| Friday, August 31, 2023 Kalo Meena! (Good month.) It's Friday again. We are going to our monthly expats coffee morning, and I have to drop my mobike off for an oil change en-route, so I don't have much time. The last two days have been somewhat windy, which was nice. The weather here is still hot but it's growing slightly cooler at night and thunderstorms from Tuesday will knock daytime temperatures down to only 27°C ("feels like 30"). In other words, uncomfortably humid for four days. Of course, I'll believe it when it happens because forecasts are notoriously unreliable here. |
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| Having left my mobike with the mechanic at 10 am, we headed for Vamos and passed DD (Disabled Dimitris) on the road. |
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| Vamos square was busy. Manolis the taxi driver was picking up a fare. |
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| The traffic in Kalyves was horrendous, which is why we look forward to the end of the tourist season. |
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| We squeezed up the narrow alley into the seaside car park and found a parking space about a hundred metres away from the "Apicorna" Café. There we had drinks and chatted till 12.30. I walked across the road to buy sausages from the butcher and then we drove back through the town and parked near the supermarket to buy fruit, salad and yoghurt. |
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| The sky was becoming increasingly cloudy as we headed home. Iliana dropped me at the mechanics' workshop. I got Manos to oil the mobike chain. I paid him and rode home. |
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| By now it was after 1 pm. I sat down to edit a couple more chapters of the current book. At 3 pm, Iliana went to visit the English neighbours and I switched to watching videos interspersed with research. Iliana returned just before 5 pm and announced that it was raining. I looked outside in surprise but it was only a few drops. |
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| At 6 pm Iliana decided to go for a walk before sunset. I cut up my strings of sausages and arranged them on plates to go in the freezer. Once they are frozen, I'll put them in a bag and replace them in the freezer. Traditional Greek sausages such as these contain only meat and herbs. (Our British butcher's shop told me that they put 7% bread crumbs in their sausages "so they hold their shape". Hmm.) |
| Saturday, September 2, 2023 I awoke late at 8.30, showered, dressed and went downstairs to catch up with news. Iliana had been up for hours and had already hung out sheets, pillowcases and white clothing to dry. Billy phoned to say that he'd be at the Café, since it's slightly cooler today (29°C). I read web pages till 9.30 and then had breakfast. At noon I rode to the Café for drinks with Billy. He told me that someone had phoned him three times, pretending to be from his bank. They tried to scam him but without success. On my return home I brought in the washing and then settled down to edit more chapters of the book. |
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| I was interrupted by the arrival of Shkelqim, our Albanian painter. He wanted to drop off tools and measure the wall that he will be insulating. Unfortunately, he stepped onto a plastic chest and smashed it. It's very old and had gone brittle. |
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| Iliana returned from the neighbours' house at 4.30 pm. I ate yoghurt and banana. We took a walk around the village. The sky was blue but the mountains were obscured by mist. |
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| We'd seen commercial vehicles emerging from a gravel track so we walked along it to investigate. Two new houses are being built. |
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| Nearer to the centre of the village, two more houses are under construction. These had tiny swimming pools (or large jacuzzis) so they are probably intended to be tourist rentals. |
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| Sunday, September 3, 2023 We drove to Georgioupoli for breakfast at Stelios Café Bar as usual. I bought liver and eggs from the butcher. On our return, I phoned Billy and arranged to meet him at Café O Petros in Litsarda. While were were there, Billy's son phoned him from England. |
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| Back home, I emptied the wood from the broken plastic chest into the concrete "sarcophagus". I borrowed some of it into the yard and chopped it to make kindling, which I put into a stout plastic bag in the wood store. |
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| In order to insulate this wall, it will be necessary to remove the chimney, drainpipes, awning and LED lamps. Afterwards they need to be refitted on spacers, which will protrude through the foam insulation boards. The boards will each be secured to the wall with five bolts. |
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| The drainpipe goes beneath the tiles in a concrete platform so Shkelqim will get a plumber to do this job. |
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| This is one of the LED lamps. It has a rain cover made from a piece of scrap aluminium, which also prevents the lamp from shining across the road to annoy the neighbours. Work should begin on Monday or Tuesday (when the storms are forecast to begin). |
