A little progress on the fireplace

I've been stalling on plastering the fireplace because of that wire. I feel I really should do something to fix it in place, at least. Even if it doesn't need protection, it's going to be easier to plaster if it's fixed. This afternoon I went downstairs to see what kind of rubbish we might have available. I found some bits of - I think Land Rover - head lining. Lightweight, insulating type stuff, easy to cut. I then sought out some staples that Ian salvaged from some pallets he broke up for firewood. They're flimsy things, but I can't find the longer panel pins that I'm sure we've got somewhere.

Anyway, I cut some strips of the stuff and managed to get two of them pinned to the wall. Only about a dozen staples were sacrificed in the process. I gave up on the third strip, but Ian pointed out that the wire should be fixed quite firmly at the bottom, because it's likely to get pulled. If it breaks up all the plaster, that would be quite annoying.

Wire, sort-of fixed

For the lower fixing, I smacked a tapered bit of firewood into a gap between the bricks and broke it off, then screwed an eyelet it. It was just the right size for the wire but, of course, far too small for the plug on the end of it. I had to pull apart the connection (on which Ian had fixed the insulation problem), then join it back together and re-do all that fiddly insulation.

Wire going through eyelet, which will hopefully stop it pulling on the plaster.

Now I have no excuse not to do the plastering.

Tackling the fireplace

You remember I said that I'd fix up the fireplace properly after Christmas? If you've been here a while and you have an exceptionally good memory, you might remember. Well, I didn't say which Christmas, did I?

It's one of those jobs that generates other jobs on the way. I did mortar the arch bricks in place - it's not a brilliant job, but it looks OK - and stuffed some stones into the gap above. I also fixed the mantelpiece to the wall. That job suffered a setback when the gimlet handle broke as I was trying to get it out of the wood. That's a pretty solid old bit of wood, evidently! Then there was an even longer delay while I thought about the position of our speakers.

Hitherto, they'd been either side of the sofa, on the floor, which I didn't think was a very good place for them. I thought they'd be better the other side of the room, facing the sofa. Since we plug the computer into the stereo when we watch telly, and that sits on the coffee table by the sofa, that would mean getting a wire from one side of the room to the other. Ian didn't think it was a good idea, so I could expect no help from him. One day when he was out, I moved furniture (that would have been so much easier with two of us!), moved the stereo and speakers, and ran a wire around the doorway and fireplace. Ian now thinks the sound is much better, but would like me to fix the connection where I didn't insulate it adequately and it's short-circuiting. Urgh.

Anyway, I now have a wire running round the fireplace, ready to be buried in the plaster when I get to doing that bit. I did buy some all-purpose plaster, but when I looked at the little bag I'd bought, and looked at the thickness of the plaster I needed to match, I realised I didn't have anywhere near enough. I could do with something to get some bulk on the wall, under a top layer.

Since then, I've built little brick pillars for the solar panels, and have a great deal of lime and a little sand left over. I've heard that lime mortar is made by just mixing these two, with a little water, so today I did that. I remember the ratio was 3:1, but I think that was dry weight, and the sand's been sitting outside in the rain, so I have no way of knowing what it would weigh dry. Also, I'd rather not introduce either of these to my kitchen scales. I just added lime to sand until it looked about right. The sand was already wet enough that I didn't need water, but there was one other ingredient. Traditionally, hair was added to lime mortar to strengthen it, and the bathroom bin was full of hair, so I cut some up and mixed that in, too. Oh, and there was some moss in there that had grown in the sand.

Somewhat to my surprise, it was very easy to work, and stuck to the wall at least as well as any similar gloopy stuff I've tried to stick to walls in the past. I've only done a bit of it, but here's how it looks so far.

Mortar has been applied mostly at the top and left

I'm not sure how well you can see it, but the next picture is a close up showing how thick the old plaster is, and so how much bulk I'm having to make up to match it. Also the wire. I should probably fix and protect that before I go any further.

This could be a long job. Even after I've covered the wall to a reasonable depth - probably at least two coats - it'll take ages before it's dry enough to put the top coat on. At least I think you have to let the bottom coat dry before you put the top coat on, I don't really know. I'll have to look that up.

Fork handle (just the one)

I have a hand fork for gardening that has just two prongs, both somewhat pointed. I've no idea where I got it from because it never would have occurred to me to buy such a thing, but it turns out to be incredibly useful for weeding in stony ground. Recently, I have mostly been using it for transforming the garden path.

About eighteen months ago, years of neglect took their toll on the handle and it fell apart. I then lost the metal part, before rediscovering it some time later, still stuck in the ground. Onwards a few months to the new terrace I made last January, and I had quite a few offcuts of oak left over. I wondered... maybe I could use one of those to make a new handle?

I chose the thickest piece and cut it to length. Most of the work I did with a small, sharp craft knife, starting with taking off the bark. Before I started on shaping the handle, I took a chisel to the end, and trimmed it down so it would fit into the small collar on the fork.

Trimming the handle to fit into the collar

Once I had that trimmed down to size, I set to work whittling the main part of the handle into a comfortable shape to hold. I enjoyed this bit. The next bit was not quite so much fun; I had to make a hole for the metal part to fit into. Not fancying my chances of controlling an electric drill, I used a gimlet, which was effective but slow. I may have run out of patience and tried to fit the two parts together before the hole was quite finished. Of course, once I'd smacked the metal bit in as far as it would go (not quite far enough), I couldn't get it out again

The two parts fitted together

As you can see, the metal section sticks out some way before opening out into the two tines. This means the collar is free to move up and down a bit. As I slammed the metal into place, a couple of small cracks opened up in the wood, but they didn't split the handle open.

There's a small crack visible here.

