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.

Christmas Presents

We got a very nice Christmas present from the Notaire yesterday, a cheque for nearly 2000 euro's !
Apparently this is the balance from the huge fee he requested a few months ago.
Very nice indeed, that will pay for the work I have to do in January to put the wiring in behind the T&G before the chippies put the inside walls up.
That is going to be a cold weekend.

No news about the chalet as far as windows or earth cables or backfilling goes. I will find out in January.

Pictures

I have now loaded all the newest photos into the web album.

This is how is looks from Rob's chalet. The roof is a single layer of tongue and groove (T&G) boarding covered with a red roofing felt. It is about 95% water proof as it was tipping it down for most of the trip and there are only 2 minor leaks in the roof. There is a big hole right around the building






Inside the carpenters have only built the outside skin of T&G and lined the walls with building paper. This is the kitchen as seen from the door from the entrance hall. There are no windows or doors in the whole building. This corner is where the waste pipe for the kitchen has been built into the floor. This is where the kitchen and the entrance hall will get the power. Gaine will be feed up through the floor in this corner and will spread out through the walls. I have been strongly advised to fit the gaine before the carpenters T&G the inside wall.

This is the dining room. Through the windows there will be a largish balcony on this corner of the building. The balconies have not yet been constructed. As you can just about see, the support coming down from the roof that will form an upright on the balcony is propped up on this skinny plank of timber. We are waiting for the triangle bits that fix to the concrete wall and prop up the ends! These big windows will slide open nearly all the way and with them both open it will feel like outside. In the summer it will be fantastic.

This is the view of the salon from the dining room. You can see the "wall of glass" on the far end and just make out the steps in the foreground. This is a lovely room. It is big and roomy and light, definitely room to swing a cat and kind of makes up for the smaller bedrooms. On the right hand side just below the picture is another opening in the floor. This one was originally intended to take the moisture from the bathrooms and send it up to a second chimney directly above. I dropped the second chimney on grounds of cost but will make use of the box outs in the concrete to route my cables though The dining room and saloon will be powered by cables coming from here.

This photo shows the jointing and detail on the mezzanine level. This big brace ties the roof together and I think it looks superb. The mezzanine will go on top of the concrete walls although the finished floor height will not be very much higher than the top of the present concrete as the window sills of the 2 big windows facing Robs place are quite low.






This vertical column is intriguing, on the plans it is shown coming down on to the corner of the concrete entrance hall. As built it does not. So what went wrong? Is the timber wrong or the concrete? My guess is that the concrete is wrong. I will not know for sure until I measure up the kitchen but my guess is that the concrete wall is about 300 mm out and when the carpenters tried to put the column in it wouldn't fit. When I saw this corner on the plans I recognized it as a major feature of the house. I was going to ask for it to be timber all the way from floor to roof and that the concrete be poured to it. I didn't as time and cost was against me. As it is it has worked out quite well, I have the feature I wanted plus a bit more and maybe I have a slightly bigger kitchen.

This is the two chalets together. Mine will look a bit less tall and skinny when the ground is back filled and the balconies will also help. A second balcony is going on just above the garage and below the pair of French windows. (aren't they actually all French windows)







Hervè has changed the front page of his invoices so that the have my name on them so these can go to the bank to be paid.
He assures me that the windows will be in and the building backfilled before Christmas. Whilst Andy the electrician was around I pummeled him for information about how best to wire up my chalet. He was a mine of useful information. Especially about the earth system in my chalet or rather the lack of any earth in my chalet. Putting in the earth cable does not look that difficult just running a 25mm2 cable around the building and burying the cable about meter deep. As the builder wants to back fill before Christmas and I have no free weekends before then I asked Hervè to organize an electrician to install the earth for me. In back filling around the building the builders will sort out the slopes and attempt to stabilize the steep slopes using some of the rocks discovered whilst digging the foundations.
The water is apparently connected to the mains, and he assures me that the is a stop tap for each connection in the road. Rob and I could only find one stop tap lid so I wonder what is happening there?
The sewage will be connected temporarily to the septic tank.
The carpenters will complete the T&G at my convenience, although with the roof on and the windows in they can finish this winter if I like. So my plan is to get the gaine in as soon as possible and hopefully the wires with it as it it much easier to thread the cable while the gaine is straight rather than fixed on the wall. So January may well see me wiring the chalet or at least the top floors. As it is I need to sit down and design my circuits. Andy had a very good book which was up to date on the latest French regs, L'installation électrique which I will be getting and using to help.

