Month: July 2024

Too hot. Last week they were forecasting temperatures of over 40 degrees C for this week but now they’ve been moderated a little to the 39 degree mark. OK if you’re on holiday down here next to a cool swimming pool but not if you have work to do. Like I have. It’s so hot that I’m not getting any work done on my aircraft. I’d hoped that by now I’d have my Savannah all serviced and ready to go and just be waiting for the new anti-freeze to arrive while I’d have started work on my X-Air, but things have just been at a standstill.

I’m typing this at teatime and I’ve just returned from checking what conditions are like at Malbec as the barn has been in shadow for several hours. When I left the temperature gauge in my car read 39 degrees C and at Malbec it was still 33 degrees in the shade. Also the humidity, although forecast to be only around 50-60%, was quite a bit higher I think, making working conditions not very enjoyable and the vis quite poor as the following pictures show.

When I returned home the temperature inside my house was 31 degrees C even though I’ve had the shutters closed on the sunny sides of the house and yet again sleeping tonight will be uncomfortable, even with a fan running, as it’s been for the past several days. The temperature is forecast to be 35 degrees C tomorrow and falling slowly thereafter but is still not forecast to fall below 30 degrees until Saturday, so whether I’ll get much done before then I do not know.

I need to pump the Savannah’s tyres up and lubricate all of its swivels and hinges after which it should be ready to fly. That’ll only leave the anti-freeze and a thorough clean inside and out to be done. There will be less to do on the X-Air but that also will need a thorough internal clean, although it’s always kept in the barn with outdoor covers on, so cleaning its exterior won’t be much of a problem.

The other problem because of the weather is the insects. There is a profusion of wood wasps this year and they’re all flying around looking for places in which to build their nests. As soon as I open the doors and windows of my house in they come making a nuisance of themselves. I was stung on my toe while wearing flip flops a few days ago when I opened the doors of my tool store because several of them had started to build their nest behind the left door and got annoyed when I slid it open, and even this afternoon I had to chase two out of the Savannah’s cabin who had found their way inside through the left wing root. The last thing I want is for the cabin to be full of angry insects next time I open the door!

I started servicing my Savannah weeks ago but it’s been ages since I’ve been able to do anything on it at all. As it has been some time since it has been flown and even longer since it was last serviced, I decided that I would give it a thorough inspection and service before taking to the air in it this year. It was during the engine inspection that I discovered a potentially serious problem with its cooling system.

The Savannah’s cooling system is much like that of a car. Its engine is water cooled with a radiator and when its engine heats up and the water expands the excess passes out through a tube in an expansion chamber at the system’s highest point into a bottle. Then, when the water cools down again, it is sucked back through the tube back into the main system.

I found that what had happened was that the metal outlet of the expansion chamber connecting it to the bottle had completely corroded away so the excess cooling liquid instead of flowing into the bottle was just being lost to the atmosphere. If it had been allowed to continue there was a real possibility that the engine would overheat leading, in the extreme case to a potential engine seizure and failure and it doesn’t bear thinking about if that was to happen mid-Channel on a flight back to the UK!

A replacement expansion chamber was called for and in preference to the original Rotax part that had corroded away and is very expensive, I decided to go for a less expensive Chinese made copy. I think it’s made from stainless steel, or maybe aluminium, so it will not corrode, and also looked to be extremely well made. I ordered it from Ebay and unfortunately it took several weeks to arrive, and even worse, when it did it wasn’t the correct part.

It turned out that there are two versions and I’d ordered the wrong one because I hadn’t checked before placing the order. The supplier was excellent when I let them know and offered to send the correct version without my returning the original, just for the cost of the postage. And they were true to their word, but unfortunately yet again the correct version took several weeks to arrive while the Savannah remained un-serviced and, of course, unflyable.

The part arrived a few days ago and today was the first day when I could get around to fitting it and doing the engine service. I started soon after lunch and when I’d finished the cooling system was back together and filled just with plain water so I could run the engine to heat and drain its oil, a new oil filter was fitted, new oil added and eight new spark plugs had been gapped and also installed.

