On to the wall cladding

 Thursday 27 January 2011

With rain forecast for Friday, we got in another afternoon at the shed, finishing the final wall (which has most of the plumbing), and starting a bit of the wooden cladding. 

I'd forgotten how much all that hammering hurts.

In answer to a silent call for help, Mike arrived, walking the dog, and soon took over my end of the operation.

They got about halfway down the back wall, before we ran out of time.  Dave was teaching guitar to Lilias' son, Patrick, and then we were due back in Lefkas for another meeting with Constantine to try to finalise the plans.

By 10.30 pm we were all pretty happy with how the cottage looked on paper, so it's time to give it to the structural engineers to see whether it can actually be done.  That could take a month or so, and then planning will take another 6-8 weeks minimum, apparently. 



A hardy soul, braving the cold:

Health, work and happiness

Tuesday 25 January 2011

The first thing we saw when we got up was this concrete mixer at the bottom of our garden.  They'd started pouring concrete into the sheep-field-as-was.  It feels like an act of criminal vandalism, but I expect I'm over-reacting

The second thing we noticed was snow on the mountain.  OUR mountain, wherein lies Goat Bottom (admittedly only 13 metres up from sea level, but close enough).  There was a definite chill in the air.

We took off in search of Dave's medical insurance stamp.  Finding the right office in the Town Hall was surprisingly easy, as a helpful young man showed us around.  On arrival, we found the insurance room to be full, with a clerk at a desk at each end, two female visitors sitting chatting to our clerk, and another male visitor just being helped.  The room was about the size of our shed, so by the time you'd squeezed both of us in too, it was standing room only.  Luckily, in all the crowd, there was one good English speaker, who explained that we couldn't get Dave's book stamped without a medical number, and this was issued by the citizen's advice bureau in the next village.

Off we went.  Found the bureau, admired the view of Vlicho bay from the window while waiting, got the number issued, returned to the Town Hall, located the right office again, and got the book stamped. 

Now we could get some work done.  So down the yard we went, and Dave spent the rest of the morning grinding a damaged rudder, covering himself in health-giving fibreglass dust from top to toe.

With that finished we bought a couple of cans of soup and headed up to Goat Bottom for some fresh air and a busy afternoon.

While in Lefkas I'd treated myself to this fancy new staple gun.  (I'm as irresponsible in toolshops as other women are rumoured to be in shoe shops!)   Look at it - sexy matt black - it says 'aircraft aluminium' on it - very impressive (wonder what it means?). 

Anyway, it just flew through the job of foiling the next two walls of the shed, without wasting a single staple.

And there we were, with a glamorous shiny robotic shed ...

 ... which then became a soft fluffy teddy-bear of a shed as the cosy insulation went in ...

 ... and finally the mackintosh of membrane.

And the snow was still thick on the mountains - the mainland ones opposite, as well as our own.

I went into Lefkas for my test results while Dave went to band practice.  It seems my cholesterol is a little up - I'm advised to get lots of outdoor exercise and eat a healthy Mediterranean diet ...!

Health matters

Monday 24 January 2011

On Monday we were due to go to the hospital.  Dave had had a virus over the New Year and the GP recommended a series of blood tests by way of an MOT.  I decided to get some too, on the basis that what you don't know could kill you.  And Monday was raining, so nothing much else was doing.  So we got up bright and early and went to Lefkas, arriving at the hospital at 9 am.  We then queued among the little old ladies in black for half an hour before making it to the reception window.  Dave has a medical insurance so he presented his book, but the receptionist looked at it, flicked through the pages, and said 'No'. 

It transpired that his book hadn't been updated.  Despite paying regularly every six months, he also had to go once a year to the Town Hall in Nidri to get stamped.  He hadn't been ill since getting the book in 2007, so he didn't know this.  We made a call to Lilias, our guide to all things Lefkadian, and she explained.  The Town Hall only deals with medical insurance on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so we couldn't get any further that day.

Meanwhile, not having medical insurance, I walked into a smart microbiology surgery, asked if they could do the tests, they agreed, I paid, they took a blood sample, and said the results would be ready the next day.

As we were on a health check mission, I also had an eye test, again just walking in off the street and getting immediate attention.  Interestingly, the Greeks don't do eye tests at the opticians, but at separate eye doctor surgeries - presumably they don't trust the opticians not to sell them glasses they don't really need.

