Not another opinionated rant!

Readers whilst it might seem like all I’ve been doing is ranting about current affairs, this is not the case.  The 240V power cable has been laid to the workshop.  Our fit 28 year old nephew was volunteered by myself to get into the roof cavity and run the plastic conduit and cable from the far corner of the house to the main switchboard side.  The roof has a 15° pitch, which is just too small for me to crawl around in these days.  I’d probably put my foot through the plaster ceiling lining at least twice.  My job was to feed the pipe from outside whilst he scurried around inside the ceiling cavity like a rat.  He then departed to make some money doing his real job whilst I carried on.

The wire was dropped down the outside of the wall and into the trench

Jan then helped me pull the power cable through the conduit to the workshop.  She did the feeding and I did the pulling.  No doubt she will find this acquired skill useful at some future date.

The depth of the conduit is 700mm.  Legally it has to be a minimum of 600mm but I do like to over engineer things.

Up into the workshop

I now have to do the connection at the sub-board in the workshop

Meanwhile the trench was backfilled. 

It won’t take long for the grass to grow back.

Work has also progressed on the outback trailer.  I’ve been fabricating the steel salvaged from the old bench in the garage and then had my neighbour weld it to the underside of the trailer as a second spare wheel carrier.

The major challenge here was working out a method of raising the tyre.  I used wooden blocks and the trolley jack to position it.  Obviously I can’t do this whilst in the outback!  My solution has been to fabricate a cradle from 3mm galvanised wire.  Two lengths running longitudinally and two shorter cross lengths.  They are connected using double throated wire clamps.  The clamps were then covered in duct tape in an effort to ensure the clamps don’t wear the tyre.  By releasing the wire the wheel is lowered.  Obviously the reverse to raise it.  I haven’t finalised this last part.  At the moment I’ve fitted an angle plate to the front of the trailer coupler as an anchor point and have used ratchet straps to raise the wheel.

It’s a bit Heath Robinson and I need to give more thought to a better aesthetic solution.

Oh… Jan has chosen her swimming pool…… I need to do more digging!