Fire and water

The "Family Room" is nearly ready! Once the building debris had been cleared, I fitted the new stove bought in September. I had already laid a tile base for it to stand on some time ago but the arrival of Cole and his team forced a halt for me while they constructed the en-suite bathroom. Now the work inside the house is finished, I will need to get the paint roller and brushes out.

The new stove can burn coal or wood, as in my case, and was fired up for the first time yesterday morning. It proved very easy to light and easy to control the rate of burning. Within half an hour it was providing plenty of heat and although the instruction booklet warned of a smell the first time it was used, this was not very evident. After adding more logs I let it burn for a couple of hours before allowing it to die down. Very satisfied with this new stove - German design, manufactured in Hungary. I may get another one for the back room as the ceramic tiled stove in that room has a few faults and is proving to be a so-and-so to light. As these tiled stoves are built in situ, it would probably be difficult to replace the broken bricks in the combustion chamber and make the warped metal stoke-hole door fit properly. I have tried to fill the cracks with fireproof filler but the gap is too large for effective sealing. Obviously a metal stove does not provide much heat once it has gone out, unlike the tiled stoves, in effect wood-fired storage heaters which continue to radiate heat for many hours after the last log has burnt out. However, ease of lighting and much more controllable heat output wins the day for me! The large tiled stove in the "Breakfast Room" will be retained as it is not only fairly easy to light and burns well but will also provide a feature for the room and a talking point for guests who have not seen such things before.

After Cole and team finished the en-suite I added a few fittings - towel rack, holders for toothbrush and paste, floor standing toilet roll holder with loo brush and a small pedal bin. I had to wait a day for the silicone sealant around the shower tray to harden before I could use the shower but at last I could have a shower. Unfortunately it was only a slightly warm one as there appears to be a problem with the instant heater. This is possibly due to the relatively high water pressure from the pump in my cellar pushing the water through the heater too quickly. The heater itself may be faulty of course and I will get Viorel the plumber to check it again when he comes to complete the septic tank installation. In the meantime I will just have a quick shower when necessary!

The washer/dryer is working superbly and has been well used in the first few days as I had collected quite a lot of dirty washing. Hand washing only really worked for lightly soiled small items up to T-shirt size. Although I had managed to wash some towels and jeans during the summer months when it could be done in the warm sunshine, rinsing out the soap suds usually required three lots of clean water and wringing out by hand was hard work! I really sympathize with people in Roandola and Laslea who have to do their washing either in the river or at one of the village wells because they do not have their own water supply.

Old vines and dying leaves

Over the last few days I have harvested white and black grapes from six of the nine vines in my courtyard and garden. This years yield looks pretty good to me and the grapes have also had a few frosts on them which I am told improves the quality of the juice whether it is subsequently fermented or not. Unfortunately one vine, which grows around the outside loo at the end of the garden, ripened in late August and most of the grapes succumbed to birds and the myriad of flying insects around at that time. Of the remaining eight vines, five bear white grapes and the other three, black. I have no idea what varieties they are but the three whites I have harvested so far are smaller than the black varieties which are large and juicy - and good for eating too!

The three white varieties yielded a total of 70kgs of grapes and the three black varieties, from smaller vines, totalled 43kgs. After crushing and pressing, the juice from both white and black grapes is stored in a collection of 5, 6 and 10 litre plastic bottles which originally held my drinking water. Once the remaining two vines have been harvested, I will spend a day crushing and pressing the grapes and then the process of turning most of the juice into wine will begin. Some unfermented juice will be set aside for soft drinks for younger visitors. One thing I have noticed is that the juice from the white grapes is more "rose" in colour, as was the bottle of "Roandola 2009" I was given earlier this year by the previous owner of No 130 and which I had thought at the time was a mixture of white and black grapes.

In reality making my own wine doesn't make sense economically as the crusher and press cost over £195 yet I can buy a 5 litre flagon of palatable Italian red or white wine for just over £4. So the money I spent on equipment would buy me over 230 litres of wine! However, there is a certain satisfaction in making your own wine from produce you have grown, whether grapes or any other fruit or even flowers! And of course the equipment is there for next years crop - and the next and the next.....