And not before time. The old spark plugs still looked to be in excellent condition but they were due for a change and will be disposed of. The engine oil was also very black so it too was overdue for a change. And the best part after all this? I did the work in the shade inside the barn (which is why I didn’t start in the morning) and when I pulled the Savannah out again after I’d finished, it started instantly on the key and ran beautifully smoothly 🙂

The following pics show the new expansion chamber in place and the old one with its outlet tube totally corroded away.

Rotax recommend that the coolant system rubber hoses are replaced every five years and I was going to do that. However, I inspected all of the tubes very closely and they all seemed to me to be in very good condition, so I’ve reused them and their clips. What I have done, however, is order five litres of G12 antifreeze. I disposed of the old antifreeze when I drained the system to fit the new expansion chamber and as G12 is recommended for the Savannah’s engine, it is sensible to make the switch from the ‘bog standard’ ethylene glycol mixture that was in there. I’ll also do the same for my X-Air’s engine when I eventually get around to that 😉

I have a list of things that I need to dispose of now that I’m installed in my house and I’ve been working through them, albeit rather slowly. I’ve already sold the small freezer that I had in the caravan, my old electric bike (not the new Chinese one that I couldn’t register) and the ‘coffret de chantier’ that provided an electrical connection for the caravan and the house while it was being constructed. However, the list of items that still remain is pretty long and high up on that list is my old caravan.

It’s been sited at the bottom corner of my garden for just over three years now and has been sitting doing nothing since I moved into my house last September. Although it’s old and a bit tatty it’s still watertight, which is a big selling point for someone needing an old caravan for the same reason I did or to site on a piece of private land for leisure use eg as a base for hunting or fishing. So now’s the time to ready it for sale while there’s still a a good market for it during the summer and early autumn months.

I always intended to use my Kia to tow it up to the front of my house where I can clean it inside and out and generally spruce it up. I never thought it would be easy due to the time it’s been rooted in the ground but in fact it turned out to be more difficult than I thought. I’d removed the jockey wheel when I sited it down there and somehow the bolt that clamps it to the frame has gone missing, so even getting it hitched up to the car wasn’t as straightforward as it should have been. But it was after I’d got it hitched that the problems started.

My Kia has a 2.0 litre engine and a 4WD drive lock but no matter how I tried it didn’t have the power to shift the caravan let alone pull it up the slope of the garden. I’d released the caravan’s hand brake but it could well have been that the brakes were seized on, but in any event I couldn’t get it to move. I made a couple of phone calls to see if I could get hold of someone with a tractor but to no avail as the only one available didn’t have a tow ball, so I had to try to work out something different.

My Kia is automatic and I was wary about overheating its torque converter so I let it sit and cool down while I had a brief lunch. I then returned to have another go. During the break I’d had a brainwave. Up to then I’d been trying to drag the caravan out from where it had been parked in a straight line and I thought that maybe it’d be a good idea to try waggling it from side to side instead by turning the Kia’s steering wheel to left and right in succession with a break in between to allow the caravan to settle back, and it worked.

I was really relieved when it eventually moved and I was able to drag it right up to the front of the house where I needed it to be. So the Kia had the muscle for it after all! Here’s where I initially positioned it, by driving almost up to the road and reversing back.

And here’s how the bottom corner of the garden looked after the caravan had been moved. One of the ‘tonnelles’ (small marquee type tents) has already gone as it was finally destroyed by strong wind gusts a few weeks ago. I’ll probably also throw away the one that remains as although it still has a good frame, it’s roof, which had already been torn by the wind, was ripped to shreds in a hail storm that was a once in twenty year event which also put dents all over the roof, bonnet and one side of my Kia.

Although a new roof and side curtains are available for it (on sale at the moment actually) I don’t now have a flat area other than where it is to put it up and as it probably won’t sell second hand for much more than what they would cost, I don’t think there’s much use hanging onto it and it’ll probably be best to consign it to the ‘déchetterie’ given the other priorities I have just at the moment.

