I have found the key !

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all my readers!
No real news, I only wanted to report that the key that was lost has been found!
No idea where it had been but it turned up in one of those odd dishes we have around for emptying pocket change and general kipple into. Well, I was emptying my pocket of kipple and there it was lying in the dish! The key that was lost.

So the key has returned!

Electric Weekend

I bunked off work early on Thursday afternoon, stuffed some clothes in a bag and headed for Geneva. I arrived at about 4:30 just in time to meet Rob from the plane and then we were off again. We had intended originally to rent a mini digger and move tonnes of earth and rocks about this weekend but worried about the weather and being buried in snow we wimped out and settled for doing some electrical work in my chalet. On the way up to Morzine Rob wanted to pick up some shutters for his windows, which he assured me would fit in the car. Well, fair play, the did actually fit in the car, but they were resting on the front seat, Rob was squeezed in somewhere at the back, I could only just get 5th gear and each time we turned left I thought the whole lot of it was going to slip over on top of me. Any way we made it with no significant damage to the car (or the window shutters)

Along the way we had discussed my previous trip and why I was unable to get in. When we arrived low and behold there was a key in the other side of the lock, just as my wife had suspected.

Rob was very apologetic, he said he and his wife had spoken about just this and decided that because I only had this key that they should not leave the key in the lock. and then they did. Well not them, apparently the cleaner is the most likely suspect. So we have revised our key arrangements especially in light of the fact that I still cant find my other key so I have reclaimed the spare one from Rob.

The next morning we head down town for breakfast and supplies, although it turned out to be supplies and lunch, but that it typical. Rob seems to have lost the cheque I gave him in the post so I have to cancel the cheque and get him a new one, so I see my friendly bank manager Julian, and have a quick chat, he tells me that he could probably lend me the 30,000 Euros it would take to finish the place off. Interesting news. Anyway, Viourons (DIY shop) supplied us with electrical goodies at vast expense and we headed back to fix them up. I had lights and sockets for the garage and power sockets for the bedroom. Easy stuff.
Rob fixed up my earth breaker and hid it all behind a piece of wood screwed to the wall while I screwed sockets and switched to the wall and tried to measure gaine. Eventually we got the power sockets wired in to the consumer unit and they work. Now we had extra sockets for the power tools and importantly the halogen flood light. Its getting dark and we are just finishing off the lighting circuit, I am about to wire the cable into the consumer unit when the bulb blows in the flood light and we are plunged into darkness. OK enough for tonight, come back tomorrow.

The next day, Saturday, as usual we spend the morning in town doing stuff which seems necessary at the time but seems to take up a really long time, so the afternoon is taken up with wiring up the remaining lights and making it all fairly tidy and then we move on to the bedroom.

Four plug sockets later and a bit of fiddling around with the new fixtures and I have power upstairs in the bedroom. Cool.

We have also discovered that we are connected to the mains sewerage at last.

That afternoon we spent fixing up bits of wood in Robs chalet, trying to sound proof it a little bit. seems to work well but its a bit dodgy up that high on the ladder!

Sunday morning and I attack the pristine woodwork around my kitchen. I hope the splash back will cover up any mess I make of the timber, but I have to cut big holes in it in order to pull out my cables. Those cables that I ran nearly a whole year ago! and what do you know, the chippies had made little marks where the cables should be and there were there! Next time I am back we will have power in the kitchen.

I need a few more supplies and a day or so I should have power in both the kitchen and the salon upstairs.

The next big job is the garage wall. This is a must if I am to get any heat in the rest of the place. I think the plan should be go as soon as possible for another weekend, while there arrange account at Viourons then arrange a long weekend and a delivery to coincide and get a load of stuff delivered. Framing timber, plasterboard, cement, sand, gravel, insulation, and anything else I can think of. make it a full lorry load as the delivery costs a fortune.

The Keys of Misfortune

Well we all set of for Morzine on Friday night. The whole family, thought it would be nice, spend the weekend in France. Siew Ling has not seen the chalet for a while and there have been a few changes since.
One minor problem before we left. I have mislaid the key to my chalet! Yes the most important key in my life at the moment and I cant remember what I did with it!
OK I thought I gave Rob a key maybe he left that spare key in his chalet or if not I can get in through the garage. Fine so off we go. As we got to the Swiss border on the pas de Morgins the snow was falling and there was about an inch on the road. The car is rubbish in the snow and I realized I had no chains and what the swiss call summer tyres on the car. Crawling up to hill to the border the traction control is flashing and the back end is weaving. Not a good sign with the col du Corbier to come! So I took the longer way and went down the valley then back up the Morzine valley rather than take the pass over the mountains. Great we got to Robs chalet at about 10:30 ish and I discover the key I have for Robs front door does not fit! Well it fits it just will not turn. Its like its the wrong key. I was slightly annoyed. Phone calls to Rob who was very helpful but still could not get in the door. So with mobile phones going dead on me the snow falling, the temperature dropping from -4 downwards and both kids now awake moaning at how late it is, we admit defeat.
OK stay at a hotel and try again in the morning? try what again?
Bum.
So to save what was left of the weekend we drove 4 hours back to Zurich! 3 am we got back and I still cant find my keys!

Too good to true

Well thats typical, apparently I dont have 17000 euros left, in fact I need another 5000 to pay off the last invoice. Great. I spent the last few days trying to work out how to spend the money and what would order to do things in.