| Iliana returned from the neighbours' house and reminded me that I hadn't cooked the liver. So I chopped it into cubes, dipped them in flour and fried them in Ghee and water. After that, I edited a couple of book chapters and then did research and watched videos. (I also typed this and cropped and added the photos.) __ Monday, September 4, 2023 I was up and dressed at 6 am. Made Iliana a pot of tea at 7 am. She went for a walk and I went outside to remove the plastic chests. First I transferred the contents (firewood) to another stout plastic bag. Then I drove the chests to the bins at the top of the road. Billy phoned to say that he was breathless and would stay at home. Iliana returned and held her foot in pain. Her toe had been stung by a wasp. Silly woman could have phoned me to collect her! I applied ammonia to the toe but the sting continued to hurt. Billy phoned to say that he was fine now and would meet me at the Café at noon so I watched videos and then rode to Litsarda. |
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| I returned early to take Iliana to Kalyves to her "knit & natter" group. I picked up two other women on the way. While in Kalyves, I stopped at the hardware store to buy screws, washers and plastic rawlplugs. |
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| On my return, I chopped more firewood and stashed it away because rain is forecast. Someone gave Iliana a lift home and she arrived at 5.30 pm. I'd already eaten some liver and some yoghurt so Iliana cooked dinner for herself. I watched another video and then edited a couple of book chapters. |
| Shkelqim the painter arrived with another Albanian who was a plumber but appeared to know a lot about insulation, too. |
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| They discussed how to modify the external pipes and decided to install 7 cm insulation instead of 5 cm, so I'll have to swap the screws that I bought for longer ones and mount the wooden blocks sideways. |
| Iliana cooked her dinner and then left to visit a photo exhibition. I stayed behind to finish editing the book and then emailed it to the publisher. Weather forecast for Crete from 5th September onwards. 
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| Tuesday, September 5, 2023 I didn't hear thunder but Iliana was up at 5 am recording lightning over the sea to the north. It rained enough to wet the ground. More rain is expected, as you can see above. |
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| When Shkelqim arrived at 9 am with the scaffolding, he announced that he wouldn't be able to start work today because of the rain, which is what I've been telling him since last week. Iliana and I both transferred money from our respective accounts so that we'll be able to pay for the work. This has seriously depleted our reserve funds but I want to get the wall fixed before winter. The temperature has risen from 21 to 23°C as the sun appeared for a short time. |
| I cooked my breakfast at 10 am. Iliana set off for Rethymno at 11 am. At noon I rode to the supermarket to stamp the mail and collect any for us and our neighbours. With mail sorted and delivered, I rode to the Café for drinks with Billy. Billy left and I was chatting to a Frenchman who has recently moved to our village when Chris arrived. I excused myself because I wanted to get cash from the ATM before the forecast rain began to fall. I rode to Vamos, got cash and then returned to the Café where I stopped for another coffee because Brian & Karen had joined Chris at his table. Dave the carpenter arrived but couldn't stay. |
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| As I left at 2.40 pm it began to rain and continued to drizzle on me until I reached home, when it stopped! I placed a plastic bag over the handlebars to protect the gauges and switches in case of heavy rainfall. |
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| I went onto the roof and, wearing leather gloves, removed the aluminium shield from the bottom half of the solar water heating panel so that the panel can work at full efficiency during the cloudy days. |
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| I placed the aluminium beneath the panel and placed a rock on each corner to hold it down in case of wind. The outside air temperature has remained steady at 25°C for several hours. |
| At 4 pm I joined the weekly Skype conversation with my ex-university engineer friends. At 5.30 pm I ate yoghurt and banana and Iliana returned from Rethymno, complaining that the car door wouldn't shut and the engine warning light was on again. I refitted the section of rubber door seal which she'd kicked off (actually, she told me that the car park attendant must have done it) and used my iPad and OBD2 unit to reset the fault codes. It's the #1 lambda sensor again but the sensor and catalytic converter have been replaced. |
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| Wednesday, September 6, 2023 It rained heavily overnight. Shkelqim and his friend arrived at 8 am to erect the scaffolding. See a short clip of the erection, here: https://youtu.be/5Ev2Iw07hw0 |
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| I helped by holding things and providing eye bolts to anchor the scaffolding to the wall. First, they had to take down the porch canopy and then the fly screen door (which proved to be a challenge) and then the LED floodlights. Shkelqim chose to cut through the cable, which flipped the main circuit breaker, even though the live wire was disconnected by the switch. I asked him why he didn't simply disconnect the end of the cable from the screw terminal strip inside the weatherproof box. "Ah. I'm not a electrician." |
