Higher, and higher

As previously explained in  Raising Ground and The walls are rising we are levelling the ground at the front of the house. The photos bellow show how this is moving along

As you can see here most of the ramp is complete

More cement on the ramp as the new back all starts to take shape

Digging away the existing edge for the new wall

A few rocks in

Almost there.

And that will do for now. Just need to top off and tidy up a few bits.

On the floor in the pig pen

In order to build the ramp and the walls out the front of the house we needed to find some extra rocks from somewhere, and one thing we wanted to do was look under the floor in the pig pen to see what was there as someday this will become the observatory and will need a very solid pier constructing to take the telescope.

Half the floor gone

As the floor of the pig pen was made of rocks  it made sense to pull them up so that they could be used in the wall and then we could look underneath.

All gone

The corn is as high as a mouse's eye.

A while a go we started the experimentation with the new warring system (see post Watering 2.0) on the boniarto and corn patches. Well it seems to be working though the corn is not that high yet it seems to be growing ok.

And the boniarto seems to be thriving. Well its green anyway.

The only problem is adjusting the taps so that an equal amount of water is supplied to each tube. Well the proof is in the pudding as they say or in this case in the pot. we will just have to wait and see how the crop is.

The walls are rising

Two weeks work and it does not look like much has happened. The ramp is taking shape but not by much.

 

The idea was that this should only take 2 weeks to get the new ramp built but I don’t seem  to be getting a long that fast at the moment. Mind you it building these rock (or stone) walls can be quit therapeutic.

 

The main worry I have is if we have enough rocks to finish the walls.

Well we will see how it all goes.

Battle of the bulge

No I´m not talking about our waist lines that is another story..

What I am talking about is the curious bulge that has always been in the wall on the front of the house. It look very much like something inside the wall was pushing it out. So one time while we were working on the lower patio we decided to chip it off and see what was causing this part of the wall to be pushed out, This is what we found Yes you can clearly see that it is a horseshoe. We have found loads of these around the place and it looks as if this one has been placed in the wall while it was being built, possibly for luck. However as this wall can get very damp sometimes the horseshoe has started to rust which is what was pushing the wall out. So we removed it and put it with the rest of the interesting things we find in the garden, there is a spur somewhere…Then we just need to patch the hole and it shouldn't get pushed out again as there is now nothing to push it.

Raising the Ground.

Our house is quite normal on the la Palma in that it is built on a slope, the front of the house is two stories but the back is only one. The lower part of the front of the house consist of two rooms that in the past were used for ether storage or animals. Outside these “rooms” is what could loosely be called a yard, which is about 2 meters wide and bounder by a meter to 1.5 meter drop down to the next terrace.  The problem is that this so called yard is not level in fact it drops by almost 1 meter from one end to the other.

So we plan to level this ground and use the opt unity to construct better access to the terrace below. To do this we need to build up the rock walls and add a ramp.

So the first thing to do is dismantle the rock wall so that we can build the ramp.

Once we have the walls done the we need to bring the ground level up to meet the house and convert this yard into some thing that we can use and that will not break ankles…

Making shapes

Between the kitchen and the rest of the house far years there has just been a rough hole in the wall which has been there since we arrived. well with both sides now finished it’s time to finally put the last piece in place the arch itself. So we built the arch former from ply and small bits of pine. Once the former was complete then came the task of fitting it into the opening. we screwed two boards across the bottom of the opening. Then the arch former was fitted between them and secured in place. Rebar has been put in to give the arch added strength. Note also that the other side has already had the boards fitted. We poured the concrete in and added the extra boards as we went along.

With all the concrete poured in and the boards fitted it was time to cross fingers and pray that we had got the concrete where it was needed. The following day it was time to take of the outer boards and see if we had in fact managed to get the concrete into the right places. As the photo above shows it looks like most of the concrete is where it needs to be, with just a few bits needing some surface patching…

Watering 2.0

Our efforts at using gray water to water our veg has hot been that successful, the first year worked ok , but after that it stopped working. The main problem is the gray water has not been filtered so that it clogs up the drip watering feeds etc.

After some web research and book reading, we cam across a method using plastic pipes with drilled holes to distribute water. These are buried in the veg plots and should provide adequate irrigation.

so we purchased some 20mm plastic pipe and added the holes.

Pipe being drilled.

All the bits ready to be assembled.

The pipe sections are 2m in length and have aprox. 20cm risers added so that they can be berried below the surface.

The water is derived by 16mm plastic irrigation pipes with a tap for each buried pipe. The main problem at the moment is getting all the taps balanced so that each of the berried pipes gets the same amount of water.

So far the system seems to be working but the real test will be through the summer.

The new irrigation system with some very young corn plants…
will it work?

Battery Box fail…….

There I was happily pottering around the house when I heard this sudden crash and thud from somewhere around the house. “Now what has fallen down!!” After 10 minutes of hunting I could not find a thing that had fallen..