Bugger.

I still have to go over my figures to see where I went wrong but the bank says there is only 2500 left and an invoice of 7500 to pay.

Oh well.

Strange Money ?

I have been trying to work out exactly how much money I have left in the mortgage after the latest bills are paid. I get about 17000 Euros. IF this is true then this is very good news indeed. Thats a lot of work. A lot of timber. A kitchen. Heating. Floors.
Cool. I thought I had run out and would have to stump up the balance for these latest bills.

Now all I have to do is confirm that really is the sum available and figure out the best way to spend it!

Weekend in Morzine

I went this weekend, primarily to try and get as much "paint" on the chalet as possible. Rob was going to be there and he had offered his help in painting. I knew I only had a very limited time, about one day of actual working so I would have to be quick. For this reason I bought a spray gun. Its a big hair drier really.



I need to paint the entire chalet in three coats. First a wood preservative against termites and fungus, then two coats (at least) of varnish. All the wood. Even the hard to reach bits up under the eaves of the roof.

I went down to Viourons, intending to buy 25liters of fungicide/pesticide to put on the timber of the chalet before varnishing. They only had 5 litres. OK no idea how long it will take to put 5lt on so lets have that and see what happens.
According to the can, 1 lt of preservative should cover 5 square meters. OK so I load up the spry gun with 1lt and mentally work out an area of timber that’s about 5 square meters and spray. About a minute later the area is covered and I have a bit left so I continue on. Great this 5lt Can is going to last about 20 minutes including refills!
This was not the main problem however, by spraying the stuff on I was creating a cloud of noxious vapour (with me in the middle of it) I had a dust mask on but that was useless and by the time I had finished the 5 litres I was really quite ill, nose and eyes streaming, coughing and spluttering. Horrible.

OK so I am not going to get much more of this stuff on the chalet this weekend, not without a vapour mask.
Something like this:

Any how with that out of the picture Rob and I decided to try and get the electricity cable in, maybe the two of us could achieve what I had failed on my own. No luck, we pushed and pulled but got no further than I had before. We even employed the kids to reach down the pipe the cable was going to appear from to see if they could touch it. No luck.






I decided to try and chase back the gaine under the floor in order to determine where the problem was. So with a huge breaker I start smashing up my garage floor! Only to find to my dismay that the gaine is actually leading in almost completely the wrong direction! It must do a huge loop and come back round out the front. No wonder the cable gets stuck. Garage door and electric post are on the left, cable duct is going right!



That evening we went out to a restaurant for dinner and met up with Leon from next door. We all got talking to the proprietor of the restaurant. Leon announced that he had just the tool for getting cable through gaine. Great we will try tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning and Leon is up and about holding a very thin length of wire which has no chance of helping at all. Never mind he quickly decided what we need is lubricant and as we all know "there is always time for lubricant!" Vigorous sprays of lube all over the cable and down into the gaine it goes, a bit of fishing around and up it comes!!





Hurray! Fantastic. The weekend is worth it just for this. I quickly wire up the distribution box and include the earth cable and like magic I have a plug socket in my Chalet! Electricity. Power. Finally.
I am very happy.

Other good news is that we have water as well. Who every it was has attached a tap and meter and water comes out. Wow.



And even more good news, the town has been busy and they have brought a sewage pipe all the way up the road to just outside my chalet. All that remains is to connect from the septic tank to the sewer and we all have mains sewerage.



Good weekend, marred only by the fact that I have no money left and some huge bills to pay.
The final (I hope it the final) bills from the carpenters and the concrete, earthwork guys. and the planning permission bill and another tax bill that I find out Rob has been paying for me up to now.
Lots of bills.

Mind you the inside of the chalet looks nice now that they have put all the timber on the walls. I suppose all that will need varnishing too!

Bathroom Building

I spent the last week in Morzine, camping out in my chalet. Not the sanest idea I have ever had but it was fun (and cheaper than a hotel) but with no running water in the chalet yet it was a bit on the dirty and dusty side.

I arrived on Sunday night, around 8 ish, about an hour or so before it got dark. Just enough time to have a look around and set up camp.



I have tiles ! I have a chimney!



I was not staying at Robs place this time as he had paying guests in for a couple of weeks. I waved my hello's to Leon, the neighbor and considered introducing myself to Robs guests, no it was a little late, tomorrow would be fine. About midnight Leon, led by Robs intrepid guest, came looking for suspected burglars! Quite what Leon though was lost on me as I hastily introduced my self with assurances that I did in fact own this chalet and I was not a burglar.