To finish, I coated the wood liberally in a wax polish - I think it was beeswax melted into linseed oil, which sets surprisingly hard. I paid particular attention to the cracks, filling them so that dirt wouldn't get in and maybe enlarge them.

As well as being very satisfying to make something like this, even if I didn't do it quite as well as I'd have liked, the result is a tool that's a real pleasure to use. Because I held it in my hand to check it as I went along, I have something made exactly to fit my hand. Also, the wax polish has a lovely feel to it. After a good deal of work on the garden path, the fork handle now looks well used.

Perhaps the muddy finish doesn't feel quite so nice to hold as the wax.

I should probably clean it up and give it another coat of polish.

Little things

Sometimes, just a small change can make quite a big difference to your quality of life. In this house, we can't get radio reception, not DAB, not analogue, nothing. On the other hand, we do have a reasonable broadband connection, so we can listen to the radio over the internet, as we do for watching TV. I quite like listening to the radio while washing the dishes, but unfortunately my laptop speakers aren't powerful enough for me to hear over the sound of rattling crockery and splashing water.

Here's my solution: I found some little speakers that used to belong to a desktop computer. I checked that speakers will work upside down without getting upset. I cut denim straps from an old pair of jeans and fixed them to the underside of a kitchen cupboard with drawing pins. I hung up the speakers by their little stands.

No, this photo is not upside down, the speaker is.

It's still more faff than switching on a radio to take my laptop in there, plug in, and switch on the speakers, but not so much that it isn't worth the effort. I can now listen to the radio whilst washing the dishes. This has transformed a chore that I used to avoid until the kitchen was unbearable into something I really don't mind doing. Little things.

A few updates

I'm not doing very well with regular blog posts this year, so here's a bit of a catch up on some things I've left hanging.

Solar panels
The big project. When I last wrote about these, I was waiting for sunshine to see how they'd do.

Well, they work, but they don't put a huge amount of heat into the tank. I found this very demoralising at first, but Ian pointed out that it takes quite a few hours to put a significant amount of heat into that tank with fire, so I should feel too bad about modest performance from a couple of old radiators. There are one or two more things I could do that might improve performance. In the meantime, we've had warm-ish water out of the taps this summer, instead of cold, in spite of weather that barely qualifies for the name, summer.

Shower
It turned out that we really do want a different temperature in the kitchen than the shower, so we were forever turning the valve up or down, and trying to remember where we'd left it. Also, the temperature at the shower head wasn't entirely determined by the valve in the cupboard across the hallway; whether or not the underfloor heating was on made quite a big difference to how much heat was lost between the two. Added to that, the valve started to get sticky. I think maybe these valves shouldn't be treated this way. We needed an upgrade. One new thermostatic mixer valve was purchased, plus a connector or two, and plumbed in.

We now have one temperature for the shower and a slightly higher temperature for the hot taps. Perfect.

Wine yeast
At about three months old, the blackberry wine made with bread yeast was still pretty sweet, but pleasant and quite drinkable. That made with wine yeast, in contrast, was horrible. It was really rough, exactly like every home-brewed gutrot you've ever tipped into a potted plant when your enthusiastic home-brewing friend isn't looking.

Well, they look pretty similar

Now, at one year old, the bread yeast wine is no longer sweet at all, though still quite fizzy (correctable with a vacuum pump), and has quite a decent flavour. The wine yeast wine is surprisingly a little sweeter. It has mellowed and completely lost the rough edge, and has a more complex flavour than the bread yeast wine. In conclusion, then, both are fine for older wines, though wine yeast is better, but bread yeast is far superior for a very young wine, if you're happy to drink it fairly sweet. Before you decide that bread yeast is all you need, though, I also used it for my other wines. The dandelion wine was very good, but the oak leaf, beech leaf, and blackcurrant wines are still fermenting now, and still very sweet. It seems that bread yeast doesn't stand up well to tannin.

Vinegar
My too-sweet beech leaf wine remains resolutely sweet. I chuck in a bit of yeast or some more vinegar from time to time, but nothing doing. I think I may have discovered the solution to the antibiotic time-bomb, as this stuff kills everything I throw at it. It's a new multi-purpose sterilising solution.

Pickled mushrooms
These are very nice.

Perhaps a little stronger on the vinegar than I'd ideally like, but that has to be good for storage. It feels odd to be eating preserved mushrooms right in the middle of mushroom season, but I had to try a few, and yep, they're good.

Willow bench
Is mostly still alive. Many of the thinnest pieces died, but most of the thicker, more structural pieces have survived, and are putting out thin shoots of their own to replace the ones that died.

It's still not strong enough to sit on, but I'm sure it will be in time.

Crocosmia
In our first February here, when I was carrying out a serious assault on the garden to get it ready for my first year of planting, I moved some crocosmia from a flower bed to a steep bit of hillside. It was hard work. While not yet the dazzling display of colour that I have seen from these plants, they're getting established nicely and give a good show of orange flowers scattered across the hillside.

A smattering of crocosmia

In the background you just about be able to see the willow fence alongside the terrace. That's doing quite well, with almost no losses, and may yet provide valuable support if the terrace does start to break down.

Nearly there!

Since I last posted, I've made more progress on the solar panel project (which is just as well, as I'm not doing anything else!) One job that I had thought might be beyond me was fitting a new electric socket into the cupboard where the pump is. I've never tackled mains electricity before, and didn't really know where to start. However, browsing through the Readers Digest DIY manual (as you do), I found nice clear instructions for taking a spur from one socket to supply another. That's exactly what I needed - I could use the socket across the hall that we'd been plugging the extension lead into. Far better to have the wire running under the floor than over it. All I had to do was lift the floor...

