To anyone else this is just a picture of a pair of shutters. To me this is a significant milestone as they are the first of the full height shutters to be painted and remounted and they also mean that all of the shutters on the front of the house are now done.

Well wad’ya know. Yesterday the wind destroyed the small parasol that I had over the small round table on my terrace. Today I’m thinking that it did me a service.

For the past several weeks, ever since the manufacturer replaced my Isward lawn robot that developed a fault with a new machine, I’ve been unable to mow my front lawn without running into problems. The new machine would not recognise the mapped boundary between my lawn and the field next door and kept crashing through into the the long grass in the field. Neither I nor the Chinese manufacturer could understand why it should keep doing it, repeatedly, over and over again in the same area.

I narrowed the problem down to the system’s GPS RTK beacon which is mounted on a pole that I’ve placed next to the charging station. Even up to this morning I was convinced that the beacon was now faulty and needed to be replaced and the manufacturer had agreed to do so. However, I then noticed on a drone video that I shot about a week ago that the Isward was at about the same height as the beacon at the point where the boundary anomaly was the greatest and when I checked the signal I found that the machine was unable to connect with the beacon at that point.

So I considered trying to raise the height of the beacon to see if that would help and looked around for a means to do so. And know what? The lower part of the tube supporting the now-destroyed parasol turned out to be exactly, not approximately, exactly the right diameter to accommodate the pole of the beacon. So I banged it firmly into the ground, inserted the pole of the beacon and set Isward off.

And it now appears that all of my mowing problems are over! The parasol that’s gone didn’t cost much and quite honestly I’d have paid what it cost just to solve my mowing problems. It’s funny how things sometimes work out. Some people say that things happen for a reason. I don’t know, do they?

Some people say that bad things come in threes and I’m beginning to believe them. The wind has just done a stunning job of destroying my third and last parasol. It’s also been sending through gusts that have been seriously testing the new awning that I put up this morning, so much so that I’ve now pulled it mostly in. The little parasol was lightweight and fairly inexpensive but it’s annoying that the wind should keep being so destructive. I had no idea until this year that my terrace was so exposed as originally I thought it was quite sheltered because of being partially in a dip and below the tree line. It appears that that only applies for westerly winds. I’ll have to remember that.

And works a treat. Fitted the roller curtains first thing this morning and they did a fine job keeping the heat of the sun off the terrace area as it climbed into the sky this morning. The 3m x 3m parasol that you can see in the shots below can now join its companion that was destroyed by the wind a week or two ago in the décheterie as it is of very poor design and bends and twists in the wind. And to cap it all, one of the struts that supports the fabric tore through the fabric yesterday as it had been threatening to do for some time. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.

And that included a shop this morning at Intermarché in le Bugue. I tried working outside in the beginning but the day turned into another stonker and what with the heat and being constantly attacked by biting horse flies of which there’s a plague this year, presumably on account of the weather, I soon moved inside to do the assembly work. It was more or less the same as the previous smaller version but a couple of little things caught me out and delayed things a bit, like a change in positioning of the strut fixings on the front bar.

By the time I was ready to mount the awning on the wall the sun had moved round and it was cooler but then the wind got up and some hefty gusts started to come through which I didn’t really need while I was in the process of lifting the awning up onto the shutters. I had to think a bit about positioning. It was obviously essential for the winding mechanism to be to the left of the living room door shutters and this dictated where it had to be mounted. I wanted it to be a little bit further down towards the kitchen window but it won’t matter in the long run because the current shape of the terrace and the positioning of the table and chairs will not be for the long term.

The pictures show the steps involved in getting the awning up onto the wall. I am less happy with the fixings this time around because they are not as secure as for the other smaller awning and I am concerned about that as this awning is heavier and more exposed to buffeting wind. No only is the wall constructed from hollow blockwork but I am worried that I might inadvertently have hit joints between blocks when I drilled for the anchors. Only time will tell if my fears are justified… I hope not.

All that’s left is for me to fit the roller front curtains and that’s a job for tomorrow. This working 7 days a week is beginning to take its toll on me and I’m feeling pretty knackered this evening. After fitting the front curtains I’ll take it easy for the rest of the day tomorrow.

Is what I did today. The manufacturer of my ‘store-banne’, my new awning, said that installing it is a two-man job. However, I’m always up for a challenge and I reckoned that I could do it using my shutters as supports and a bit of ingenuity. And so it proved today. Today’s awning was a 3m x 2m one, so a bit lighter than the 4m x 3m one that I’ll be installing over my terrace, but it was good experience to work out how to deal with the larger one.

Today’s job was to fit it over the south side living room window which receives direct sunlight for much of the day and is the source of a lot of heat, especially during the current heatwave, that permeates throughout the house. The plan was to lift the awning onto the shutters, lift it higher into its exact position that I’d carefully measured beforehand propped up each end by two 4m lengths of timber, mark the fixing holes and then drop the awning back onto the shutters while the fixing holes were drilled.

Once the anchors were securely attached in the fixing holes it would then simply be a matter of attaching each end in turn one fixing at a time and tightening the awning onto the wall. Easy enough, what could possibly go wrong? As it happens, nothing, aside from one of the anchor inners turning with its securing nut after it had been hammered (gently) into the wall so it couldn’t be tightened. Annoying, but the sort of thing you expect with this kind of job.

I’m not the first person in the world to put up one of these awnings but I took a series of photographs just in case someone who hasn’t can see what’s involved. The first few shots below show the initial steps in getting the awning mounted up on the wall above the living room doors. Remember, the doors open inwards but the shutters swing outwards so the awning has to be mounted high enough to clear them. I chose to mount it at eaves height as that’s the height the awning on the terrace will be at. And the mounting height also has to allow for a 14 degree angle of droop of the awning so has to be mounted even slightly higher than you might think.

For me that unfortunately meant losing the exterior light over the living room door. I haven’t checked yet but I may be able to get away with lowering it a bit, although I doubt it. However, I think I might be able to fit an LED lamp of slimmer design, but that’s for later.

But that wasn’t the end of the job. The awning that I chose comes with two roller curtains as will the larger one that I’ve bought for the terrace. The manufacturer’s instructions are for these to be fitted during initial assembly but I left them off as well as a front trim strip because of how I planned to support the awning on my shutters, which I thought would probably damage them. If I’d had a helper I’d have followed the manufacturer’s instructions but I had to fit them standing on steps after the awning was up, which took me longer than getting it up in the first place.

The final shots show the finished awning with its roller curtains in place.

So what is my final opinion? I’m very pleased with the results. Once the awning was in place I was working with it extended and it made an enormous difference. I think it will be a great help keeping the house cooler during the hot months. Although the curtains will be a big advantage on the terrace I don’t think they were really necessary on this awning in this position and in fact without them I might have been able to keep my existing light, albeit moved down a bit.

The whole awning seems to be of very good quality. The fabric is heavy grade Dacron and the metal fittings are all of good quality. My only concern is that in this position, on an end wall, it’s very open and exposed. This won’t apply for the larger one on the terrace as it will be mounted tight up under the eaves, or for the extra 3m x 2m one that I’m also going to order to go over the double doors on the front of the house as I’m so impressed by this one. I think I’ll make an aluminium enclosure for it, not difficult but just more time.