It took me all day to remove the electrical and water connections that I’d run down to the caravan and then connect it up again in the front of my house so I can set to cleaning it inside and out and tarting it up ready for sale. Here’s how things looked when I finished up ready for a late evening meal.

As the pictures show, the caravan is filthy on the outside so tomorrow I’ll start off with the pressure washer which will probably improve its appearance quite a lot. Although I’ve given its inside a cursory clean from time to time while it’s been empty, it’s also quite grimy inside so cleaning it thoroughly inside and out is now the priority, especially as from time to time passers by often enquire if old caravans like mine are for sale. If that happened it really would put the cherry on the cake 🙂

As in the UK, dental treatment in France is quite (very!) expensive. And that’s if you can get it because when I needed to find a dentist a year or so ago, every one I tried said that they were full up and couldn’t take on any more patients. Luckily for me I had a small job done by a dentist in Montignac not long after I came here and when I phoned them they found that I was still on their list and could do the work I needed to have done.

Fast forward another year or so and I was experiencing some more problems. Work that I’d had done in the UK years ago, before I came to France, in some cases getting on for around 20 years, was beginning to fail and I needed some more major work, starting with a root extraction. Surprisingly this was done in the dental hospital at Brive on the French health service and didn’t cost me a bean and afterwards I was supposed to return to my own dentist for other work followed by a possible implant.

I put that off because I was in the middle of my house build, only doing so at the end of April of this year by which time even more had gone wrong and I was suffering discomfort both biting and chewing. I therefore took the decision to have a major dental overhaul done as hopefully it will be the last major work that I’ll need in my lifetime, and work started at the beginning of May.

So far it has cost me 2080€ to have three crowns and a bridge reinstated, including replacing pegs in the gums and the bridge forming an extended crown over an existing supporting tooth and one of the reinstated roots. This is the gross cost and some of that will be reimbursed under the French health scheme as I do not have dental insurance which, if I’d taken it out when I got to France, would have cost me over the years many more times than what I’ve paid out for the treatment that I’ve incurred.

I’m not quite sure of the amount that I will recover. So far I appear to have received 324€ and I’m not sure because some of that may relate to prior health costs, although I don’t know what they might have been. So to date the refund amounts to just over 14% of my total outlay and there could (should) be more to come. Now we come to the interesting bit. I told my dentist that I wanted implant surgery to fill the most significant gap that remains and I was under the impression that he could do it. But apparently not. ‘Implantologie’ is a service that only specially qualified dentists can perform and he wanted to send me off to a colleague of his with a surgery just south of Limoges.

That’s about 1 1/2 hours drive away but I went anyway for a ‘devis’ (estimate) even though I’d found that there are several other ‘implantologues’ in my surrounding area. I suspected that the price would be on the high side and I wasn’t disappointed. I started off paying 100€ for a panoramic x-ray scan after which I was told what was being quoted for. This was for two implants, leaving a gap between them, and a bridge between the two implants over the whole space. For this the total amount quoted was 3880€. And the final rub was that none of this, nor the cost of the panoramic scan, would be reimbursable.

So that made me think. My friend Wim suggested that if I wanted the work to be done I might consider going to somewhere like Roumania where it would be much cheaper. In fact when I began searching on the internet I found that the preferred destination coming from France, and possibly also the UK, is Turkey and it didn’t take me long to find that there are lots of clinics, mainly it would appear in Istanbul and the holiday destination of Antalya.

I obtained a quote from a clinic in Antalya but I found that although it might be a good destination for someone who wants to combine dental treatment with a summer holiday, it probably wouldn’t be the best place in the winter when I want to go. I also found that at that time of year flights from Bordeaux, where I want to fly from, are fewer and more expensive, so I switched my search just to Istanbul.

One good thing I found was that almost all of the clinics that I was interested in had a Whatsapp account that made communication very quick and easy. They started off in French (I have a French mobile) but switched to English when I told them it was my preferred language, and the clinic I eventually chose was even prepared to exchange messages and provide me with a detailed quote at 10.00 pm French time, or midnight in Turkey.

