On with the boards

27 Dec 2017

So we took down the Christmas tree (which was only a few cut branches stuck in a bucket of sand) and turned the work bench back into a work bench, and the dining table back into a paint station, and got a few coats of paint onto the next couple of ceiling boards for the bedroom.

As well as pressing on with the ceiling, we also need to be doing a list of jobs required for the electrics.  Not just choosing fittings, but some necessary fixings.  The first one is the kitchen wall.  Where the plaster has been pulled apart, we decided to cover up with plywood, filled and painted, which can later be tiled, perhaps. 

 Dave drilling the ceiling boards

while I start painting the wall board after masking the socket places.  We also cut plywood to go above and below this board, to cover up the broken plaster.

Boxing Day in the garden

26 December 2017

I didn't take many photos, but the weather was fine enough on Boxing Day to tempt us out of the house to spread more cardboard and then woodchip mulch on the 'Moringa beds' in the south west corner.  As soon as the Christmas disruption is over we want to start some Moringa seedlings again, and hopefully have little saplings to plant out in spring.

It also seemed to be a good time to prune the roses, even though one of them hasn't stopped flowering, so I brought the cut flowers in.  One of the blooms was fabulous, near perfect.

Christmas at Goat Bottom

24 December 2017

We downed tools on Christmas Eve, trying, but failing, to finish the bedroom ceiling panels before the break.  No worries, it'll keep. 

 Our living room on Christmas Eve, ready for guests tomorrow

Christmas day, after a very successful part-vegetarian lunch: Panos, Lucy, Dave, Onone and Amanda.  A nice group of six of us.

To the wire

22 December 2017

Just as we'd given up hope of seeing Tomas before Christmas, he turned up.  It was too damp and blustery for fitting panels on the roof, so instead he started on the second fix of the electrics: checking which wires do what, and getting sockets and switches ready.  It has been about three years since the first fix, and some of the internal walls weren't even built at that point, and as we were building we 'sort of guessed' which wires were what.  Not very well, in some instances.

However, this is a very exciting development, and requires us to choose light fittings for the whole house - which is a job in itself.

 Work on the ceiling continues at its slow pace

 Tomas and an assistant turn up just before Christmas ...

 ... and pull everything apart, just when I was thinking of tidying up for the festive season!

Still, lots of stray wires were identified, and relocated, where necessary.  Some of the kitchen wall had to be de-plastered, as the wire for under-cabinet lighting had gone into a socket, and elsewhere a wire I had thought was a light switch turned out to be another socket - now in a slightly strange place for a socket, but never mind!

Choir performance

19 Dec 2017

The Choir has done two performances already in the last two weeks, and this was the final one, at the Philharmoniki Concert hall in Lefkada.  So we dressed up in our black and red and went off to wow the audience.  Dave provided a microphone and speaker for Rosa, so he was officially the sound man for the show.  We got through it all without muddling, and Rosa gave us 9.1 out of 10, which was pretty good - better than Kastoria, she said.

Chipping away

19 Dec 2017

Dmitris and Panos came back on Tuesday and finished off the pile of brushwood, creating an enormous heap of woodchip ready to put on the beds in the garden when we get a moment. Excellent job done!

And the chickens got another outing to their foraging ground

Raising the stakes

15 Dec 2017

On Friday, Dmitris and Panos came over to make woodchip out of our huge bundle of last year's olive tree prunings from the three acre field next door.  We grabbed the opportunity to get some help lifting the monster inverter.  Dave had cut a piece of strong rebar to size, which could be fitted through it, so Dmitris and Panos took an end each and lifted, with Dave holding it underneath, and between them they managed to hook it onto the bracket.  I flapped around helpfully in the background, squeaking anxiously.

 The silver box on the wall was the one causing all the trouble.

 Then they wiggled the batteries into position too.

 Inside the inverter - very smart!

 Dave, in his excitement, worked late, fixing the battery wires into the fuse box.  There are some things that are straightforward and easy, and some things that have to wait for the electrician.  Dave is whittling away at all the easy stuff, so Tomas can focus on the tricky bits - when he gets here.

Setting up the battery zone

13 Dec 2017

It occurred to me very suddenly one morning, on waking up, that all the equipment in boxes ready to be wired up for the electrics, would need a substantial backing board firmly fixed to the wall posts, before they could be mounted.  Dave agreed, so we made a trip to the woodyard for a large piece of 20mm ply.

It turned out to be huge, and heavy.  We measured and drilled, and Dave cut away some of an olive wood corner that was sticking out proud of the wall, then we sanded and painted.  Then we worked out the positions of the battery management system and the inverter, and Dave measured and fitted brackets, and eventually we managed, between us, to hold it up and get some screws into the wall.

 Monster board, ready for action!

 Dave clears protrusions from the wall

 Drilled, sanded, painted, and brackets being fitted

 The wall before ...

 ... and after, fitting

The battery management box hung up on its bracket.  Then we tried to lift the inverter.  Not a chance.  Dave will need proper help for that one.

Eggs and muck

10 - 12 Dec 2017

The chickens hadn't been laying for quite a few days.  I'd had to buy eggs.  We weren't sure if it was the weather or the feed or a protest.  Then I caught a glimpse of an egg deep in the straw of the chicken house, away from the nesting box.  When I went round to check, I found a large stack of eggs.  So that mystery was solved.