Memvrani

Sunday 23 January 2011

The last week has been busy in the yard, and then it rained for three days.  We got to Lefkas on Friday morning and collected insulation and wood to start the outside of the shed.  We also went back to Lefkas on Friday evening to see Constantine, in the hope of finalising the plans for submission to the planning authority.

Apparently the planning authority has recently been a headless chicken, as the October elections streamlined the bureaucratic structure of the island by removing seven mayors of small districts and replacing them with one overall mayor based in Lefkas town.  As part of this process a separate bureaucracy which included the planning office has been dismantled, in order to bring it under the central mayoral umbrella.  Knowing this, Constantine hasn't been too busy with the plans because there was no point.  Now, though, it seems we have a green light again.

We arrived at the office at 7 pm and stayed until 11 pm - and didn't get anywhere near finished.  More to do next week.  The cob cottage is growing bigger in tiny, apparently unavoidable increments, and it looks lovely on the plans - whether we'll ever get it built is beginning to be a worry, though.

On Sunday it stopped raining, so we took the van load of insulation and membrane up to Goat Bottom to start on the back wall of the shed.

Greek note: The word for membrane is 'memvrani' - I find it curious that in translation, the word has changed by how it looks, not how it sounds.  In written Greek, 'v' looks like a 'b'.

The word for breathable (as in breathable membrane) is something like apneu-oosa (apologies Constantine, I probably got that wrong).  This is memorable because of the pneu - which makes sense of pneumonia, but why pneumatic?  Tyres don't breath, they just have air in them.

 The shed walls will be lined with silver foil, then stuffed with insulation, then covered with the memvrani, and then we'll nail up tongue and groove as an outer skin.

We had the winebox inners for some of the foil lining, and a big roll of cooking foil for when they ran out.  I was surprised how far they went - nine boxes yielded eighteen sheets, which filled about five of the wall sections.  This would've been a quick and easy job, if it hadn't been for my cheap Lidl staple gun: which would do about eight staples before jamming.  I would then spend five minutes opening it up, unjamming it, retrieving the staples from where they'd been flung by the spring loading, and start again.  Get to the top of a rickety ladder and it would jam again.  A fiddly job - thank goodness Dave wasn't trying to use it - it would've been flung into the brambles within minutes.

We used up the left-over insulation, some of the rockwool which we don't like but don't want to bin - surprisingly it did most of the back wall, with only a few bits of the left over polyester to finish off.  So the back wall is insulated and we haven't even opened the two new packets. 

After the insulation we installed the membrane, and stood back, it looks remarkably like a proper building, clad in its waterproof skin.  One wall ready for tongue and groove.

We rounded off the afternoon by walking about a bit.  Here's a close up of a little bit of our land.  The rain must have brought up the moss.  I know it's not very good grazing, but isn't it georgeous?

[Note to Mum: If you double-click any picture it should enlarge to full screen.  You can then use the 'back' button (top left corner of screen) to close it again.]

And I took this picture for Dave - he is fascinated by these 'pitcher plants' - they are carnivorous flytraps.  The fly walks inside and falls down the slippery throat to drown in the bottom, where the plant digests it. 

Panel the first

Sunday 16 January 2011

Sunday being a day off, we were straight up the land, Dave having wrestled with ideas for how to mount the first panel, and being anxious to test out his ideas.

Dieter was saving us money by not selling us an installation kit, and leaving us to do it ourselves.  This may have been a false economy - it was very difficult.  Dave is definitely not spiderman - we needed George and Richie again for this project.

Dave fitted brackets to three sides of the panel.  The roof is large enough to take four panels, so he had chalked out the position for this first one. 

Then he had to climb up there, while holding the panel, with my help, fiddle it into position, get up there too, and then realise there was no-where to put the drill, the screws, and the sikaflex (a very sticky black sealant to prevent rain getting through the screw holes - but it is a well-known fact to anyone who works in a boatyard, that the merest, tiniest drop of sikaflex will instantly smudge all over a 20 ft radius, especially smearing any people in the vicinity - this was proven, yet again, to be true). 