All of the clinics explained that implants involve a two-stage process. The first stage only needs 2 days during which the implants are inserted and then you have to allow anything from two to six months for the gums to fully heal before the the crowns and/or bridges are attached. This means that two trips will be needed to Turkey for the work to be completed involving two round-trip flights and two hotel stays, the second of which being for up to a week.

The task is therefore to select a clinic and then search for suitable flights, preferably with low-cost airlines, to get you to Istanbul and back at the time of your choosing. That’s not as easy as it sounds because using skyscanner.com, my booking engine of choice, changing flights by a day can result in the fare almost doubling, or more, and flight times changing dramatically, from 6 or 7 hours to over a day.

And there’s a further complication. All (nearly) of the low-cost airlines are now playing games with baggage allowances. A stay of up to a week for me only requires carry-on cabin baggage and some of the airlines – Pegasus and Wizz Air being two notable culprits – levy a hefty charge on top of what look like very low fares if you actually want to carry on anything larger than a lady’s small handbag. I therefore immediately rule them out.

So how did I do? I think pretty well. The majority of the clinics that I checked out offered an ‘all-in, dental tourism’ type service involving transfers to and from the airport, your hotel and their clinic and also tie-ins with selected hotels. Unsurprisingly, these tended to be at the upper end of the price bracket although some were cheaper in the mid-range or slightly lower.

It appears that I happened upon a clinic that did not class itself as offering dental tourism. It did indeed offer a full range of services, which I won’t go into but including facial surgery and full mouth implants, and the price they quoted me for the same treatment as all the others was extremely reasonable – in fact the cheapest of all that I received.

On the other hand their facilities looked to be impeccable and when I queried this, saying that top-class facilities and low prices don’t usually go together and I needed to be reassured that what I saw when I arrived needed to be the same as what they showed on their web site, they explained that their clinic is owned by the principal, has no shareholders who need dividend pay-outs and they just concentrate on providing an impeccable service.

The way I look at it is no matter what price is being quoted, what’s on offer can be a bit ‘scammy’ and the impeccably modern facilities shown on their web site can turn out to be a dingy back room in a poor part of town. Like anything else you buy, it’s ‘caveat emptor’ and all you can do is weigh up all the evidence before making your final decision. I liked what I’d been told, how I’d been treated and the street view images I’d got from Google Earth so at the end of the day I decided to go with them. And the clinic’s cost, for the same treatment that I’d been quoted 3880€ for in France? The princely sum of 1020€, just over a quarter of the price, leaving lots of room for air fares and hotel costs.

Turning to the air fare, I wanted to go initially to Turkey towards the end of October or maybe the beginning of November and after trawling through dozens (literally) of flights I was delighted to happen upon a direct Turkish Airlines flight from Bordeaux to Istanbul within my desired time band for only 246€ return. I was really pleased because the flight did not involve a stop-over and transfer en-route and Turkish are one of the good guys who still offer a decent cabin bag allowance – up to 55 x 40 x 23 cm and 8kg. Good for them!

And now what about a hotel? OK, this is a bit sketchy I have to admit, as I’ve been told by a friend who’s a seasoned traveller and has booked hotels in Istanbul. On the first night I will arrive at the hotel well after midnight and when not in the clinic, I intend to be out exploring Istanbul as this will be my first visit there. So I will only require anything more than a bed for one night, which is not much of a risk to take.

So I’ve ended up booking into what claims to be a 3* hotel not far from the clinic for two nights and with this amount of lead-time (I’ve paid for the room already) the cost will only be 38€!! I wanted a hotel that provided breakfast with the room and I’ve since found that although this one does, it’s at a sister hotel a short distance away and I must admit that if I’d noticed that before booking it would probably have swayed my decision.

So, so far we have clinic 1020€, air fare 246€ and hotel 38€, but this is only for stage 1 of the treatment. The clinic has said that at this stage they can’t tell me when I will need to return for stage 2 as that will depend on what they see when stage 1 has been completed. However, I think it’s reasonable to assume that it will be some time in early March 2025 and on that basis the air fare and the hotel cost can be estimated.