     We recently bought 30 sacks of well rotted goat manure, and while we pressed on with the ceiling boards in the bedroom, Panos and, intermittently, Dave, distributed them round the garden, ready for when we get a chance to clear around the trees and prepare the beds for spring.

 Manure spread, and cardboard mulch started, ready for woodchip

The panel rails ready on the roof.  Just waiting for Tomas the electrician to come.

On the rails

8 December 2017

Simon arrived bright and early, Panos happened to be free and was enrolled too, and the three of them, including Dave, were up on the roof, fixing things all day

 Dave getting an early start on the tile cutting

 Panos, Dave and Simon drilling and fixing the rail mounts

 In keeping with local tradition: two of them watching while the third one works!

 They needed stuff handed up to them, so I got up the ladder to gingerly put things on the edge of the roof, and took these two photos of the garden while there.

 The old pear trees are making lovely colours just now

 After lunch, Rowan and Jade turned up to do some more work on the glasshouse, the house was swarming.

 Simon decided to move the tile-cutting to the roof, to speed up the process

Then there was the moment when they couldn't work out how the little panel clips should be placed, and there was no help for it, but to go up there myself.  Here I am, not very bravely squatting at the roof ridge and shouting instructions!

Mounting the roof rails

7 December 2017

We have had a word with a friend who installs solar panels, and he has a day free before he goes away for Christmas, and the weather is expected to be good, so it's all systems go for tomorrow for fitting the rails on the roof.  Tomas the electrician will fit the actual panels, but we need to have the rails in place to make it easy for him.

In order to have things go smoothly tomorrow, Dave spent the day working out how to do the fitting.  The company who supplied everything: Off Grid Europe, have supplied everything, which is excellent, but the roof mounts and Greek tiles aren't a good match.  Each tile with a mount fitted beneath it will need a small piece of it ground off with an angle grinder.  Just an extra bit of faffing about, situation normal!

 The tiles and the grinder, ready to go

Later that day, the first rail fitted, mistakes made and corrected, techniques learned.

Chicken run

4 December 2017

We have just obtained a temporary chicken fence, and have enclosed an area around a couple of the old olive trees.  The plan is to let the chickens forage in the enclosed area on sunny days when we are about.  It's as close to free-ranging as we can allow, given the damage the chucks do to the veg garden.

 Dave leads his girls to the new foraging ground ...

 ... where they are very happy indeed

Meanwhile, the cat has adopted the little arched window (next to the stove!) as her new haunt

Wood, as far as the eye can see

1 - 2 December 2017

We continue to work on the ceiling insulation in the bedroom.  We would like to get all the ceiling boards installed before Christmas, but it won't be easy.  We need another run to the woodyard, for batons and boards - we are doing this in small instalments, as the car can only take so much, and we don't have the space to store large quantities of wood, especially with guests coming for Christmas dinner.

 The living room, turned into a cutting and painting workshop

 On the workbench to the right there are some odd little pieces of plywood - offcuts being used to finally finish off some neglected corners.

 The completed panels in the central section (facing north) - prioritised because the electrician is eagerly awaited, and we need to be ready for fittings to be fitted!

 And the panels on the same section to the south, the first board, which was varnished, but we decided to change it to white, so it's been masked and painted.

Starting the Ceiling Boards

28 / 29 November 2017

This one is going to be a long job.  We decided to start the ceiling insulation in the bedroom for three reasons: it is on the mezzanine and therefore relatively low, mistakes will not be publicly visible, and we want to be warm this winter.

The process is: we cut batons to run alongside the rafters.  Because every other rafter is cross braced, we have to cut the batons around the braces, which involves a very acute angle.  Where the rafter joins the wall or the apex beam there is an obtuse angle.  We are using plywood panels, which we can get in 125 cm lengths, so every 125 cm we need a cross baton.

So, we measure, cut, check, drill, sand, varnish with two coats and then fit the batons.  We can't measure the cross batons till the side ones are in, and they then need to be cut, checked, drilled, sanded and twice varnished before being fitted.  We can then stuff with insulation, which is proving happy to be stapled to the roofing boards, and is therefore the easiest part of the job, when we'd expected it to be more difficult.

Having fitted all the batons and the insulation we measure, cut if necessary, check, drill, sand, twice paint and then fit the plywood panels.  These need to be fitted one by one so that the next one can be measured from the fitted one.   And then there are the electrical fittings for overhead lights ...

As you can imagine, there is a huge amount of waiting for things to dry built into this process.  We need to have several sections on the go at once, but we don't have enough inside space for long pieces of wood and large sheets of plywood to be laid around drying.  It's going to be a long job.

 First stage, filling in some long-overdue-for-attention spaces in the internal walls.  This one's been stuffed with pillow innards and will be boarded with tongue-and-groove, because that's what we've got to hand.

 This is the space where the first panel and a half will go.  The side batons are in, with the acute angles round the cross-bracing on the left hand side.

 Dave drilling the screw holes in a baton.

 Some time later, the first panel is in and the insulation.  We tried using a wood preservative but decided that we prefer white paint, which is more forgiving as well, so this one will have to be re-painted in situ.  At least it's not over the bed.

The second panel - painted white - fitted too.  The white is much nicer.