Roselea

Category: Stoppage

  • Dumper Truck Wouldn’t Stop!

     Our old dumper truck wouldn’t stop when the stop button was pulled – a real ironic case of a Stop button causing a Stoppage!

    Dumper-Stop-Handle-It-should-pull

    Dumper-Stop-Handle-It-should-pull

    Dumper-Stop-lever-on-engine

    Dumper-Stop-lever-on-engine


    The cable from the spring loaded pull knob had come adrift. The cable is very similar to any brake cable found on bicycles and any vehicles, which is connected to the cylinder head of the diesel engine to open a gate valve to disrupt the compression chamber’s integrity so the fuel cannot be pressurised, and cause the next explosion to drive the piston down again, thus stopping the cycle of the engine.

    We will have to surf the net for a spare part, hopefully we can find someone who has a new bit, or else, we will have to make a new switch mechanism to achieve the same job!!

    P.S. Found a new part, a complete knob and cable for £10, should be delivered Wednesday.

  • Minor Flood Number 2 Stops Play!

    Last night, we had well over 40mm (1½ inches) of rain in about 6 hours. There is lots of puddles everywhere!


    But as usual, the workshop caused another flood! Again it etched away the soil and managed to get under the fence and run downhill into our area.

    Module-2-Rain-washes-soil-in-1

    Module-2-Rain-washes-soil-in-1

    May-2016-Heavy-rain-subsistance-1

    May-2016-Heavy-rain-subsistance-1


    We will have to put up an even bigger and deeper barrier to stop their rainwater from getting into our land.

    At least, our new swimming lane done a great job of holding back the water and there is no sign of any problems along its length. Phew!

  • Rain Stops Play!

    At 4pm this afternoon, we had a lovely big thunderstorm roll over us and
    interrupted our work. We did wonder if it would miss us entirely as we could
    see the dirty black cloud off West of us and it was rolling Northwards,
    shouting at us with lots of deep booming angry crashes! But alas, there was
    another one behind it and that one was more on target!! We dashed indoors
    with huge raindrops slamming down upon us!

  • Snow Stops Play!

    We woke up to a thin layer of snow on some of the raised objects (off the wet ground) where it didn’t melt. The temperature is hovering around the freezing point, which is not good for concrete. So we wait for the warmer spell that is supposed to be coming soon!

    Snowy-Ballast

    Snowy-Ballast

  • Snow Has Stop Play! Again!

    We have a thick layer of snow over everything! It is minus four degrees Celsius (-4oC)!!

    Snow and Ice

    Snow and Ice

    (the garage)

    Snow and Ice

    Snow and Ice

    (down the garden)

    The concrete floor slab has a thick layer of crunchy ice which is uneven and a little slippery!

    So no Play today! Oops I mean Work!

  • Air nailing gun not firing!

    Our big framing nail gun has stopped working! The trigger works and we can hear air coming in but the piston is not moving with the usual loud thump and of course the bang as the trigger is released to fire the nail!!

    Stephen took it all apart and greased and oiled the various moving parts but it took two tries of fiddling around to get it working again! We are not sure why it is working again! But we are not complaining or least not yet!

    That took a couple of hours in the morning!

  • Dumper Truck is down in the Dumps #2

    Yippeee! We managed to jump start the dumper truck! We tipped the load and drove it back to the house to connect the battery charger!

    Phew! That is a great releif and thanks to our cousin Neil over in Blackpool for his 20 years of expert knowledge of heavy machinery and everything with a engine in it. Cheers Neil!

  • Dumper is down in the Dumps!

    OH GEE WIZ!

    Our truck is broken! The starter motor is making a horrible crunching noise! Oh Blimey!

    We phoned our cousin for his expert opinion and listening via our mobile phones, he recommends checking the battery charge level! The noise reminded him as if the starter motor is not quite engaging fully. The battery level was 12.2V which is rather low! We do have a solar panel mounted on the dumper truck to keep the battery charged up but we have been using it many times in the last couple of days and it has been very cloudy too! So we are not surprised that the battery is flat!! We are trying to jump start it using the mini digger to just get the truck going so we can finish emptying the load and drive it back down the slope!! Yes we are stuck half way up the slope!

    We have our fingers crossed !!

    Stephen sitting on the dead dumper

  • Collapsing trenches

    We started to dig the first trench for the earth tubes and as soon as it was full depth the walls started to collapse, a large chunk from the right and a smaller section on the left.

    first trench
    shows the collapsed side of the trench
    As we were planning to work at the bottom of these trenches this is a bit of problem… When we dug out the leach field the sides of the hole stayed put for a week and more!

    I think we will have to think of another way to do the earth tubes…

  • New Extension Tube for Sewage Treatment processor has arrived!

    New Tank ExstensionThe replacement manhole extension tube has arrived today and it fitted quite nicely! We have left it at it’s full size for now to act as a visible warning that here lies the Sewage Processor tank and delivery drivers should be encouraged to avoid running over the tank!!!

    We will landscape the garden when we are completely finished building the house and driveway and also finally decided on how deep and big the veg garden will be!