How to Keep Warm in Winter

Here's a little video I've made about the hot air blower we're going to use to keep ourselves warm this winter. It's the first video I've made, so it's rather simple, but I'm pretty pleased with it.



Now that we've sucessfully made biodiesel from the oil we've been collecting, we can use it to run a heater. It's a very sophisticated device, burning the fuel like a little jet engine and using a heat exchanger to warm up nice fresh air. The heater pushes out an enormous volume of hot air and will be connected to warm our bedroom and bathroom. Though it sounds pretty noisy in the video, once it's warmed through it settles down to be much quieter. Adding a silencer and hiding it away under the caravan should let us keep it on throughout the night without disturbing our sleep.

Monkey!

 

I was going to put up a picture of the 'repairs' I've done on the shower in the caravan. The plastic it's made out of is old, yellowing and rather brittle. When the caravan was used irregularly for the previous owners' holidays it was certainly up to the job. Now that we've been showering regularly for over a year of continuous occupation, the cracks are showing.

Literally.

The disturbing sign of leakage isn't wet feet or musty smells. Instead the chipboard that the floors are made out of starts to sag where the water has penetrated them and softened the glue. These little dips that bounce as you walk over them act as a map showing where the shower has sprung yet another leak.

So, knowing that plastic like this can only be stripped out and replaced, and that a specially caravan sized shower will no doubt cost way too much, I've botched it. Fibreglass repair tape and resin used to build and repair small boats does a fantastic job of holding the edges together and keeping the water in place. It's not pretty - not even slightly - rough and browning as the resin reacts with daylight. But it works, so I'm happy.

However, having taken a photo to share online, I realised just how ugly it looks. So instead here is a picture of Monkey, one of William's favourite toys who unexpectedly got thrown into the bath and has had to be given a seat to dry out again. 

Hyacinths

If you were watching Gardeners World on BBC tonight, you might have seen a piece on the National Collection of Hyacinths. We're just around the corner from them, so we're bitterly disappointed not to have been asked to feature as the National Collection of Nettles.