Monday
Woke up later than I intended after a much colder night than I anticipated. Bright sunshine. Drove down to Thonon, about 30/40 minutes away to the big DIY shop. Asked for some cable 16mm2 red 16mm blue and some 25mm2 earth, It took the assistant nearly an hour to coil up these three bits of cable and I pottered about looking patient, collected odd bits of electrical goodies. Then off to the plumbing section and load up with a toilet. Nice suspended one, exactly the same one Rob and I had installed in his chalet all those months ago when we built his first bathroom. Now with a few bits of wood and some other stuff the trolley was rather unwieldy so I decided to check out this lot and come straight back in for the bath and sink. Check out OK load the car, come back to the shop to find it has closed for lunch! Will not open for another 2 hours!. Fine I have enough stuff I will come back tomorrow. So drive back to Morzine.
Its now about 1 ish by the time I get back and I make a start on the bathroom to be. Well just the toilet is not going to get me very far and it is obvious that the hole in the floor intended for the toilet is in completely the wrong place without major pipework. So in order to keep it simple I decide to break another hole in the floor to get the toilet waste pipe through. Having already decided on the layout of the bathroom, bath against the wall on the right toilet against the out side wall in the middle and sink opposite the door against the outside wall. I took the plunge and started to break a hole in the floor. Relatively straight forward, no major reinforcement issues. But I could not position the toilet finally without the bath. So that would have to wait. What now?
OK what about electricity. One of the tasks I wanted to do this week was finally get that big cable through the gaine and bring the power inside. No joy. I spent an hour or so heaving around the cable and messing about. It was having none of it. The carpenters have rigged up a plug wired into the temporary supply so extension leads will have to do for now. OK, if the main cable will not go then maybe the 16mm and earth will. Bit luckier this time and I was able to thread the cables through this bit of gaine.



You can see the earth cable coming through the hole in wall there.
No luck with the big cable though. OK I bought some stuff to remake the door in the garage, so I set about rebuilding that. I have gone from a super heavy weight piece of removable wall to a light weight door that actually opens on real hinges!

Tuesday
Woken up at 8:00 by the carpenter poking about checking that his guys had been working, he informed my that I had left my car windows open all night and that it was raining, great. I drove back down to Thonon in a damp seat in the pouring rain, bough my sink and bath, which was very difficult to maneuver through the check out. My car passed its design criteria with flying colours, a bath can fit comfortably inside (with all the seats removed) Back to Morzine, off load and head down to the local DIY store to get some timber.
I obviously bought the most expensive timber in the entire world and some blue insulation. The timber I wanted would be described in the UK as rough sawn, which I now believe the DIY shop provided on the other side of the road (the shop is split in to 2 sections one on either side of the road) what I got was planed timber, not really the sort you hide away in a stud partition wall. Never mind it was wood it was going to be fine.

Arriving back at the chalet I noticed a strange damp patch on my drive. It had stopped raining but this patch was spreading from beneath the rock walls that have been newly installed. The problem was it was not water. It was sewage. Sewage from Robs chalet bubbling up from under the wall and running down my drive. Great, another problem. Hervè was going to have to sort this one.

So with the bath in place, I could work out where the toilet should go and fix it to the wall (surprisingly close to directly over the hole I had broken in the floor!)



So I started on the stud walls.




I laid out and screwed down the sole plates first, apparently you should do the roof plates first but with one person this is impossible. So I opted for the more practical approach which meant the floor first then screw the uprights to the walls.

Wednesday
Visit to Hervè and he assures me that some one will come out to check the leaky sewage, sure enough in the afternoon a guy comes along assures me that yes it is merdè, and that he will be along with a digger to fix it tomorrow.
Also asked Hervè about the water, when is it going to be turned on? He will ask the mayor and get back to me.

With the uprights on the walls using some temporary braces and chocks I manages to wedge the roof beams/plates up long enough to screw them in place then I was able to install the other uprights. With these in place the noggins can be cut and nailed in.




Some of the noggins are a bit wonky but everything was plumb and pretty sturdy.
I then had a go at the floor of the bathroom. The blue insulation is 50mm thick and the timber is 70mm thick. It is actually finished floor level, so the bits under where the doors will go may have to come out or maybe I will raise the floor level a touch to go over these bits. The blue insulation went down really well once I had got the right technique for getting round the cables. Rather than trying to cut grooves in a single piece just cut the piece and then the groove is just a notch in one side. works well.

While I was busy with all this the carpenters had arrived and were busy inside prepping the walls for the layer of T & G. A lot of preparation. The also put in the chimney.




Thursday
Still raining, so I finished the stud walls and started on the support for the sink. Using the only wood I had It turned into quite a monster.



Still, it works, although I am not sure the sink it quite right.
Back to the local DIY shop for some more bits of pipe work and I managed to plumb in the toilet.



Rains all day, no digger to fix the sewage and no water guy although Hervè says he night be out on Friday or Monday, we shall see.

Friday
My last day, The water guy tuns up, now, Rob and I have always disputed with Herve that that the builders actually installed a stop tap for my chalet. Hervè insists that they did but we have never been able to turn it. We know where is should be, there are 2 plates in the road one for Robs chalet and supposedly one for mine but mine has nothing under it. We have told Hervè this but he assures us its OK. So the water guy comes around and after putting a tap on the water pipe in my chalet spends about 45 minutes fishing around with this enormous key on a pole trying to turn a stop tap (that might not be there) at least 2 meters down a narrow pipe. Eventually he gives up declare that its "impossible" and disappears. What?? What now?
I have to leave and everything is still up in the air.

OK so I have half a bathroom, but still no electricity and no water.
But I now have a roof and I have keys to my front door!

Tiling

Rob (who is visiting his chalet today) reports that the carpenters are in and applying insulation to my roof! They have gerry rigged the electricity cable by just slinging a cable across the drive and they are away!
Maybe I will have tiles by the time I get there in August.

