Electrickery

It's a late start to this update so maybe it'll be short but likely I'll just not get to bed for ages as actually a little bit has happened today. Let's not faff about though; onwards.

She is even more excited about this than she looks

The day started off in the best way possible; no alarm. We woke up about the same time (and Louise as well) and both the puppies jumped up to say hello. I kind of remembered in the night that they had again asked to go out and again asked A which was perfect and apparently Louise had pounced on A to wake her up. Haha. The weather was looking pretty vile first thing with a solid raft of cloud from horizon to horizon apart from a gap near the hills where the sun was shining through. We dozed on and off and suddenly this blew away and we were left with a lovely start. We got up for brews and to do the watering round (while there was water) and after a lovely time pottering around and weeding and checking out all the plants I went onto the roof terrace and found that one of the sunflowers was looking fit to open today or very soon.

Small screen: work. Big screen: cycling

There were quite a lot of things we needed to do in various towns today which was our priority but I didn't want to head out too early in case we got anywhere before the shop opened. I spent a bit of time checking out what we'd need to buy in town to help me do the electrics later and also realised that today was the start of the Tour de France and my eurosportplayer subscription had expired so I renewed that. This will be my next three weeks. I'm very excited.

Building materials for the kitchen floor

Just as we were about to head out the workmen arrived and A pointed out they had brought materials for insulating the floor. I was driving so as A went to open the vehicle gate I stopped to snap some pictures. From there it was down into the local town to pick up my company stamp as Dincher had alerted me yesterday that it was ready. This was a simple pickup then we headed to the big town. On the way out a car in front started driving erratically then pulled over and we were pleased to see the Other Brother waving at us as we drove past. He was heading to his flat and waved again as he turned in. Lovely chap.

This is why you buy a 4 x 4

Our first port of call was the hardware shop where I found all the things we needed for the wiring and then we spent a fair bit of time pottering around the tiles and bathroom sections picking out what we want. We have now selected tiles for Room 13 (lovely and bright), the vestibule and all the kit for the wet room including a particularly lovely sink/stand combination and an awesome shower unit with multiple heads and computers and things. We'll be heading back there with Bekir once he returns (hopefully on Monday) to start putting the guest suite together. As we were leaving A spotted a really lovely small petchka which we both agreed would look brilliant in the bedroom so we bought it on impulse. I'm really pleased with it. From there we went round the corner to our usual carpark in the centre however town was rammed today so I was forced to resort to my old trick of bouncing up onto the rough ground next to the carpak. A found this hilarious so here I am king of the mountain.

Road bikes one minute...

.... and scramblers the next

We were in town to visit bank with my new stamp, and make payments to my accountant for my new business. The lovely girl served us who had helped A when she was here on her own and we got everything sort out very easily indeed. I do need to go back with invoice numbers for some of the bills I have been sent as they actually input the invoice number on the transfer and won't send money unless you have an invoice. Clever. After this we went past Lidl for a few things and spent a fortune (standard) then we were back home. On the way we saw a large group of bikers from over the mountain going towards Greece and then some dirt bikes on a track down by the river. Motorbikes are definitely getting more popular in this region.

Long term idea for cable tidies

When we got back I went straight into the roof to get stuck in with the wiring. The task was to take the gypsy wiring that I had disconnected from the bedroom and get it reconnected again, but via a consumer unit on the stairs. First order of the day was to get the cable tidies in place. Now Dan will recognise these are racking for effects and I brought these with me this time purely for the purpose of giving a frame on which I can zip tie cables to keep them tidy. It did not take long at all for me to attach a bar every two metres of so down the side of the roof to where the consumer unit will be.

Taking apart the old connections

Plug circuit tidied

Before I could run the cable along this tidy I had to sort out the tails from the bedroom and get them jointed to the new run of cable. This was a bit of a mission as first I had to extract the cables from the box they had been cemented to the wall in. Once I had them free I then spent quite a bit of time and effort tidying them up, straightening their ends, then taping and fixing them into a chunky bit of joint strip. Finally I was happy and could think about running the actual cable. A was a lifesaver at this point, bringing me brews and also running the power up so I could have the bulb on which Bekir and Sally had rigged which meant I didn't need to use the headlamp as much. The only problem with this picture right now is I need to change the tape from green/yellow to brown. More on the reasons for this later.