My next trip out to see Hervè will be in January, but I might get out between Christmas and new year for a day trip, maybe?

No Pain, No Gaine

Just got back from a flying visit to the Chalet. I timed this trip to coincide with a visit from Rob to his chalet. He was getting advise and help from a friendly English electrician, Andy, who is well versed in the ways of French electrics. All was remarkably well with Robs wiring and it could have been a whole lot worse, but basically Rob had wired to a slightly out of date book and the new regulations required some simple changes. That and the gaine. Gaine (pronounced "gain"), yes this strange word is what I was attempting to describe earlier here and I have finally found out its official name. Gaine is the name of the small plastic tubes that the French electricians have to run there new installed cables through. These are the same plastic tubes that were omitted from the building of my chalet. These are very important if you wish to pass the EDF's official inspection (called the consuel) and actually be allowed to connect your power up properly. I am sure they will figure quite prominently in the next few months.

I have learnt quite a lot about the French official attitude to electric installations and, as it happens, they seem to be a darn site safer than the English in this respect.

Well, I have a beautiful chalet which is no where near finished but is just about waterproof and according to Hervè, the windows will be in by Christmas and the tiles and chimney could be in by Easter. Whilst I remain cautiously optimistic, I know how reliable Hervè's time scales have been in the past.

I will upload the photos this evening.

Time to Pay the Ferryman (partly)

I have been in touch with Hervè to arrange a meeting. It got moved from late November to early December due to family emergencies. I have a meeting set for 6th December with Hervè on site. Another reason for postponing the trip or only doing the trip once is that Rob is meeting a tame electrician to give his wiring the once over. Sounded like a useful contact and I haven't seen Rob for a while so we are taking this opportunity to meet up.

Matt has left the building. He has some appointments in the UK and my "spy on site" has had to leave. I wonder how much work he got done for Rob? It would have been good to meet up again before he left but no matter. On the plus side it means I may receive his photo diary of the construction. He took many photos on his cell phone (not certain of the quality but should be OK for the web) but could not send them as his phone never got a strong enough signal for long enough. I have never had a problem with signal strength out there so I don't know what sort of dodgy phone he owns. So dodgy in fact there was no other interface to get at the photos. You would have thought that in these days there would be another way of getting at this content. Blue tooth or infra-red or even USB, maybe its actually designed that way to ensure you have to send any photos you do take by MMS that way the phone companies make more money.

Where was I, ah yes talked to Hervè. He has sent me 2 new invoices/bills. What he does is take the bill from the concrete guys and put his own header page on top which gives me a clue as to how much to pay. For some reason Hervè has sent me the wrong header page, Mr Wilson and Mrs Wright apparently owe my concrete guy (BERGOEND S.A.S) quite a lot of money (as do I). Fine no problem I can this sorted, but it is just kind of careless to send two invoices both with the wrong headers.
He sent another today, this time for the woodwork. 53000 Euro's.
Lot of money.
Too late now.

It is interesting to try and work out the state of the building from the invoices. It shouldn't have any windows or balconies. It shouldn't have a chimney. No door/s. No tiles on the roof.
Pretty basic really. I am concerned to leave it like that over the winter. I wonder what Hervè will say? ("no problem, don't worry, it will be fine.")

Anyway looking forward to seeing it and meeting up with Rob on the 6th.

Reply to Ian.

My first verifiable comment! Thanks Ian, the chalet is in the valle de la Manche, head towards the gold mines, about 2km outside of Morzine, a little village/hamlet called Le Chargeau. Ian, your chalet is very nice, really central but away from the noise. I still cant quite work out where it is exactly. Next to Café Chaud, fine, I know there, but I cant figure out which building from your photos. Anyway you are in Morzine in December and we should meet up. For anyone else Ian's chalet is called Chalet Le Coffy and is really well placed in Morzine.

How to give someone your private email address/contact details without it being available to the world?
I suppose that is what the comment moderation type stuff is about. I can decide to publish or not.