Blasted, Bastille Day

Friday afternoon, we left Zurich at a very respectable 3 o'clock, motered on down to France over the pas de Morgins, over the col du Corbier, arrive in Morzine at 7:30 (ish) fantastic, 4 hour driving with a half hour break along the way. Right, we need some food, go to the supermarket. The supermarket is open. Result. Siew Ling goes in and gets busy buying food. I see this big notice on the door and translate it to mean "This shop will be CLOSED Saturday 14th July" That's tomorrow, why is the shop closed? OK "Siew Ling we need to get more food, this shop is closed tomorrow" Fine no problem.
As we are leaving my brain has reached a conclusion that it now provides: 14th July why does that ring a bell? what does that remind me of? Bastille Day! France's National Holiday! Everything will be closed on Saturday. All the supermarkets, all the shops, all the DIY shops! Arse!

We arrived at the chalet to find a bit of a transformation, the chalet no longer has a big hole all round it. It has been back filled and landscaped.



I now have a driveway! with a drain out side my garage! More surprises, I have a earth cable, in a weird place but I have an earth, not connected to the consumer unit, but its an earth! I have a temporary supply box, all connected to the overhead wires, with a meter and everything, just what he EDF billed me for!



But no connection to my Chalet. OK I can do that, I just need 20 metres of 16mm four ply cable and an earth cable to connect the consumer unit up and all this was planned, I can go to the DIY shop on Saturday and buy all of what I need and get my power on.

But no, tomorrow is Bastille day and everything is closed!

So Saturday came round and sure enough everything was closed, except, embarrassingly enough the supermarket, I had misread the sign which said "This shop will be OPEN 14th July" Oh well everything I need to be open was closed.

Any way It probably saved me money as I had to improvise. I scrapped my original idea of how to block up the garage and went with a new off the cuff design (as usual) The door turned into a removable section of wall rather than the elegant doorway I had planned but it will function. No hinges mean the door doesn't really open rather it falls!



Oh it was so hot. The sun was burning hot all weekend, absolutely fantastic weather, maybe not for working out side but great sunshine.

With the garage blocked up I could move some (nearly all) of Robs tools into my garage so as not to disturb his guests next time I am there (4th August I hope).

As the garage doors/wall went up I was thinking about the electricity, how best to connect it. In the end I removed the cable I put in last time from the entrance to the consumer unit. This cable is the one the builders donated. Its not bad and I am sure its fine, its just I don't trust it as part of the permanent fixtures so I will use this cable to go from the pylon to the garage and then some spare 10mm from the garage to the consumer unit. The builders cable is the only bit of cable I had available that would reach without cannibalising the already installed 10mm in the kitchen.

So I tried all Sunday morning to thread this big ugly cable down the ducts from the pylon to the garage. Funny thing is the duct changes colour, the duct at the pylon is orange and has a smooth interior, the duct at the garage is red and has a horrible ribbed interior just right for catching cables on. This is a bad sign, I was not convinced they were actually the same duct but some listening and shouting and wobbling cable around indicated they were possible connected. Anyway I tried all morning, I carefully prepared the end, I pushed and pulled, I pulled it all out and laid it all out and twisted the kinks out of it I let it warm up in the sun, I pushed and pulled from both ends, I couldn't get the thing through! It would go about as far as the chalet then no further! bad sign! but the other way it would go a lot further and then stop.
For some reason I am relatively convinced that the ducts do actually join up, why I am not sure when everything points to the fact that the are not joined. Maybe it the hard work involved in digging them up to prove it that I am avoiding!

So no electricity for me this weekend, but I have block the garage up.

A New Electric Dimension

Surprise, I got a bill from the EDF last night, 250 Euros. Not certain quite what for but it is a good sign. It should mean the temporary electricity box is installed under the pylon. I may not quite have power to the house and I might not have an earth but I think I might be connected to the mains !!


The title is from some song that keeps going round in my head, I think its by Dreadzone, I think the song is called "Third Wave"

Planning a visit

I am going to Morzine on Friday and I hope to seal up the garage doors. Hopefully I can put a door in as well because without the keys to the front door I will not be able to get in!

This trip is also a recon. mission to determine just what has been done and what hasn't. Hervè tells me the electricity is in, but quite what this means I don't know. I hope it means the consumer unit is wired up to get power rather than the earth spike has been put in. That and the water, Hervè doesn't seem to know quite what is going on as regards the water supply but he has said he will find out.
Apparently Leon (the next door neighbour) has started to connect his sewerage up to the mains that stopped down the road a bit. This means we might be able to piggy back his pipe and have a real connection soon!

My plan is to go out this weekend and block up the garage doors, this will make the place relatively secure and I can leave stuff in there. As it is at the moment anything in the garage is in plain sight from the road, so not ideal. Once the garage doors are sealed I can move my stuff out of Robs garage and into my own. I plan on going down for a whole week in August and Rob has guests in his chalet so my usual ploy of running an extension lead from his garage into my chalet wont be too popular. Also raiding his tools might arouse suspicion! So this weekend I will move what ever I need out of Robs garage and into mine.

My First Consumer Unit

The backfilling has begun! A big yellow JCB type machine has been busy slinging mud around, generally in the direction of the hole around the chalet. One slight disappointment is the absence of any earth cable, although this is not the end of the world (it can be installed as a 2 meter spike in the ground) I was told that this would be done before the backfilling. Well some things don't change. In order to avoid any complications when or if the electrics are installed I decided I needed a consumer unit on the wall so the carpenters can use extension leads to power their power tools. So this weekend my son and I drove down to Morzine and met up with Rob and his family who are staying in their chalet for a week. Rob and I went down to the DIY shop at the edge of town and I bought this:

A consumer unit. This was priced at over 300 euros but I was charged 192 ?? I think it was Robs account that got us a discount. Sounds well worth getting an account !