And what did this little beauty cost? Just 179€ including tax plus delivery, bringing it to a few cents over 200€. I think that’s pretty good, and the larger 4m x 3m one with curtains was just 20€ more. Both were from an on line supplier called ID Market, with whom I have no connection or affiliation, and are well worth the time and effort of assembling and fitting them I reckon 🙂

I don’t have a workshop so I have to do any major job outside. But yet again today the thermometer has hit 40 degrees C so it’s far too hot to do that. And especially so since the wind destroyed my large 4m x 3m parasol that offered some useful shade over my terrace area. And it’s because of that event that I’ve had to look for a new way to get shade back again because due to the shape of my house the terrace is a sun trap and the 3m x 3m parasol that I’m left with just isn’t up to the job.

So I had to find a much better solution which I think I have done in the form of what is called over here a ‘store-banne’, something resembling an old-fashioned extending shop awning. I say ‘I think I have done’ because any ‘store-banne’ would ideally need to fit under the light over the door leading onto the terrace. I think the one I’ve bought will do, but I won’t know for sure until I come to fix it to the wall, although I think it just will.

But getting back to the original point, like everything that you buy on line these days, when it arrived today it came in a big box and needed to be assembled. So where was the only place I could do that? On my living room floor, of course. As you can see, my living room looks more and more like a workshop because as well as there being three fans whirring away trying to move the hot air around there are tools and boxes of fittings in every direction.

So that’s how I got around the heatwave and assembled the ‘store-banne’ ready to be fixed on the wall. Given its price I’m surprised by the quality of its construction. It’s 4m x 3m so should nicely cover my terrace table and chairs and the main reason I chose this model is because it also has two full-length roller-blind curtains along its front which will be especially useful when the hot sun rises from the east. Formerly I had to tilt my old parasol but the curtains will make it much easier to create shade early on.

Anyway, below are pics that I shot after I’d finished the basic assembly. All that’s left are the front curtains and I’ll show those in a later post when I’ve got the thing up on the wall. Ideally you need two people for that but I’ve never shied away from a challenge and I’ll work out how to do it 😉

A short time ago I purchased a nail gun from a supplier on Aliexpress in readiness for when I (eventually) start building my garden tool store/workshop. I’ve not yet had a chance to use it properly – I’ve just fired 10 or 15 nails by way of practice – so when the trestles I was using for painting my shutters collapsed a couple of days ago because their joints had never been fixed I was pleased to get an opportunity to put it into service.

I decided to use staples rather than nails but unfortunately after the first half dozen or so one jammed in the nose of the gun and when I tried to get it out it broke off at both ends rendering what is in effect a brand new gun unusable. So I contacted the supplier asking for advice on what I needed to do to extract the broken piece of staple.
They said they would check with their engineer and came back the next day with a proposal to send me a replacement part which I could fit myself. I replied saying I’d need instructions in advance on how to do so and they helpfully sent me a video showing how the gun had to be disassembled.

I could possibly do it but the person in the video was a skilled assembly worker, so I expressed my reservations and asked if there was any alternative, thinking that my gun could be returned to their German warehouse. They came back with an immediate response saying no worries, they will send me a brand new replacement gun.

I expressed my gratitude for what I considered a very generous gesture and proposed that if they sent me a return label I would return my gun. They replied saying that they don’t have a return label and that I could keep the original machine.

I admit to having had some dodgy experiences with Chinese suppliers but this one has proven to be exceptionally outstanding. And who are they? They are the Onevan Global Store who can be found on Aliexpress. I recommend them.

Despite the temperature – 42 degrees forecast again for today and for several more to come and even after that it’s forecast to not fall to much below 40 degrees. So working outside on the excavator is a no-go and I’ve more or less given up on doing much more work on my garden tool store/workshop until the autumn. And I can’t see me installing my swimming pool and doing the work I have planned for my terrace until next year. But there’s nothing I can do to control the weather.

But that doesn’t mean I can stop work altogether. It’s cool enough in the early morning and evening to get things done. I got Isward going yesterday evening on cutting the grass at the back and restarted him mowing again this morning at not long after 6.00 am. As I type this he’s just about finishing off. I’ve also been pressing on with painting my shutters. In a day I can give two pairs two coats of undercoat per side followed by two top coats the next day.

Shown below are the second pair after their first top coat on their fronts (their backs were top coated yesterday). I’ve just got two more pairs of small shutters to do (for the kitchen and bathroom) and then I’ll be onto the large pairs for the living room doors. If I can’t get much more work done outside in my garden at least it will be nice seeing the shutters back up in colour.

As we’re expecting 42 degrees today my day started off at 7.00 am while it was still relatively cool. I set off Isward the robot to mow the front grass which it has done successfully many times previously. But not today. It got half-way through before deciding to head off into the long grass on the boundary with the adjacent field. I reset it, set it off again and it did it again shortly after in the same place.

A GPS problem? Anyway, I restarted it and after a while it decided to once again head out of the lawn boundary onto my driveway. So I then remapped the lawn entirely, cancelled the first mow and set it off again and later it decided to head off yet again into the adjacent field in the same place, at which time I decided to give up on mowing the lawn for today and concentrate on the next pair of shutters which I’d washed earlier after removing all their furniture. By this time it was after lunch and after all my trials with Isward I thought that it would be a relief getting back to something as simple as rubbing down and undercoating the shutters.

Wrong! Almost as soon as I started rubbing down the first one the trestles that the pair were lying on collapsed. It appeared that all the trestles that I’d purchased were cheap for a reason – their frameworks are all tongue and grooved but the tongues had never been glued or otherwise fixed in the grooves. No problem, I thought. Just the job for my trusty new nail gun. And so it would have been, except after the first 20 or staples one jammed in the nose of the gun and I can see no simple way of getting the jammed piece out as in trying to do so it has broken off on both sides.

I’ve contacted the Chinese supplier to find out what to do but for the time being the gun is partially in bits on newspaper in my kitchen. And it’s still only 3.00 pm so plenty of time left for lots more things to go wrong. I’m waiting in expectation…

I took some photos this morning of the first pair of shutters hung back up on the wall and I have to say that they certainly do make a strong statement! However, this is not far off of how I envisaged them when I initially prepared the plans for the house as shown by the final image below.

We’ve had another scorcher today so not a day to be working outside. But much as I would have liked to be out early getting some excavation work done I decided that my top priority was to try to get the hardware and software rebuild of my main computer done and with this in mind I’ve spent the last two days doing that and painting shutters. The latter has been a thankless task. I’m usually pretty good at hand-painting and proud of the results but painting these two small shutters has been one of my worst painting experiences ever and I shudder that I’ve got several more pairs to do.

I’ll never touch another can of Dulux paint ever again because as I said in my previous post, based on this experience it isn’t what it used to be. What should have been a relatively straightforward and easy job – painting large flat surfaces laid horizontally – has turned out to be a nightmare as the paint has meagre coverage and covering power and even after two top coats the undercoat was still showing through in several places. I refitted the furniture earlier this evening and found that some patches painted this morning were still not dry which I find unbelievable. The final results after yet more retouching are shown in the images below. The shutters don’t look bad but they don’t stand up to close scrutiny and I’m not proud of them.

I’ve been painting the first pair of shutters for the past two days, one coat of universal undercoat on each side of each shutter yesterday and two coats of top coat today. I’m not that happy with the results because even after the second top coat you can see patches of undercoat beginning to show through again as it dries. So much for hoping that I’d be able to get away with one coat each of undercoat and top coat.