I’ve found that at that time a return flight from Bordeaux with Air France/KLM (again, good baggage allowance) could be booked today for 275€ and a 6 night hotel stay for something like 216€ and with those figures it’s now possible to compare treatment in France with treatment in Turkey.

Treatment France ………………….3880€

Treatment Turkey ………………..1020€
Air fare stage 1 treatment ……..246€
Hotel stage 1 treatment …………38€
Air fare stage 2 treatment ……..275€
Hotel stage 2 treatment ………..216€
TOTAL TURKEY ………………………1795€

So there you have it. I’ve already booked for stage 1 of my treatment in Istanbul in the first week of November and anticipate returning for stage 2 in early March of next year. This just happens to coincide with the time I usually go off to Egypt for a bit of winter sun so who knows, as it’ll be slightly later I might also get a little bit of a sunshine break in Turkey next year. But in any event, I’ll keep everyone posted on how it all works out 🙂

A quick addendum to the above. All of the Turkish clinics said they’d like a copy of my panoramic x-ray and the French clinic that charged me 100€ said they’d send me one on DVD to forward. However, the Turkish clinics also all asked for multi-photos – front, each side, mouth open, top, bottom – and in a case like mine that’s relatively straightforward they can work and quote from those. After that the Turkish treatment is all-in, including another panoramic scan etc, everything required to complete the treatment. Can’t argue with that.

At last, after three years and one month the storage that I’ve been renting for the stuff that I brought with me from my old house in Plazac is empty. I’m out of there. All that has remained in there for the past few weeks has been stuff from my old workshop and heavy tools and it was the latter that made today challenging for me working single-handedly.

They included an electric concrete mixer, a garden roller, a heavy electric tile cutter, a bench drill, a large bench vice and a bench grinder, all of which I had to get up onto my trailer – and off again when I got home. And it’s surprising how heavy a full old bag of cement becomes after it’s taken on water from a damp atmosphere and turned solid!

After putting racking into my ‘abri’ I was surprised and pleased to find that everything went in. For now I’ve just put things that I shouldn’t need to move on the left and things that I will need to get at over on the right. Here’s how things turned out after quite a long, hot, tiring day.

There are one or two things on the floor but that won’t matter as there’ll be more space available when I’ve sold the electric concrete mixer (I bought a motor powered one many months ago that’s also in the back of the ‘abri’) and also the tile cutter which I shouldn’t need after I’ve done the tiling in my kitchen and ‘cellier’. But at least I can now think about other things – my aircraft, painting my shutters and hopefully selling my old caravan.

A lot happened very quickly after I’d filed the claim for a refund for the unsuitable coolant expansion tank for my Savannah that I’d purchased from Ebay. The seller contacted me first thing this morning to say that there are two versions of this item and they’d supplied (ie I’d ordered) the wrong one. They said that if I’d been in the USA it would have been easy for me to have returned it for them to supply me with a replacement, but not so in France.

Under the circumstances they said that if I just paid for the Shipping ($40, about 35€) they would ship the other item and I could keep the one that I’ve already got. I thought that this was a very fair offer and there was only one complication – I’d already placed an order on Loravia for the Rotax part at a cost of 300€. I decided to see if I could cancel the order for a refund and Loravia agreed for a 10€ charge plus 12€ to cover the Paypal fee to return the remainder (290€) direct to my Paypal account. I agreed to that as the ‘fault’ was down to me and I’ve already received the refund.

The Chinese seller said that tomorrow they’ll give me an Ebay link to pay the $40 shipping charge which I will prefer compared to a direct Paypal transfer which will incur a charge, so after a bit of toing-and-froing (had a lot of that lately) the deal has been done. Now I’ll just have to wait a bit longer for the correct part to arrive. What a relief 😕

It appears that my celebration was premature after all. The ‘cheap Chinese’ radiator expansion bottle that I bought from Ebay for my Savannah turns out to be absolutely useless and a total waste of money. What a surprise.