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| Iliana and I drove to Georgioupoli and I had breakfast at Stelios Café Bar while she went shopping. It rained really hard. You can see it here: https://youtu.be/e2daQrfsf_I As we drove home it rained even harder and we drove through floods to reach Vamos where Iliana got cash from the ATM and I got bananas and very, very wet sandals and socks! |
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| The rain was abating as we arrived home and the guys were just taking delivery of the 7 cm thick insulation boards. |
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| They had stashed their tools and plaster in the pergola to keep them dry - except they were already wet. So I placed a small fan on the tiled floor to get some airflow. As the sky was still black and threatening, the lads decided to stop work and go home. |
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| At 1.30 pm the sky cleared and I heard bells. Some goats were eating our neighbours' hedge. |
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| So I went out and barked at them to make them go away. There were sheep there, too. |
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| Yiannis the plumber arrived in his van and stripped the pipes off the wall. He extended the stubs outwards to accommodate the 7 cm polystyrene insulation boards. He also disconnected the propane gas cylinder and enlarged the hole where the gas pipe passes through the wall. He said that it had been installed incorrectly. |
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| It needs a plastic sleeve in the hole. (When I shone a torch into the hole, I could see blue polystyrene insulation board! So at least this bit of wall is insulated inside. I thought it was an empty cavity. Even so, it's not very thick and there are certain to be gaps so the extra 7 cm of insulation on the outside should help a lot.) |
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| It also needed a stainless steel gas pipe and a two-way manifold with changeover switch for the gas bottles. It needs a different type of pressure regulator and a pressure relief valve. And the bottles and connections should all be housed inside a metal box! |
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| Thursday, September 7, 2023 I awoke at dawn, made coffee for me and tea for Iliana and then went into the workshop to drill the wooden spacer blocks for the stove chimney. Iliana put the clothes in the washing machine as the day was forecast to be dry until evening. |
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| This is the pipe leading to the septic tank, which the plumber has adapted so that it is further from the wall. |
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| These are the pipes coming out of the bathroom. The plumber has extended them. Where the pipe ran down the wall, it had clearly been fitted before the wall was plastered and painted, so that explains why the inside wall was always damp! |
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| Shkelqim's mate arrived to start work and it began to rain. Iliana dashed outside to bring the washing indoors. The rain stopped so she left the larger items outside. We drove to Kalyves to order wood and to buy mosquito mesh and plastic pipe. |
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| On our return, we found the workers painting the wall pink, having filled all the holes and cracks. Having dropped Iliana off, I returned to Kalyves to collect the wood that I'd ordered for 12 noon. On the way home, I stopped for a quick coffee with Billy, Brian & Karen at the Café. |
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| Shkelqim and his mate Nori had fitted the plastic pipe in the hole that carries the gas pipe. |
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| They'd also fitted threaded rods where the chimney will be mounted and told me that they had rockwool insulation to place between the chimney and the polystyrene insulation, to prevent its melting. |
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| I looked the the catalogue for a door canopy to replace the old one, which is somewhat cracked. Iliana would prefer a tiled porch so I'll have to ask Shkelqim whether that might be possible. |
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| Shkelqim had cut through the wire for the door light so I heaved myself onto a plank with my tools and set about remaking the connection. |
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| This plastic box is fully sealed and will sit underneath the final render. I should never need to access it but if I do it simply means knocking out a bit of plaster. I used Blu-Tack for additional sealing around the screw terminal strip, the cable exit and the entire rear of the box. |
| Friday, September 8, 2023 Despite the forecast of thunderstorms and heavy rain, we've had nothing today, although the sky remained mostly overcast. I spent the morning at the computer. I rode my mobike to the Café and ordered a kilo of cheese for tomorrow. I drank a coffee and spoke briefly to Claude, whom I met there yesterday. He bought a house in our village last February and had to return here to sort out some bureaucratic nonsense regarding his water supply. He's going back to France tomorrow. My schoolboy French is "rusty", to say the least, and he speaks no other language, but we managed to communicate quite successfully by speaking into his phone, which then translated. |