So I slapped this on the wall round about where the final consumer unit will go
and wired in one of the breakers to one of the plug sockets. Then as that had taken all of 10 minutes I threaded the big three phase cable generously donated by the builders through the red ducting from the garage door to the consumer unit and wired it up.

Very nice !

I bought the power in at the top because, most likely this is a temporary fitting and I wanted to be certain that I would have enough length of cable to allow me to move the consumer unit around if I have to.




The other end of the cable comes out by the door:

The three phase cable has four cables running in it, three phase and one neutral. It is very heavy.

Now when the electrician turns up to provide a temporary electric supply he should be bright enough to connect up this cable as long as we have an earth as well. With no earth the plugs will be very dangerous to use. I bet that wont stop them!


Just to the right of this photo you can see the temporary supply box. This contains some electric stuff and will eventually sit below the power pole on the other side of the drive and connect up to the overhead wires. Then a cable will run from the white box through the other red duct and can be connected to my cable and that will give me electricity ! Simple huh !

The backfilling has started and they have connected up the sewage pipes to Robs septic tank, well I think maybe it is half mine as I paid enormous amounts to have it moved, any way the sewage appears to be connected. The drains running at the bottom of the back fill connect in to the down pipes from the gutters. I didn't know this before but it seems stupid not to really.


This is the back corner of the garage the 2 90 degree bends one will be turned up and connect to the down pipe from the roof the other will direct the flow across in front of the garage and out presumably under the road ?





It is the end of May and although, yes the backfilling has begun, nothing else has. The backfilling will take about 2 weeks to finish according to M Bergoend (the concrete guy) He was up at Robs place this week trying to persuade Rob to get his drive tarmacked. He was saying apparently that I am going to have my drive done and that Rob should get his done at the same time. Well I am not getting my drive done. That is so low on the priority list as to be off the scale.

I will have to watch what is going on other wise they will spend all my mortgage on stuff I don't want (yet)

Meeting Hervè

Arranged a meeting for today with Hervè to discuss several points about the chalet. I congratulated him on getting all but 2 of the windows in and he presented me with a bill, 20 grand ! Those are some expensive windows.

Hervè also gave me a tax bill for 4500 for 2 years tax, lovely. Thanks. Apparently the tax people have been trying to track me down at various addresses in Switzerland and eventually resorted to sending the bill to Hervè to forward to me.

Hervè says:
The roof will be done by the end of June
The chimney will be done by the end of June
The gutters and downpipes will be done by the end of June
The insulation and the internal T&G will be done by the end of June.
The backfilling will be done by the end of May
The earth cable will be put in before the backfilling
A temporary electric supply will be established
The water situation will be resolved and I will get a tap and meter installed.

So all in all There should be a fair amount of activity in the next few months.

Rob requested the backfilling be done as soon as possible as he has guests coming. Well Hervè phoned the builder and apparently the builder van do it in the next couple of weeks. I will be amazed if it is done but we shall try. I will write an email to Hervè outlining the points we made and the dates he said things would happen.

This trip was the first in our new car. It went great. Ohmri accompanied me and we drove from Zürich to Morzine. I figured that if I was going to spend any time in Morzine then I was going to need a car of my own rather than rent each time. Originally I was going to get some pick up type vehicle or a 4x4. The new Nissan pick up looked good we could even put the kids in the rear seats. Problem was the rear seats are OK but not for any distance. So the pick up idea was reluctantly shelved and we ended up looking at Renault Espace. Big car roomy comfortable and all the seats come out so it sort of turns into a van when required. So we bought one.

Didn't really get a whole lot done on this trip but fixed down the cables a bit more. Ohmri got ill and we left for home on Saturday afternoon about 15.30 got home at 19.30 so 4 hours door to door, going over the Col du Corbier (a lovely switchback of a road that climbs a pass and is real wiggly) and that was with a twenty minute rest stop. So I am pleased. It went well and we will do it again soon as I have arranged to meet up with Rob at the end of the month.

Now to see if I have any money to pay these bills.....

Quote from Leon

Leon (my next door neighbour) has sent a quote for the garage doors: 4400 Euros ! sounds a bit pricey, but I think Herve's quote was over 10 grand.

In other news Rob and his family are staying in Morzine this week and have reported that the glass is going in to my windows. Sounds like I will have to take Leon up on the garage doors.

Happy Easter

Just got back from a very nice Easter long weekend in Morzine. Finally made it back, seems like ages since I was there. My first surprise was that the window frames are in and I have a front door:
The chalet its self is all still in one piece. Apart from some blocks that have fallen over as the builders have not got round to backfilling around the chalet yet. One of the things I need to talk to Herve about.

I managed to do quite a bit in the three days I had to work, well two and a half as I lost half a day blinded in one eye! Long story but I was wearing all the protective gear, goggles, ear defenders, face mask and still I managed to get something in my eye!