The pipework configuration is totally wrong and there’s no way it can go onto a 912S engine. The reason is that it can only fit ‘one way’ due to there being a large electrical connection next to it and then none of the pipes except one points in the right direction to connect to the rubber tubing of the cooling system.

The Ebay ad says ‘no returns accepted’ but I’m hoping that when Ebay and Paypal see the images I’ve filed comparing the new version with the existing one they will agree that the differences are so major that a refund is fully justified.

I’ve now had to order a Rotax original item but luckily I found after a new search that a supplier who I’ve actually used several times in the past (Loravia) is listing it on its web site for 100€ less than other suppliers so even if I don’t get a refund I won’t be out of pocket compared to if I’d gone ahead at the beginning and paid the higher price. And if I do get a refund, it will work out better for me.

I went to check on the new part for the Savannah’s cooling system yesterday as I thought it wasn’t quite the same as the part it’s replacing and I was right. Its makers have changed the design slightly, presumably so as not to infringe Rotax’s patent or registered design, and although it will fit, installing it won’t be totally straightforward. The reason is that the configuration of the pipework has been changed and possibly the diameter of one of the pipes is different, so I shall have to work out how to hook the water pipes up to it.

So I couldn’t do anything – that’ll be for the coming week – and as rain was forecast for later in the afternoon, which eventually materialised, I thought I’d use my time by printing off and hanging pictures in the dining area of my living room.

I have a large Epson A3 printer from when I did my house’s design which means that I can print off images up to 40 x 30 cm in size, either landscape or portrait. There are several sites on the internet from where you can download very high quality copyright and royalty-free photographs of almost any subject you can think of, so my idea is instead of buying pictures for the walls of my house, to print off images that I like, frame them and hang them where I want them to be.

I used white wooden frames in my bedrooms but for this area of the living room at least, I’ve used black. Each frame comes with what’s called a ‘passepartout’, which is the white card that fits in front of the image to give it a white border inside the frame, but they all have to be marked out and carefully cut to size using a scalpel and straight-edge and this is what takes the time. I ended up hanging nine prints and am very happy with the results. The choice of image, though, is a very personal thing and my choice might not be to the taste of everyone. What do you think?

Everything in the above images except the pictures I brought with me from England and the dining space I designed with dimensions to accept the table, chairs and cabinets. The table and chairs were never used in my old house at Plazac because the table was too big so this is the first time for over 12 years that I have a proper dining area that meets my needs. And I also rather like the way it looks 😉

And this is why I designed my house the way I did. It has been a gorgeous day today right from the time the sun came up, so first thing this morning I opened the east and south facing doors in my living room and my kitchen window to allow the sun to flood in.

This afternoon I had to drive north to a small town near Limoges to see an ‘implantologue’ which is what they call a dentist who can do dental implants over here. I decided to take the ‘back’ route ie not the main autoroute and was thoroughly rewarded for it. There was little traffic of any sort to speak of and with most of the road having a speed limit of 90 kmh it was a privilege to do the drive there and back in the gorgeous weather.

We’ve got a bit of drizzle forecast for tomorrow followed by a series of hot, dry days so I should be able to make good progress on getting my storage cleared out and my aircraft back to flyable again. The weedkiller that I ordered was also delivered today so I should also be able to get cracking on getting rid of my weeds. I can’t wait 🙂

I’ve been feeling a bit cheesed off for some reason, I’m not sure why. We had drizzle for most of this morning that meant I couldn’t get stuff out of storage which is what I wanted to do. Best laid plans and all that. The delivery date of the weedkiller I ordered has been put back for some reason so the weeds I strimmed back are having a field day and coming back with a vengeance before I can hit them with it, which is annoying to say the least.

I think what may also be getting at me is that we’ve passed the summer solstice and the summer hasn’t even really properly started. OK, I know that has affected everyone but the stop-start weather has really disrupted my plans and I seem to have been sitting around a lot and marking time for far too long. The other reason for that beside the weather has been the time it’s been taking for things I’ve ordered to be delivered and as well as the weedkiller, I’ve been waiting weeks for the part I needed to service my Savannah to make it flyable again.

