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VanafFrom 1 July 2021 we have adopted the crocodile at Reptielenhuis de aarde in Breda. With this we honor the reptile fan, and especially crocodile fan that Maxim was. We did visit "de Aarde" with the three of us not very long after opening, and in summer 2020 Rob and Maxim did an arrangement "assist the caregiver".
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On August 19, 2020, the heating engineer comes for regular maintenance on the central heating boiler. Nice to do that in the summer, so we will be well prepared for the heating season. While he is busy I continue my work at hime. After a short time the engineer calls me: the burner is a total loss: after 16 years he says he no longer wants to connect the boiler because it has become dangerous.
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On December 27, 2014 during the night quite a nasty snow cover started to come down on a warm earth. At some point the snow stayed, but it stayed wet and icy. This managed to cover part of our solar panels in a thick layer of snow and ice. Since the cover was incomplete, the inverter refused to start and gave repeated errors. We ended the day with 0 Wh of power, a first for our installation. During the night, pieces of ice and snow kept coming down, giving rise to scary cracks and crashes on the roof.
December 28 I went to the roof around 13:00 to clean the last bits off with a broom: this was a dangerous operation from below: patches of ice and snow up to 50 kg crashed down on grass and driveway. The result of this action is quite apparent in the graph of solar power on that day!
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Since 27 January 2012, we are producing our own electricity using a photovoltaic (PV) system on the roof. This is the story that goes with it.
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Today is the start of our holiday trip to Madagascar. We have to get up at 3:00, leave the house at 4:00, and end up at Schiphol airport at 4:45 where the check-in counter is not even open yet. At 5:00 we pass all queues quickly and our flight leaves in time at 7:15 starting with a 20 minute ride to the "polderbaan".
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Before we moved into our house close to Heenweg in 1999, it belonged to a greenhouse farmer family. And the greenhouse had enough place to store things for the family. Now that we bought the house separately, we really need a shed: for storage of our garden tools, to do some basic jobs in the house, and to place our bicycles.
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Since Rob needed to go to Durban end of August 2003, we decided to make South-Africa our holiday destination for that year. A selection of our nature pictures coming from the different national parks we visited is shown here.
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The house had an open fireplace when we came. This was not very efficient for heating, and a bit dangerous. This is the story of the installation of our new "flam" fireplace.
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With an antenna on the roof, and two-and-a-half channel reception in house, we had decided that it couldn't harm to ask the cable company to get a connection. The rules said that if it would cost more than 100 Euro's, they would first tell us how much it would be. But then: suddenly there they were in our garden. I guess the communication boom on the markets has made this possible: at the time this happened the cable companies were doing ~5000 US$ per connection....