The paint I’m using is Dulux Basque Red, a traditional colour for shutters and doors in these parts. I had hoped that with the red being such a full colour it would have good coverage and covering power but it appears that I was wrong. Back in the day Dulux was a premium quality brand (at a premium price) when it was owned by the UK’s ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) but since being taken over by Akso Nobel it appears that the quality bit has been dropped and only the premium price now remains. If I’d known what results I’d be getting I’d have gone for one of the multitude of lower price paint brands, many with no need for undercoat, and got similar, if not better results.

The images below show how the undercoat is beginning to show through again, especially on the edges. If I have to do a third coat it will (a) take more paint and (b) take more time. Even if tomorrow I can turn the shutters over and paint the fronts that means the two pairs will have taken three days to paint. Do the math. I’ve got nine pairs to paint so even if I can keep painting at the rate of two pairs every three days, which I doubt I’ll be able to as I have other things to do (like my excavation work), it’ll take me between two and three weeks to complete all of them. And I shudder at the cost if I keep using Dulux given at the amount of paint I’ve used just on these small shutters.

Yesterday I got to the bottom of why my excavator wouldn’t start and appeared to keep having a flat battery. I surmised that its new battery fitted In China had failed and ordered a new replacement which arrived on Tuesday. I fitted the new battery yesterday and it didn’t solve the problem. The machine stayed totally dead. When I put a meter on both batteries – the original and the new – both were fully charged which told me that the original battery was being charged on the machine and the reason it showed a full charge so quickly when placed on a battery charger was because it was already at 100%.

I then removed the new battery, replaced the original and the machine was still dead so I decided to try it with a fully charged jump pack. Still dead. Then I connected the earth of the jump pack to a a grounded bolt on the machine, got power and the machine started. That told me that the problem was an earthing problem and when I checked I found that because the main engine earth connection had never been tightened it had vibrated and become completely unscrewed (see the left bolt in the photograph below).

In fact NEITHER of the two bolts clamping the fuel tank, the left of which also makes the engine earth connection, had been tightened and that also explained why the tank was sitting about 2 cms too high and too close to the top of the engine cover making it almost impossible to remove the fuel filler cap . I’m very annoyed about this because due to the bolts not being tightened during manufacture I am now 70€ out of pocket for a battery that I have no use for which I’m now trying to return. The Chinese manufacturer is, as usual, very apologetic and admits it was at fault but that doesn’t make up for the time I’ve lost over the past ten days or so. 🙁

It’s been getting really hot inside my house during this latest ‘canicule’ – around 30 degrees Celsius most evenings – and one of the reasons for this is the absence of its shutters. I removed them nearly two years ago – see HERE as they were getting rained on at the start of a wet winter and becoming streaked with dirt. I intended to paint them the following Spring but as usual, events got in the way and they’ve remained where I put them, securely under thick covers under the trees in the front of my house.

That all changed today. I’m unable to do anything in my garden (except watch Isward roll up and down making a beautiful job of mowing my lawns) as the new battery for my excavator, which was promised for last Saturday, did not arrive and won’t do so until tomorrow, and I can’t fix my main computer, which is still not functioning as I’m waiting for a disk that I need to be delivered. So I decided that this would be a good time to start on my shutters.

All I’ve done today is mount them back on the house where they can stay until I can get each pair down again in turn in order to remove their fittings, thoroughly clean them, paint them and put them back up again. They can stay there now as we’re expecting a hot, dry summer and hopefully I’ll get them finished before the weather begins to change again in the Autumn. They didn’t do at all badly under the covers. Rodents managed to get in as they do everywhere but although they took in nut shells, acorns and stuff like that they didn’t make any nests or do any damage to the shutters themselves.

Putting the small shutters up wasn’t much of a challenge as they aren’t very heavy to carry or rehang. The large ones for the full height double doors in my living room were a different story. I remembered what I job I’d had taking them down and humping them round to where I stored them and wasn’t looking forward at all to the job of carrying them back again and rehanging them. I even wondered if, after nearly two years, I’d be able to do the job alone but would you believe it, I managed humping and hanging all six of them (3 pairs) without too much difficulty. Maybe I’m healthier and stronger now than I was then 😀

I have to say that I’m pleased to see them back up again. They make the house look more ‘finished’ again, even though they’re not painted, as the images below show.

Tomorrow I’ll start the job of painting them kicking off with the small ones on the front of the house, which are not affected by sun and with which I’ll then replace the ones at the back as I go. And hopefully if I work in the front of the house under the trees I’ll be able to do it without being affected by the heat, which is expected to get up to around 40 degrees Celsius over the coming days. I’ll possibly even think about finishing painting them before I get back to my excavation work, but I’ll see how things go. In the meantime, here is the first pair stripped of fittings ready for cleaning, lightly rubbing down and painting.

“What’s next?” I asked in my last post. Well, I’ll tell you.

While I was in my old house I bought a couple of very nice parasols, the larger and the more expensive of the two being 4m x 2m in size to completely cover my outdoor table and chairs set. Although they were acquired 5 or 6 years ago, both have spent most of their time in storage, have only been used 20 or so times the whole of the time I’ve had them and were still like new.

I’ve been unfurling the larger one on several days in the last couple of weeks as my terrace has been subject to direct sunshine and was getting very hot. All was well until yesterday when a huge gust of wind came apparently out of nowhere and blew it over despite it being very heavily weighed down. Due to its weight it was badly damaged and although I intended to at last get back to my garden excavation work today, instead I had to spend a miserable morning cutting it up and taking it to the décheterie for disposal.

Anyway, after lunch I was able to get out into the garden to at last continue excavating. But it was not to be because yet again I was prevented from doing so. After starting the excavator up once and switching it off again the battery then wouldn’t even crank its engine over and it was impossible to restart it even with a jump pack. So that was that. The battery has been playing up over the last couple of weeks and today it decided to fail completely.

I’ve told the supplier in China what has happened and informed them that I’ve had to order another locally in order to resume working. Because of the time difference I’m waiting on their reply but I fully expect to be recompensed and will be very annoyed if they prevaricate in any way.

There seem to be forces outside of my control that are intent on preventing me using the (expensive) equipment that I’ve purchased and doing the work I have planned in my garden. It’s one calamity after another and I can hardly keep up with them.

So I decided to devote my time this year to sorting out my garden, right? Getting it into the shape I wanted, building a garden tool store/workshop, installing an above-ground swimming pool that I’ve had for a year now, fixing the ground around my house that’s collapsing a bit because as I told the builder at the time, there wasn’t enough earth to backfill the void under the building, plus a few other jobs. And I equipped myself with the tools for the job – a mini excavator from China and a motorised dumper. So what could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot as it happens. First several weeks were lost due to continuous heavy rain that prevented me even getting the excavator out of its garage let alone driving it on my land which its tracks would have cut to pieces. Then, when the rain did stop we had a couple of weeks of totally unseasonal intensely high temperatures that made working outside without cover more or less intolerable, so still very little progress was made.

Little, but some as despite the heat I managed to get cracking on digging out for the base of my planned tool store and transporting the earth up to the top of the garden in order to reshape and reduce the severity of the downward slope from the (collapsing) terrace to the garden. So I was able therefore to concentrate fully on my garden work? Well, no actually.

Before I could I had to allocate several days of perfect working outside weather getting my car ready for its bi-annual test (CT). This unfortunately had to include stripping out its under-bonnet in order to replace the windscreen washer plastic tubing that had been gnawed away by the mice that got into the car a few weeks ago as if left it would have been an automatic fail. As it is I couldn’t fix the tubing for the rear washer that still doesn’t work, but that wasn’t needed for the CT, which my car fortunately sailed through.

