TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

I took the time this weekend to start fixing the front steps, with very little planning to work with, I decided I’d at the very least get the continue the path to the house, so that at least there is something there to support the previous besser block attempt.

The problems with the besser block attempt are in the soil below the blocks, they sink when the soil gets wet, making the step collapse which then requires rebuilding, and causes the overall level of the step to decrease – so it’s a rocky mountain climb to get inside.

I had initially thought the area would easily be covered with half or at most, 1 bag of ready mix concrete. I was wrong, it covers 0.2m2, and the area I have is 68cm x 52cm. But, I did buy two bags in the knowledge my attempt would probably fail.

I mixed up the first bag with water, there’s no exact measurement on the bag, but it did state to mix the whole bag with water, so it was done. I mixed the bag with ample water, and it was pretty thick – I added a bit more, and we had a slurry going.

“Too much water” my partner said, as she was reading Google whilst I stuck into it. She was probably right.

So, I mixed up the second bag, ensuring I used less water and I really thought that it did not meet the consistency of concrete, it looked like a very dry cake, breaking up as I was picking it up.

I proceeded anyway, and as I shoveled it into the pieces of timber I had cut to form the area for it to set, the aggregate sunk, the concrete remained on top.

I was surprised at this, but worked with it, the result by about 12pm today was fairly wet on top. As the afternoon progressed, it got a fair bit dry, it started to look like beach sand after the water has ran away from it.

I wrote my name in it, and this confirmed it wasn’t as dry as I thought it was. Much disagreement came from the opposing force, so I covered up my name, and it settled to form a flat-ish surface.

I’m not sure how the edging will turn out, it’ll be covered anyway, so it’s leaning towards the couldn’t care less pile, but if I can neaten it up, it might be a bit of handy knowledge to have when we finally get around to tackling some plant life in the barren desert land that is our front yard.

On the plus side though, I figured out to dig up some pesky plants that we litterally slaughtered with the shovel last time (but they came back). I watered down the soil really well – far more water in the soil then I used for the concrete task – and then got the shovel in behind it and wedged out most of the root system.

I did that to both of them, and then got the roundup out, and sprayed the roots that remained and could not be dug out.

Hopefully, we don’t see them again, and once we get the budget back on track, we’ll get some plant life in, and see it grow. The other idea is probably to run a small front covered entrance area out from the sunroom/office. But that might not happen – I’m adverse to it, because, who entertains at the front of their house? I could be wrong, have been.

The bag quoted curing time of 7 days, so by next Sunday, we should be able to restore the besser blocks and place the steps on them again. It’ll look awful, but that’s not what I’m trying to solve.

We’ll know more in 7 days, hopefully it doesn’t crack or break away (and also dries..).

There are other thoughts in my mind at the moment, a new concrete area at the black of the granny flat, which we would extend a ‘bedroom’ for it onto. But I’m not going to do that, council approvals and all.

I’m still focusing on my wireless temperature sensor concept, waiting on the wireless kit from China, some resistors from Hong Kong, and some diodes from Tasmania, oh, and the full concept of how it all goes together.

The painter spent the last few days finishing off painting the house. He did a great job on it, and even went further than he had to / quoted.

For testing colours, I figured, I would paint the front of the back fibro shed, which can be seen from the street (which meant our testing would not be wasted).

For the shed though, there was a bit of timber and a lot of old silicon from the awning they had there that the building report marked as unsafe. It was ripped down prior to us moving in, so it was a non issue  – else I would have ripped it down already anyway.

The painter though, painted the front of it himself, so that saved me doing it, which kinda removed something for me to do – a bad thing, I get bored easily.

The brick work at the front is probably the next thing to tackle, it needs a coat of render and painting – the painter having already tidied up the brickwork on the side (and again, it wasn’t quoted work).

The colours – took 5 sample pots, and a good 15 or so colour cards to decide, and the colour we pick is no less than “Self Destruct” – a great name for a house that’s nearing 60 years of age.

So, our colour scheme is: Roof, Downpipes, Doors, Frames, and Fascia – Colourbond Deep Ocean. Eaves – White On White. Wall cladding and concrete stumps are all Self Destruct.

The sand / beach effect is there in that colour on the walls, as well, as a colour that is nearing some sort of coffee, is what my partner has claimed. It need not matter, I’m happy it wasn’t the green the colour looked like during the testing.

