Chauffe-eau electrique

At home, the last few days have been all about my electric water heater, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t managed to fit in a few microlight-related and social activities! During Friday, I finished putting the four fixings for the water heater up on the wall in the corner of my bathroom. The job took longer than I’d hoped because the fixings consist of ruddy great bolts screwed into large plastic plugs in holes in the wall and the last one had caused some plaster and a bit of rendering to blow off. So I’d had to make this bit of damage good before proceeding any further but everything was ready for my neighbour Benjamin to help me lift the water heater up onto its mountings on Friday evening ready for me to press on with the installation on Saturday.

I spent the whole of Saturday prefabricating the two copper pipe assemblies, for the hot and cold water, that were to replace the old, leaking pipework that I wanted to remove and provide the new connections for the water heater’s cold supply and hot water outlet. I originally planned to do the job using compression (screw) fittings because of my dislike of the French soldered ones but in the end I decided that I’d have to use soldered fittings because of the limited amount of space that I had to work with. So my prefabrication work was slow and painstaking because I had to make sure that each joint that I made was as perfect as I could make it, to avoid leaks. The pre-fabricated pieces had compression fittings at each end, however, to make joining up with the existing pipework as easy as possible.

I got nothing done on Sunday for reasons I’ll explain in a moment, and in fact I finally finished the installation today, after a very long day’s hard work. Here’s how the finished job came out.

As well as putting in new copper, I also had to replace the leaking plastic waste pipe as the water heater needs a waste outlet so it can be drained if necessary in the future. The following picture gives an idea of what the finished job looked like – not perfect by any means, but it’ll be boxed in away from view, and a great improvement I think on what was originally there.

I only have one little frustration. I am pleased and relieved to say that so far it appears that all of the soldered joints I did are holding up. However, there appears to be just one leak, and that’s in the most unexpected of places – on a cone fitting attached to one of the isolating valves I’ve installed. Of all places, that’s one of the last joints that should be leaking and I’m afraid it does nothing to persuade me away from my rather jaundiced view about the poor quality of French plumbing fittings. Poor quality AND expensive 🙁

Now back to Sunday. The weather wasn’t up to much for flying on Saturday but even though there was rain in the early hours on Sunday and the wind was still a little gusty, Victor and I went off to Cavarc in his 2CV in the afternoon. This week we were flying the Hurricane with the ‘carénage’ (body) and Victor wanted to get away from the airfield again in it if he could. For some reason Francis decided he wanted me to fly first, though, which was a bit unfair really, as Victor was keen to get a flight in as he and Madeleine were leaving on Monday morning and I’ll get other opportunities to fly over the coming weeks while Victor’s away. But Francis had made his plans.

If you fly out from Cavarc in a south-westerly direction, overhead the village of Castillonnès, pretty soon you come to a ‘piste privée’ called Ségalas. It’s privately owned by a farmer who’s well-known to ULMistes in the area and keeps the runway in excellent condition, not just for ULMs but for Group As too. You have to phone ahead for prior permission and that’s where Francis planned for me to fly to with him sitting quietly as a passenger in the back seat. Here’s a pic that shows where Ségalas is relative to Castillonnès.

You can see the place quite clearly on Google Earth. The runway runs from the north-east to the south-west, literally, as landings have to be made uphill from the north-east and take offs downhill from the south-west. Google Earth doesn’t really show this, however.

There were some nasty gusts aloft as we flew there and back but I’m pleased to say that the landing and take off at Ségalas went off without a hitch. Unfortunately we wasted a bit of time chatting to the owner after we’d landed and when we got back to Cavarc, Victor was champing at the bit to get airborne, not least of all because we had a dinner arrangement in the evening that we had to be back for! As a result, Victor was limited to some circuit work, but I told him that probably that was the best use of his time on account of the winds.

After we’d finished, cleaned the mud off the aircraft, as the runway at Cavarc had quite a lot of standing water on it still, we made a dash for home. A group of seven of us had booked dinner at Le Coq at Fleurac, which turned out to be a charming evening, with 3 courses with ‘unlimited’ wine and traditional French music from a small band thrown in. It kept spitting with rain and was a bit chilly unfortunately, but we were outside under an awning and had a great evening nevertheless. And when the bill came, I was gobsmacked that it only worked out at 30€ per head including tip. Now that has to beat Pizza Express any time 😀