So back to the garden, then, only to be confronted almost immediately with something of a personal disaster. Many months ago before I went off to Istanbul for implant work, I placed myself for a course of treatment in the hands of a dentist in Montignac. To say that the man is incompetent is an understatement. Crowns he fitted at my great expense were falling out repeatedly while the treatment was in progress and when in Turkey I had one of his crowns replaced with an implant in addition to the ones I’d planned for. The disaster was that a double crown, bridge almost, that he’d fitted then fell out leaving me in need of emergency dental treatment.

The problem is that it’s impossible now to find a dentist in this area and at the time of writing this the work hasn’t yet been done. I’ll have to try to find a local dentist (perhaps there’s one who has lost a few patients since I last phoned around) but if I can’t I’ll probably have to spend more time travelling back to my old dentist in the UK. I’ll have no alternative as my son is getting married in September and I’ll have to get the work done in time for that.

So then back to the garden? Well yes, but it soon became clear when the grass front and back of my house began to rapidly start growing that unless I did something I’d be spending all of my time keeping it under control rather than doing what I needed to do, namely following through with my plans to reshape my garden. So I took the plunge and invested not an inconsiderable sum in a lawn robot that I thought would take over the task of controlling the grass and thus freeing the time up for me.

But there was just one snag. Setting the robot up was, let’s just say, more error-prone and more complicated than I’d reckoned for. And it took several days, the best part of a week actually, with Whatsapp messages going backwards and forwards between me and China. However, I eventually I found my way through the maze of instructions in the ‘user manual’ that in the usual Chinese way somehow omitted the ‘how to’ details of several of the crucial steps in the set-up process.

But I did it, albeit with several more days lost, and the robot began to do its job and pretty well too. In fact I have to say that I’ve never seen my weed-infested apologies for lawns looking as good as they do after a few days of Isward the robot quietly humming to himself as he rolled up and down and back and forth in my garden seemingly enjoying the job of keeping the grass and weeds under control while I did other things.

I’m especially pleased with the area close to my house’s northern wall where the septic tank is sited. The contractor placed it closer to the house than I would have liked making the spaces between the house and the septic tank covers rather steep. However, I’m succeeding in resolving the problem by building it up using earth brought up from the excavation and although it’s not yet finished, I think that eventually it’ll be possible to get a mower or strimmer around the area in question.

OK, so now if I put my tooth problem to one side I can concentrate solely on my garden? Unfortunately not. The day before yesterday while I was clearing more brush and scrub away from the corner of the garden where I’m excavating the base for tool store I noticed that Isward hadn’t moved for a while so went to investigate. It turned out that he’s expired. Not dead exactly but mortally wounded by a technical fault that couldn’t be cleared even after many attempts at doing so.

I followed the instructions of customer services explicitly but it transpires that a servo motor controlling the height of the cutting blades has failed. They apologised profusely for wasting yet more of my time and promised to send me a brand new replacement machine, together with yet four more replacement blades as a goodwill gift. This is already on its way from Germany but in the meantime before it arrives lawn mowing has come to a halt and I only hope that the grass doesn’t grow too long again requiring me to mow it manually.

So back to uninterrupted excavating then? No, dammit! Just as I thought I’d be able to my computer has broken down. I’m writing this on my slow old laptop that I can’t continue using as all of my files, photographs and programs that I use are on my main machine. I thought I’d discovered the problem and bought a new network card, but before I could install it (after unpacking it unfortunately) the machine stopped booting up entirely.

I built the machine myself in the caravan while my house was being built so I know it pretty well. I think the problem may be the motherboard, the second most expensive component after the processor so have had to order a replacement. Luckily Amazon had a ‘used’ replacement at less than half price which I’m now waiting to be delivered, but it’s a complex machine and fitting it will involve almost a complete rebuild. My worst fear is that if it’s not the motherboard it’s the power supply. If it is, although it’s still within its 5-year warranty period, I could end up facing yet more delay.

As mentioned, the day before yesterday I spent several exhausting hours in quite intense heat cutting and clearing away scrub, brush and small trees from the area at the back of the excavation to allow access for my excavator and the images below show the results. I need the access to clean up the hole I’ve dug and also adjust its side, front and back levels.

The following morning, yesterday, I looked out first thing and was amazed by what I saw. The wild boar, which I haven’t seen any sign of for months, had come up during the night onto the field next to my house that the local farmers had cut and cleared of hay while I was doing my brush removal work and had dug a large crater just yards from my garden.

I still haven’t had a chance to finish my fence to keep them out. I ordered the parts to connect my post auger to my excavator but specified the wrong size and am still awaiting two connectors. My fear now is that they may try to get into my back garden and wreak havoc as they did several times previously and have set up some barriers that won’t really be up to the job of holding them back.

On top of all this, did I mention that due to an ear wax problem I’m almost deaf and need to arrange an appointment with my doctor to get my ears syringed? No? Sorry, what did you say? I couldn’t quite catch it… 🙁

I’ve got a huge amount of work to do in my garden over the next few months so I’ve got to make the best possible use of my time. We’ve had almost constant rain over the last week or so and in all that time I’ve only managed to do two or three hours of work digging out the base for my planned garden tool store/workshop because I don’t want to work in the rain digging out wet earth and I don’t want to cut up my garden with my machines.

I also have another problem. I have quite a lot of grass to cut here and while I’ve been unable to work outside it has been steadily growing. When the weather does dry up I’ll need to get that back under control first and will be unable to get back to my excavation and building work until I’ve done so. And then, for all I know, it’ll start raining again and I’ll be back to square one.

This conflict of priorities is a problem that I really need to solve and I can only do so by having the tools for the job. I’m not the sort of person who likes to buy toys just for the sake of it and never have been but I will seriously consider anything that is of real value. And I think I have found something that fits that bill in the form of a lawn robot.

A lawn robot cuts your grass for you so you don’t have to and therefore has the potential to free up a lot of time for you to use doing other, potentially more productive things. Once set up it works automatically, day and night if you wish, keeping your grass neat and tidy and also weeds under control without any effort from you. Well a bit, maybe, with a strimmer going around from time to time tidying up some edges and areas which it’s unable to get into. It’ll work on wet grass and even in the rain when you wouldn’t want to be outside mowing the grass, so long as it’s not too heavy.

And the weed thing is quite important for me. Because my garden was up until quite recently just a farmer’s field weeds are still a problem as they grow faster than the grass and some are difficult to cut down even with my ride-on mower (possibly I need to sharpen or replace the blades). However, because the robot is constantly cutting the grass down to a low level, the weeds can’t grow either and can even die back as the grass thickens.

The machines come in all shapes, sizes and prices from a couple of hundred euros to several thousands depending on the features you want but the main consideration is the area of grass that you want to cut. A Lidl Parkside robot at 230€ wouldn’t be much use for me as it’s only suitable for small lawns of up to 250 m2 and I have something like 2000 m2 to keep under control. Even a machine suitable for an area of 1000 m2 probably wouldn’t be suitable because its speed and battery life would mean that it would need to be running for many hours with lots of recharges to cover the whole area and keep my grass in trim.