The exterior is mostly complete, we are having a break for now I think, pay for it all, and then finally, we’ll go on to a much larger interior change. Of note (but expected), is the exterior looks about 15 times better than the interior does, the paint on the interior is all marked and scratched, espiecially in the second bedroom.

I’ve been toying with the solar hot water system lately, the install doesn’t seem to be trapping as much heat, there was one day there where it was fine, yet the off peak was doing most of the work (so the meter reading led us to believe).

The solution (so far), was to leave the solar collector in the sun for longer. The system works like below.

The collector sits in the sun (on the roof), and gets hot as the sun hits it, there is a temperature sensor on the collector, and one on the inlet of the tank (the bottom).

When the temperature at the collector reaches 12oC hotter than the tank inlet valve, the water is pumped up, circulating through the tubes, and arriving back at the tank.

Hot water rises, leaving cold at the bottom, so as the hot water is returned, it’s released into the bottom, heating up the rest of the water as it goes up.

The pump cuts off when the collector is 6oC hotter than the tank, allowing the collector to remain hotter, and get even hotter faster, because we aren’t taking away much of the heat.

The temperature settings that were set by the installers (or perhaps arrived to the installer), was 2oC for pump cut off, and 6oC for pump on.

I looked up the programming mode, and find that I probably should have moved it off off peak, because the tank need only reach 60oC every 3 days to prevent biological contamination, and can be set to heat the water if it drops below 45oC – this would mean it would run much less, as the off peak kicking in always heats up to 60oC, and it will do that daily.

The other short coming of it is there is no tank temperature, only inlet, it’s a short coming because the tank could be at 50oC and the bottom could be at 30. If that were the case, I wouldn’t honestly care, because the water would still be hot. This would mean it would not need to turn on the heating element thus saving power – but it doesn’t know, and it doesn’t have control over off peak power, and I’d rather have both hot water, and no biological contamination, so we are stuck with leaving it on.

Of interest is Energy Australia’s relay control kicks in after 9am, and not in the night like one might expect, we’ve seen it spinning away.

As a test today, I flicked off the off peak switch this morning, I wanted to see if the collector performed the same, or if it was pumping hot water up as a result of the off peak heating kicking in (pumping hot water up there would have a cooling effect).

It was raining today, the off peak switch was off, and it peaked at 45oC, which was pretty good. I’m waiting on tomorrow, hopefully no rain, and we’ll kill the off peak switch again tomorrow.

Today, I turned it back on at 3pm, and it roared into action, consuming 1kWH in the space of about 15-20 minutes. I suspect had we not, the water may have gone a little cold.

I’m still now spending a lot of time researching two concepts, a wireless thermometer logging data to the PC, and wirelessly capturing data from the inverter.

The 2 problems with the inverter will be one, how do I torque the side panel screws down to 1.5Nm, keeping the inverter safe from water / etc, and two, the inverter possibly uses a protocol by Aurora, which isn’t available for review – but I’ll see what I find, if anything, else the windows software can fetch the data manually.

When we installed our solar hot water power, we replaced the leaky, useless electric hot water system on the granny flat with a pipe from the house to the granny flat.

We dug the trench and paid the plumber $550 to run the pipe – a bit of a premium perhaps, but if you look at the savings of being rid of that electric hot water system, it’s a significant saving.

However, one of the issues has been the water at the tap during wet rainy weather, is barely warm. I was attributing that to two things:
a) the ground being wet.
b) the 45oC tempering valve they installed – a safety measure.

The better solution would have been to give the granny flat hot water before the tempering valve, but that might be an issue for the plumber since it’s installed.

So, I was under the house today, trying to get some measurements to price Expol underfloor insulation whilst I was at Bunnings, when I noticed the pipe actually travels under the house along the floor, then down, and then past a toilet pipe and out the brickwork to under the ground – where the pipe goes diagonally for about 7m to a joint on the granny flat.

When I was fixing the taps out there, I noticed it was warm, so today at Bunnings, I bought some pipe insulation. It comes in a ‘tube’ rubber type form – I don’t have the ability to cut the pipe and rejoin it, so I came up with a better idea.

Cut the tube, wrap it around the pipe, and use cable ties to hold it to the pipe.

It’s annoying in the dark spot under there to feed a small cable tie and get it locked around a relatively similar sized pipe (note, next time, get the longer cable ties). However, I managed to get the pipe covered right all around – with just a small gap in areas where it wasn’t going to get much better.

I went and tested the water – a remarkable improvement, it feels ‘hot’ but not real hot.

