Pupdate

April has been rather nice, which has given the opportunity for plenty of long walks :)

Florida

We started the month in Florida, more on that in its own post – Florida 2025.

Bike bother

Vespa

I mentioned my broken Vespa last month, and returned from Florida to a diagnosis of low compression, and an estimate of £433 to repair it. After chatting to a neighbour who restores classic mopeds I decided to have a crack at repairing it myself. It took about an hour to strip down the ‘top end’, and it quickly became clear that I’d need new everything – cylinder, piston, cylinder head. So… I ordered a complete kit (that cost around £130) and it arrived a few days later.

There were lots of fiddly annoyances putting everything back together, so it took me about 5 hours to complete the rebuild and test runs. But it was super satisfying to hear the engine start again.

CB1000

Then it was time for the MOT test for my big bike. It had a puncture from a tack, but thankfully I was able to fix that with a Dynaplug (HT Joe Baguley for recommending them).

The MOT picked up a couple of minor problems:

1. The rear brake pads need to be replaced, which I’ll get done when it has its 32,000m service that’s due soon.
2. The indicator switch wasn’t operating properly (again). This was frustrating as I fixed the same problem last year by stripping the switch down, cleaning, and applying new dielectric grease (per this video). I guess these things get temperamental when they’re nearly 30y old and unused over the winter months :( This time around I’ve applied some DeoxIT to the contacts, which is a product I’d never heard of until John Kennedy mentioned using it to fix a keyboard switch. It’s presently working perfectly :) But let’s see if it’s still OK in a year (or 5, or 29).

Heat pump

I forgot about this last month… My heat pump broke so I had to call an engineer to fix it. They diagnosed a broken valve, which was replaced under warranty. But, it took a week for the part to arrive, and then a few more days for the engineer to be available to fit it. This isn’t like gas boilers where the repair folk seem to have most spares in their van or available same day from stock.

USB Cification

My first trip away with both iPhone and iPad needing USB C chargers nudged me to reconsider my standard tech packs that I take on travels. Out with the old and in with the new for cables and some other bits.

At first I thought I could get by with some USB A-C adaptors, but then I looked at a more USB C native approach (beyond the USB C things I got a couple of years ago).

Anker Zolo power bank

My ‘London’ bag has carried a 5000mAh Tumi power bank for many years, and it’s held up really well. But I saw that I could get a 10000mAh pack that’s the same physical size and has a built in USB C cable (and USB C port, and a USB A port). I was able to get the power bank bundled with a (very small) 20W USB C Anker ‘wall wart‘ for £14.99, which seemed pretty good.

Freezer

The dog food drawer didn’t quite slide back in properly, so the door didn’t quite close properly, so next time I went to the garage freezer it was warmer (and wetter) than it should be. It’s not the first time, and it’s always a shame to be chucking out what should have been good food.

So… I’ve got myself an Acurite freezer thermometer. It’s quite reassuring to see that the freezer is back to normal operations. The alarm has already been helpful. After putting some groceries in the freezer and carefully closing the door I came downstairs an hour later to the alarm going off. It wasn’t obvious to me what was causing the problem, but water was already pooling at the bottom, so warm air was getting in somehow. Thankfully things returned to normal after making sure the door was properly closed (again).

What I didn’t expect is how wildly the temperature in modern freezers can vary throughout the day. My indoor freezer has a display that tells me it’s at -18C, but in reality both freezers seem to swing from -10 to -21 as they go through their various cycles.

Solar Diary

The readings from 5-11 Apr look suspiciously even because a UPS failure meant that the inverter monitoring wasn’t working for a week whilst I was away :/

As mentioned earlier it’s been a beautiful month weather wise, with plenty of sunny dry days. That’s led to a bumper harvest of photons – almost 15% more than the best previous April.

Tub time

The nice weather (and the end of the Easter break) meant it was time to get out the hot tub again. Thankfully Lay-Z-Spa seem to have sorted out their app, so I’ve been able to connect the tub to my devices network and set a timer so that the heater is running when the sun is shining.