Friday 24 October 2014

A damp quiet day

It's been a day for taking it quietly. The weather's been quiet as well, but a bit damp all day, not persisting down, or not very often, but constantly mizzly. As a result, we've spent most of it indoors, getting bits and pieces done but not achieving anything very dramatic.

Sheila's largely recovered from the effects of her flu jab, I'm pleased to say, and has been mostly getting on with her crochet. We did go round to the Farm Shop in the morning, buying meat, including pork escalopes for tonight, and a loaf of bread. I got some IT jobs done when we got back, so as not to feel totally bone idle.

This afternoon we managed a walk right round the marina without getting too wet. We called into the office to discuss displays for the Christmas Fair stand and inevitably chatted to one or two fellow moorers and lodgers on the way.

I had intended to take some photos of the new signs, but forgot the camera or iPad until we were on our way round. I planned to go back out with the iPad later, but it started raining more seriously, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait until tomorrow.

One revelation came through just now though; we've been mystified for quite a while by an occasional sound of suddenly trickling water in the wee small hours (those over 60 know what that term really means). It only comes once in a while and never more than once per night.

We've had all sorts of hypotheses; rain building up on the roof then running down through the gap in the handrail, a tap draining, water running out of a drain on the boat next door, but none have stood up to investigation.

Then, as I was idly playing a game of Canfield on the iPad, it came to me – the dehumidifier. During the winter, we have a compact dehumidifier running in the engine room during the day. It makes that space ideal for drying stuff that can't be tumbled and it reduces the condensation that otherwise tries to occur in the comparatively unheated space.

Now, a dehumidifier is, of course, a sort of inside out fridge, with a cold plate and a fan to blow the air over it. The plate shouldn't frost up particularly, but there's always the possibility of an odd bit of frost collecting in the corners. With the beast switched off over night so as not to disturb us, any such bits of frost will melt and run down into the reservoir, trickle, trickle.

You can sometimes see the same thing under a car with air con that's been parked up for a while.

Ah well, one less thing to worry about in the middle of the night...

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