Well about a hour later I was hanging up the washing and spotted the following:

What seems to have happened is that the plastic in the storage box that we used to cover the battery 3 years ago has degraded to the consistency of prawn crackers and finally collapsed.

Look out…Look out…..Weather about….

One morning as I was going about my normal  morning routine I walked outside an was suddenly surprise to spot the following. Yes that is a water spout. It’s a little mini tornado that appears over the sea, we do see them sometimes when the conditions are right. They disappear quite quickly and don’t make it to land and also it is very rare to spot one touching the sea. which if you look at the picture below you can see this one does.

In need of support

In order to build the arch between the kitchen and dining room later this year we need to get the two sides made up to about the same point so that the former for the arch will sit level. We did the other side back in January. So we finally got our act  together and sorted out the other side. So once we had cut the wood it was time to pour the concrete. This didn’t take all that long as the width on this side is not as great as the other side. when we had poured the concrete all the way up to the top we put in some small lengths of rebar in to connect to the rebar that will go into the arch when we pour it.  After a few days we took of the wood and here you have it another side of the arch complete.

What´s Behind the Red Door

Finally after 3 months work the solar power huts are now watertight (well mostly, still need to do a bit of rendering) with the fiting of the doors.

These doors are home made out of ply (was suppose to be marine ply but I have my doubts) with air vents at the bottom.

The main problem was the hinges, I wanted nice rustic hinges for the doors that fit on the face, but could not get any that fitted onto the frames as that part was too big so had to cut them down…. which task took quite a bit of sawing with a hacksaw and some black enamel paint to stop them rusting.

The battery huts doors were fitted first about a week ago. and then today we finally fitted the power hut doors. Hurray!!!!!

They seem to look quit good… Now all I have to do is get all the bits inside them…

Here Comes the Summer

In preparation for planting the veg ready for the summer we have cleared the weeds and sorted out the upper terrace. We tend to use this terrace to grow veg for the summer as it is easy access to maintain and water. Once we get the water recycling working we should be able to use the lower terraces more but for now we will use this terrace.

As you can also see we have put a number of poles in to mark out various areas of the garden. These include what will be in the future, raised beds for growing crops in an area of about a meter wide by 2 meters long.

Surprise Squash

While Helen was clearing weeds at the bottom of the garden she discovered this It’s a  calabaza  which is a type of squash or pumpkin it had grown from some seeds which ended up on our compost heap. As our compost heap doesn’t work very efficiently at the moment it isn’t getting rid of the seeds but it does grow some wonderful pumpkins as looking at the vines which are coming up from that area we have found about 3 more potential calabazas which are only about an inch long at the moment.

Wiring a Power Station

I do wonder if this may be overkill but it has to handle up to 100 Amps and its better be safe than sorry.

I have started to layout the main solar power switch box. This box provides for the main isolation switches, fuses and some electronics to measure the current flowing in one of three locations, into or out of the battery, into the house 12v supply  and to the inverter that will provide 240v to the house.  Each of these circuits can also be isolated in this box.

          

Front and rear of main switch box panel

There is a second box that provides isolation for the solar panels. see Danger Electric Shock Risk for the layout of the full power panel.

You’ve Been Framed

Before the doors can be fitted to the huts on the roof we needed to make and fit some door frames

Before the door frame could be fitted the back plate which will mount all the electronics needed to be fitted as once the frame is in there is no way we would be able to get it trough the hole.

An then once fitted and the render applied up to the edges they were given a coat of paint which will match the rest of the wood work on the house (Once we paint the house this summer).

Danger Electric Shock Risk

After water got into the previous electrical systems for the solar panels we are taking no chances with the new system.  So as well as building nice brick built houses on the roof for the electronics and batteries to sit in we are building a nicely laid out panel which everything sits on.

The black thing in the top left is the heat sink for the charge controller which will take the current from the panels and feeds it to the batteries. Underneath that is a switch and fuse to isolate the panels. In the centre is the main box which will contain all the fuses and switches to isolate the batteries and the supply to the house. The blue box on the right hand side is the 750w inverter that will provide the 240v for the lighting and other low wattage things for the house. We can’t use the inverter just yet until we up the battery capacity but we need to plan the space in advance.

Removal of the Man Trap

The entrance way has always had a large hole in one side of it (it was a drain), but since we ran the drains etc for the new bathroom across it, it has been a bit of a assort course just to get into the house.

So finally we have got around to relaying the entrance way.  This involved digging up the current concrete, creating a manhole for the drain accesses and putting down the new concrete.

Casting Manhole.

Removal of existing concrete.

New concrete laid.

All Done.

So now we can get into the house without braking a leg. I just hope I got the grading right so that the rain water goes down the drain and not into the house.

Spaghetti Junction

In preparation for creating the arch which will sit between the kitchen and the dinning room, we needed to mount all the conduit and boxes for the power and lighting for the kitchen and outside.