Anyway drilling lots of holes and breaking chunks pf concrete to make room for plug sockets

These take about 45 minutes each and leave you with no feeling in your hands for about ten minutes after that! The look tiny but they are hard work. Even harder was chasing out the concrete above my head for this cable

This cable comes out above here just to the side of the big wooden pillar upstairs. It needs to be chased in like this as it will be visible until it gets below the door.



One of the big things I wanted to try out this time was some paint I found in the local diy superstore (called Jumbo) so in a scientific frame of mind I read the instructions and discovered that the 7kg of paint I had bought was supposed to cover all of 3 meters square, So I marked out three square meters so as to get the correct thickness. Then I read that the paint needed a primer on absorbent surfaces, well fresh raw concrete is pretty absorbent so I guess I need a primer, but do I really as buying primer was about half as much as the paint. So I devised a further experiment! (cue maniacal laughter and thunder clap!) I divided the three square meter into six areas, three I painted with primer, 1 I would apply the paint to the fresh concrete and the other two I would make the concrete damp first and then apply the paint. I was awarding marks for ease of application, finished surface and durability.









Before and after.
I let it dry overnight and came back to discover no discernible difference between any of the panels at all. It was all stuck to the wall solidly and all looked pretty much the same. The only difference therefore was how easy it had been to put on and the only thing I would say there was that the primer and the damp surface was marginally easier that the dry panel. So I wont be messing about with the expensive primer. Well maybe on some important places like the stair roofs, but other than that I will be washing the walls and applying. The finished surface looks like this:


This is fine and very similar to the finish we have in our current apartment.



I managed to do lots, more electrics and run loads more wires around and through and all over the place. I have christened the hole most of them disappear down, "The snake pit"


I marked out where all the internal walls were going to go.
I swept the whole chalet to remove all the debris from previous visits, made a lot of difference. I marked out the kitchen.

Things to do next:
Speak to Herve about temporary power.
Speak to Herve about water.
Find out from Herve about what the time table is for back filling, tiling and finishing off.
Get more 2.5 mm cable and install the rest of the plug socket wiring upstairs.
Internal walls
Water
Floors (upstairs at least)

So everything to play for then ....

Robs Chalet is finished!

Robs Chalet is finished. We were there this week and installed his garage doors and the EDF has installed his proper mains electricity. So his chalet is now finished. Apart from the million and one little things to do, but he is not reliant on any one now. All the official jobs are done, well actually I just thought of one thing he might not have done yet. The marie that gave him his planning permission has to sign off the chalet to say its built properly. Maybe this has already been done. I will ask.

Anyway we were there on Monday night to Wednesday and most of that was spent fixing the last bits of wiring for Robs electrics before the EDF came to turn him all on. Biggest surprise is that apparently we are 3 phase.

Three Phase electricity. Not much of a problem but as Rob had designed his consumer unit on the assumption that the supply would a single phase it was a bugger to change it all around in order to accommodate three phase. But the electrician had sorted most of that out before Robs inspection. He passed his inspection and that is why he was able to get full power turned on yesterday, up until then he was only on a temporary supply which kept tripping out.

In my chalet we drilled some holes through concrete floors and walls in order to run the gaine through and allow the installation of the switches and light fittings.
Not a huge amount of work but important to do. I need to do a huge cabling job now and run some serious amounts of cable into the house. Rob has given me a load of cable which he was using to get power from his temporary supply, about 50 meters of 10mm blue and red which will sort out the appliances in the kitchen. Quite expensive stuff so I save a bit there, Thanks Rob. We also salvaged the electric box and contents that housed the temporary supply so hopefully I can reuse that as well. I need to speak to Hervè about establishing a temporary supply as they will not be able to hack into robs any more. After we had fitted Robs garage doors Rob gave me the panels that were replaced. It is just a shame they do not fit in my garage door holes! Mine are considerably bigger both ways than Robs are.

The company that makes the garage doors is owned by our next door neighbour, Leon Bettenfeld. They make garage doors, so it seemed appropriate to get a deal from him rather than mess about with anybody else. He will price me up a set of garage doors for about 3500 Euros and fit them around April time. Sounds good. He also mentioned that someone had been around measuring the windows about a week ago. This is a good sign. I suppose I could have some windows and doors come April !

3000 Euros from the bank

The bank has admitted it made another mistake and refunded the 3000 Euros to my current account.

Statement of Account

Well the bank is looking even worse this morning. I got a statement in the post and it appears they have lost 3000 Euros!
I have a mortgage with the bank and the arrangement is that I inform the bank that an invoice needs paying and they credit the money into my current account (from the mortgage amount) and then pay the invoice out of my current account.
So with these payments messed up by the bank they seem to have messed up again. They credited my account with 103386.39 but made two payments totalling 106386.39
So I am down 3000 Euros.
I looked at the balance and thought, "What ??? where has all the money gone?" The bank tries to nickel and dime you to death at the best of times but 3000 is a bit much to swallow.
So I am on to the bank again and I am quite interested to hear what they have to say. I do hope this is their mistake, maybe I have run out of money!
No, I don't think so there should be about 53000 or so left. That has got to cover the roof, the windows, doors and the internal T&G.

Managing the Bank Manager

The bank has just gone down in my estimation.
This morning Hervè sent me an email asking that I pay the last invoices he gave me.
This was a surprise as I had sent the invoices and instructions to pay them to the bank ages ago. So I tried to phone the bank but could not speak to the right person so I sent them an email asking what had happened and enclosing a copy of the email requesting payment.
Now I get an email saying "Oh yes I made a mistake and they haven't been paid but I will pay them today." ????