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| Back home, I mounted the PIR LED floodlight onto its rain shield, which was originally made from a piece of scrap aluminium. Previously, I had mounted the lamp on its side, directly to the wall. However, with the wall to be covered in expanded polystyrene, I want to minimise the number of screw holes in it, so this is the perfect opportunity to mount it properly. |
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| I cut and drilled two wooden blocks that will be screwed to the wall to support the PIR LED assembly. I varnished all of the wooden blocks and left them in the shed to dry. |
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| Saturday, September 9, 2023 Yesterday was so overcast that we have no hot water. Shkelqim and Nori arrived at 8 am and painted the bottom of the wall with a cement sealer. Then they climbed the scaffolding to drill the wall and install the wooden blocks that will support the drainpipe. |
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| Shkelqim fitted the two smaller blocks that will support the PIR LED assembly. |
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| We drove to Vamos to get a bread loaf and cash. Then to the English supermarket in Litsarda to buy cat biscuits, beetroot and other stuff. For reasons unknown, neither landline not SIM card Internet is working in the village. Then we walked to the Café to collect the cheese that I ordered yesterday and a bottle of wine. After drinks there, we drove home to check on the builders. |
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| Shkelqim applying tile cement to the insulation boards. |
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| Progress so far. The lowest boards are blue, which is the more expensive water resistant type. The gaps will be sprayed with foam insulation. Bolts with large washers will be screwed into the wall at each intersection of corners. (That'll be noisy!) |
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| The wood stove chimney outlet is now insulated with aluminium-backed rockwool. Nori is bolting wood batons to the wall. These will support a tiled-roof to keep rain off the door. Iliana decided that she preferred this, rather than buying a new plastic canopy, which is rather flimsy. |
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| Bill phoned to say that he was going to the Café so I rode there to join him for half an hour. Back home at 1 pm and the work is progressing. |
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| At 6.30 pm Nori had already gone home but Shkelqim was determined to finish up to roof level. He gave up as the sun was about to set, leaving him just enough time to put his tools away. I told him not to tidy up as it was pointless because he'll be back early tomorrow to continue the work. |
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| Sunday, September 10, 2023 Shkelqim was back at 9 am to mix glue and continue fitting insulation panels. Iliana set off to walk and I collected her after half an hour and drove to Georgioupoli. We visited the table top sale by the river and then had breakfast at Stelios Café Bar. I bought liver and eggs from the butcher. |
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| On our return, Shkelqim and Nori had finished installing the bolts and washers. At this point they had run out of insulation sheets and, as it's Sunday, they couldn't buy more. So they finished off and left. |
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| At 12.30 pm I rode to the Café. Billy didn't turn up, although he'd said that he would go if it wasn't raining. So I sat and read over a cup of coffee. Karen & Brian arrived so we chatted till about 2.30 pm when they left and I rode home. It didn't rain but remained overcast all day. |
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| Monday, September 11, 2023 The rain woke me at 5 am. It was heavy but didn't last for long. Nori arrived at 9 am with a supply of insulation boards. Shkelqim arrived much later, having taken his children to school and attended a blessing ceremony. They finished off the insulation by wrapping it over the roof edge. |
| I cooked the liver. Some was so stringy that I put it into a separate container for the cat. After that, I cooked my breakfast. In-between times, I wrote notes to my Internet Service Provider (ISP) because they'd switched all my accounts to a different server and nothing - including email - was working. By 11 am they'd got all of the websites back online but the email on my Mac still wasn't working. |
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| At noon I phoned Billy and arranged to meet him at the Café at 12.30 pm. While we were there, Yiannis arrived from the bakery so a queue formed to buy bread. |
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| 4 pm and the lads have finally reached the plastering stage. They hang the plastic mesh and sweep plaster across it. |
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| Tuesday, September 12, 2023 The lads arrived around 7 am. (I'd been awake since 4 am, thinking about the email problem caused by the server change.) They proceeded to smooth down yesterday's layer of plaster on plastic mesh. Iliana took a walk as soon as the sun appeared. |