Well the good news is that it has at last arrived, see the image below, so as it looks as though we can expect a decent bit of weather, as soon as I’ve emptied the storage I’ll be able to go ahead and do the work on the Savannah.

The other bit of good news is that as I mentioned yesterday, I met up this afternoon with the prospective buyer of my old ‘coffret de chantier’ in Condat on the other side of Montignac and he took it off my hands for my asking price.

His name was Xavier and he is in the same position as I was a couple of years ago, having designed his own house and is now at the stage when he needs to have electricity on site. I’m glad to say that he was very pleased with his purchase and I said that I hope that it works as well for him as it did for me. I’m sure it will.

But thank goodness, the logjam is beginning to break and I can at last begin to see myself moving forward again and getting things done. I don’t mind being idle by choice but I hate having idleness forced upon me 😐

Despite trials and tribulations and somewhat disappointing weather for the time of year, things are still moving on. I’m still waiting for the parts I need to complete the service on my Savannah for it to be airworthy again and although I could have been servicing my X-Air, I decided to concentrate on my house and garden while the weather permits it. The grass needed cutting again before it got out of control and the hump behind my house had become totally overgrown again with enormous thistles and other weeds and something needed to be done about it.

Cutting the grass was the easy bit and I did it a couple of days ago but as I’ve found previously, the stems of the giant buttercups that infest the lawn are almost impervious to the blades of my mower and even though the grass has been evenly cut, the stems still stick up proudly all over it. I may have to try sharpening the blades to see if that will make a difference or even investing in new ones, as the existing ones have given good service over quite a few years now.

As for the hump behind the house, it will need to be seeded but I’ve decided to treat it with weedkiller beforehand. I’m waiting for some weedkiller that I ordered several days ago to arrive and in preparation I’ve been over the whole area to be treated with my heavy strimmer to reduce all of the weeds to ground level which I hope will increase the effectiveness of the weedkiller solution.

At the same time I’ve been manually removing and disposing of a large number of the large stones that were brought to the surface when the builder disturbed the ground and are now on the surface. They will all have to be removed in due course but the task will be made easier when the weeds have all gone.

If the weather becomes as hot as it should do for the time of year, I will be able to leave the seeding of the hump until it gets cooler again in the autumn, if necessary giving it another treatment of weedkiller beforehand as the solution breaks down quite quickly in the soil.

So here are some shots of what the house is currently looking like. I’ve still got all my plant tubs and pots that I brought with me from Plazac but haven’t yet filled and planted them. There’s still time and although watering them every day will increase my workload, I doubt I’ll be doing anything more major to the house’s exterior, beyond painting the shutters, and a good array of plants would add considerably to the house’s appearance.

The stone laid around the house is beginning to fall into the void below it as I always suspected it would. There wasn’t enough earth for a proper backfill despite the builder saying there was. The terrace at the house’s rear and the path up the side leading up to it are falling away a bit but are not dangerous and are still usable but I don’t intend to do anything about the problem this year as I’ve not decided what to do for the long term. A solution that I’m considering would be a decking platform at the house’s rear with stairs down onto the lawn so I don’t want to lay anything solid and semi-permanent that would then have to be ripped up again.

I’ve also received two more excellent pieces of news today. Firstly, it’s been confirmed that I’m receiving a full refund including bank charges for my electric bike that I packaged up a week or so ago and returned to the supplier in Poland because it could not be registered to be legally used on public roads in France. That’s a relief because I always hoped that there wouldn’t be a dispute over the amount involved and much as I regret not being able to keep the bike, I’m glad that the matter is now over.

The other piece of news is that I’m seeing a buyer tomorrow for my ‘coffret de chantier’, the box with a meter that you need for a temporary electrical connection while your house is being built, for the price I advertised it for a few weeks ago. This was 40€ more than the amount I’d budgeted for, but even so, the buyer will I hope be well pleased with it since it is in excellent condition compared to those being advertised by other sellers and is complete with the accessories needed for it to be connected up and used immediately. So big smiles all round if the sale goes through 😀