Silicon Bog

Category: House

  • Remain calm – we may be entering a pocket of turbulence

    A bumpy couple of days, but things seem to be sorting themselves out a bit more now.  Our rented house isn’t delivering a fond farewell, with a broken washing machine and running out of oil for the Aga being recent highlights.

    Thankfully I got some more kerosene from the incredibly nice and helpful people at Regional Oil in Mungret on the way back from work today, so we should have a warm kitchen again tomorrow.

    The landlord has arranged for a new (yes, I suspect ‘different’ might be a better description) washing machine to arrive tomorrow, which would be great if it happened.

    I wasn’t able to get hold of the builder today, so hopefully that’s because he was so busy putting the finishing touches to our house, but I fear not.  Down to 19 days before we need to leave our current residence.

    I did a bit more wiring work on the Bongo, so it now has this mini fan heater installed.  I fitted a 1000W inverter behind the glove box and connected it directly to the leisure battery with some fairly beefy cables, so it can take a reasonable load before melting wires.  Handily, the inverter’s fitted next to the recirculation vent for the air conditioning, so keeping it cool should be straightforward if the need ever arises.

    The dehumidifier arrived today, so it’s getting a trial run in this cold house before moving onto smaller, more humid, pastures soon.  I left it working away for a couple of hours in the hallway and it’d collected about 150ml of water, so it’s not doing badly.  It’s a desiccant model, so should perform well in the cold, and it’s relatively quiet and energy-efficient compared with the compressor-based models.

    Irritatingly, it doesn’t have a Relative Humidity display, so maybe I’ll deploy part of my weather station indoors to measure the levels for a while, as I haven’t got around to fixing the whole lot outside yet, but have at least wired up this humidity sensor to it over I2C.

  • Wide-angle shots of the house

    A fairly mixed day weather-wise… there was an impressive rainbow going along the coast road so I stopped along the way to get a few shots.  I then went on to the bog house, where I took some wider-angle shots (with my 12mm fish-eye lens) of the interior.  That field-of-view is commonly used in estate agents’ photos, but since my lens is more of a hobby one, it tends to show strong barrel distortion – in reality, at least a few of the walls are straight!

  • Gallery of bog house taken 04/02/2017

    The builders have made good progress on ceilings, and the stove is mostly in.

  • Gallery of bog house taken 28/01/2017

    We thought we’d go along and check progress, as we’re due to give notice to our landlord that we’ll be moving out in a month’s time.  The builder is confident that we’ll be able to get in here before then.  A lot has been done, but you’d have to say that there are one or two rough edges to be smoothed-off yet.  The plumber is coming Monday apparently, which is good news – there’ll be radiators and a new water tank and cylinder then.  The main thing is to get the electricity back on, which will happen after second fix.  Electricity will get us well water (hopefully), and the means to run a dehumidifier.

  • AddressPal works!

    I got an email this morning letting me know that the parcel I’d had sent to St. Albans in the UK (which arrived there on Monday) had made it to my nearest post office in Ireland.  I collected it after work and paid €3.50 for the service – very happy!  I now have this plinth heater (electric/central heating switchable) and it cost a lot less than it would have any other way.  Barring minor details like my An Post ID not having made it onto the address label (despite having entered it when I ordered), things went very smoothly.  The consequence of not having the ID on the parcel was that someone stuck a label on it threatening that things might not go so well in future if I didn’t buck my ideas up (in slightly less aggressive phrasing).

    The featured photo attached to this post is of the box concerned.  Note how I’ve carefully shot it to remove any visual cues to help you see how big a parcel can make it through.  The answer is “quite big”.

    I’m trying to motivate myself to blog more frequently again.  Things are moving at a reasonable pace on the cottage renovation now – I spoke with the builder again today and apparently the wiring is done.  I’ve got lots of photos still on my camera covering house renovation work but have been very pushed for time recently, which has resulted in their upload being put on the long finger.  See, I’m like a native now.

    As a not-in-any-way seamless link, I’ve added a new “glossary of terms” section to the blog to cover stuff I’ve heard in Ireland and what I think it means.  Please let me know if I’ve got it all wrong.

