So what's been going on at the cottage recently? Well with regards to the interior and exterior of the cottage itself, not much. My builders are still on a sabbatical working in Dublin. A local plasterer was supposedly being subcontracted to finish off the plastering but that idea seems to have died a death. I turned up at the cottage yesterday afternoon to find the place all plastered up and ready to paint and instead found little change since the las time I was there a couple of weeks ago. The one big difference is that my range is now completely in bits and unusable. The last weekend I was at the cottage the range was dripping water from the boiler so was unusable. I mentioned this to the builders so they'd obviously been down to stop the leak but left the thing in bits. It's a good thing I still have my liquid fuel Trangia to cook on.


Loreena McKennitt

One of the reasons why I've been away from the cottage for such a long time was that I'd taken a week off to partake of a little sojourn to Barcelona to see the delightful Loreena McKennitt in concert. It was literally a flying visit to Barcelona flying in on a Tuesday morning, flying back to the UK on Thursday morning then flying back to Ireland very late on Friday.

Yesterday I finally caught up with David from Voltage Systems down in the Wexford village of Ferns. I'd ordered six 110 Ah batteries to power up the cottage and yesterday was the day to collect.





These six batteries will provide the cottage with 7920 watts of power. By my calculations that should provide 3 or 4 days of power if there wasn't any daylight to energise the solar panels that will charge these batteries up. In to the mix I'm going to add a small wind turbine so there should be some form of charge going into the batteries most of the time.



On arriving at the cottage yesterday afternoon the first change I noticed was that the sheep in the field opposite had lambed and there were lambs bouncing round all over the place.


The cottage all fenced off







The next big thing I noticed than my newly created garden had all been fenced off. Sean my nearest neighbour and farmer who's land surrounds the cottage had very kindly arranged to have it all fenced off

Sunday morning I drove into Carlow to get some supplies, screws and methelated for my alcoholism .. oops .. er .. I mean Trangia, liquid fuel stove. I suppose I could have gone to Kilkenny but at the same time I knew there would be a second hand market on in Carlow and I'm on the look out for furniture for the cottage.

On my furniture shopping list my priority items are a bed and a table. We I was in luck on the table score at the market. I managed to pick up a fantasic ruststic looking table with five chairs for the princely sum of 50 Euro, the asking price was 60 Euro but it would have been rude not to haggle



The rest of Sunday I spent planning how to lash the batteries, solar panels and control circuits together ready to supply power to the cottage.


A weatherproof box, purchased from Lidl, which will be used to house the batteries.


The six batteries in a weather proof box. Next thing to do is insulate the batteries and find a way of regulating the internal temperature to keep the temperature around 25C.


Battery box, with 2kW Silverline inverter, 100 amp switch to isolate the solar pannels from the four charge controllers.

Today's exercise down at Rathlogan was to do my Topol impression and up on the roof to put back the crow guard that had previously been removed whilst other works had been done down below on the range and chimney area in the kitchen. A lead cowl had been placed over the top of the chimney to stop rain running down the inside of the stack but this had been removed on Friday whilst the builders fired up the range for the first time and tested out the heating system. Unfortunately they didn't put the crow guard back so arriving at the cottage today I discovered the whole of the top of the range covered in sticks and debris that the crows had been throwing down the chimney.



Considering that the house had stood empty for only a day the amount of rubbish the crows had managed to deposit was incredible, leaving the chimney unprotected was not an option. My builders are now on a sabbatical for the next few weeks so the only two possibilities for refitting the crow guard were to call Paul the local Chimney technician or do the job my self. Well from those of you who know me, you know which option I chose.


Yours truly scaling the dizzy heights of Rathlogan whilst a friendly native does little to help other than take photos of the English eejit


A fool hardy task if there ever was one. I don't really mind heights it's the getting there that bothers me, in this case it was via an ancient set of rickety home made roof ladders constructed by the previous owners of the house. Still the view from the top of the roof was amazing and I think I may be inclinded to spend time sat up there sipping Pimms and taking in the view when the weather allows ..... NOT!

Derek and Anthony work on the new tiled bathroom/utility room roof.



The end of the old henhouse all bricked up and in the process of being converted into the new bathroom.



The newly fitted out henhouse. This isn't the final layout but it gives me a functioning loo and sink whilst my trusty builders take a sabbatical for a few weeks.



Now all the trees have and shrubs have been cleared the house can be seen from the road. It's also been remarked that it's now easier to see on coming traffic, making the road a little safer for everyone. At this point I should thank Pat Spencer (relative of the previous owners of the cottage) for doing an incredible job with his JCB and I'd also like to thank both James and Sean McEvoy my wonderful farmer neighbours for allowing me to square off the plot the cottage lies on.



Before leaving Rathlogan I just stood outside the front of the house and looked in awe at the sunset with Fertagh Round Tower silhouetted by the burning clouds. Hopefully I'll get to view a good many Rathlogan sunsets in the future.

Finally after months of hunting I've come up with a decent deal on batteries that I can use to power the house. Admittedly they're not the 250Ah AGM batteries that I covet but I've had to come to a compromise with regards to the practicalities of being able to single handedly move the batteries and the cost.

Here's the plug : I've now just ordered 5 x 110Ah batteries for the cottage from a company called Voltage Systems +353(0)539366319 +353(0)879285530 down in Frens, County Wexford. After an interesting conversation with David Sykes we managed to come up with a very nice deal that would be difficult to beat anywhere in Ireland.