The low cost machines are also predominantly ‘old’ technology. Without going into detail, lawn robots have to be set up to remain inside and mow specific areas. The ‘old’ way of doing that was to lay a wire around the whole periphery of the area in question which the machine could detect and when it did so it turned automatically and went off in another direction, eventually covering the whole lawn by ‘bouncing’ off the wire. The technology was never perfect and still isn’t, and some cheaper machines have been known to drive over the wire and cut it.

This problem was overcome by using GPS which doesn’t need to have a ‘hard’ periphery around the area needing to be cut. Instead you ‘drive’ the machine around the edges of the area so the machine ‘learns’ where they are and stores them in its memory so it never exceeds them, and if you have a more complex garden, like mine, you can store details for several areas which the machine then deals with separately as and when ordered to.

The latest machines don’t even use GPS. Instead they use a system of laser radar called Lidar. Its main advantage is that machines with Lidar can operate where a GPS signal is weak or where it can be lost, under dense trees for example. However, it’s more expensive and offers little more than cheaper GPS machines where there is a good GPS signal. Also, current GPS machines are now incorporating AI that allows them to continue working should they lose their GPS signal for a short period.

The machine I’ve gone for is the Isward GX 2026 model, as shown in the images below. It’s Chinese, of course, and I’ve ordered it from Aliexpress. It uses what is referred to as GPS RTK technology which involves setting up a small GPS receiver in your garden to which the machine links wirelessly and it also incorporates AI obstacle avoidance so it doesn’t chew up your guinea pig or any object in its path in or on your lawn. A machine of the size I need with Lidar costs a bit more than I want to spend and as my garden is very open with a good GPS signal I don’t think I need it.

I won’t say any more about it for now. Instead I’ll wait until it arrives and I can set it up and use it. Like all lawn robots, it’ll need the grass to be cut with a standard mower before starting work but then I hope it’ll do the job I want it to and free my time up so I can get back onto my excavation and building work. Like all lawn robots, it comes with a charging station that the robot automatically returns to without supervision when necessary. It needs to be placed on flat ground and my first problem will be finding a suitable area that’s flat enough. However, I’m sure I’ll be able to overcome that.

I’m nowhere near the speed of a real pro but slowly but surely I’m getting quicker with my new mini excavator as my skill level improves. I’m making fewer mistakes and managing to pick up full bucket loads of earth to transfer to my new dumper much more frequently now. One problem I’m having is that the excavator can occasionally be very jerky.

Other people have complained about this problem with small excavators that they’ve bought from China so I’m not alone. The result unfortunately is that you can scoop up a full bucket of earth only to lose most of it if, while you’re lifting the boom and spinning the excavator round towards the dumper, it jerks so violently that it throws all of the bucket contents into the air.

This is annoying but not so bad if the earth just falls onto the ground, but several times it’s been tipped onto the dumper itself with a quantity going onto its engine. You also have to be careful to ensure that a jerk does not cause the excavator bucket to hit the dumper by making sure every time that the bucket has been raised high enough so it can’t hit the dumper bin if a jerk does occur. However, it makes emptying the bucket into the dumper a lot slower than it need be.

In my last post I said that I’d show how the excavator swing beam works and the first few images below do that. Without a swing beam the excavator bucket can only move in a direction perpendicular to the excavator’s cab which can be very restricting. For example, later on I will need to dig a trench down to the bottom of my garden for the electricity cable for the new garden tool store/workshop that I’m currently working on. I’ll want that trench to be as close to the boundary fence as possible but without a swing beam the minimum distance will be half the width of the excavator itself.

With a swing beam the distance can be reduced to near zero because the swing beam allows the excavator bucket to move in a direction perpendicular to the excavator’s chassis but to one side of the excavator itself. In the images the excavator’s chassis is parallel to the direction of the trench, the cab has been turned to the left and swing beam to the right effectively allowing the trench to be dug on a line perpendicular to the excavator’s track or further even to one side. This is necessary because the reach of the excavator’s beam is less than the distance from the back to the front of the area being excavated.

What about my new dumper? It has been a godsend as the images of it with a full load show. Imagine digging out the amount of earth that it can carry by hand, let alone then pushing the load up the slope of the garden, then up an even steeper slope and then tipping it out by hand. The dumper makes this easy, if not exactly effortless. Its bin has been designed to be delicately balanced so it can be easily tipped out by hand on the level. However, I’m driving the machine up a slope and tipping the bin while the machine is still on an upslope, which still requires quite a bit of effort.

I’ve managed to shift quite a lot more earth today. Once again it has been slower than it might have been because as well as digging the earth out of what will be the base of my new garden tool store I’ve then been using it to transform the slope at the rear of my house. I don’t know whether I’ll have enough earth but I’m trying not just to reduce the steepness of the slope but also to extend it away from the rear of the house and create a flat area of grass before it falls away from the terrace, as shown in three photos that I took at the end of the day.

I’m now about half way through digging out the base for the garden tool store.

The job hasn’t been as straightforward as it might have been because of the number of tree roots that the excavator is having to rip out. Doing the job by hand would have been totally impossible and I am so relieved that I made the decision to acquire my own equipment which is allowing me to work without stress at my own pace. Difficult to put a price on that 🙂

Starting with putting barriers around my newest apple tree in my back garden and the already chewed Japanese Flowering Cherry in the front. As far as the latter is concerned, it still has a few leaves on it and as they are reputed to be avid growers and I don’t have the time to do anything else with it for the time being, now I’ll just wait and see if it recovers. If not…

Then I refuelled both of my new machines which was a slow process as neither have any means of showing the level in its fuel tank until it overflows. That’s undesirable at the best of times but at the moment fuel on the ground, or worse, fuel all over the engine, is an expensive waste that needs to be avoided. Then I could get on with my digging, except that I couldn’t.

The reason was that I decided to continue from the other end of the excavation, the left hand side closest to the new excavator garage. The reason was that I thought that if I ended up there I’d be boxing myself into a relatively tight squeeze. The big problem, though, was that now the big old walnut trees and other greenery have leaves on their branches, they had dropped down into the area in which I needed to position the excavator.

I knew that this was going to be a problem that would need to be dealt with at some time so today was as good as any to take my life into my hands and risk almost instant death by climbing up into the upper branches and sawing off the ones against which I’d be leaning my ladder. After a couple of scares when the ladder threatened to fall down taking me with it it actually went quite well and I lived to fight another day.

The amount of foliage that I removed turned out to be much more than I expected. I’ll leave it for now but as soon as I can get around to it I’ll have to chop it all up with my electric saw, put it in my trailer and take it to the ‘déchèterie’ at Rouffignac for disposal.

I also took my saw (hand, not electric) to the large root from yesterday and cleared the area of ground from which it had emerged.

Only then was I able to get excavating again and at the end of the day I’d managed two more bucket-width strips. This was much slower than a ‘pro’ would have done, especially with a bigger machine, but I’m still learning the knack of working both levers in order to scoop a good bucket-load of earth cleanly out of the ground, then raise the bucket, swing the machine and drop the load into the dumper.

The other thing, of course, is that I’m running each dumper load up the garden, depositing the earth on the slope behind my house and then spreading it with a large rake to reduce the steepness of the slope, all of which takes more time.

After digging the first strip the excavator’s swing beam came into its own as I had to dig the second strip to one side of the excavator, as I will have to for all the subsequent strips. All of the ‘cheap Chinese mini excavators’ that you see on the internet don’t have swing beams so are much less capable than my machine. I didn’t take any photos of it in action but I will next time.

