End of Week 10

25 April

There's a week missing from the blog - the pressure to get all the work done was too great. Early starts, full working days and complete exhaustion - what an absolute blessing a glass of wine is then.

So, this is it: week 10 - the last week. I've set next Tuesday as the date for the first trial run, and I'm pretty sure I'll make it. This afternoon (Tuesday 25th) I spent a very uncomfortable hour re-connecting the gas - this time with a regulator. I suppose I should have known the LPG tank would need a regulator but the firm that sold me the kit did not say anything about needing one so I assumed it was part of the tank. Another £60 , More pipe bending, joint making and grovelling under the van working at arm's length: I got the joints tight but decided not to test it this evening - I'm too tired and it's too important to be fuddled by exhaustion.

28 April 

I'm  usually pretty critical of my own woodwork. I see all the little faults, and I'm constantly making small mistakes (and occasionally big ones) which take time to put right. Today though I managed a very difficult job as well as I could have hoped. If you've no interest in woodwork skip the next paragraph!

Having decided to use a mixture of cherry veneer onto poplar ply and solid, locally grown cherry wood for the edges and corners, and having rounded the vertical edges of all the bits of furniture where sharp corners might be a problem, and having decided on a rounded corner on the worktop, I (pause for breath) wanted the table to have rounded corners. I decided to use a burgundy coloured hard laminate for the worktop and the table, glued down onto poplar ply and edged in solid cherry. It's easy enough to do the straight sides with a half-round cherry moulding, but getting 4 clean symmetrical and identical curves on the corners of the table can only be done with a jig and a router. The jig was simply a piece of scrap 6mm plywood with an accurately  rounded corner. It was cramped to the table top 3 mm in from the edge. The router is fitted with a ring fence, 6mm high, surrounding the cutter and offset by 3mm.  More difficult is the matching jig to make the concave curve in the solid cherry wood. My knowledge of geometry is rudimentary so I had to work it out mostly by trial and error. I'd been thinking about this problem for 2 days, but it still took most of the morning to work out all the angles. Once the jigs were made and tested the actual machining time was in minutes. I was hugely gratified to be able to glue the whole lot together with no gaps.  

Sunday 30 April

 The big event yesterday was installing the kitchen and testing the gas water heater for the first time. It didn't light and there was a red light flashing, but reading the manual I found a procedure to clear what they call a "gas lock-out" and ping! A green light! That was a great moment, only partly down-graded by a smell of gas. I quickly switched everything off and turned off the gas, but I was too tired last night to try to identify the leak.

Now I've lit the heater again but shut off the gas to the kitchen area where it will feed the hob and the grill.  So far no gas smells. Then I turned on the kitchen area and soon found the leak - one of the compression joints not tight enough. Now everything is working and there is no gas smell, but I won't use the van until I've installed a double gas alarm which can pick up carbon monoxide and narcotic gases.

Now the mattress is in, the sink and hob are installed, there is hot and cold running water, blown air heating, hook- up power, spotlights, fridge, toilet.  There is still loads to do - it all looks untidy and messy still, but it's on track.