A Bit of Heavy Lifting

I wanted to buy an wood burning stove for the chalet but I knew it was going to be heavy so I arranged with Rob to come down on Friday (yesterday) and get him to help with the heavy lifting.

The trip down on Friday morning was terrible. It was raining hard and the windscreen wipers on the car started playing up just as I got out of Zurich. Sure enough a bit further down the motorway the wipers jammed and I could not see anything. I pulled over on to the hard shoulder and freed them, had a look to see if it was fixable but it would require a spanner to remove the blade. Well there is a services a bit further down the road surely I can fix it there, after all it is a service station, that's what they do. Yes? Well the blades jammed up again before I made the services, I freed it up and carried on. Got to the services to find or rather not find a single piece of mechanical help available. You could buy clothes and garden furniture but a simple spanner No. Right desperate times apply some pressure and oops the wiper just came off in my hands. Oh well that will cost me! Still thank goodness its the passenger side not the drivers or I really would be in trouble!
It rained all the way up to Morzine. Arrived about 14.00 and after a cup of tea Rob and I went back down the mountain to Thonon to get the wood burning stove and a hot water heater. Drama in the DIY store, my credit card was refused and we had to make other arrangements much embarrassment but sorted. Any way the stove and boiler only just fit in the car we had to strip the packing off the water heater to get it to fit.

Still it drove back OK. We left it until Saturday morning to unload As handling heavy stuff in the dark and snow sounded a bit dodgy even for us!

It snowed over night even more and when we came to unload the car we decided the Stove was just too heavy to lift so what about a sledge?

Dropped the crate onto a pieces of blue insulation and dragged and pushed our sledge about 20 meters until it was at the foot of the entrance stairs to the chalet.





We heaved the crate containing the stove up the stairs on runners made from a ladder. Up ended it through the door and in to the chalet. The crate decided it had had enough and disintegrated allowing us to discover that the stove actually came to pieces and we removed about 100kg of iron from inside of it! Moving it into its final position was a lot easier now it was a bit lighter.

It looks like a Dalek!

Cant light it up yet as the chimney needs 150 mm tubing and I only have 125mm so I t will have to wait until next time.




The other heavy piece of kit was the hot water heater and associated plumbing stuff

I was worried the heater would not fit on the wall but it seems OK. There is a load of plumbing that needs attaching to the bottom of it.










All this fun for next time. Well thanks to Rob cos I couldn't have done it on my own.