So, I decided to buy a new cement mixer rather than buy a second hand one with questionable reliability and it turned up today.
Its the first time I have ever actually seen a brand new Belle mixer so I decided to take a photo for posterity.
They’re rarely seen in the wild so please take some time to marvel at its fresh, unmolested beauty.
I give you the rare beast – the brand new Belle Minimix 150
So, following the approval from building control we have started to get the footings dug.
Got Tristam Mayes from Mayes Plant Hire round with his mini digger and tracked dumper to get the footings excavated. He operated the digger and I drove the dumper.
There’s 22 linear metres of trench and the whole job took a little while longer than originally planned, as the corner closest to the beech tree was absolutely full of lumps of flint which made progress very slow going.
It took three visits from this truck to remove all of the spoil.
Nearly done
I had to dig out both the corners by hand due to there being a 6 inch sewer pipe running across the property which we did not want to disturb. This pipe has got to be shuttered when the footings are poured as the concrete cannot place any load on the clay pipe.
We decided to visit Cambridge early one morning to do a bit of shopping and to look at the ipad pro. Decided that a little stroll around Cambridge would also be nice, we headed down this lane which leads to the River Cam.
So, we want to build an extension on the side and back of our house and I want to do as much of the work myself as I possibly can. This obviously starts with an idea which I need to illustrate on paper or in this case, draw on my PC with a planning tool called Sketchup.
Now I didn’t stumble across this program on my own, I found a website of another chap who has done the very same type of project himself and has kindly written a blog all about it upon which he referenced this very program. Therefore I have downloaded it and decided to give the extension drawing a bash and see what it looks like.
Here’s my first attempt.
This is our house as it currently stands.
We want to extend the building at the side with two storeys and round the back with a single storey. This will add one bedroom with an en-suite bathroom, a utility room and a large kitchen/dining room.
Well, the Sage that I bought has started playing up and due to the fact Lakeland offer a two year return guarantee, I decided to take it back.
The grinder started producing varying results and the portafilter kept sticking to the group head. Not what I expect from a £550 machine.
Wasn’t very happy with the performance of the steamer either as I couldn’t get a decent froth no matter how hard I tried, plus it spat out about an eggcup full of water before any steam was produced. Not exactly what hype made out.
So, having searched the coffee forums I eventually settled on a more professional machine, a La Spaziale Vivaldi II which as it turns out is a far superior machine in just about every way. It does not have a built in grinder but it has a dual boiler system and a rotary pump so no more chug chug chug chug when I pull an espresso.
It does however take about fifteen minutes to heat up in the morning, but that’s small price to pay for such a lovely coffee.
Here’s a video update clip of my habanero, scotch bonnet and cayenne chillies, bought them their very own grow house!
The grow house was from Homebase and cost £50. The fixings that were supplied were not very good quality so I replaced the screws with better ones and also glued the whole thing together with polyurethane wood glue, now it’s nice and strong.
I have picked about ten green cayenne chillies off the plants, and given them away. None have reached a red colour yet.
Not sure which plants are habaneros and which are scotch bonnet, will let them continue to grow and see when they ripen.
They’re much bigger now, and the Cayenne is producing some fruit, which I keep picking off in an attempt to allow the plant to grow a little larger.
Well, after a day of hard web research, I shortlisted some PC speakers to replace my Altecs, the list is as follows;
Although I do like Bowers and Wilkins equipment (I have the Zeppelin Air and it sounds incredible) It appears the B&W don’t have a sub, and therefore produce all their bass from the two desktop speakers.
According to some reviews on-line this apparently can cause the desk they are on (in my case) to vibrate excessively. Excluded these.
The Klipsch look good and the reviews are great, but as John Lewis had the BOSE on display and I could actually listen to them, I decided to get them.
Now I have to look forward to running them in for the next few months.
After having my Altec Lansing MX5021 desktop speakers for the past 9 years and put up with the increasingly loud standby hum for ages I decided to take the unit apart and have a look and see what was the cause.
The Altecs are looking a bit sorry for themselves now, they’ve fallen off my desk countless times, survived about 5 house moves but still sound incredible.
However, there’s always been a low hum from the amp/subwoofer box so I took the unit apart on Tuesday night and tried to find out what was causing it.
As soon as the unit was apart the cause of the hum was dramatically easy to locate, it’s the transformer.
I detached the transformer from the casing (its screwed and glued) and re-mounted it on a thick bed of silicone to try and damp the humming.
The windings themselves were really hot despite the unit not being driven for some time before the strip down, the same was true for the heat sink on the amplifier board, it was still very hot about 35 minutes after power down.
One thing I didn’t like the look of was that the sub casing was filled with fibreglass insulation which actually covered the transformer and the heat sink. Strange build choice.
Put the whole unit back together and tested, the hum is still there. Bummer.
January 2014
As you can see, they’re growing strongly.
My garden and this windowsill are south facing, so the plants are doing really well, as they get full sun all day.
Had a small chilli off of the cayenne, but snipped it off to make the plant concentrate on growing stronger.