| I did battle with my email system in between reading the latest news and research. At noon I rode to the supermarket to date stamp the mail and collect our electricity bill (with some trepidation, considering how much I'd used the air conditioning in the past two months!) But it was only 130 Euros. I rode to the Café and sat with Billy till 1 pm and then returned home. The lads were still applying plaster to the wall. They call it "pasta", which translates as "paste". The insulation boards they call "Felizól" but I think that's a manufacturer's name. 2.30 pm Iliana was angry about a tax demand plus interest that she'd just received from HMSO. "Why didn't our ***** accountant tell me right away?" I don't know the answer to that and he hasn't responded to emails. Iliana went to chat with our neighbours. I went into the workshop for my weekly Skype chat. At 5.30 pm I ate a small portion of pork pie and then drove to Kalyves with a sample of tile. Unfortunately, all the shops were shut. I could see a pile of tiles in the yard of the Electrical/Plumbing supplies company so I'll return in the morning. |
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| I prepared and blanched some beans to put in the fridge. I ate yoghurt and banana for dinner, plus a fig from the bag, which I'd bought this morning and had frozen. |
| Wednesday, September 13, 2023 I was woken around 7 am by the sound of scraping. Shkelqim had arrived and was finishing off the wall. Since my Internet Service Provider (ISP) moved all of my websites and email over to a new, improved (safe & effective) server, I've spent a lot of hours trying to fix problems. My email on this old Apple Mac PowerBook no longer works fully. In "Apple Mail" email client, I can receive mail from some accounts but not others and I can't send emails at all. I installed "Thunderbird" and it can send emails but it can't receive any! For the moment, I'm using "Apple Mail" on my MacBook Pro but it's not what I'm used to and now ALL of my websites have just gone off-line so I have no email. I've set up a gmail account to use temporarily for email but I can't upload this blog nor send out email notifications. I rode to Kalyves and wandered from shop to shop looking for tiles that Shkelqim could cut into strips to replace the "skirting" along the bottom of the wall. The third shop that I tried had exactly what I wanted and only just enough. They said that I was lucky because it was old stock. So I'd better drive to Haniá in the near future and stock up on any more that I can find for when the next wall is insulated. That won't be before next year unless I suddenly get rich. At 12.30 I rode to the Café for a coffee with Billy. He's been complaining that his smart phone battery kept running down. I turned off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth but the battery wasn't lasting a day. He complained again today and then his phone rang. He couldn't hear the caller and tried to turn up the volume but inadvertently turned on the torch light instead! I pointed it out to him because he hadn't noticed. "I keep doing that." Well, that's solved that puzzle. His phone rang again so I answered it. It was the local courier: he had a parcel and was outside Billy's gate. I told him that Billy's wife was at home. "Well please phone her and ask her to come to the gate." I didn't argue; I simply said "right away" and did so. She unhooked her oxygen feed and headed up the driveway. I asked Billy why he didn't have a doorbell button at the gate? "I have but the b****y courier won't step out of his van! |
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| The light switch for the understairs cupboard was held with double-sided foam adhesive tape and kept falling off and jamming in the door. Finally, Iliana got exasperated and told me to fix it once and for all. So I drilled a hole through the switch and used a screw. (It doesn't appear to be live.) |
| The lads swept up and disappeared after eating sandwiches provided by Iliana. Shkelqim went to buy wood and tiles for the new porch roof, which they'll construct tomorrow. I spent the rest of the day pratting around trying to get my email system working so that I can send out the notification on Friday for you lot! At present, it all seems to be working OK on my MacBook Pro. Our son set a message that the plumber had completed the inspection of the gas boiler in our rented-out house in England. He'd done the certificate and he'd previously done a makeshift repair on the boiler which, he said was not going to last beyond Christmas because the necessary parts were no longer available. It would cost more than £3000 to replace! I checked my records and found the original installation invoice from 6 years ago, which stated that the boiler was guaranteed for 10 years. I emailed this to my son to deal with. No doubt the company will find a way to Wardle their way out of replacing the boiler so I'm not hopeful. __ Thursday, September 14, 2023 The lads arrived to paint the corners of our house white and to paint the roof fence. |
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| We drove to the chiropodist for our 6-weekly foot maintenance. We were early so we sat in the garden until she was ready. We left with a home cinema system for repair. |
| We parked in the car park at "Jumbo" and Iliana wandered round with her shopping list. She's very organised! 
