Day 3: Saturday, Nov 12th
Expecting the roofer and sparks at 8am as agreed. They turn up about 0845 and start to get things moving.
I’ve spent the last hour or so getting ready – cupboard under the stairs cleared and access through the house protected with sheeting.
The chimney starts to get a right battering from the off, but it seems under control and the wiring start to come together under the stairs.
I’m lucky in that I’ve been able to offset the cost of having the chimney taken down against some of the wiring. In a rare moment of fortune, when the house was rewired a few years back I had two circuits run to the loft – 1 for light and 1 for power. The latter, frankly has never been used, so this will be repurposed as the feed from the solar system to the fusebox. The layout of the house would have meant considerable work and mess otherwise (channeling out, capping, making good etc.) so this has saved time, money and mess. This is a great advantage. Should I want power up there in the future I can use an extension lead from the landing, which to my mind is no great hardship for the few times it may occur.
So the cupboard under the stairs now also contains the isolator, an additional meter and an OWL CM160 transmitter. The latter used to provide easy measurement of power production. The inverter and other isolators are mounted in the loft on the other end of the original circuit.
Whilst all this was going on the roofers were busy trying to fit the first mounting rail on the roof and make good the whole that used to be the chimney. It was not rapid progress. The roof hooks went in easy enough, but the spacing was a problem – one that was to continue for the next day as well. By their calculations there wasn’t enough rail provided by the wholesaler – I shall explain that later.
By 3pm they’d made the roof water tight (sort of), fitted the first rail, and the panels had been tested at ground level with a meter. It felt like progress. A bit.
They would be back tomorrow morning at 8am, with more rail and would finish tomorrow.
End of day photo:
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