Autumn has sort of arrived. We are still enjoying clear skies most days and the night time temperature is dropping below freezing. Most mornings there is a heavy frost on everything until about 9:30am. However, once the sun gets over the hill behind my house, the temperature rises quickly to the high teens and even low twenties - warm enough for me to work outside in shorts and T-shirt again!

Most of the trees in the valley and on the hills are deciduous and the colours in the bright sunlight are quite stunning. I have taken some photos, one of which is reproduced here, but the camera doesn't do justice to the brilliance of the yellows, oranges, coppers, reds, browns and silvers of the dying leaves. There is very little wind in the valley and the leaves have mostly stayed on the trees, only falling off one or two species such as the pear trees which line the road through the village.

Looking forward to having a shower!

Work on the en-suite shower/toilet in what will be the "Family Guestroom" has progressed well. The walls were constructed and plastered and septic tanks lowered into a 3x2x2 metre hole by October 2nd. Then I had a couple of days respite from all the mud and dust until Viorel the plumber arrived to install water supply and drain pipes and connect up to the septic tanks. Viorel is also an electrician so after going to fetch some more drainpipes last Thursday afternoon, he came back with two mates and we went through the whole house noting my requirements so they could give me a quote. They left at 6pm and half an hour later Cole, who has been co-ordinating everything for me, rang to say the materials would be 1000 lei and the labour 900 lei. If this price was OK they would come and do the job on Saturday. This equates to £395 so of course I said "Yes, please carry on" straight away! Included in the quote was changing the rather thin wires supplying the house so they won't get fried when the 5kW instant electric shower is used. I might, on the other hand, make the lights in the rest of the village go dim if shower and kitchen water heater are in use at same time!

At lunchtime on Friday, Viorel finished his plumbing work for the time being and arrived with his two mates at 9am on Saturday wearing his electricians hat. They worked through the house room by room and only briefly interrupted the supply three of four times. Amazingly some switches, sockets and light fittings were connected while circuits were "live" but of course an electrician knows to only work on one wire at a time and uses insulated tools. All the cables for the instant shower heater and en-suite lights were channelled into the wall, new power sockets fitted in all rooms and new lighting fitted in kitchen to replace the non-functioning light which had forced me to cook by the light of a plug-in desklamp for the last few months! Power outlets were all replaced and most now have UK 13 amp double sockets I brought with me from England fitted alongside the Romanian type (see photo). This allows me to plug in my UK electrical items without an adaptor or having to change the plug and will also benefit any guests who arrive with a plethora of phone/iPod chargers, shavers, laptops and hair straighteners/curling tongs but only one Continental adaptor between them! To cope with all this new wiring, the main supply to the house was upgraded and as one of the electricians works for the electricity supply company, he had the equipment and skills to go up the pole (see photo) and carry out the work without me having to apply to the electricity company and then wait two or three weeks! The ancient screw-in ceramic fuse holders have been replaced with a master trip outside the house in a new meter box and five circuit breakers inside the house. They finished the installation around 6:15pm but then found that the new spotlights and power sockets in the kitchen were not working so they spent the next hour tracking down and rectifying the problem. When they left at 7:30pm, clutching their well-earned 1900 lei, I cooked my dinner by the light of four spotlamps instead of one desklamp! Oh joy! And the cooker hood I had installed myself was plugged in and working!

Today (Monday) Cole the builder/project manager has been here with one young assistant backfilling the earth around the septic tanks and constructing a strong platform of oak boards over the top. This is so that the heavy layer of earth on top of the tanks does not bend the thin metal tops and crack the plastic tanks contained within the galvanized sheet and tube frames. It will also make access for any repairs easier and allow them to be dug up if and when Roandola is connected to mains drainage - supposed to happen within a couple of years but I'm not holding my breath!

Tomorrow the floor of the en-suite will be tiled by Cole (I'll leave this to him so they are level and flat!) and then I will follow up with doing the wall tiles, which is something I can do. Once that's done Viorel will return to install the shower, WC and wash basin, connect up the drains and complete the wiring to the shower heater and lights.

At last I shall be able to have a shower and do the washing in my new washer/dryer. And of course I shall no longer have to go down the garden to use the toilet (daytime) or use the Porta Potti (nighttime/wet weather) - or is that too much information!