Cables nice and tidy

And so with the new roll connected I ran enough cable down to where the consumer unit is going to go. I used my zip ties to connect the cable to each metal strip and by the time it was done I felt pretty good as it had worked perfectly as I had planned. Excellent. Now I stopped for a cup of tea and to watch a bit more of the cycling.

Making a start on the consumer unit

With this in place I started to fit the box on the wall. At first I attempted to drill holes into the concrete raft which runs around the top of the wall however this proved way too tough even for the hammer drill that is as old as I am so I shifted down and got it nicely seated with wall plugs in the old bricks. I then wasted a lot of time being very confused by the wiring going down to the lights in the bedroom and after help from friends on twitter (and a lot of abuse as well which is fair enough frankly) I decided I was not comfortable doing something I didn't understand and declined to run a cable for that at all. I then started on the armoured and, using the craft scalpel to strip and clean the cables (much easier than a cable stripper) I got the neutral and earth wired in. In fact in this time I had to go to my little builders merchant (no joy) and therefore into the big town to pick up an earth strip so I could do this.

Making changes so we have consistent wiring

There then followed another lengthy pause in the progress where I realised that the colours that Steve had used for his consumer unit downstairs, which I was copying for this work, did not match with what Bekir had used going down into the bedroom. Briefly (I hope this is clear) I was expected blue and brown to be one of live or neutral (over here they don't care which is which) and the other colour to be the earth. Now some of the cables had green/yellow and some had black but that is fine; so long as we matched the first two colours the other one would always be earth. This was good until I realised that for the cables running into the bedroom we had the brown pulled back as earth and black (in this case) going down as one of the line wires. I thought about this for a while then ran some ideas past A and the upshot was I went into every plug in the bedroom and swapped the black out to earth and put the brown is as a line. This was a good thing to do as I learned a lot about wiring plugs and also I was able to re-fix one of the sockets which had come loose over the last few weeks.

Ready for the next step tomorrow

We did some fun searches on google while looking in to this and found that generally in Bulgaria no one follows standards and it does depend who does your wiring as to which colour refers to which task. I just want consistency and so I'll make sure, if Bekir does any more wiring, that he understands this. At this point I was still completely confused by the lights circuit and had discarded all plans of doing anything with it before Bekir comes back so I just cracked on and got the rest of the consumer unit wired, including my circuit breaker for the plugs circuit. What a buzz (boom boom) to have made such progress and hopefully succeeded at something I've worried about for a while. Tomorrow will be the big day though when I wire the other end of the armoured into the unit downstairs and turn the supply on. Fingers crossed!

Lots of excellent food

My superb awesome Kavarma

With my work done A suggested we go out for dinner and this was such a cracking idea. We packed away, then put the puppies into their cage and headed out. A drove as a treat for me and we had a lovely time. The food at our local restaurant is just superb and the service is excellent (even if they did forget my kavarma until I reminded them) and it was just lovely to sit outside in our favourite restaurant and eat and chat and laugh and enjoy ourselves. It has been a pretty non stop two weeks, mainly my fault because I built up such a head of steam not being here that I want progress and I want it NOW, but these times of peace and stopping are just so precious. /We were also able to talk through the lighting circuit and work out what it was so maybe I can get it done tomorrow also.

Since getting back I've been typing this and A has been around watering things and playing with the puppies. Louise is still very hangdog while Thelma is almost hyperactive (just now she went tearing down the corridor, into the "living room", round that room and back up and round Room 13 and back, all while Louise sat on her chair and watched as if to say "what is WRONG with you!". We just hope she gets better and back to normal soon.

Time for me to sign off; ciao.

Just as I was adding the pictures A came up shouting that there was a firefly on Rambo's back so I went down with the camera and got this video. Hah!