  • New year’s resolution clearly wasn’t to keep my blog up to date

    Progress continued on the bog house.  The last time I saw it before Christmas, it was full of rubble and in an utter state.  It reminded me of when we first met the builder and he told us to bear in mind that we were seeing it in the worst condition it would ever be in.  That wasn’t actually true, as with the ceilings all pulled down it looked significantly less homely.

    Anyway, a week or so ago we met the builder on-site, and they’d removed all the rubble from inside the house, and had also demolished the (correct) wall between the two bedrooms to make one big space.

    We talked through where we wanted sockets, radiators, etc. and he spray painted their locations onto the walls.  The main push now is to get all the fittings for the bathroom, a special plinth radiator for the kitchen, and the new stove ordered.

    As of 17th January, all this is pretty much done.  I’ve ordered the plinth radiator thing from the UK, which will make it here via An Post’s “AddressPal” forwarding service.  You sign up with them, get given a special code to use as the first line of your address for UK deliveries, then get stuff sent to their place in St. Albans.  An Post then pop it onto a plane and it arrives at the nearest post office in Ireland and they let you know.  It should cost €3.50 when I pick it up.

    I went to look at a heavily-discounted solid fuel stove today, and will be buying it tomorrow (their card machine didn’t work properly and despite their request for me to fix it, I thought better of meddling).  The stove is really heavy, as it has a lot of metalwork in it for water pipes, etc. (it’ll be our boiler for hot water and central heating).  Last main item to buy now is a bath…

  • And I will try-y-y-y to fix you…

    The Bongo has been repaired.  It was as simple as paying an extortionate amount of money for a second-hand fuel pump, having it shipped over to Ireland to a mechanic, then paying them an only-slightly-less upsetting wodge of cash to rip out the old and install the new.  So far, so good…

    We went to visit the house yesterday evening to check on the renovation progress.  I was warned by someone I’ve been working with that you can’t trust Irish builders, but the roofs have both been replaced, and work has really moved on in general.  I would reference the second (and easily worst IMHO) episode of Fawlty Towers at this point, but don’t want to tempt fate as they’ve got an internal wall to knock down and a doorway to seal up yet.

    Anyway, overall I’m very impressed, and they even put up some tinsel on the scaffolding 🙂

  • “New” kitchen arrival

    “New” kitchen arrival

    Earlier in the week we looked at a kitchen that someone was selling via DoneDeal (it’s a classified advert website that’s very popular in Ireland).

    The sellers were a really nice couple from Gdansk and it was very informative talking to them about their experience over here as fellow immigrants (or immigrant-elect in my case).

    The main gripe was the weather, which is fair enough for many, but in their home town it hits -20 in the winter so they probably can’t complain too much.

    The other issue they had was with those claiming benefits and not wanting to work. There’s been plenty of bad press about people from other countries being dole scroungers, but it’s well worth remembering that the vast majority of people motivated enough to leave their own countries to seek a better life do expect to put in the hours to achieve that – they just want the opportunity.  The native population perhaps less so at times – very similar to the UK in that respect.

    They ended up delivering the kitchen to us, as getting a van was impossible.  So the place we’re renting now has a kitchen in one of the sitting rooms.  I think it’ll freak out the landlord if he comes in at any point!

  • Further evidence of proof by assertion’s flaws…

    “It’s not a cold house”. Yes, my crazed landlord, it is.  Or rather, when it’s cold outside, it’s also cold inside. I know it’s been one of those years that has shown a callous disregard for logic and truth, but as a Nobel prize winner once sang, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. The answer is “through the poorly-sealed double glazing and all around the house, as almost none of the internal doors shut properly”.

  • The old kitchen…

    The old kitchen…

    In case you were wondering about the state of the old kitchen prior to its removal with extreme prejudice, I present it here.  That’s actually quite a long work surface (3m), but it’s only 45cm deep.  The previous owner made it himself to a pretty good standard – the wood was solid and everything. Before the rot.