But he did it - a nasty job, and our nice green roof is now a blotchy green and black roof - but the panel is up.  Hurrah!  It's not wired to anything yet, that'll wait till we have the other three panels and the regulator and inverter.

 When I wasn't passing tools or supporting the panel, I went off on a frolic of my own and started to build a compost bin out of offcuts.

Arriving back at the apartment later that evening, we found that the building site next door had gained a new feature.  The shuttering had been put in with a blithe disregard for our convenience - once again the washing line had come down; the compost bin had been moved, turning the compost out into the swamp; and the garden path was a hurdle track.

Monday evening I couldn't help but go up to the land for an hour and finish off the compost bin.  We can now take our compost to Goat Bottom, since our bin at the apartment has been compromised.

Returning to the apartment we found further sinister developments had taken place.  This development is going to completely block the sun from the east, probably until about 2pm.  Which will make it very cold and dark in the winter.  Thank goodness we've got an escape plan.

During the week, the reinforcing bars just kept coming.  Our landlady told us she had been told they were building a small wooden house - doesn't look small or wooden to me.

Olive Oil update

Saturday 15 January 2011

The olive oil had to be decanted from the container, which we had promised to leave at a local garage to be collected by Stefanos - which was nice of him, as it saved us another trip up into the hinterland.  Not that that's a particular hardship, of course.

So we had nine litres, that makes six 1.5 litre water bottles.  But they need to be washed, in case we'd been drinking from them, and then dried.  Neither of us knows whether water in the oil is a major issue, but Dave said you get diesel bug if water gets into fuel, so it would be best to have them properly dried.  So I sellotaped them all together and balanced them on a radiator.  Dave wondered if I was up to some strange installation art.

When we poured out the oil it was still cloudy, but a week later, when I'd remembered to get some tape to write labels on, it had magically cleared down, so I took the bottles out into the sun for this photo.

In the background of the olive oil photo is our lemon tree in a pot, so I took a proper photo of that too, as a reminder to get a move on, so it can be planted out on the land as soon as possible, while still dormant for winter.  (Although not that dormant, as it's putting out little lemon buds even now in mid-winter).

Juggling

Monday 10 January 2011

Boatyard tasks are demanding attention now.  Just to give the full flavour of our wild lifestyle I captured a few shots of Dave hard at work on yacht plumbing: 

 ... and rounding it off with a relaxing visit to the land in the evening.

 While I stripped down more ex-winebox inners.  But this time I rigged a washing line, pegged them out and hosed them down.  Hmm, good idea for a bird scarer ...?

Thursday 13 January 2011

On thursday we visited Dieter, and bought our first solar panel (not the display model Dave is standing by, but our very own one that Dieter is loading in the van.  Three more are on order.

Friday 14 January 2011

By Friday, once again we couldn't stay away, and had a happy day with non-yacht plumbing, installing the sink - salvaged second-hand from upside-down George; and the shower fittings.

Sharp-eyed readers will notice that we've hung the tap upside down.  This was deliberate (honest!)  as the little hot/cold indicator is on the underneath - well, now the top, where we can see it.

By the time we were done the day was running out and this glorious reflected sunset was lighting up our own Ayer's Rock - the mountains on the mainland.

Solar Power - Yes Please!

Sunday 9 January 2011

On Sunday, Dieter came to visit.  Dieter is an Austrian electronics engineer who has recently taken over a marine electronics shop in Lefkas called Metronix.  We have known him for several years, while he was based in Nidri doing ad hoc electrical jobs on yachts and working on the German pontoon.

We had asked him to quote for an off-grid solar system to power our proposed camper truck lifestyle.  We also asked, in passing, what sort of investment would be required to set up a small 'solar farm' generating maybe 10 kilowatts of power to feed into the grid, as there are currently very advantageous Feed-In Tariff deals in Greece.  We also suggested he come and have a cup of tea.

 He refused the tea, but accepted coffee, and talked technical with Dave.

 

Look, a picture of me! (Complete with startled hair)

 Dieter's van

Measuring the field.  He later provided us with a written proposal for 60 panels on two structures in an area 10m by 15m that would generate at least 11.1 kilowatts with potential earnings in excess of E5,000 per year for 20 years.  But the investment is nearly E50,000 and we'd need a very friendly bank.