Finally, two shots of the earth I’ve dumped and spread on the slope behind my house in order to reduce its steepness. It doesn’t look like much but I’d guess that it must amount to around 2 tonnes, so an impossible task to do by hand, especially single-handed.

My two new machines are performing exactly in the way I hoped they would 🙂

After waiting indoors this morning for a delivery that needed a signature – batteries for another labour-saving tool that I recently purchased, of which more later – we kept getting intermittent light rain that I didn’t fancy working outside in. So I went shopping instead and after a light lunch managed to get outside later in the afternoon to start on some serious work with my new excavator and dumper.

The first job requiring some proper earth moving is the base for my planned garden tool store and workshop. It will measure 4.5 x 3.5 metres and I intend to lay a concrete base 12.5 cm thick which will require about two cubic metres of concrete. I set out the area at the bottom of my garden a week or so ago with red pegs linked by light string and today marked it with fluorescent marker paint as I wanted to remove the pegs and string so I could start work.

It didn’t take me very long to find out how tricky working the excavator actually is and my admiration for the guys who have done work with much larger machines at my old house at Plazac and here grew by the minute. There’s a definite learning curve and it’ll take me some time to become even half-proficient, if I’m lucky. As it was I drove my new dumper into the excavator’s bucket when initially getting into position to tip earth into and whacked the side of the dumper’s bucket a couple of times while dropping earth into it, fortunately without doing any damage.

It was slow work compared to how quickly a pro would have done it and I only dug out one strip down one side of the base, but knowing how hard the work had been digging out the two bases I laid at my old house in Plazac by hand, I know that I could never have done the same here. There were a few smallish roots there but here there were both stones and a lot more roots, including one very large one which the excavator ripped through with relative ease.

I’ll need to cut it with my electric saw before continuing tomorrow but on the whole I was quite happy with what I managed to get done in not much more than a couple of hours or so.

I may be digging out a bit deeper than necessary but I’m not too worried about that. The reason is that in the fullness of time I will have to lose all of the black stone put down by the builder in my driveway entrance and all around the house, so putting some in this base and the base for my swimming pool to bring them to the correct levels will be a good way of doing that and freeing up some earth that will be highly usable for modelling my garden. But that’s for later.

I already started doing that in a small way today by using my new dumper to transport 400kg of earth at a time to the top of the garden to begin reducing the slope from the back of the house down to the garden. Ultimately I intend to do much more of this and may even need to bring some topsoil in to get what I eventually want to achieve.

So that was it for today. I was very happy with what I managed to do which would have been impossible without my new little excavator and dumper. And this was only the very beginning 😉

Yesterday I spent the day removing the barriers from around my fruit trees that have prevented the deer from attacking them for a couple of years or so, not because the trees no longer need the protection but because the barriers had allowed the grass and weeds within them to grow massively in height and thickness. This was bad news because the weeds and grass starve the trees of water and were now so bad that they needed to be removed.

After strimming away the weeds and grass I laid what turned out to be cheap, poor quality Temu mulch rings around the bases of the trunks of the trees in order to prevent the unwanted growth from coming back again and then replaced the barriers, but for the time being at least, without their supporting thin metal rods. The only exception was the new apple tree but I still have enough barrier material in my garden ‘abris’ from which I also intended to make it a new barrier.

I also intended to make a cut-down barrier for the new little Japanese Flowering Cherry that I’d planted nearly two weeks ago in my front garden, but as soon as I saw it this morning my heart sank. It was apparent that just as before, when the deer had attacked a new apple tree one day before I’d planned to put a barrier around it, the same had happened yet again with the Flowering Cherry.

I’m assuming that despite the abundance of greenery all around, a deer had taken a fancy to my new, weedy, out of shape Flowering Cherry. And it had done a thorough job, from top to bottom of the bush taking not only almost all of its foliage but also chunks of its stems.

The bush was something of a disappointment when it was delivered but I had no intentions of replacing it. Now I’m not so sure and may have to bite the bullet and shell out yet again for a replacement. If I do, I think that next time I’ll go for a tree format rather than a bush, which is what I originally intended, but for the time being I’ll leave what’s left in place and see how it does as I’ve got enough on my plate already to be dealing with in the garden.

All the way from China via Italy. Isn’t she lovely. Now I can really get going on my garden projects 😀

What do you make of this?

I know what I do, and I think we’re going to see more of it if fuel costs stay high.

It’s one of the problems of living in rural France. You’re waiting on a heavy delivery and you’re informed of the delivery date and time so you wait at home especially to receive it.

But it doesn’t arrive. Why not?

Because at the time it’s due to be delivered the delivery company (on this occasion Geodis) doesn’t have any more drop-offs in your area so instead they start playing ping-pong.

As they have to have trucks travelling between their depots, they send it back from whence it came and then when it arrives there, it gets turned round again, in the hope that when it arrives at the depot responsible for delivery, in this case Périgueux, this time there’ll be other drop-offs in the same area.
If not, will it go round again? I wouldn’t bet that it wouldn’t.

So, so far two days late. Let’s wait and see.

As we Brits say when something goes exactly according to plan. I was somewhat fearful this morning because the work I had planned for today needed for me to replace the excavator’s bucket the right way round. This also meant, of course, that I’d need to replace the bucket securing pin that had previously been seized in its joint and given me so much trouble when I was removing it, and that I was not looking forward to.

And sure enough it would not go back in. Each bucket (and the post auger) came with its own pair of pins so I then thought that as a last resort I’d try a pin from another bucket. And what do you know, it went in with almost no difficulty at all. So it appears that the problem isn’t serious after all. It’s just to do with slight variations in securing pin diameters, so I’ve informed the manufacturer and as well as asking for a replacement for the original pin, I’ve asked for a spare or two in case any of the others have also been manufactured on the big side.

Having replaced the bucket I could get on with today’s tasks, starting with planting the new Reine de Reinettes apple tree in the hole that was left after I’d moved the original tree further down the garden. This didn’t need much work by the excavator. All I had to do was tidy up the hole, finishing off by hand with a shovel, and plant the new tree in the usual way. Here’s how it looked after I’d finished. I was very happy as the manual effort required was minimal.

Then it was time to move to the front of the house to dig a hole and plant the new Japanese Flowering Cherry. This time I’ve shown a bit more of what’s involved.

The main thing I’ve discovered is that as you might expect, the excavator is not designed to dig small diameter deep holes. OK, the minimum width of the hole is the width of the bucket (in this case 400 mm) but due to the action of the bucket, the length of the hole extends the deeper you dig and in this example was about 800mm. Even so, I know from experience that the manual effort involved in digging a hole like this in this soil is considerable.

That’s because there was another problem, as I remember too well from when I was digging holes manually in the front of the house (eg when I installed my post box). The ground is so rocky that you hit rocks the moment your shovel (or your excavator bucket) hits the surface. The little excavator had its problems but I more or less got down to the desired depth before I had to start tidying the hole up by hand. And not just by hand. Also by club hammer and chisel in order to smash the large rocks in the bottom of the hole into smaller pieces that could be removed.

But compared to digging the hole by hand, planting the little flowering cherry was a doddle and the final result was very acceptable. It’s always a good idea to separate the roots of any tree that’s been grown in a pot and when I did so for this one I found that the earth it had been grown in looked awful – almost like dirty sand. I cleaned it up but left enough on the roots before planting the little tree with plenty of special compost and back-filling with original soil with all of its large stones removed.