In one way, that wasn't too bad as I'd laid that bit of floor myself, so knew where I was with it. On the other hand, the pipes set into the floor had been connected up since then. At least they were flexible plastic, so should cope with having the board gently eased up. I did just that and, after a slight setback when I discovered that the wires to the socket went up, not down (so no hole in the floor beneath them), the job went entirely to plan, and I now have a new double socket in the cupboard. I also tidied up the wiring in there and added a switch for the pump. First I had to find a switch, which came to light when I took the coats off the coat rack before soldering just above them. There was a thermostat on the wall, no longer in use (obviously). That must have a switch in it! I thought. I took it to pieces and discovered not only a switch that's normally on, push button for off, but also a wiring diagram. Perfect. This enables the pump to be switched off with the solenoid valve left open, which is necessary for draining the system. In addition to a switch, the pump now has a connected earth wire. Yes, I know.

Believe it or not, this is the after tidying photo.

I've connected up all the plumbing. This included a few solder joints, most of which were done twice, though in my defense, I was dodging hail showers at the time, and re-doing the leaky connector over the coat rack that I hadn't quite fixed last time I tried. I'd expected the compression joints to be relatively easy, but even they threw up a few challenges. One pipe running down the side of a radiator wouldn't go past the plug I'd put in the other corner, but luckily I had a flatter one in a different corner, so could swap them around. In spite of writing Make sure 1st and 2nd boxes are close enough together for flexi-hose on my list, they weren't, but I solved that by bending the solid pipe instead of cutting it to only just longer than the box. When I went to raid the old radiators for bleed valves, I found that most of them had the grub screws missing. I don't know how that happened - I don't remember taking them out. I used a cap in place of one bleed valve - it works almost as well. Finally, I nearly destroyed two nuts trying to tighten a joint that I'd failed to put an olive in. Luckily, I checked.

Having made all the connections, I needed to fill the system to check for leaks. That meant going up into the loft, which meant a ladder that I discovered, on first climbing it, wasn't very firm on the floor. That is, the floor is dusty and the ladder slipped. I caught it before it went too far, but came down quickly and resolved not to go up again without someone to hold the bottom. Ian being out at work, I called on a neighbour, who kindly came round and held the ladder for me, and was quite interested to see the rest of the system too. Much to my surprise, not to say delight, there were no leaks. Not one.

The next step was to replace the plain water in the system with an antifreeze* mix. I'd originally thought of mixing it up in a watering can then pouring it into the header tank in the loft. Unfortunately there wasn't enough headroom above the tank for that plan to work. When Ian got home from work I asked for his input on the problem. He thought a bit then said, I do have that 12 volt pump and hose that I used to use for biodiesel. Maybe we could pump it up there. I have a spare battery, too. While he went off to fetch those things, I continued to search for inspiration on the internet. Surely other people have solved this problem? Well yes, but most of them solved it at the design stage, incorporating charging valves into the system for this very purpose. Then I came across the following very useful advice:

you could try this "cheapskate" approach:

Make no connection whatsoever to the water main. Use a 5L house-plant sprayer (Hozelock). Remove spray head, fill container with antifreeze water mix, attach hose to system drain and pump. The pump will easily deliver up to 3 bar.

I wasn't sure whether our pump could deliver that kind of pressure, but filling through the drain would be a lot easier than getting the pump within reach of the header tank. It had to be worth a go.

Pump in a bucket of bright pink antifreeze, powered by car battery and battery booster

It worked, just about. We ran the system pump to help it, and there was lots of running out to open bleed valves, then close them again in case the antifreeze all escaped as well as opening and closing the drain to take liquid in, then not let it out again. This required a lot of coordination between the two of us. The pump didn't quite manage the last litre and a half, so Ian took that up to the loft in a jug, and I think we may need to top up with a bit more water, as there are distinct gurgling sounds when the pump's running. However, we now have all the panels connected up and full of antifreeze, ready to go. The controller is doing its thing, and reporting slightly more information than it was last time I wrote about it.

Controller display, now fixed to the shelf

In addition to sensors in the panel and in the tank, I now have one on the pipe just before it goes into the tank. Ideally, this should be at about the same temperature as the panel when the pump's running, but as you can see, it's considerably lower. That means we've lost almost 20°C between the panel and the tank. Not good. Insulation is needed.

I started insulating the pipes around the panels, but I need to improve on this. I'll do more when the weather's better.

More shiny wrapping will be added

For the next stage of their journey the pipes cross the conservatory. I had an idea that since they're running under a transparent roof, maybe they could absorb some more sunlight on the way. It's probably a daft idea, but I persevered. Using an offcut of the roof itself, I made thee sides of a box.

Bent polycarbonate roofing

It is possible to bend polycarbonate cold, but only if you can take it a lot further than the angle you need, to allow for spring back. I couldn't do that, so had to apply heat. This meant waving a blowtorch at a piece of plastic I was holding in my hand. I managed not to burn myself, which is quite remarkable considering how often I burn myself on the oven. The other day I even managed to burn my finger on one of the solar panels. Yes, it did get that hot!

To go inside the box, I taped up some of the thin insulation for behind radiators and pleated a few layers between the pipes, and some more around them. Just the top was left open to the sunshine. When I say open, I mean covered by twin-wall polycarbonate roofing.

Boxed-in pipes

I'm not entirely convinced by this, but it has to be better than it was. If nothing else, it's a lot tidier.

Items remaining on my list are: Insulate pipes and touch up paint on window frames, both of which are waiting for better weather, screw down window on first box, which I'll do when I'm quite sure the system doesn't need bleeding any more, fix blinds to boxes, which can wait, as it's only needed if we go away in the summer, and possibly not even then, figure out clock for controller and program data logging, the first of which I spent quite a lot of time on today, and one I added yesterday, calibrate sensors. When I checked first thing, the display reported that the panel was at -2°C but there was no sign of frost, so it's evidently not accurate. I had meant to do this before I taped the sensor to the back of a solar panel, but I forgot.