Once all the conduit and the boxes had been installed with a specially cut former to hold the socket boxes in place. The outside of the boxes were covered in plaster to hold the conduits firm and stop the concrete from seeping into the socket holes.

Once the concrete had been poured and allowed to set for a few days it was time to take off the mould and see what was underneath. We have 3 boxes that will hold all the switches to control the kitchen and outside lights.

So here we are we have switches to control a light in the new kitchen and one above the back door (Yes we can now go to the bathroom at night with out requiring a torch). Also one of the switches is linked to a socket which powers the hot water heater so after a long time we no longer need to have a cable that runs all the way from the entertainment room to power the heater. The sockets are only there temporarily to provide power  while we work on the kitchen.

A Small Construction Job

With the solar power down we need to get the small huts on the roof finished so that the final solar power system can be installed. Talk of procrastination, I  have been working on these on and off for two years.

Well we have the structures mostly finished and roofed but they still need to be rendered and doors added before the electronics and Batteries can be installed. Well the first stage is almost done .. the rendering, this has had to be done in three stages:

First: Attach a plastic mesh to the wall, this helps the render to stick.Second: first coat of render. Ok I had intended to only do one coat but just did not have enough.And finally the top coat: I actually think it looks quite good.

The Year of Stress

And thus with the chimes of midnight there came an end to what has been "the year of stress". It all started one rainy night back at the end of January when while driving back from classes on the other side of the capital when a rock landed in the road just in front of us. The inevitable collision wasn't life threatening but it did damage the car enough to render it in our eyes not worth repairing but we did instigate a procedure for claiming the cost of the damages back from the government. Or friend Sheila paid for the repairs. But in the mean time we needed a car for me to get to and from work. So we purchased a second hand Citroen C2. All was then fine for a short while until one day we were driving out of Santa Domingo after picking up some paperwork from the town hall when there was a tapping noise from the engine upon investigation we suspected that it was the timing belt so we called a tow truck, our suspicions were confirmed a few days later when the garage gave us the quote which was just a shade over 1,000€. The really annoying thing about this is that we would have taken the car in to the garage for a service at 80,000Km which was in about another 1,000Km.

Our claim against the government for the damages has now turned into a court case with us now suing the government through the Courts which will take awhile, and a some point mean a trip to Tenerife when we eventually have a date for the case to be heard.

We have also been plagued this year by problems with the catrastal register (Land registry). It appears that when we brought the house the registry wasn't updated. So when we discovered that this was the case we tried to sort it out, Oh how wrong we were. First we tried to sort it out in the local town hall. Nope, the guy there told us that the numbers on our documentation were wrong and that we would have to get the document changed before we could register the changes. So about a month later we went to the notary's office and spoke to them. Nope they said the document is correct. They suggested going to speak to the main office of the registry. So we went there after first going to the wrong place. They said fine what you need is a copy of you deed and your ID and fill out the forms. So we did that and thought that would be all, but no. A while later we received a registered letter which said that unless we produced so documents within 10 days we could face a fine of up to 6,000e. So we took the letter off to the notary's expecting there to be a big problem but all we needed was a copy of the previous owners deeds so after paying 9e we went back to the registry and handed over the paperwork. Again great we thought that's done, but no. We received a couple of letters a few weeks later that again we to to the notary's. The upshot of this is that we have to get all the people who own lands that border ours and four witnesses to the notary's to sign an affidavit and we also need an official survey done of one plot due to a size discrepancy. The size discrepancy is odd because the deeds were based on the registry figures at the time they were made.

So on to the next year and lets hope the next year leads to a resolution of some of the outstanding issues and that we don't have as many problems as this year has produced.

A Message

Just a quick message to all our blog readers everywhere

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS

AND

A HAPPY NEW YEAR

 

Lots of Love Helen & Theresa

Storm Warning

I'm sitting writing this blog entry on my old PDA in bed, I'm doing this because at the moment this is about the only room in the house that's got any light. It has now been about 27 hours since the power went off at about 3 yesterday. We did have power briefly for about 10 minutes just now before it went again. Why the power has been out for so long we're not exactly sure but we have just had some very serious storms come through. In fact last week we registered a wind gust of 104Km/h. We have suffered some minor damage the worst being that water had got into the charge controller for the solar system (because we hadn't sorted out the new enclosure) which means that we are limited on our solar power, we do have another charge controller but to get that working we have had to buy some new batteries and will need to get a few things done before we can install it.

Another problem is that we have had a wall collapse on the lower terrace which we had to clean off the road.

We were lucky with this storm as in the north we were sheltered from the worst which came up from the south east.

PS We have had power back on for a short while this evening but its only on for about half an hour before it drops out again. But it was on long enough to get the freezer back up to temperature which meant that we were able to check that it was all still frozen. Which it was thankfully.