So here’s looking back on the tree planting work of the past couple of days, starting with the original tree that I transplanted two days ago. It looks to be coming along fine in its new position.

Now the new Reine de Renettes apple that replaced the tree I’d moved. It looks to be in good condition but I’d say is a year younger and therefore less full than the tree I’d moved and also the other Reine de Reinettes that I bought at the same time, which is doing famously. That’s it behind and to the right of the new tree in the next picture.

And now the little flowering cherry. To be honest, I’m a bit disappointed with it. From the pictures on the supplier’s web site, I thought it would be bigger and fuller. It’s also bent to one side and as can be seen in the picture, I’ve tried pulling two branches outwards using sticks banged into the ground and with a bit of luck over time they will give the required results. The problem is that I have to buy on the internet as with all the other things I’m dealing with I don’t have the time to troll around the local nurseries sourcing trees and shrubs, much as I’d like to.

The final thing I did today was attach sticky anti-ants and insects bands to the trunks of all of the trees in my garden. Ants can already be seen on the leaves of several trees so it’s not before time.

The manufacturer of the sticky bands also recommends attaching bands to any supporting sticks, which I’ve done for the stick supporting the new tree, as the ants are very clever and otherwise use the sticks as ladders and cross over to the trees above the sticky bands on the trunks.

I also intend to remove the barriers around the trees and cut the grass surrounding them. Grass voraciously sucks up water that the trees need to survive and prosper but I won’t be doing it for a day or so as I’ve ordered several 60cm mulch rings to place around the tree trunks that will prevent grass and weeds from growing and also feed water down to the tree roots.

In fact there is now going to be a slight lull in activity, possibly save for me acquiring materials with which to construct the concrete base for my planned garden tool shed/workshop. That and the next job I have planned will begin to involve me shifting much more earth, more than I’d ever care to have to move by hand. For that, therefore, I’m waiting for this to be delivered.

More later 😉

The first batch of fruit trees that I bought turned out to be weedy and of very poor quality. I ended up losing almost all of them – I think I have just one little cherry tree left that is fighting to survive but is still weedy and will probably never do anything worthwhile, at least in my lifetime.

The next batch I ordered were from another supplier in the Landes in south-west France. These were more expensive but were bigger and of much better quality. I was extremely pleased with my purchase, especially with one of the Reine de Reinettes apple trees that was a lovely shape, and despite the shock of being transplanted bore fruit immediately.

Unfortunately, after putting the trees in, the night before I planned to surround them all with protective netting the deer came into my garden and attacked them. The trees that were the worst affected were the two Reine de Reinettes and the one the most seriously damaged was my favourite.

The damage was extreme. In order to obtain the tiny, immature fruit the deer had ripped off one of the tree’s main branches and by so doing had ruined the shape of the tree. Then, to make things worse, the same tree was attacked the next year by aphids and ants and all of its leaves began to shrivel.

I hit it with vast quantities of Neem Oil spray which had the desired effect. Over several weeks it cleared the aphids and ants but the tiny fruit that had started to grow shrivelled and died and at one time I thought that the tree might have died as well. But it hadn’t!

So now we come to this year. I’ve had to remove a couple of small, dead branches but despite the fact that the tree now appears healthy, there’s no possibility that it will ever now be a thing of beauty as it’s completely lop-sided. And to make matters worse, because it was originally so lovely, I’d planted it the closest to the house.

I therefore had to make a decision. The tree couldn’t stay where it was, but it would have been a shame to lose it completely after all it had been through, and me with it. So my idea was that once I had the excavator I’d order a replacement and move it lower down the garden where it could do the best that it could, and if by doing so I lost it, so be it.

And today was the big day. I ordered a replacement Reine de Reinettes apple tree together with a Japanese Flowering Cherry from a supplier in Paris. They will both be arriving tomorrow courtesy of Geodis so I needed to move the existing apple tree today ready for its replacement to go straight in.

The Flowering Cherry will be going in front of the house and as it will be smaller (apparently they grow pretty quickly) I’ll be able to use what I learnt today and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get that one in as well before the end of the afternoon.

With all that decided it was time to prep the excavator. Over the last day or so I’ve gone all over it and greased every grease nipple. I’ve also changed its engine oil for a known good quality diesel brand so this morning I needed to change the bucket config.

Usually the bucket digs backwards towards you, the driver, but I wanted to be able to lift the apple tree out of the ground with its roots in order to drop it into a hole in another part of the garden. For this I decided to see if reversing the bucket would do the trick, as I had to get under the tree from the excavator side.

Then my problems began. To remove the bucket you have to remove two large pins in rotating joints that secure the bucket to the boom. You have to remove the bolts that secure the pins and then bang them out, thus releasing the bucket. One came out as intended but the other didn’t. It was effectively seized in the joint.

The following images show that slowly but surely by using brute force the pin did begin to come out and as it did so it was clear that it had been inserted in the factory with what looks like no lubricant whatsoever. I’d pumped grease in but although it had oozed out of the joint ends it hadn’t penetrated into the centre of the joint at all.

The reason for this appears to be that the joint bush into which the pin was inserted was slightly undersize in manufacture. I’ve told the manufacturer about this but there’s very little that they can now do. I’ve asked for a replacement pin which doesn’t now look very pretty with all the bashing I’ve done on it but that will be purely cosmetic.

If the joint bush is undersize, which I suspect it is, it won’t do much to solve the underlying problem and changing the bucket as well as fitting the post auger will be a constant nightmare in the future. The only effective solution will be to slightly ream out the joint bush but I do not have the facilities to do that.

So how did the tree transplant go? Pretty well actually and although some physical effort was needed to tidy up the holes, it was not excessive. With the bucket reversed, the tree lifted out of the ground very quickly and easily with most of its roots and the hole it came out of, after a bit of tidying, will be fine for when the replacement tree arrives tomorrow.

Digging out the hole in the virgin ground in its new position was actually quite a bit harder and also quite tricky as there’s a learning curve getting to grips with the machine’s controls. If I’m honest I was surprised by the machine’s apparent lack of power digging down into the earth, but to be fair, I was using the bucket the wrong way round and not as it is intended to be used.

Finally, a couple of shots of the transplanted tree in its new position. I’m very happy with the results and there’s no way that I’d have been able to achieve them in the time that it took and with the minimal amount of physical effort that I had to provide.

After mulling over the ways of making some sort of curtain for the open front of my mini excavator garage I decided that the best thing to do was make a pair of full height doors. The doors did not have to be totally weather-proof. All they needed to do was stop the wind blowing rain inside and as the wind would not be blowing to force them to open – quite the reverse actually – they did not need to be of overly heavy construction.

I had plenty of tarpaulin left over after covering the walls so I decided to cover the frames with it and then hang each one on three hinges from the front verticals. The wood was very cheap – just under 3€ for each 3m length – and I reinforced the frame joints by gluing each joint and then gluing and screwing plywood reinforcements over each one made from scrap pieces of the crate the excavator came in. I finished off hanging the doors working in blistering heat over a very long day yesterday and the results are shown below.

It was tricky getting the doors to line up as the garage hasn’t been constructed on totally level ground. Nevertheless they didn’t come out too badly. The bolt I bought is far too small and securing it, although not easy, is possible. To make it even easier I’ve ordered a couple of flip-over latches that I’ll place above and below the bolt which will align the door fronts better and make securing the bolt easier. I’ve also got some very short nails which I’ll use to secure the tarp to the outsides of the door frames and that really will be it.