As for figuring out a clock, this is so I can record temperatures and keep track of when they occur. People usually use an external, battery powered clock for this, but it is possible to make the Aruduino keep track of time and date after taking a time signal from a PC to start it off. I spent a long time looking up how to do this (it's here, if you're interested), then this afternoon our electricity kept flicking on and off, reminding me why the external clock's a good idea. I guess I'll be getting one of those then. That means more soldering. Hmph.

So there we are, nearly finished. The only remaining job that's going to make a difference to the effectiveness of the panels is adding insulation, and I'm well on the way with that. All I need now is some sunshine.

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* I spent far too long considering what kind of antifreeze to use. Our system has the unusual feature of two walls of copper between the solar loop and the drinking water. This means I'm not constrained to use non-toxic antifreeze (if you have only one wall of copper separating them, you should use propylene glycol, which is food safe, in case there's a leak. Otherwise you might end up poisoning your drinking water), so could consider other alternatives. Methanol has a low freezing point, low viscosity, and an even higher specific heat capacity than water. It would be absolutely ideal if it weren't for - and I found this fact very frustrating - its tendency to evaporate, filling the space with poisonous, explosive gas. I settled for car antifreeze in the end, which is pretty much where I started from.

The third panel

I'm still working on the solar panels. They're not finished yet, but I'm making progress. This post is a bit about the design of the system.

As soon as you add a second panel to the system, there's a decision to be made about whether to connect them up in series (water goes through each panel in turn) or in parallel (there's a junction to split the water so it goes through both/all at once, then another junction to bring it back together again). Guidelines that I consulted on how to connect up solar panels tended to describe a combination layout, e.g. four panels arranged in two parallel runs, without discussing the pros and cons of each option. I had to do some general reading, and some thinking for myself, and here's what I came up with.

Panels in series make a longer loop for the water to go round, which means a more powerful pump is required. Panels in parallel require balancing to make sure one of the panels doesn't end up dominating the system, which the water essentially bypassing the others. I think that plumbers tend to favour parallel systems for these reasons, as balancing systems is something they do all the time, so it's no big deal to them. As for the effectiveness of catching heat from the sun, given a certain amount of sunlight falling on a given surface area, it might seem that there's no way that varying the plumbing could affect how much heat is captured, but there are a few factors that are worth considering.

Specific to my system is the fact that radiators have a high volume of water relative to commercial flat panel solar collectors. This means that they aren't so responsive; they take longer to heat up, so if there's only a short period of sunshine, they may not get hot enough to trigger the pump and take the heat into the thermal store. Hot enough is an important point here: If my store is at 50°C already, the incoming water needs to be pretty hot before it's any use. This means I want to maximize temperature, if possible.

On the other hand, there's the question of panel efficiency. For all the insulation I've put in, they will radiate heat back into the air, especially through the glass. If heat can be taken away from the panel when it's only a little above air temperature, then very little heat will be lost to the air, so the panel will be operating at a higher efficiency than it would if it was a getting a lot hotter before the heat was taken away and stored. Now we have arguments in favour of both high and low temperatures.

Let's look at how serial and parallel systems vary in terms of temperature. In a parallel system, water in all of the panels heats up at the same time, starting cool then, if it gets hot enough, all being pumped into the store at once. In a serial system, water goes through each panel in turn, so the first panel might be considered a preheat panel, and the last a topping up panel. This means there are different temperatures at different points in the system, which could be a good thing, considering the conflicting requirements mentioned above. The first panel can operate at a lower temperature, and so be more efficient, and the second panel brings the water up to a temperature high enough to be useful, i.e. hotter than the water already in the store.

However, there is a slight weakness in the description I just gave you. Water goes through means that the water is already flowing round the system. This won't happen until the last panel gets hotter than the stored water which, radiators being slow to respond, could take quite some time first thing in the morning. This brings us to the third panel.

How about having a booster panel that will heat up quickly and get the water flowing round the system? There are many designs for DIY solar panels to be found on the internet, and most of them involve much smaller volumes of water than the radiator design. If I made a small one of these and added it after the bigger panels in the series, it would heat up more quickly when the sun hits the panels in the morning and so start the water circulating before the other panels had got up to temperature. After that, it should serve to boost the temperature as the preheated water flows through it, so giving the higher temperatures needed to be worth adding to the store, at the same time as allowing the other panels to operate at cooler, more efficient temperatures. That's the theory, anyway.

I had plenty of microbore (10mm dia) copper pipe salvaged from the old central heating, and a sheet of aluminium that was originally behind a gas fire, and has more recently been part of my heated propagator. These could be used to make a solar collector along the same lines as this one described on builditsolar.com. I went for serpentine design to save making a lot of connections - I don't need a high volume of water here, so it doesn't matter if the pipes are widely spaced.

Having bent my pipe, I then used a 10mm steel bar - I have no idea where that came from - and hit it repeatedly into the aluminium sheet to make grooves. If you're thinking of trying this, it really is worth making a jig to shape the grooves. I started by setting the workbench to the appropriate width, but it kept opening out, which absorbed much of the energy I was putting in with the hammer.

The grooves in this aluminium sheet are carefully aligned to the bent pipe (visible in the background), not accidentally wonky

Once I had the two parts made, they needed connecting together. Following advice from builditsolar, I used silicone gloop to fill the gap between aluminium sheet and copper pipe. I then drilled some holes and tied the pipes into place with cable ties.

Each cable tie is looped twice over the pipe and joined at the back. I had hoped to pull the aluminium more tightly around the pipes, but the cable ties weren't strong enough.

All this got me as far as selecting a radiator for the other panels. I then selected a suitable sized window and made a box in the same way as I had for the other panels (I didn't tell you about the second panel. It was very much like the first one, except that the best fitting windows were wood framed house windows, which took a lot more work to prepare, being old and somewhat rotten). At some point before putting the insulation in, I realised that it would be a good idea to solder the connections that needed it before the pipes were snuggled up next to plastic insulating stuff. I'm glad I realised at that point.

