Poison

I discovered the rodent had been at work gnawing the lid to the chickpeas and helping himself. Apart from the mess, the dreaded rodent is getting very destructive and annoying. He/she has refused my humane trap so has now been offered some nice yummy rodent poison. I’m not fond of terminating rodents in this way but needs must in this case.

I made the mistake of leaving Maya and Sasha outside but fortunately it was 22:30 when they decided to bark for some reason. I went out and called them both in so the remainder of the night was peaceful if not hot. There was an attempt to go out much earlier than I’d like but I soon put the culprits straight.

The morning walks went reasonably well although Isabella seemed to behave annoyingly badly. A woman was standing in the middle of the beach and I’d redirected the others to leave her alone. Soon after, Isabella took it upon herself to give the woman a visit. Unfortunately, I was too slow to intervene in time. Luis turned up at the end and got a good dunking. I took them back then went out again with the Crazies.

I didn’t ride to Paleochora and I didn’t go swimming. I did mess with my head for a little while then released the dogs and fed them. The plan was to go swimming later to wash off the inevitable dirt I’d collect progressing the Air Con install. I’ve completed the interconnecting wiring and connected the refrigerant pipes. I’ve installed the condensate drain pipes and jacked up the outdoor unit to compensate for the condensate drain connection which cleverly is below the level of the feet. The unit is not intended to be stood solely on its feet. I stuck some galvanised square section under each foot and will fix the unit down with some big bolts. I want to see how intrusive it is before deciding on its final resting place. It could go over the awning roof which would facilitate cleaning the unit. The van roof is a little leaky in places so this might be a cunning plan. It would involve welding some tube between some existing sections but I’d need to see if there’s enough headroom for servicing purposes.

I used the vacuum pump once I’d completed the wiring and connected the two final pipes with flares. I don’t have a torque wrench so made a best guess. Using an adaptor, I connected the vacuum pipe to the gauges and turned it on. I left it running for a while and then left it to see if the vacuum would leak out once the pump was switched off. I later discovered that the connector had not been screwed in tightly enough to depress the valve so I’d be evacuating only the pipes to and from the gauge set! Having tightened the adaptor using a tool, the valve now operated correctly so I ran the pump once more.

This was interrupted by a call from Sue regarding the ongoing router saga. Ellis and I reset the router back to default, connected successfully to the Internet having configured only the VDSL section of the setup. Amazingly, this time, it connected and remains connected even though I’ve configured the subnet and made several changes. There is more to do to connect the H-H store to Lewes but for another time. Ellis is off until Sunday for a well-deserved break.

The dogs remained mostly quiet as it was hot. I didn’t do as much moving around as yesterday as it was slightly different and I spent time fooling around with routers again. I still feel quite tired due to a combination of not having a nap, the heat and a long support session with Ellis.

Maybe, tomorrow the Air Con will spring to life…