Month: July 2026

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 🙂