Here is my finished booster panel, out on the hillside. The diagonal lines are reflections of overhead cables.

As you see, the window wasn't a very good fit for the collector, but it does allow space for a bleed valve to one side. The vertical pipe disappears under the top layer of insulation, to exit the box at the bottom.

And here it is in context:

Three solar panels, all fixed to their brick bases.

So, I now have all three panels in position. Once I've connected them together I'll be able to fill them and start catching sunlight. That isn't quite the end of the project, though. Insulation is quite important, too, and it would be nice if the power supply didn't run across the hallway to reach the pump.

One solar panel (box) now in position

When I checked my brick bases yesterday morning, they were had indeed set firm and were still horizontal and vertical in the correct places. This was pleasing, if not very surprising. At this stage, I was able to make the final measurement of how steep the bank is, or more precisely, the slope between the two bases. Getting a panel set up at the desired angle to the sun isn't straightforward when you're standing it on such an irregular surface. However, having given it much thought, I had a plan, and measuring the slope was the first step.

Tools for measuring orientation

As previously mentioned, the compass proved less useful than anticipated (and wasn't needed for this stage of the job, in any case), and it turns out that a paperclip makes a poor plumb bob, but the spirit level and protractor, held against a floorboard resting across the brick bases, were quite effective. Once I'd measured the angle of the bank, and I knew (from calculations) the desired angle towards the sky, I could prop up the solar panel box indoors at the right attitude.

Solar panel box propped up on bits of firewood

It's not the most stable of arrangements, perhaps, but it did the job. With this in position, I took the spirit level and drew horizontal lines around all the legs. This part was more difficult than I expected, but I ended up with this:

One solar panel leg marked out for cutting

Do you see where I'm going with this yet? If I cut the legs to horizontal, and have brick bases that are also horizontal, the two should fit together to give me the right angle of the panel. Added to this, I need a vertical hole in each leg for the peg. That is, it will be vertical when it's all in position, but at time of drilling, it has to be perpendicular to the cut surface of the leg. These holes also need to be exactly the right distance apart, so I measured the pegs again, for the umpteenth time. I used a gimlet to make pilot holes as it's much easier with a hand tool to give it half a turn or two then check again with a set square to make sure it's still going in the right direction.

Having drilled the holes, I couldn't resist taking the box up to the bank to see whether it fitted. Halfway up the steps I thought, I'm not going to want to do this again. Luckily, it fitted!

Solar panel box, standing on front bases only

Not only did it fit perfectly, but it stood up on its own, too. That was better than I expected but I thought I'd better stick to the plan and add the back legs. After all, it will be carrying a lot more weight when it's finished. Having got the box in position, the next step was to find the positions for the back legs, which I did with a plumb line made by tying a brass nut to a piece of string and hanging it under the legs. I then mortared bricks and pegs into position, again aiming for horizontal bricks and vertical pegs, though it was slightly less critical this time.

Once the mortar had set (I left it over night, with the panel propped up for extra support, though it didn't really need it), it was time to fill in the gaps. There were some bits of wood up there that I'd taken up some time ago when first thinking about how to support solar panels. I think they were from the leylandii hedge. In any case, they looked quite suitable for making back legs from. I measured these against the gaps between panel feet and brick bases, cut them to length, drilled holes, somehow eased them into the gap, and finally added brackets to connect them up at the top.

First panel box fixed in position

After that, I applied copious quantities of creosote then brought the glass cover out to go on top, which I finished just as the first few drops of rain fell. Now I can turn my attention to the second panel.

Solar panel update

Since finishing the new terrace, the solar panel project has been top of my list of priorities. I've already had one panel connected up and working, complete with pipework, pump and automatic controller, and since then I've more-or-less made a second panel, and made a start on the third, so it felt like I was fairly near the end of the job. I hoped to get it finished by the end of February.

Unsurprisingly, that didn't happen. Feeling somewhat despondent, I sat down and wrote a list of all the tasks that needed doing before I could say the job was finished. The list ended up looking like this:

There seem to be quite a lot of jobs still to do. I managed to cross a few off by the time I took this photo.

That didn't improve my state of mind greatly; it was considerably daunting. Still, at least it was now obvious why I hadn't finished it all in the expected timescale. I started tackling items on the list and felt quite productive on some days, but on other days I got hardly anything done. I started to sense a reluctance in myself. This came into sharp focus when another, really quite unpleasant, job presented itself, and I jumped to do it. Hmm, this isn't just laziness... I'm clearly avoiding the solar panel project.

What's my problem, then? I think that as the day of reckoning comes into sight - not just a test to see if it works, but a Tada! Finished! moment - I'm getting anxious about messing it all up. This kind of thing is probably stating the bleeding obvious to many people, but I'm not very good at being in touch with my emotions, so I have to resort to detective work to figure out what's going on in my head.

I realised that I've also been making things more difficult than they need to be in the name of efficiency. It really doesn't matter if I have to clean creosote off the paint brush several times. It doesn't matter if I have to make up several batches of mortar, even if that means wasting a bit. This was compounded by the way I wrote the list, with a couple of sets of jobs marked x3, lumping them all together into one. If I take away the restriction of doing certain jobs for all three panels at once, then I can focus on one panel at a time, which is less overwhelming. It also means I can get the first one up on the bank, out of the way, so I have more space to work on the next one.