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| After that, we drove a short distance to "Lidl" supermarket for food. On the way home, we called at the plumbing shop in Kalyves to ask if our kitchen extractor fan grille had arrived; it hadn't. Iliana was hungry so we sat outside "Yevsis" coffee shop so that she could have a sausage roll and hot chocolate. I had a cappuccino and watched the traffic at "chaos corner" - a T junction where cars park illegally and block the large vehicles. |
| Back home, the lads were still working on the house. We unloaded the shopping and then I went into the workshop to tidy up in order to make room on the bench for the home cinema box. Having cleared the bench and the floor, and tossed out all of the junk that I no longer needed, I wanted to use the car-vac to pick up dust and crap from the carpet. It runs off 12 volts so I lifted my 12v battery charger down from the shelf and plugged it in. There was no output. I checked and the 15 Amp output fuse had melted. I had no spares so I drilled the end caps and soldered 30 Amp fuse wire through the ceramic tube. (Don't try this at home, kids!) By now it was 6 pm. The lads had left and the plumber had arrived and had spent the last two hours replacing pipes and the wood stove chimney. He asked me if I wanted him to order the parts to connect the two gas cylinders, including regulator and switch-over valve, It would cost 330 Euros extra! And that didn't include the cost of a steel cabinet. I told him to go ahead. In for a penny-- |
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| Having cleared the workshop, I heaved the home cinema box out of the car and carried it to the workshop. It's a Yamaha RX-V757 "Natural Sound AV Receiver". I removed the screws and lifted the cover off. It was very clean inside and had been running hot. This is typical of a unit that has been sitting inside an enclosed cabinet. The symptom was "dead: doesn't light up". So I checked the fuses. They were intact. I downloaded the service manual. |
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| But before proceeding with a tedious fault-finding procedure, I did an Internet search for "dead RX-V757". Several videos were listed and each of them showed exactly the same fix: replace the 22nF/630v capacitor on the left-hand side vertical PCB. I removed this capacitor and it measured just 6nF. Clearly, it was knackered. |
| Shops here are generally open till 9pm so I phoned one of the three electronics components shops in Haniá and asked if they had a capacitor in stock. After much rummaging and swearing, the shopkeeper said "yes, we have it". "Great! I'll be there early in the morning to buy it." Fingers crossed. At this point the plumber announced that the Pipework was completed and we could at last use the bathroom, so I had a shower. I noticed that the bathroom extractor fan was humming loudly but not turning so I gave it a thump and it did an excellent impression of a blender chopping nuts. Uh oh. After a minute, it spewed out some chunks of plaster and then ran quietly. When I'd finished my shower and dressed and the fan had timed off, I climbed onto the bath with a screwdriver and removed the grille. I found no more chunks of plaster but plenty of dust and fluff, which I cleaned out before replacing the grille. |
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| Flash photo in the dark because I want to finish this blog tonight. The corner of the house painted white. |
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| The pipes installed by the plumber. The left-hand pipe drains rainwater from the flat roof. The right-hand pipe takes the toilet flush and the "grey" washbasin and shower water to the septic tank. |
