New tool store

After having had its components languishing on my land since the first week I arrived here, today I at last made a start on getting it assembled. I started late (as usual) and my intention was to move everything up from the bottom of my land, where it’s been since I moved the caravan down there prior to the summer, to the top in my large trailer. But unfortunately the Kia’s battery let me down today and didn’t have enough charge to start its engine.

It’s been threatening to do so for a week or so now, so I think a new battery is in order. I have to be very careful too, because when the time came to replace the Kia’s battery last time, when the battery level fell below a certain point it operated the central locking, locking both the car and my old house keys in the car – after I’d locked the house up. I ended up having to break a window to get back in, so I don’t want something similar to happen with the caravan. Plus, of course, experience tells you that when it inevitably does let you down, you’ll be miles from home with no jump leads.

The battery is on charge as I type this and will remain so overnight, but I think that tomorrow I’ll have to remind myself of its size so I can make a trip, probably back to Carrefour in Sarlat where I bought the last one, as they delivered such excellent service swapping the new one they’d supplied that failed after a few weeks, promptly and without question. Good service should always be rewarded, I think.

So anyway, while the battery was initially charging, I ended up having to cart a lot of the new store’s components up by hand – unfortunately nearly all of the wall and roof sheets, which are the heaviest. Before I did so I also swept off all of the acorns that had been deposited on the store’s new concrete base, a huge pile actually, hoed the ground around it and levelled the earth a bit pulling as much as I could into the gaps left around the concrete after the shuttering was removed. It’s far from perfect but there’ll be plenty of earth available once they start digging out for the footings and slab for my new house, so final adjustments can be left until later.

Here are all the components laid out ready for me to start work assembling them, hopefully tomorrow.

It’s far from ideal, leaving the roof and wall sheets lying uncovered on the ground as they are fabricated from only very lightweight metal sheet that’s very easily damaged by a weight pressing or falling on it. However, they should only be there for a day or so, so hopefully nothing untoward will happen in that time. I’m also pleased, as shown by the final pic below, that I’ve now almost succeeded in clearing the bottom of my land again.

There are now only the wooden table and chairs set that I brought with me from Plazac under a tarpaulin and two generators. I’m hanging onto them for now because the smaller one that I brought from the UK that stopped charging when a switch on its panel got damaged and that I was going to throw away, I think might still work if the switch in question and the associated wiring is replaced correctly. I’d like to try anyway.

The larger one was working fine until I went to restart it after not using it for a couple of weeks or so and found that the engine was ‘blocked’ at a certain point in its revolutionary cycle. I think that I’ll not be able to save it if it’s something like a dropped valve or broken piston ring as it’ll be practically impossible to acquire any spares, but it has some handy parts on it, such as French type sockets that I’ll be able to transfer to the other generator if I can get that working. Anyway, I intend to put both of them into the new store when it’s finished – assuming that there will be enough space – until I can get around to them. The large one also has a practically full fuel tank – contents that are not to be sniffed at now that fuel prices are beginning to go through the roof…