Buttoning up the citrus

This week: Just a tiny leak; Buttoning up the citrus for winter; The build begins; The last day of this week;

A tidy desk is the sign of an unsound mind…, or so goes the old saying!

In getting ready for building my new computer this week, I cleared up my study desk. I needed space to do a build, accompanied by one or more of the felines.

The weather this week has been mostly wet. However I’m not complaining. We have been so short of rain, with the last rainfall of any note being in early May, so the 133 mm of rain Dol has received this week has been more than welcome.

No longer will I have to irrigate anything. Last Sunday, when I saw the wilting leaves of the Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts, I had to water them again.

I’m sure though, that this will be the last irrigation needed until next summer.

Apart from odd forays into the orchards when the weather has been fine, my week has been spent inside.

I have lit a fire in the wood stove on all but one night when the temperature was over 20°C. Usually a number of the felines are close to the fire.

Or better still, on a radiator until it gets too hot when them climb into a hammock.

Every night the fire has burnt well and I am now coming round to the view that this is because the flue is now so well insulated.

I’m still using the chimney fan when I light the fire, when the outside flue is cold. However the flue temperature quickly rises and once it is above 180°C, I have no problem just using the fire draft valve, to control the burn rate and the heat.

Just a tiny leak

Early in the week, I noticed a couple of drops of water on one of the bars of my heated towel rail in the bathroom.

I couldn’t work out where they had come from and despite searching I couldn’t find a leak. So I just dried them off.

A day later there were two more bubbles of water. A day and a half later, there were drops of water all down the towel rail. This merited a more serious investigation.

The towel rail is fed from the central heating system and apart from drying towels, also heats the bathroom.

Drying the rails once more, I saw there were two raised sections of paintwork on separate longitudinal bars, then as I watched, little beads of water appeared from these flaws.

I checked with a magnet and the towel rail is all steel, so my suspicion is that there is a flaw in these two pipes and they have corroded, just enough to allow water to be forced through.

I have had all kinds of problems with the various things that the local plumber installed, to the point that I started doing all my own plumbing years ago. But one thing I did when the central heating was installed, was to add Fernox, a central heating corrosion inhibitor and lubricant.

I have topped this up from time to time too. So I suspect that because these are the only two pipes affected, and they have both failed in exactly the same place, that it is a manufacturing fault.

You only need a pinprick size hole in a pipe for it to leak.

I had some self amalgamating pipe repair tape, so cut two strips and fitted it over the leak. This immediately stopped any further droplets of water leaking out.

The only problem is that the tape is black. This rather shows up on the white enamel towel rail. I have now ordered some white self-amalgamating tape on-line. When it is delivered I will replace the black tape.

It does mean though that I need to keep an eye out in case any more leaks start.

When you own a house, it isn’t if there are any repairs which need doing, rather how many are on the list at any one time…

Buttoning up the citrus for winter

Over the last 10 days I have been watching the progress of bitterly cold Arctic air which has moved south over most of Europe.

It is all the fault of the Jetstream. There are two areas of Jetstream air, both circulating anti-clockwise around the northern hemisphere. The upper one is in the Stratosphere and the lower one in the Troposphere.

These circulation’s “corral” cold air and keep it well to the north. However when the Jetstream breaks down, especially the lower one, then cold air escapes south.

This is what is causing the outbreak of cold we are all feeling across Europe at the moment.

Every winter, sometime in November or early December, I fit the citrus trees with a wind screen.

My citrus orchard is on a north facing slope, so when we get the dry, cold winter Bura winds, there is little to protect the trees.

Citrus trees can be damaged and even killed by cold, however they vary by variety.

Lime trees, especially Key Limes have the lowest cold tolerance, so my lime tree has been planted close to a building. Limes can be damaged by any temperatures below 0°C.

Lemons are a little hardier, but can be damaged by temperatures between -1° and -5°C. Mandarin and Clementine trees are a little hardier, down to -6°C and Kumquats down to -8°C.

Sweet oranges and grapefruits are similarly hardy and indeed benefit from winter cold, making the fruit sweeter,

Our recent winters have been mild, with maybe just one or two hours across the whole winter, when temperatures dropped below freezing.

However my concern is cold wind damage. A cold dry wind, combined with a low temperature will do considerably more damage than cold, without any wind chill.

Although the forecast lows over the next week are arounf +5°C, I didn’t want to take any chances, so started fitting the wind protection.

Each tree has a permanent rebar frame, so it is just a matter of tying the shade netting in place. Not too difficult, except when I have feline helpers!

A second, smaller piece of netting goes over the top of each frame, but I am not putting that on just yet.

With rain forecast over the weekend and early next week, I want to get as much moisture into the roots around the trees as I can.

The computer build begins

Three rainy days this week have allowed me to start the build of my new computer.

The first job was to copy the Windows operating system to the new hard disc drive. Sounds easy, however it was still a two-and-a-half hour job to copy everything.

With that done, I started to assemble everything which goes into the computer tower chassis.

A wet morning on Thurday allowed me to build up the motherboard componants. This is relatively easy because the tower case I chose to use has the motherboard mounted onto a sliding tray.

This means that I can build everything outside the case, then simply slide it into place.

I then fixed the power supply into the case, together with two new extractor fans.

By the time this was done, the sun had come out, so it was time to do outside work.

Friday was another very wet day. The first job was to clear a space on my scanning table and then set up the computer chassis and a monitor.

The first switch on did not go well. All the fans worked but there was no signal to the monitor.

This motherboard has a small internal screen which provides a series of codes at startup, basically tellying you what it is doing. This doubles as an error reporting system too.

I kept getting error codes saying the system couldn’t find the graphics card, and then the keyboard and mouse.

Changing keyboards and mice didn’t work, so it was time for online research.

Not that the answers helped very much. Basically they said to try and replace the components until the problem was solved. So this is what I did.

Around five hours after I started, when it was still pouring with rain outside, I turned the system on and it booted into the BIOS, but not windows.

After more fiddling around inside and a change of location for the hard disc drive, suddenly Windows worked!

What did I do? I’m really not sure, apart from remove all the “innards” and then refit them – much as the online advice had told me.

By this time, the light was beginning to fade, the rain was still teeming down and I decided I would call it quits for the day…

The last day of this week

The rain started again just after midnight, early on Saturday morning and continued unabated until 13:30, by which time we had received 53 mm of rain.

So there was not much point in doing anything outside.

Instead I continued with the computer. the first job was to update the BIOS and the operating system from Windows 10 to Windows 11. This took all of the morning.

Next I finished the installation of the hard disc drives from the old system to the new one, then I connected everything up.

Finally, I put the screens back on my desk, only to find that my HMDI cable is now too short. Something else I need to order!

So instead of two screens, I only have one working. However this week’s blog has been completed on my new system. NCG