar panels - a box

This has taken me longer than it might have done because I keep getting distracted by things like gardening and visiting relatives. Also, I had a nagging feeling that my design, such as it is, probably isn't very good. A friend recommended someone who could make a nice aluminium case, If you want to spend a bit of money. Well, yes, I'm sure an aluminium case would be good, but I don't want to spend money. Maybe I could treat mine as temporary, and upgrade sometime when we do have money to spend. At that point I started feeling better; it doesn't matter if my design's not very good, it doesn't have to be the last word on the subject.

Here we go, then. Not wanting to spend money on materials if I can help it, my box is made principally from old floorboards. I used lengths of 2x2 for the corners - I can't remember what we bought that for, but we evidently didn't use it. I kept the old radiator brackets when we took the radiators off the wall, so I can re-use those, too. Here's the frame, with brackets in place:

Framework of case for the first solar panel

The gap in one side is not for want of a long enough floorboard, it is part of the design. If water gets into the panel we'll get condensation all over the glass, which won't help efficiency, so I'd like to be able to let water vapour out, hence the vent. I don't want it open all the time, because air flow across the radiator isn't good for efficiency either, so I'll fit a sliding piece over the gap. That means ventilation will have to be manual, but it's better than permanently open.

At this point I would very much like to have put the radiator and glass in place to make sure they fitted. However, both these items were in service as a very basic solar panel which I didn't want to take apart. To move the radiator, particularly, would involve draining the system. Both items are heavy and unwieldy, and at that time, an awkward flight of steps away from the frame.

Ho hum, I'd just have to trust my measurements. This was unfortunate, as it was very difficult to measure things up there on the steep, slippery bank, especially the back of a radiator that was lying on the ground under a sheet of glass.

The next step was to insulate. I taped sheets of radiator backing between the brackets. This is the stuff that you can put behind radiators to reduce the heat lost to the wall, so ideal for this purpose. My friend Ellie gave me one sheet and the other I acquired from goodness knows where. I then turned the box over and added a layer of sheep's wool insulation, left over from insulating under the floors.

I retrieved a sheet of plywood that used to be the back of a fitted wardrobe. It was damp from standing against the workshop wall, so I left it in the sun to dry out for a bit. Once it was dry I cut it to size - most pleasingly, it was just long enough for the box. That's funny, I thought that last time I measured it, it was just too short. Well, it was hard to get at in amongst all the clutter in the workshop - I must have made a mistake. Here's the underside of box, with plywood in place:

Box from beneath

Before dinner yesterday, I applied creosote to protect the woodwork, particularly the legs. I put a coat over the plywood as well, even though it's been varnished before so it wasn't absorbed in most places. I'm sure it'll dry out eventually.

By this morning, there was really nothing left to do before assembling the pieces, which had to be done on the bank because the assembled panel would be too heavy to move. I woke up early, which was nice as I could make a start before the sun got high. I had to drain the system first, which is a pain because it needs the valve to be open but the pump off, which means disconnecting the wires to the pump. I remembered this detail just as I was applying flux to a solder joint, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's the insulated box in the early morning sunlight, with the glass ready to be fitted.

Hmm, that doesn't look quite right...

Pebble confirmed the matter: The glass doesn't fit. Oh, &*%#!

I went indoors and had breakfast. And tea. Tea makes things better. I realised that it doesn't actually matter very much if the glass sticks out a bit. I cut a couple of notches in the frame to accommodate the window frame, and left it at that. I'm sure I can stuff something into the small gap between the wood and the glass, so I don't have excessive ventilation.

Next, I checked that the radiator fitted onto the brackets. At first I thought they didn't line up, but it was just the angle of the bank, and my anxiety primed by the window measurement error. The radiator does fit, but getting it into position was one hell of a job. It's big and heavy. The bank is steep and slippery. It's not possible to see either of the two parts I'm trying to fit together at the time I'm manoeuvring them. This would have been easier with two people, but Ian was out driving a bus, and I wanted to get the job done so I could catch some of the sun's rays today.

Once I'd managed to get the radiator onto its brackets, and determined that it does fit quite nicely, actually, I marked positions of holes for the pipes. Radiator was removed and holes were drilled, then the box needed moving into position. This wasn't too difficult without the weight of the radiator, but I did need to fetch some bricks to go under one of the legs.

Before putting the radiator back in the box, I stuffed bits of wool into each end of the tubes on the back. This way, the fins will provide additional insulation instead of conducting heat away from the radiator, as they were designed to. I then fitted the radiator onto its brackets (which was a lot easier second time around), threaded the pipes through the holes I'd drilled and screwed up the fittings (thanks for the foresight to use compression fittings there, Dad), and reconnected my temporary plumbing. After mopping off and leaving it to dry a little (radiator not entirely empty) I put the glass back on.

While I had the system drained, there was one more job to do. At the end of the plumbing job, I was left with one tiny leak. It really was tiny and we were OK living with it for a while, but it should be fixed. I thought I'd have to take it apart and start from scratch, which proved almost impossible, but on the advice of blokes in the pub I learnt that it's possible to redo solder joints without taking them apart, so that's what I tried today. I'm not 100% sure, but I think I've fixed it. If it is still dripping, it's doing so far more slowly than it was before.

Plumbing concluded, I refilled the system. My temporary connections out on the bank are rather more leaky than they were before I took them apart and put them back together again. I can cope with a few drips, but I'll have to do those properly before too long. Nonetheless, I once again have a working solar panel, hopefully considerably more effective than it was before. Here it is, the nearly-finished solar panel:

Solar panel, functional again after only 8 hours disconnected, and, as far as we can tell from the temperature of the pipes, as much more effective as hoped.

I say nearly finished because there are a few bits and pieces still to do. It could do with a bit more creosote on the woodwork that's immediately under the glass and I haven't finished the sliding cover yet. It's also not in its final position, because positioning is a job in itself. Not the next job, though. The next job is the fun bit: The automatic pump controller.