I’m ready

Two guys from Bouyges Energies showed up first thing this morning. I first spotted them with their small white van doing something at the electrical box down the road into which the new box placed on my land is connected. I don’t know whether they were finishing off the connection that the previous Bouyges team had worked on in the rain a few days ago or possibly just inspecting it, but pretty soon after they’d finished down there, they came up and opened the new box on my land, did what they had to do there as well and left after a few minutes.

So we’re slowly inching forward to finally getting my ‘coffre de chantier’ connected, which will give me my own electrical supply at last. However, although I’ve fitted my box out as I want with two interior circuit breakers and two external sockets, up to now it still wasn’t ready to go because I hadn’t succeeded in installing the necessary earth. The problem was that it employs a metre length of copper rod that has to be banged into the ground and this wasn’t possible because at around a depth of 45 cms it hit a solid rock layer that prevented it from being banged in any further.

Wim kindly loaned me his metal ‘rock basher’ and sledgehammer but this still didn’t work for me – the underlying rock layer is just too hard – but then I had a brainwave. Behind the ‘coffre’ along the side of the road there’s a bank created, I think, years ago when they put the water main through. The bank is around half a metre high and it occurred to me that if I banged my copper rod in on its top, it would have that additional distance to go before hitting the rocky layer.

And so it turned out. I didn’t think of it before because I was trying to position the earth only about a metre from the ‘coffre’, but there was no real reason for that except I had only bought a metre of earth cable. After taking only a few minutes to bang the rod into the ground I bought another 3 metre length yesterday and was able to finish off the connection today.

Here’s the interior of my ‘coffre de chantier’ with the earth cable now connected into the system.

This next shot shows the earth cable running out of the bottom of the ‘coffre’ inside the corrugated plastic ‘gaine’ which protects it, up to the earth rod on the top of the bank. The distance is less than 2 metres, so the difference is nothing really.

This final shot shows where the earth cable connects to the copper rod. I’ve covered it with rocks to protect it, as had been done at my old house, and also to clearly show where it’s located should the surrounding vegetation become thicker during the period that it’s in use.

So I’m now completely ready for my ‘coffre de chantier’ to be connected up to the mains, and I can’t wait. It’s becoming much colder now, especially at night and in the early morning, so I do really need my own electrical supply so I can keep a heater going in the caravan 24/7, as I did in my old house.

And talking about the night and the early morning, I unfortunately got a nasty surpise again this morning. The wild boar came back last night and dug up the same area on the bottom of my land that they dug up previously. Luckily, the affected area was much smaller this time and it took me only a few minutes to level it again, but as it had already been damaged once, it looks much scruffier this time. If this keeps happening I’ll have to decide how I can cope with it. When I’ve managed to establish more of a garden, I won’t be able to face having it constantly coming under attack from the wild boar.