I then went to the Kitchen tap, and tested there too – and it’s actually about the same, maybe slightly less at the granny flat Kitchen – which in the scheme of things is the ‘end of the line’ for the pipe work, so it might have temperature losses in the granny flat walls and the plumbing out to the back where the old electric system used to be.

It seemed ‘much better’ to me compared to what it was during our wet weather. I’ve asked our tenant to let me know if they think it’s worse or better – however, as with any thing you ask of a person, they probably won’t disappoint you if it is actually ‘worse’. I believe it’s better compared to what I noted our there previously a few weeks back when repairing the taps (which was barely warm!), so I’ll go with the insulation has improved the temperature out there remarkably.

But as with any long pipe, it does take time to get hot, so it’s not a very water efficient pipe – but it’s energy efficient!!

A second post, I figure I might as well update on the “House” ideas.

Sitting in bed one night this week, I was thinking about how else we could make our desired house plan, but a bit more functional.

I’m no plan of having the loungeroom near the kitchen with all it’s associated noises, steam, heat, dishes, rubbish, etc.  The idea of having heat condensate on my TV is already sounding a bad idea.

The back deck needs close access to the Kitchen for when BBQ season runs up on us. So, it came to me after there. We don’t need to move the bathroom and have that as the ‘entry’. We don’t need to have the house finish where it does at the moment either.

The idea that I had was to add an L shape extension to the house, allowing 5m back. Move the Kitchen to where we were going to move it, have the resulting empty space near the Kitchen open, and the deck area, off the sides of the “L” shape, giving outside access from both areas, and a nice enclosed Lounge / Cinema type area for TV about 1 – 2m short of the granny flat.

I’m waiting on my partner to put that in a visual floor plan still, but it’s sounding really good. I also considered the Kids, and the idea of a second living area, and the ability to see them in the backyard from the Kitchen, and the ability to watch TV while watching the Kids, and.. it’s a very good idea for a functional point of view.

We now have selected a painter, we’ve had some strange quotes. 3 of which came in at around the same price of $2500, and one who ruled themselves out at $3600, and advised he wouldn’t be able to email it to us.

The quotes were considered, as follows:

– $3600. He wasn’t going to email us a quote, so we got the questions out of him that mattered in the consideration, whether he would be high pressure washing it – No, just a hose, and whether there was a written guarantee – No, and his lead time – 2 weeks.

He ruled himself out on price, but eliminated himself when he wasn’t going to email us a quote to attempt to justify the price difference.

– $2500. He was a painter, no preference for paint. He asked us a strange question, “How many coats do you want”. When I was told of this, I started to doubt if he was a painter, because he should be advising us. He did have paint on his clothes, but not much of a method of getting work really! His price, noted on the back of the card didn’t give us anything to consider, so we dumped that one there.

– $2700. He wasn’t going to high pressure clean, he was Dulux Accredited, but no written guarantee, and whilst his detailed email quote was keeping within expectations, his slightly higher price, and lack of high pressure clean were the only shortcomings.

– $2500. He was the first, he got here in the rain at that, took a look around, gave us a price, detailed quote, pulled the whole Dulux over Nippon sales speil, is Dulux Accredited, high pressure clean, written guarantee on his work.

And it was he who we chose, seems to have good work history, and he has a website (if we were to start ruling out because of the lack of one, which is nonsense in painting work – local businesses are generally sought after for their location only).

We now have to decide on colours. We’ve got “Solar Half” and “Shell Haven Half” by Dulux in mind, but like many decisions, this is sure to change anywhere between 1 and 50 times before we buy sample pots tomorrow to come to a complete decision.

I’ve still got many plans before we finish up too, I’ve recently thought of Expol underfloor insulation, sounds good in theory as that’s what we currently notice the cold the most).

The fences are probably more important, but they can wait until we get our heads above water a bit more – speaking of which, Banks. Argh – Banks. After today, I’m not sure which is the worst at customer service, Telcos, or Banks.

The bank fixed the fraud issue within the week, but they also disappointed me with the timing to resolve a personal loan issue (funds not showing in redraw!). Add to that the insult from the front line staff to go into the branch and learn how to use Netbank (as transactions no longer appear for our credit card because of the fraud issue, so we can’t dispute anything)!!

I managed to get the shed door painted last weekend, to match our scheme for our house.

Then it rained all week, starting Monday.

The steps I took to do it were largely based off having a look around at what others have done to do it. Admittedly, a powder coating finish would be far better than the acrylic paint, brushed on.

