Exciting times

At least the start of such things... We - that is M - had a busy Sunday* ensuring that there was a clear path for the scaffolders who arrived this morning at 10. They were scheduled to arrive some time between 8 and 11, but as predicted they arrived just as I was sitting down to the first meeting of the day. I was extremely glad that M was still at home to point them in the right direction - asking a customer to wait a few minutes while I sorted them out didn't seem a terribly professional approach!
They came, they scaffolded, and they went away... the job was done in about an hour, and there is the BIGGEST ladder I have ever seen leaning against the back wall of our house. Fortunately there is absolutely no way for any miscreants to get access to our back garden without climbing at least two 6ft+ fences, unless they come through the house or garage, so I think it's all pretty safe. The Solar Team arrive tomorrow at about 8 to start their installation - fortunately there are no customer meetings scheduled - they expect to have the panels up and installed by the end of tomorrow, and there may be a bit more to do the next day, but by the end of Wednesday we should be generating our own lovely free electricity!!!

In the meantime, I have done a little bit of playing with my new toy... as part of the excitement, I sent the artwork for the logo we use for our boat to a company who does digitising. You can't just give a .jpg file or a drawing to the sewing machine, it has to be turned into a proper control file which contains all the instructions about how to stitch it... I do have software to do this wonderful transformation, but it's not easy to do a really good job, and I thought we should invest in getting someone who knows what they are doing on the case. So I did, and here's the result... How cool is that?!?

* I did some work too - laying insulation and floorboards in the loft because Solar Team need to get up there to do clever things with cables and it would be frightfully embarrasing if they fell through the ceiling because I hadn't got around to doing the floorboards... so I did them.

Slaps forehead...

I decided this afternoon that I should tell the house insurance company about the impending conservatory and solar panels.
Then had a massive panic because I couldn't find the house insurance paperwork. Found last year's renewal and a letter from from the previous company saying "sorry you're leaving us" but nothing to replace it.
Eventually convinced myself I hadn't renewed it; found a quote from another company with what looked like a good price, but no policy. Rang a nice lady called Lorraine at their call centre - no policy there at all. She quoted me, again a great price, with no extra for the conservatory or the solar panels, and I was all set to pay up...
Then I saw a "new mail" alert in my "only give this to salesmen" hotmail account, which I don't use very much... It was from the motoring organisation who'd provided the car insurance this year... just a newsletter, but I started to wonder... After a bit of digging, I found an email there with all the documents attached for the policy I *had* taken out in August.
Am I going dotty or what?
And how foolish would I have felt if I had taken out another policy when I already had one?
Perhaps I should just retire to a nursing home and take up basket weaving now... not sure I am safe to be let loose with a computer...

Here comes the Sun, it's all right

Just had to review and re-write this one, as I realised I forgot to mention my next little bit of madness...
We decided it might be interesting to investigate solar power. I got the urge to do this just as the government cut the Feed In Tariff by half, mostly because I had never quite got around to finding out what to do, but nevertheless I thought it would be worth a look.
Solar-panel man number one came around to have a look and tell me what it would cost. He had a quick measure and gave me some draft figures. Unfortunately he turned up exactly the same time as a friend who wanted a quick surf of the net to chase up her visa application for her summer holiday, so it was all a bit fraught.

M and I looked at the figures, and it seemed like a pretty good deal, even at the lower tariff. Better than having the dosh in a building society, anyway. But we had a few questions, so I left solar-man#1 a message asking him for a few answers... he said he'd come back the next day to discuss.
He came, he answered, and I signed on the dotted line. It looks like a plan with no drawbacks, to be honest, there's nowhere else to put the money that will give the same return at the moment. Obviously, I will be cursing if interest rates climb, but I can't see that happening any time soon.

Having handed over my cheque, I was expecting a call within a day or so to tell me when the surveyor would be coming out to do the "full survey" so he could do the technical design... by the 23rd I was getting a bit impatient (who, me?) so I rang and asked what was going on? Yes, we've agreed, yes, we've paid a deposit. It's up to you, chaps, but as I said to the salesman, if it takes more than a couple of weeks you'll be scaffolding around the conservatory...
That did the trick. Scaffolding up a flat back wall will be much simpler - and more importantly cheaper - than scaffolding around the conservatory. Solar-man#2 will be out on Jan 4th!
 
Solar-man#2 dully arrived today to do the "full survey". He was twenty minutes late, but I hadn't started panicking at that point - I figured he might have a backlog after the terrible weather yesterday.

Doing the proper measurements meant him getting into the back garden with his ladders, which was a challenge because I hadn't arranged for a clear path through the garage... but we got through in the end. He measured and scribbled, measured some more and then scribbled some more. He drank a cup of coffee, said that his colleague would be back to me with some more accurate projected output for the installation, which would be more conservative than the numbers the salesman gave me... but still assured me that the output would be better than they predict. We shall see.
Despite him having said that he hadn't looked at the file, he knew that I'd asked them to get the array up before the conservatory arrives... and was confident that we'd be all set up and generating lovely sunshine electricity within three weeks! His last question as he left was "would a weekend install be ok?" - too blooming right it would!
He also pointed out where the lead flashing on next door's kitchen extension isn't quite where it should be, so I ran round to let them know as soon as solar-man had gone. I do hope that there wasn't too much of yesterday's monsoon pouring through the gap...
So far I am quite impressed with Solar-gang -they've been quite easy to deal with. As always, we shall see...