Great, I cant trust the bank to pay the invoices. So in the future the bank will need chasing each day to ensure the invoices are actually paid.

Only in France!

P.P.P.P.P.P.

A friend of mine once quoted the six P's of any Project "Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance". Well I have been planning this enterprise for about six years so we shall see how this cliché stands up.

A lot of the planing recently has been around the electrics. What is the best way to install the electrics in my chalet? Well the French electric book is a gold mine of information, extremely useful and not as difficult to read/translate as I imagined it might be. After all, the subject matter is fairly narrow and it doesn't take much to figure out if the book is saying do this or don't do this.
Hmmmm. Sounds like famous last words!.

The consumer unit is the box that houses all the trips and RCD's and what not that distribute the electricity around the house. What used to be fuse boxes and now is Micro Circuit Breakers (MCB) or Residual Current Detectors (RCD). This is basically a largish box on the wall with three, maybe four rows of trip switches in it. Each row starts with a big switch called the Interrupteur differential which is and RCD on the the earth and trips the power to that row if it detects any current flow in the earth for that row. (I think ?) The row contains several smaller trip switches or MCB called disjocteur divisionnaire These are rated in Amps and will trip if the current in that circuit exceeds the rated amount.

So as I understand it you are protected from overloading by the disjocteur divisionnaire and from electrocution by the Interrupteur differential.

So what I have to do now is figure out what stuff I need/want in the chalet that will use electricity and where it will be and then figure out how to get the wire to it, then figure out which trip the wire should be attached to and ....and...

Planning the plug sockets is pretty easy, there is a minimum requirement for each room and you are allowed 5 sockets (or equivalent, double sockets apparently count as one, but triple sockets count as two) on 1.5mm cable spur and 8 sockets on a 2.5mm cable spur. Each of these spurs needs a trip on the consumer unit. I worked out that I wanted about 54 sockets through out the chalet which is just a bit more than the minimum allowed. That's a minimum of 7 trips but more like 10 trips just for the normal sockets. Then there are the dedicated sockets/power outlets for the main appliances in the chalet, Oven, hob, freezer, washing machine, dryer, dishwasher and seemingly any other major appliance. I think I will put an extra one in for the microwave as well. Each of these needs its own trip, that is another seven.

The lights are harder to plan the routes for, as you need to figure in the switches as well. A minimum of 19 lamps that I will increase to 26. A lighting circuit can have up to 8 lamps on it and uses 1.5mm cable. So that is at least another 4 trips.
That is about 21 trips and still we have the heating and hot water to add in!

But the hardest part of all this is deciding where the actual wires should run, where to put the gaine! Some of these problems will be solved by using false walls or wooded panelling over the concrete walls and using the space between to run the cables, but this cant solve everything. At some stage I need to mark out boxes and cable runs on the concrete and cut it out. It will be easier to cut these chases down from switch to floor but most of the time it is going to be up from switch to ceiling. Sounds fun. And the light itself, how do make a hole big enough in the ceiling, do it from above which is certainly easier but needs to make a big hole all the way through. Or from below which will be harder work just holding the drill up let alone applying pressure to the bit. I suppose its a case of suck it and see try both and see which is more effective.

I should be going back out there soon, so I will have to decide what I am going to do. Drill some holes in the concrete I think!

Electric Book

The French book on electricity installations l'installation èlectrique has arrived. It would have been useful a few days ago but never mind. I must get my French dictionary out and have a good read through it to try and understand what I need to do.

Quite a hard days work

Well it's Sunday night and I am knackered. Ohmri, my son, and I took the train to Geneva from Zürich at 2:00 on Friday afternoon and arrived at the chalets at about 8:00 in the evening having stopped on the way to buy some building supplies (cable, drill bits and gaine) We were staying at Robs place while I put some gaine and cable into my place. My first impression was that Rob seems to have got the heating sorted out as the place was definitely not cold. With no effort we booted the house, turning on the water and the rest of the power. We turned the heating on in the main room and the bathroom and then I thought we should have dinner, cook pizza in the oven. Two minutes after the oven went on it all went black. I had discovered the secret of limited power. You cant have the heating, the hot water and the oven on at the same time as this draws to much power and the line trips out. This means you need to get your coat on and your boots and trudge down to the road though the snow in the dark open the power box (and normally dig the power box out of the snow) and push the trip switch back in to get the power on again. This works as long as you have actually turned something off, otherwise just as you have closed the power box and trudged back to the chalet through the snow taken your coat off and your boots the power will trip out again, meaning you have to repeat the whole operation again. Its all even more fun when you have a frightened seven and a half year old who also needs dressing and walking down through the snow and back again to be undressed and then the trip trips out again.

Anyway we sorted out the problem and with Ohmri a little nervous of being stranded in the dark we went to sleep.

The next morning after some chores, and after I discovered that I had left the cheque from the notaire in Zürich and could not pay it into the bank (annoying). We started work on the electrics int the chalet. I must admit I was quite excited about it as this is the first time I had done anything towards actually constructing my chalet. I have helped Rob many times building walls or laying cables or fixing pipes etc, but never actually done anything for myself on my chalet.

