Metalfire Optimum 700-900?

Now we have 4 m3 firewood piled up, and it's 33º and end of June, it's time to take steps for the new stove.  Engineer Jansen really likes the Metalfire Optimum inserts. There are two versions, a 70cm and a 90cm wide version. The 70cm should suffice for our heating needs, but big is beautiful, and an Optimum 900 would be...  nice. The price difference is minimal.

Find out if it would fit the existing mantle: make a hole to access the interior for measurements:

Ladrillo

The casing is made of ladrillo, ceramic blocks, 7cm thick.

Inside

Odd, no insulation anywhere. Yes, that is a concrete pillar at the back. It shoild have been insulated from the stove! Bad!

Measurement

The Metalfire 900 is 904mm wide, installation specification tells you to surround the stove with plates of Silca T300, 5cm thick. So, minimum width is 1004 mm. The inside of the casing is 92cm. So, an Optimum 900 does not fit.

That is disappointing! Asked Metalfire if an air gap between stove and wall of 1 cm would suffice. It won't, they say. No idea if ceramic ladrillo really cannot withstand the heat. Will find out. Else the engineer will have to accept an Optimum 700.

Heat

Hottest days of the year so far, 31-33º: time to order some firewood!

Leña! 4m3.

Last winter chopping up the big blocks was a daily chore. Good workout, but.

This time we asked for "leña para estufa", so you get wood in nice smallish chunks, else you may get huge chunks of terribly hard root that is unsplittable, even by Engineer Jansen.

If you order now there’s 6 months drying in the sun and heat. Last winter Engineer Jansen had his certainties about the humidity of the wood, having bought an electronic wood humidity tester, and the orange test light lit up far too often. Too humid wood gets you less heat, more air pollution, and soot up your chimney. Engineer Jansen does not like air pollution, and soot up his chimney.

Piling up is fun. I think we have room for 2 m3 more!

Delivery, 4 m3

Two heaps, one on the P, one in the driveway.

Pile #1:

Pile #1

Piling up #2:

Red Lines

Last week Wednesday night at 3AM engineer De Waal woke up with a hurting stomach. So bad that after an hour we were off to Emergency First Aid, who poked a finger here and there, and suspected "gastritis", and prescribed "buscopan", which should relieve stomach aches very quickly, in 15 minutes. The emergency farmacia was not open, another one 15 minutes further was. 

Buscopan did not help. A few hours later engineer De Waal was on the floor trying to find a position to relieve the pain. Engineer Jansen decided it was time for the emergency room at the hospital, 40 minutes away.

Arrived there 8:30, and were quickly admitted to the waiting area. 40 minutes later first assessment. Fingers were poked in various locations, with one spot especially hurtful. Less than half an hour later he was on a drip, buscopan, again, in a room with 6 chairs. The pain dropped a bit, but returned. That means it's not the stomach. Can be your gallbladder, or the pancreas area. (Aargh!)

Echo. Ah, your gallbladder is not well, you need to stay and we'll operate on you. It's only a peephole surgery, without complications you can go home in two days.

The engineer's belly was shaved, "beach ready!", and he himself changed into a negligee with nothing under. (Ooh!)

Quickly a bed on wheels arrived, and the engineer was swiftly rolled away, into the lift, upstairs. Red Lines. Wheel wheel wheel, off to the left. 

I expected to be taken to "his room", but no, this was it. “In three hours your father should be out”.

Eh? What? Father?? Husband! Blushing nurse.

We could not even say goodbye!

Those red lines suddenly had a rather profound and ominous feeling..

To be continued...

Horrorhor

We have nice aluminium doors with glass, and as an extra a mosquetera: another set of alu doors with a grille at an angle to keep the sun out, and mosquito netting to keep the mosquitos out. The mosquito netting was rather holey. The netting is kept in place with aluminium strips that are screwed onto the door with little screws. Nice construction, for easy replacing of netting.

Well… engineer Jansen has been at work all morning on two doors, as the screws were all corroded. He cunningly used his spraycan of WD40 to eeeeasily loosen the screws. Damn! Blast! etc. 

Holey mosquetera!
Probably a tiger.
Could have lost my leg!

One done, one to do

Shadesails: you can never have enough

In Shadesails and More Shadesails you can see the shade making activities of engineer Jansen.  Yesterday the shadesails on the roof terrace, today he installed the last of the lower terrace area shadesails, using 12x60 mm wedge bolts and nylon rope. 

Roof terrace

Lower terrace

Power Blackout

Well, that was interesting, 20 hours without power. Main concern was the freezer, how long can that be without power before the ice cream is no longer edible? (Answers on a postcard to the wellknown address)

Also, engineer Jansen has an old iPhone, with a battery that was replaced a year ago. Since then the iPhone does not accurately know the battery percentage, and it will crash from 25% to 1% in 5 minutes, and then stay like that for hours, until it dies. If that happens you need to recalibrate your iPhone. That means: use it till the battery runs out completely, then recharge to 100%. Engineer Jansen was in that process at 14% battery when the powerout happened. The 1% period did not last hours, but just 15 minutes. So, recalibration was successful.

The (hybrid) car has a USB that can charge a phone. Ooh! Clever! Alas, when you leave the car, charging stops after 5 minutes. 

He has learned that without internets there is a total news blackout, these days. If the americans had invaded Spain, he would not have noticed.

Power was out from noon till 5:30 the next morning. No internets or GSM. Internets were restored 3 hours later, GSM took another hour. Inconvenient, as engineer De Waal is currently visiting his mum, who turned 90.

It was less fun for Coco, too, who relies on electric light to go outside at night, and find her way back into the house. She got stuck outside twice, and needed rescuing using a LED lamp. Fortunately that was charged sufficiently.

Meanwhile engineer Jansen was lucky having his Kivi collection.

More shadesails

Where the table stands we use a big parasol. It's huge. It's the hugest parasol we have.  But, with the gusts of wind we experience here (huuuge gusts of wind!) the parasol blows over. And it's not huge enough. 

New plan: more shade sails. Probably option 3.

1

Or

2

Or

3