The Greening of Yew Tree Cottage

[Richard Owen]

Increased the height of the weir today. No speccy bloke available so had to bring in services of Bionic Builder (triple bypass, two new hips)



Time to get out the venerable bar-o-mix. Here she is ready to pour out a load of loverly mortar.


And here we have the finished weir. Complete with raised sides to encourage water through the middle. What a great job by BB. Better than I could dream of achieving. The only problem is I have to wait 24 hours before filling the pond so I don't wash the mortar out.



Hate waiting ................................

[frotter]

Good bodgerising, fella!

 

[Richard Owen]

This is shitfabrains



He might look like a domestic cat. He is, in fact, a rain god.

When he's upset or annoyed, boy can he make it rain.

I don't know what we did to rile him this week (not enough tuna probably) but the heavens opened. Here's some of the rain.


Now the Law of Unintended Consequences states that one person's meat in another person's gander sauce.

The unintended consequence of the perceived tuna deficiency is that the weir got a good work out. Here it is weiring away. Not a heating coil in sight. Result !



And for the aficionados of hydrocivilbodging, here is a picture of the business end.



Notice the flat, even, linear, laminar flow over the blocks. You can tell I didn't lay them.

[dhaslam]

Now to work out why sometimes when I post, the pictures are small and sometimes they are bigger.

When you resize pictures you need to do it in pixels.   The norm is 800 pixels maximum dimension.  When saved in jpeg format the picture should fit in less than 100k with medium to high compression.

[Ivan]

Looks good. When will you be generating power?

[Richard Owen]

Hi Ivan,

One mustn't get ahead of oneself.

(or one will see what a peculiar gait and disgusting big arse one has.)

Hydro power is currently set for TGoYTC Phase 5.

The current plan is as follows:

Phase 1 (pretty much complete, or as complete as a bodger ever gets) is install the heat pump and associated bits.
Phase 2 is re-roofing the house with a decent amount (200mm of PU foam. Bless you Seconds and Co via EBAY) of insulation.
Phase 3 is fitting the solar panels on the newly fixed roof, fitting the wood burner with back boiler, resiting the thermal store and fitting the second store in bodge central.
Phase 4 is building/testing/installing the CHP/standby generator and fitting the heat dump
Phase 5 is building the hydroelectric plant.

When that's all done, I think I'll have a play with making bio-diesel.

Should keep me out of mischief.

P.S. off topic: Did anyone else hear Michael Meacher say, "The writing's on the wall of the Last Chance Saloon." I'm just waiting for, "It's the last roll of the dinosaur." Don't reply to this bit; start another thread.

[Twenty4Seven]

"The writing's on the wall of the Last Chance Saloon." I'm just waiting for, "It's the last roll of the dinosaur."

I love mixed metaphors me.... We have a Parish Council that wouldn't be out of place in Dibley. They made such a hash of one particular issue that "..they shot themselves in the foot so many times they haven't got a leg to stand on" was my witty observation........ or not....

Don't reply to this bit; start another thread.

Oops - sowwy 

[Richard Owen]

Phase 2 of TGoYTC started today with a delivery of a load of insulation.

In the rain. That cat must really hate us.

No pics of insulation being delivered (to the bottom of the drive, too steep for lorry to get up) due to everyone being busy and Mrs. Owen ("I took time off work for this?) not wanting to get her camera wet.

Solution to getting the insulation up the drive was to commission the services of Farm Boy and his tele-forky-lifty thing. Here we see our hero emerging through the trees with a load of 50mm wicked rockwool (Oi! Farm Boy! Watch out for that mixer.)



Note: Picked this lot up because I will need to do some sound insulation but unlikely to need all this. If anyone is passing YTC (here in the loverly lower Wye Valley) you are more than welcome to pick up a load.

Bodgling Senior avoided doing any actual work by grabbing the camera, hence unintentional shot of your correspondent, pointing out exactly where (No not there, there!) Farm Boy should place the insulation in Bodge Central



Rapidly diminishing pile of insulation at bottom of drive, Farm Boy off with another load to avoid flirtatious attentions of Bodgling Senior and a little accident







Oops.



Insulation finally stacked neatly (?) in Bodge Central.




Now all we need is some nice weather and we can get the roof off.

Must buy more tuna .............................

[Richard Owen]

Folks,

Having warned about the dangers of getting ahead of oneself, what did I do?

Yes, you guessed: earlier this week I popped down to the Southern edge of Exmoor to this list's very own Woodenstop's (soon to be) Famous Barn of Listers. And collected a Lister. Now known as Dave.

Here's Dave about to be loaded into the van


I would have loved to have posted loads of other photos, like the ones of robocop (actually roboparamedic, but it doesn't have the same ring) on his tele-forky-lifty thing (Farm Boy being otherwise engaged), gently lifting Dave from the back of Lighting Boy's van and into bodge central, but the photos have gone AWOL between the PC and the web album. They are nowhere to be found. beans.

May take another photo of Dave, safe in bodge central, later.

[guydewdney]

That wasnt the lister on fleabay located in South Molton was it?

Guy, Porlock, Nr Minehead.

[Richard Owen]

Was indeed.

[guydewdney]

Git - I wanted that   

[Richard Owen]

Sorry,

I always feel bad about my fleabay bidding technique. It works for me, but I never feel comfortable about the emotions of the person who thought they had the item until the last few seconds.

Was it that one in particular you wanted? Woodenstop has more.

Richard

[Ivan]

Why doesn't ebay extend the auction for 30minutes if there is a bid in the last few seconds? It would boost their obscene profits as well as benefiting buyers and sellers. In fact.....it might actually be like a real auction.

[northern installer]

Cos it would spoil all the fun; 5-4-3-2-1-Bam!  hah ha ha ha!!!   beat you again suckers! yippee!.......ooer,did I really want that? (on winning one unopened case of obsolete oval peigned bajion pins)