Having given myself a good talking to this morning (with help from a sympathetic husband), I tackled one of the scarier jobs. I'd decided to make brick bases to stand the panels on, which required a bit of bricklaying. The only bricklaying I'd done before was the arch over the fireplace (not actually mortared in at the time I wrote that post - I did it more recently), which I wasn't very pleased with, so I doubted my ability to do the job successfully. The bases I had planned were pretty small, just four bricks each, two on two, but I think that might be even more difficult than a good long stretch in which each brick supports the ones on either side.

There were several other factors that added to the difficulty. I wanted a peg to stick up out of the centre of each base so that I could drill a hole in each leg of the panels and fit them on. (One job that I've crossed off the list was investigate tent pegs. I did, and found some old bent pegs that I'd failed to throw out, and they seem suitable.) To fit nicely, the peg would need to be vertical, the bricks would have to be horizontal, and the distance between the pegs needed to be fairly precise. It's no wonder I was wary of this job.

I'd done some measuring out, and cleared some turf to make space for the bases on the bank, so I had my bricks placed in position:

The floorboards were for measuring the slope of the bank. Fixing down the conservatory roof properly is below solar panels on the to-do list.

Having dithered about over whether to get ready mixed mortar or sand, cement and lime separately, I'd bought the latter after bumping into a friend in town who said he could use the rest of it (it's much cheaper to buy the components separately, but isn't available in small quantities). I double checked the measurements again, lined up various tools (spirit level, set square, tape measure), and mixed some mortar. I added far too much lime by mistake, so added some more of the other two, then found I had too much stuff to mix in my little bucket, so turned some of it out onto a school bus sign that was sitting around, before adding water and mixing. I was finally ready to start fixing my bricks in place.

It certainly wasn't easy, especially as I needed to be so precise with the positioning, but I think I did a reasonable job.

One brick base mortared in, complete with tent peg.

Two of the bases went onto the concrete wall-top at the edge of the conservatory. I'd deliberately shortened the conservatory roof to allow for this and I'm glad I did, as it's a bit tight for space here. However, most of the tent pegs were a bit long for use here. Where the bricks were on the ground I could bury one end of the peg into the earth (if I moved the stones out of the way) but not here. Luckily, I had two shorter pegs that I could use, so I did.

Commenting on the tight space there reminds me that I haven't told you about determining the position of the panels, which was a job in itself. I won't go into great detail, but I used the equation from this web page entered into a spreadsheet with solar radiation data from the same source, plus some zeros for times of day when the panels would be in shade. I then tweaked the figures for north-south orientation (or more relevantly, south vs. east) and tilt of panel until I found the maximum radiation captured. The results were 15° east of south and 53° from horizontal, which is our latitude. It was quite nice to see that come out of the calculations; it gave me some confidence that they were correct.

It's all very well knowing what tilt I'm aiming for, but implementing that on a sloping bank is another question entirely. I've mentioned a couple of features of my plan to meet this challenge - horizontal brick bases and floorboard measurement of the slope of the bank - but I'll come back to the rest of that in another post. Orienting the panels 15° east of south should have been fairly straightforward. All I needed was a compass, or so I thought. It turned out that some feature of this bit of hillside interfered with the compass. I could get a plausible reading for north-south at about four feet above ground level, but as I lowered the compass, the needle turned round until it was pointing more than 90° in a different direction. I dread to think what's buried there. (Actually, I was more than tempted to dig... but resisted.) Eventually, I decided that the fence was running pretty much north-south, so worked from that.

So far, I have three and a half brick bases mortared in place. I finished my batch of mortar after fixing the first layer of bricks of the fourth base. That's OK, though, because I'm concentrating on one panel at the moment, and setting the front two feet in place first before propping it up to determine where the back two bases need to go. Hopefully, when I check again tomorrow, the bases will be firm, still horizontal, and the pegs will still be vertical and the correct distance apart.

New shower

We have an old electric shower here. It's very feeble, but in summer it does provide our only source of running hot water; for anything else we have to boil the kettle. The long term plan has always been to replace it with one plumbed into the hot water system, but that rather depends on having a fully functioning hot water system, which depends on having solar panels to heat the water in the summer. In the winter we light the fire every day for heating, and that provides heat for the water, too.

The other day I had a shower and it seemed even feebler than usual. I had to turn the flow down to the most pathetic dribble to get the water anywhere near a comfortable temperature. I thought it was just because the incoming water is very cold, but Ian pointed out that it wasn't this bad when the outside temperature was -15°C, and concluded that there's something wrong with the shower. Since there was still some heat, we thought it most likely that one of two heating elements had burnt out. If we could replace that fairly cheaply, our electric shower could limp on a little longer, giving us time to plan a replacement. While I looked up replacement elements, Ian took the cover off the shower unit (after switching off the power at every possible point) to investigate. I heard a startled, Ugh! from the shower room. Was it full of water? I asked. No, mice!

Mice in the shower unit

Yes, that's right. There were mice in our shower fitting, snuggling up to the water heater. At least, presumably that's what they'd been up to when they were alive, which they weren't any more. This raised our hopes that the fault might be as simple as a chewed wire, but alas, there was no sign that the mice had done any damage before getting electrocuted.

In the meantime, I learnt that heating elements are not sold individually, but a replacement heater can assembly may be purchased... for £67.44. We could buy a new shower for not much more than that. OK then, it's not worth buying a replacement part for the old shower - perhaps now's the time to plumb one into the hot water system. This required decisions. The key question is how to get the water coming out at the right temperature. Trying to keep things as simple as possible, I thought that a manual mixer tap might do the job, as our hot water temperature is pretty stable. The alternative is a thermostatic mixer, but I'm not convinced by their reliability, and I assumed they'd be a lot more expensive. Ian looked to the internet to investigate the latter question, while I thought about what other information we might need.

Before abandoning the electric shower entirely, it would be nice to know that our system can supply enough hot water for a shower. It was designed to (by me), but not with much spare capacity, and we don't get the thermal store as hot as I'd originally expected to. Some testing would be necessary. Much as it pained us to take so much heat out of the store, it was the only way to get the answer.

