Sunday 3rd February 2008
I put the mower back together and gave the start rope a couple of good pulls and it burst into life, the repair and modification was successful. I spent most of the afternoon cutting the grass and during that time I stopped and started a good dozen times and the recoil starter was fine.
I must qualify as a Mountfield repair man now!
I have been looking through my files for Open Weekend photos and although I have quite a few, due to Lynn and I working hard at the weekends at the busy times, we have few photos. I have a fair number from early days, but very little from the last couple of years, so if anyone has any good photos please either e-mail them or post them on the forum.
Any used in the photo album will have a credit given to the owner of the photo, I can't promise to use all supplied photos, but as many as I can. I'll be most grateful to anyone who can help out.
The sun has gone and strong winds have returned. The amount of noise the steelwork of the tunnels make when really windy has to be heard to be believed. I hate these winds, they will eventually be the down fall of the aging polythene. I'm not looking forward to when it happens!
There is an obvious weak point in the way the roofing sheets are fitted to the roofs of the tunnels. Each sheet is the full length of the tunnels, it is finished and fixed to the horizontal bar which is about 5ft below the highest point of the curved end. The polythene is pulled down into pleats from the curve and fixed to the horizontal bars. This section of polythene moves more than any other part, as it is not pulled taut over it's full area. The point where the pleats are fixed is weak and so far 3 roof sheets have broken at that point so far. We have effected a short term fix for this, but if I were to build another set of tunnels or when it comes to re-roofing I shall have an extra fixing on top of the end hoops and have the roof as one section and the end half moon sections separate. This will then eliminate any pleats.
The pleats and horizontal fixing can be seen in this picture.