KALIYA Solar Roof Diary - Day 5

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Day Five

The alarm went off at 6.35 as usual but I had already been woken up by the sound of clattering rain at dawn. It's now 9am and it's been raining hard for a good four hours. The ground is saturated and there's no point going up to the village when the only work we have left to do is making holes in the roof and mounting the last solar panels. Everything else is ready and once the electrician completes his work, we should be able to switch on early next week.

The rain continued until about 10am and, after giving the stream time to dry up, I eventually managed to clamber up the slippery mountain scramble to get to the village at about 11.30. Taimon and Nelson were already setting out the second block of modules and had lready hauled the first pair of modules up to the roof. They weren't happy with the modules they fixed yesterday and spent a couple of hours reworking the fixings. Time for a toolbox talk about making the best use of their collective skills - no point in hiring 2 carpenters if one simply hands nails to the other - that's what their assistants are for.

Progress today was painfully slow - probably exagerated in my mind by the fact that a week had seemed a reasonable amount of time to complete the work. But then, we lost just about all of Monday (no transport and with Taimon working on installing doors and locks for KALIYA), a large part of yesterday morning and just about all of the this morning. Actually, by the end of today, with 5 of the 11 panels securely mounted and all of the solar internal components mouted and wired, we're well on the way to completing the installation.

Another toolbox talk and the carpenters are confident, with good weather on Monday, that they can complete the module mounting. With all of the electrical work completed over the weekend that should mean that we will be ready to switch on the lights on Monday evening. Suddenly things seem much closer to completion - it's just that horrible nagging feeling that I cannot trust our electrician which risks playing on my mind over the weekend.

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Photos

Hard Work With Hardwood
Taimon struggles against the hardwood in the heat and humidity - about 70 hand drilled and chisel countersunk holes were needed.