Testing step 1: Run the shower at a desirable flow rate and see how long it takes to fill a bucket. Answer: 2 min. Step 2: Gather up enough buckets for fifteen minutes worth of water. Actually I only got seven; one was full of sloe wine, one was full of engine oil, and I don't know where the tenth is. Still, a fourteen-minute shower is close enough for testing purposes. Step 3: Run the shower at a desirable temperature and measure this with a thermometer. Answer: 39°C, which Ian cross-checked with advice online, and found to be much what everyone else says, which is reassuring. Step 4: Use the kitchen tap, which is a simple mixer tap, to fill the buckets, trying to maintain the same flow rate and temperature as we'd want from the shower.

There are two questions here: How easy is it to keep the temperature steady, and can the thermal store supply that temperature of water for the duration of a shower? The thermometers on the store at the start of the test read 60°C at the top and 40°C in the middle, which is somewhat lower than full, but quite typical in the morning after the heating's been on for a couple of hours. The good news is that the temperature held up quite well for the fourteen minute test. The bad news is that it was very difficult to maintain the temperature in the first five minutes. The hot tap may run at a steady temperature, but the pressure's all over the place, so I was constantly fiddling with the taps until it eventually settled down. That's no good. So much for a simple mixer tap.

Buckets of warm water. We left them in the kitchen so that as they cooled down, the heat would warm the house. It was also quite a good place to put a bowl of bread dough to rise.

Ian's research into thermostatic mixers wasn't very encouraging, either. They seem quite fussy about what inputs they require. In particular, he didn't think our system would be able to provide hot enough water - at least not consistently - for the things to work properly. Hmm, neither of the two options we were considering look very good.

On the subject of thermostatic mixers, we do have one in the system already. Ian's never been convinced that that's what it actually is, but after learning more about them he realised that it's probably just not doing anything most of the time, because the input water isn't hot enough. With the thermal store now hotter (the fire had been lit for some hours by this time), he measured the hot water temperature and found that it was 55°C. That's hotter than we'd ever want coming out of the tap. I reckon 43°C is about the hottest I'd want for doing the dishes, before I'd need to add cold to make it useable. That's not very much higher than we want for the shower. What if...?

What if we turn down the setting for household hot water to a temperature that's comfortable for showering? That way, we wouldn't need a mixer tap at all, either manual or thermostatic. It may seem a bit primitive to have no temperature control in the shower but really, we don't need the temperature to be variable, we just need it right. If the household supply can achieve that, why add anything else? The simplicity of this solution certainly appeals. We can always try it, and if it doesn't work well, upgrade later.

The next step was to plan the design and see what materials we already had available. We're not fussy about appearance - one day we'll make our bathroom nice, but that's a big job for sometime in the future, no point faffing about with buried pipework now. The plan was to insert a T joint into the hot pipe under the basin and take a pipe from there into the shower, attach a tap and fix it to the wall. The existing shower head has a standard screw fitting, so we can use that. We found a length of 15 mm pipe that had previously been connected to the old gas tank. If you watch the video in that link, at the end you'll see the man come over and tie a knot in the pipe. I had to cut that bit off. We also had a few short bits of 15 mm pipe, and various connectors.

The old gas pipe looked just about long enough, but until I'd bent it into shape, I couldn't be sure, so the next job was pipe bending. Ian was getting quite twitchy at this point as we didn't have much time before the shop shut (it being Sunday afternoon). I insisted that it wasn't worth going to the shop until we knew what we needed, and continued bending the pipe.

Pipe bending

It really was only just long enough to go over the shower screen and have one end low enough to clear the trap on the basin, and the other end low enough that the tap wouldn't hit the old shower unit (we're keeping that as backup. It's not good, but if the hot water runs out completely, it's better than nothing). Then we went and bought parts. All we needed were a tap and one elbow joint. I also bought a bag of olives - the sleeves that go inside the nut in a compression joint - because we have plenty of nuts and it would be really annoying to have to stop work for want of an olive. The total cost of parts was less than £10.

After that, and a tea break and chat to my dad (he called) it was just a matter of turning off the water then being brave and cutting into the pipework to attach all these bits. For some reason, our water wouldn't turn off completely, leaving it dripping. This is very annoying, but does provide an instant check for leaks.

I didn't finish connecting everything up until after dinner. I went round all the nuts, tightening them up and chasing the drips from joint to joint, until there was just one that was still leaking. I tightened further... the dripping increased. I went and slumped on the sofa in despair and Ian took over. He tried applying sealing gunk, but that didn't help, so he removed the offending pipework.

That would be the problem, right there.

The connector was cracked. No wonder it wouldn't stop leaking. Ian then went off and searched for more parts, and found another elbow that I'd missed earlier. Unfortunately I'd used the last of the PTFE tape on the previous joint and the gunk he'd already tried wasn't really the right stuff. And the joint was still dripping. He searched some more and found some very old jointing compound. It took a lot of scraping and stirring to recombine the solid and liquid parts, but eventually we had something that looked like it might be smeared on a screwthread. Ian did this bit, and put it all back together with the replacement elbow.

A hodgepodge of connectors under the basin

So far, no leaks! In the end, the pipework is even fairly neat...

... though perhaps less so at the shower end.

Yes, we did choose that tap.

So how is it, then? I had a shower this morning. I didn't really need one, but I had to test it, even though the thermal store was a bit on the cool side (we were too busy plumbing yesterday to pay full attention to the fire). The temperature, once the hot water came through, started at slightly hotter than I'd want but quickly dropped to slightly cooler. It wasn't uncomfortably cool, but didn't encourage lingering. That was OK, though, because the pressure was so much higher than I'm used to. I'm sure the flow rate was much higher than we used in the test, and not easy to turn down, but it was lovely! With that much water I can get clean quickly, so I don't need to spend fifteen minutes, and it's so much nicer.