Do we want tenants?

Friday 7 January 2011

Pantomime rehearsals are taking up much time at the moment, in addition to everything else.  If you recall, I am cast as Snow White (against all probability) and spend Wednesday evenings and most Saturday afternoons demonstrating an inability to act naturally. 

Last Weds rehearsal, Vince came over to me and asked whether Dave and I would consider tenants, as he knew of a couple who were looking for somewhere to put a camper van.  I suggested we meet them, and a rendezvous was arranged.

Meanwhile, we persuaded Vince and Angie to come and see our patch of land.

- it's out there somewhere!

While there, we got a first coat of preservative on the door: it's pinkish ply, painted with the tail end of the yellow stain we used on the floor - yep! it was like painting on false tan - it went a strange orange colour.  Two more coats to go.

Back at the apartment, the builders next door, in the sheep-field-as-was, had issued an ultimatum to the wisteria - if we wanted to keep it, it had to be removed asap.  So Dave chopped it out - a couple of inch-thick roots had taken themselves under our slab of concrete, so they just had to be hacked through.

I dug it a nice hole and planted it on the south west corner of the van.  Fingers crossed.

Vince's friends, Michael and Alison, turned up on Saturday.  He'd said he thought they maybe had children, teenagers, perhaps, so we were a little surprised to meet five year old twins, Isabel and Elise, and two year old Kieran.  However, everyone was very well behaved, even Dave and I, and we all got on very well.  Dave being adopted as a surrogate granddad by the twins and Kieran deciding to sit on my knee.

Michael and Alison are looking to do something very similar to what we're doing, including all the eco-stuff, and seem rather excellent potential neighbours at Goat Bottom.  Alison has experience of keeping chickens and would like to write; while Michael used to work in health and safety on the oil rigs - a slightly worrying specialism given our work practices, until he explained he's now working in the boatyard and finds it a refreshing change!

After all the excitement, we put up the siding in the North gable end, and created this hatch so we can inspect for leaks, and store some stuff in the roof space.

Into the New Year

Early January 2011

Well, hopefully, this will be the Year of the Camper Truck - although moving in doesn't seem to be getting any closer.  We've been getting things done, interspersed with having to get on with work in the boatyard, and have had a run of exceptional weather, which has delayed updates to this blog, as I've either been out working or at home eating and sleeping.

I thought I'd try to keep a record of any Greek words we add to our vocab, so here are a few: the Camper Truck is a 'Tro-ho-spito' - literally 'wheeled house' and the shed is either 'spitaki' (little house) or 'apothiki' (storehouse).  Interestingly, apothiki must be the root for the word apothecary.  At a recent visit to Constantine the architect we found out that linen store is 'linothiki' - where '-thiki' is the word for something that holds a gun: holster, perhaps.

These little flowers have been popping up around us, enjoying the mild weather, and causing mayhem as we try not to step on them when heavily laden, or in a rush.




We had a run into Lefkas one day.  I picked up this somewhat tedious if very useful item of equipment, and gave the deck a good brushing ...

... while Dave got this amazing Nimbus 2000* of a wood chopping axe, so we can get our olive wood cut to size for the stove.

This is pretty well the only item we've bought in Greece where they didn't offer us a plastic bag - which we refuse whenever we can.  But Dave was not prepared to walk out the shop with a great big axe over his shoulder, so we had to persuade them we really did want a bag for it.

*Harry Potter's fancy broomstick






Around about January 6th, a Thursday, when we'd been down the yard for most of three days, we couldn't help ourselves, and spent a day on the land.

The next job, we decided, was putting the door on the shed.  This would mean we weren't having to unpin and re-pin polythene over the door space at every visit.

I didn't take enough photos of the process, but we cut two sides of ply, drilled out the holes for the handle and the lock, glued on the sides (which was a bit messy, as the ply wanted to buckle and we didn't have enough clamps for the job) and fixed on the door furniture.

Dave planed it smooth and we checked it for fit.  Then he put the hinges on the door edge and marked the places in the door frame to be chiselled out.

  
Just then, Leslie and Steve called by.  While we made them tea ...





 

 ... Steve set to work on the chiselling, proving an unstoppable force ...

... that soon got the door hung ...



















... and it still fitted perfectly.