First thing to notice is the balconies. They are great. Huge chunky bits of timber bolted to the concrete. They look really nice. I am very pleased with them. I like the joints and the shear size of the timber that was used.








In fact I am impressed at the size of the timber that was used all over the chalet. Enormous pieces of wood.

Anyway my mission for the weekend was to install enough gaine and cable so that my life was not hell when the chippies had installed the internal skin of T&G. The more cables I could install now and run inside the walls would mean less cable I had to mount externally on the inside wall of the chalet. So a little hard work now would pay handsomely and make the chalet look a great deal better than it would with wires tacked all up the walls everywhere.
The kitchen was where I started. Firstly with a bit of demolition. The gaine and the cables have to come up through the floor somewhere as the can not come through the concrete. I am going to use the hole left for the waste water from the kitchen. Although I think that this has been put in the wrong corner. It should be on the left hand corner and it is actually in the right hand corner. No matter that can all be sorted out. My plan is build a fake wall on 2 sides of the kitchen. The third side had the window in and the forth is open to the dining room. This false wall will hide all the wiring and plumbing so I avoid having to install a huge number of wires now. This also makes the job a bit more manageable in a weekend. The third wall is the window so I set about with my plan to install the electrics in this wall as it could not really be hidden.

A hole for the waste water from the kitchen had been left in the right hand corner of the kitchen:







Which looked like this after about half an hour with a big hammer:
It is this hole through which all the services will run up into (and out of) the kitchen. I might move the hole later to the left hand corner or rather I might make another hole in the other corner to use instead of this one.




Anyway after a while of drilling and threading and worrying about floor heights and kitchen unit heights and lots of other worries.

Before and after

Here is a closer shot. As can be seen the plastic gaine, with cable inside it goes up into the wall and the other end comes out horizontally. This horizontal portion is low enough to be under the finished floor level, in fact finished floor level is just about the top of the enormous horizontal beam on the concrete. Drilling the holes was fun as the drill bit I had bought was only 200mm long but that added to the length of the drill meant it was never going to be a straight drill. So I did it in two, well three, stages. First drill down almost as deep as the drill would go then drill in from the side about half way up the horizontal joist and at as much of an upward angle as could be achieved (not much, maybe 10 degrees). Where the two holes met (and surprisingly then usually did meet) would be nearly a right angle and the gaine, let alone the cable, would not turn that sharply, so just below the first horizontal hole I would drill another to allow a larger curve on the gaine and this proved very successful. (more than I expected anyway)

A word about gaine, some one somewhere is laughing, probably in a French accent. How hard is this stuff to use? It comes in a coil which it does not ever want to leave so it really does not want to be straight. Threaded down the tube of gaine is a little wire:
This wire is absolutely useless! You cant actually pull it out unless the gaine is absolutely straight and it hates that. I supposed that this wire might have been placed there to aid the threading of cable through the tube but that is plainly wrong. It was placed there to annoy and confuse people and to stab their fingers when they are careless.
The only way I found to successfully thread a cable through the gaine was to firstly secure one end of the gaine and straighten it all, then remove the stupid annoying little wire. Now try to push a cable down the straightened gaine. But cable also comes in a coil and it likes to stay coiled as well so you are pushing the cable that is trying to revert back into a coil down a plastic pipe that is trying to revert back to a coil and more often that not the coils are trying to revert in different directions. It becomes very difficult.

I had loads to do. Apart from the kitchen there was the dining room and salon and the entrance hallway. Each needed some attention and gaine put in the walls. Again it started with demolition. The builders had left a rather large hole in the floor of the dining room to the right of the steps:

This looked a lot better some time later after some persuasion with my friend the lump hammer.















Well the power for this side of the upstairs is all going to come up through this hole. I think it was originally designed to put the outlet pipe for the humid air up and out through a second chimney.

Using the same technique described above I put the gaine and cable in to this wall

This includes a 300mm hole through one of the main supporting timber columns. This I did by drilling from either side as straight as I could and would you believe it the holes lined up so well that the gaine just pushed through!






But trouble was looming. I was trying to take a piece of gaine up into the ceiling to run a cable across one of the beams in the roof for lights, when I started drilling through metal screws.
As you might make out the top hole only goes in about a centimeter then there is a shiny patch, well this shiny patch just about wrecked my expensive, just bought yesterday, oh so fine drill bit. I was a little annoyed. I mean that drill bit was good it chewed through this timber like it was butter. I had to hold it back it wanted to drill and keep drilling. But sadly after its encounter with the screw here drilling the hole underneath was a real pain it had to be pushed real hard just to get a bite and I was only about half way through the job with many more holes to drill!


I persevered and put in more gaine for plugs in the salon and the entrance hall and more gaine for external lights in the entrance hall and the kitchen.

I was working by floodlight when I finished.

Beer and food in Morzine followed quite closely by bed. I was aching all over. It has been a long time since I worked quite that hard all day. It was good though. It felt real good to have done something at last.

Sledging on Sunday was wet and cold but real good fun and we both enjoyed it despite the rain. A bit of a tidy up allowed me to imaginer the rooms and the work ahead. I reckon I need a bit more power in the walls for lights especially but that will wait until the end of Jan. It a 2 man job to getup high in the ceiling and I think I may buy another drill bit as I don't fancy messing about 20 feet up a ladder with a blunt drill!

We left Morzine at 12:00 and arrived home at 6:00, exhausted but happy.