We will monitor the situation, but so far this is a clear success. Of course, it does put the pressure on to get the solar panels finished before we stop lighting the fire in the spring.

Wintry things

Winter arrived in Devil's Bridge this morning, almost as abruptly as autumn arrived, back in August. We've had a few hard frosts, but mostly it's been pretty mild, then this morning it snowed....

... and very pretty it is too, though not so nice for birds.

A pair of bullfinches came to feed on dock seeds.

When I say the weather's been mild, it's still quite cold enough to have the heating on and as usual, we're struggling to keep the house warm. The other day I did a maintenance job that I should have done ages ago. I replaced the fire rope seals around the doors on the wood burning stove.

Until I started measuring how much I needed, I hadn't even noticed that the ash flap at the bottom also has a channel to fit rope into. It's not a very big job, though slightly bigger due to the fact that it was previously fixed with cement (it shouldn't be), so I had to chip all that out first.

We couldn't believe how much difference it made! We'd always thought our second hand stove was just old and leaky but in fact, with new seals in place, it's possible to close down the air flow so much that wood stops burning. Without the flow of cool (room temperature) air into the fire box, it gets a lot hotter and radiates far more heat into the room. We're also using less wood, as it doesn't burn up so quickly. A day after I replaced the rope, Ian investigated the air inlet control, which has never had any noticeable effect before. With the ash cleared out of the vent, it works just fine, so now we have an efficient, controllable stove. It's like having a new one! It's a salutary illustration of the importance of maintenance.

Now, I'm going to go and sit by the fire, but I'll leave you with one more picture of snow, because the sun came out briefly about an hour ago.

The darkest time of the year (and a fireplace)

Take several months of financial stress, add seasonal depression, responsibility for a big, stressful event, a period of intense uncertainty (which isn't resolved yet, so I can't tell you about it) and on top of all that, a dead cat... well, it hasn't been the easiest autumn. There are good days and bad days.

On the good days, I've been working on the fireplace surround. This has been a ragged hole in the wall since I attacked it four years ago.

I've had some ideas about what to do here, but most of my ideas involved spending money, which we'd generally rather avoid, and is currently not an option for merely decorative projects. The part I was most certain of was the brick arch. It would be nice to get hold of some attractive bricks, but perhaps not entirely necessary. I started by searching the property for all the old bricks I could find. One was on the driveway, having been used as an alternative handbrake. Several were serving as a stand for the barbecue. Some were just lying around. Those you see in the photo above were the least scruffy/most similar to each other that I could find.

The next step was to clean the bricks as best I could without buying chemical cleaners (to be avoided for several reasons). Online advice suggested that dishwashing liquid might be worth a try, so I tried it, applied using brushes with both nylon and steel bristles. It didn't make much difference. My next attempt involved play dough. I made up a salt dough and pressed it onto the ends of the bricks, then baked them in a low oven until it was hard. The next day, I soaked it off, then scrubbed with dishwashing liquid again. I can't be entirely sure, but I think that quite a lot more soot came off the second time. Whether the play dough had anything to do with this, I have no idea.

Having selected my bricks, I still didn't know what to do with the edges of the fireplace. I'd quite like to leave the bricks bare, but as you can see, the brickwork is far from tidy. My cousin suggested brick slips - bricks made in thin tile shapes, including corner pieces, sold for applications just like this. It was a good suggestion, but.... money. Then a visiting friend suggested a wood surround. This is much more realistic as we have lots of old floorboards. I was sure I could find a couple of pieces that would suit. I even considered carving some decoration into them, but that would be quite a big project, not to be attempted before Christmas. In the meantime, I considered how to fix up a shelf above the fireplace.

I found the old shelf that had been there before, somewhat weathered now, but not necessarily any the worse for that. I was holding this up in position (it's just a little longer than the width of the arch - the ideal size), wondering what kind of brackets would be suitable, when Ian walked by and said, Ah, a mantlepiece! This comment set off a new train of thought. I'd been referring to the horizontal pieces of wood in my mind as a shelf, and shelves are typically supported by brackets. Mantlepieces, on the other hand, are often part of a fire surround, with supports that sometimes go right down to the floor. I wondered whether we might have any pieces of wood that I could use like that? Initially I was thinking of new cut timber that I might carve, but before long I lighted on the idea of using the leylandii trunks I got from cutting down the hedge. Quite a few of these have been turned into firewood, and some still have branches attached, but there were three trimmed and unburned. I selected the two longest and cut the ends straight across. Here they are in position, under the mantlepiece:

Leylandii trunks holding up mantlepiece and hiding scruffy brickwork

I'm quite pleased with this. They're currently held in place with bits of string - I'll fix them properly after Christmas. No, really, I will!

The bad days come with the rain. Not just the rain, but closed-in, up-in-the-clouds weather that blocks out light and warmth and joy for days on end. The air and the ground get saturated with water so that nothing's ever quite dry, and we get puddles in the store room.

Those orange dots at the top of the picture are squash. I'm having to keep a close eye on them so as to eat them up quickly as they start going mouldy.

The other day, some friends and I discussed what the point of Christmas is. We came up with quite a lot of points, and agreed that you can take your pick. My focus is to fend off the gloom and darkness of this time of year, and celebrate the return of the light. When my mood lifts sufficiently to get anything done, I'm focusing on Christmas. Today, I am mostly making sweets and - the reason I wanted the mantlepiece up before Christmas - I have decorations up.

Mouse ears and chocolate pigs

Evergreens and sparkly things around the fireplace

Tonight is both the solstice and the new moon, so it truly is the longest, darkest night of the year. After this, the light returns. Yuletide greetings to one and all!