The garage really has turned out out to be a very nice, weatherproof shelter and will, I hope, be worth all the work when the weather deteriorates and the winds blow, as they undoubtedly will. I’ll now be able to finish greasing up the excavator (I’m waiting for some lithium grease to be delivered), change it’s engine oil for what I know is good quality stuff and be able to start using it. And not before time 🙂

My mini excavator garage is now more or less finished. I say ‘more or less’ because I’ve used 240 gm/m2 UV resistant tarp for the walls and I’m going to bang more securing nails in all around the bottom of the walls and along the mid-height horizontal beams in order to make the walls as wind-resistant as possible. It was very frustrating fixing them in place today because we had a cold north-westerly wind with strong gusts that kept making the walls billow out and impossible to fix while the wind was blowing so I had to keep stopping and waiting until the gusts had gone through.

I cut and mounted the side walls and back in one piece which made them harder to fix in place but ended up with no gaps through which the wind will enter and try to blow the walls off. It doesn’t look perfect but I’m happy with the result and think I was quite fortunate in that I didn’t level the ground on which the structure now stands and the framework could never be described as precision built. I think it’ll last as long as I need it to… at least I hope it will. But just in case I’ve fitted thick wire guys to the front verticals to prevent the framework swaying in the wind.

I’ve got enough tarp left over to make a curtain for the open front end but I haven’t thought of a design just yet. Ideally I’d like it to be like one of those curtain roller blinds with a string on the side in an endless loop that when you pull one side of the blind rises and the other side it falls. That would need some kind of sprocket arrangement though, which I think is a bit beyond me, but I’m still thinking.

So what did my garage end up costing me? I’ve saved 55€ by not using the two sheets of ‘agglomerée’ that I originally bought for the roof and used ‘free’ plywood from the crate the excavator came in instead. However, I’ve not costed in the roofing felt that was left over from the last garden tool store/shed that I built in the garden of my old house in Plazac. Totting up everything else, for the wood, nails, glue and anything else I’ve bought along the way, the total comes out to about 185€.

I don’t think this is too bad when you consider that the only other alternative I could find that was high enough to take the excavator was a 3m x 4.5m vehicle garage from Vevor with open ends and one open side, costing 880€. This also had the disadvantage of really being a permanent structure. I did find another 3.3m x 4.8m tent-garage costing 695€ but this had a door only 2m in height which was not high enough. Anyway, I hope all my postings about this build might be of help to anyone else considering such a project.

So what next? After banging in all the extra nails that I mentioned earlier and thinking up a design for a door curtain, my next job will be to go all around the excavator making sure all the nuts etc are tight and greasing all the grease nipples and anything else needing a smear of grease eg the bucket and auger mounting pins. That will make the machine ready for use and the next task will be to mark out the base for my proposed 4.5m x 3.5m garden tool store/workshop.

This will be the excavator’s first big job but before that I might get a bit of practise in by skimming the top off a hump at the bottom of my garden to the left of the new garage which always tilts my ride-on mower to an alarming angle when I cut the grass. It should be fun 🙂

This mini excavator garage build project is proving to be bigger and taking longer than I originally thought. Today I’d hoped to finish it off by completing its roof and walls but in fact only managed to get the roof done. And even then I ran out of roofing felt nails so still have a few left to bang in along one edge.

But at least the plywood roof covering is now totally covered and the roof is waterproof and with some rain expected tomorrow that’s a good thing. It won’t matter too much if the wood of the framework gets a bit wet. I’ll buy some more nails tomorrow as I’ll also need those for the walls.

I’ve got some other things I need to do tomorrow so I don’t think I’ll do any more garage work even if it doesn’t rain. But just in case I’ve put a tarp over the excavator to keep it as dry as possible. It’s not that I’ve fallen in love with it but I’m not stupid and although it’ll be a working machine I want to preserve as much of its value as possible for when I do eventually come to sell it. That was the idea of building a garage for it in the first place.

Back on the excavator garage today. Some time was lost as I had to replace the top horizontal beam in the back as due to one of the corner verticals warping its end joint had opened up so wide that it couldn’t be pulled back with longer screws. So having done that I glued and screwed the new length and did the same to the middle horizontal beam as if the joints are only screwed without being glued they’re too flexible and liable to come loose when the winds become heavier.

Although this garage is only intended to be a temporary structure, from the lessons I learnt when my two ‘tonnelles’ were destroyed by high winds over the winter in roughly the same position in the garden, it has to be put together reasonably well if it’s going to survive the course. So today was all about finishing off the roof covering and getting it securely fixed down. To start off with I attached side bars on each side to which to glue and nail the roofing sheets and to which the roofing felt will be attached, hopefully tomorrow.

Then I had to attach interior bridges along the joins of the roof sheets on both sides, a tricky job for just one person as they had to be supported while being screwed into from outside.

That was a good point to break for lunch to allow the glue I’d used to cure a bit before adjusting the sheets along the ridge line so they laid flat and nailing them down along the ridge on both sides. To do this I had to use a ladder leaning against the sides, climb to the top and lean as far as I could over the roof. Not for the faint-hearted! Here’s how the roof ended up.

And here’s an end section showing how the joins between the sheets turned out.

I’m hoping to finish the whole thing off tomorrow as some rain is forecast for Wednesday. I’ll do the walls first and finish off with the roof and hopefully that will be the end of the project.

No work on my excavator garage on Friday as it was essential for me to cut the grass. It’s now growing like crazy and if left it would soon get to a height that would defeat my ride-on mower as I’ve found in the past. Just once because once was enough as then I’d had to go all over it with my brush cutter which was both time-consuming and very tiring.

So getting back to the garage, yesterday was time to get started on the roof. I’d made the decision to use the plywood from the crate in which the excavator was delivered but I knew that this would present new problems. For a start it’s quite flimsy so isn’t self-supporting, unlike the heavy ‘aggloméré’ that I originally intended to use. It’s also not of very good quality and neither the sheets themselves nor my garage structure are square, so cutting and fitting them neatly wouldn’t be easy. Nevertheless I’d made my decision.

But first after clearing away the junk in front of it I wanted to try the garage for size by driving the excavator into it for the first time. That meant driving it down almost the whole length of my back garden from where I’d parked it in front of the house. This I had to do very carefully as the tracks cut into the ground even with the very slightest turn as the picture shows of the ground in front of the garage where I had to turn the machine to line it up.

The first thing I noticed was that the excavator doesn’t appear to be as high as the manufacturer’s dimensions appeared to suggest. There’s more headroom than I’d calculated when I made the garage’s framework but I’m happy with that because it’ll give me more room to add stiffeners in the top corners of the open end and will also allow me to park the excavator inside well over to one side to make dismounting and mounting easier. The extra length that I added has also worked out very nicely.

So yesterday was all about adding the plywood roof covering. This was easier said than done and the final result yesterday was not pretty, albeit adequate for purpose. I took my life in my hands getting the sheets up there by placing a prop inside and climbing up on my ladder leaning on the framework outside and then moving round, but I’ve done worse 🙂

Today I’m off to Brico Depot to pick up some strips of timber to screw inside the joins of the plywood sheets and some heavier wood to run along the tops of the walls outside to which to attach the roofing felt. That’ll probably be it for today as we’re not expecting rain and I’ll then take a bit of a break and resume work tomorrow.