First, I used a wire brush to scrub the surface of the door clean, and create a suitable surface for coating.

Second, I washed it down, Sugar Soap is good.

I waited til the door was dry, which took about 30 minutes in the sun of that day, and then applied the first coat. The paint we used was Nippon Solareflect, in the Colorbond Deep Ocean colour, Gloss finish.

So, I painted the door using a brush, starting at the bottom, working my way across in even strokes, through to the top, and then doing what I could to get to the back roll as well (to avoid seeing white when ‘looking up’).

I waited 2 hours, and then began a second coat, and also made sure that the coat was complete – making sure we had full coverage involved covering anything that looked lighter.

My thinking during the first coat was to get it on as much as possible, it need not be complete, so long as it wasn’t a thick coat. The second coat would ensure complete coverage.

I let it dry after 4pm, but began looking outside to the grey, rain look that was in the sky – thankfully, it didn’t rain til overnight / the next morning.

After seeing it now, I think it’d still be better if it was powder coated to the right color, and also, it has many dints in it (but otherwise in good condition) – the dints make themselves pretty visible.

It’s like many things of beauty, it looks good – from a distance. Since the shed isn’t at the front, it matters little, it can be seen from the front, which is why I did paint it, because the dilapidated timber fence is going, and we’ll put up a new fence on the council boundary in the future.

This week, we had the Invisigard mesh and Invisiscape screens go in. The reason why we chose to have the fixed screens on the fixed windows in simple – there’s no point protecting the opening, if you can just smash the glass next to it.

The screen doors are still to come, problems with a guillotine have meant the company can’t cut the mesh.

The fixing of the screens to the windows is done by screwing them down – in order to remove them, you would need a specialty drill bit, which the installers tell me you must be registered for.

But, considering the screen would also protect the glass from breakage, it’s unlikely you’d need to ever remove them, and the added benefit – no costs in monitoring, like you would with an alarm system.

There now is an issue with the front steps again, my besser block fix proved poor, rain has caused the ground below it to soften I think, and so the blocks have sunk into the dirt. We’ll have to figure out what the long term goal is for that, and plan.

Then again, that door could be removed, and we could turn the bathroom into our entry, off the side. It’d make a very different (but workable) floor plan

As if to tease me, we had a fairly sunny day yesterday.

If it weren’t for work, I might have been able to coat the front door, and even get a second coat on.

Today, we have more rain, and the forecast for tomorrow? Rain. Another weekend wasted.

I suppose for some people the rain is even worse, for example, lawn mowing – can’t cut the lawns in the rain, so no work. Construction – can’t put a roof on a house in the rain.

The rain would be useful, if we got a water tank, but back to it, our consumption is so low it wouldn’t make it worthwhile. It would be useful, for example, the other night, we had no water, because of a broken pipe somewhere, and then you get the follow on brown water for some time after the repair. A water tank would at least allow you to flush the toilet.

I’m disappointed at the inability to do anything because of the rain. I’d much like to be painting or arranging the exterior paint job, or many of the other items I’d like to get done.

Unrelated, but still worth considering, is, we were looking at sites like AV Jennings, for example, who build houses on your land. I was amazed to see they knock up a 3 bedroom house for around $115k. It seems largely finished, except for curtains, garden landscaping, etc – $115k, in comparison to $27k (cladding), $17k (roofing), and $8k (security screens), seems to be a near option worth considering (as we’ve still got a good $30k or so on the interior – and that’s without the extension idea).

If we make it ‘comparable’ to the AV Jennings house we looked at, we’d arrive at $102k worth of work done. Add about $20k for demolition though and the renovation still looks cheaper.

The internal work was ‘estimated’ (very loosely), as $25 – 40k by the builder, which is fair, so if we take his loose estimate as gospel, then to reach our current desired completion (it’ll probably change), we’d have spent $86k.

I’ve excluded the security screens for example, and the solar hot water, and solar power, as these wouldn’t be included in the knock down rebuild anyway.

The benefit of a rebuild though, would be that you get less compromises (for example, the rear of our house is 40mm sunk in the right, barely noticeable, but there none the less).

There are only good two aspects to the last week of rain, the first is builders generate a lot of wood chips – rain washes them away onto the grass. The second is we don’t have our gross meter installed, so we aren’t losing any generation at the moment (the last step, now that the inverter is finally installed).

The negatives of the recent rain, are we can’t paint the garage door, the front door, back door, or anything. Which delays anything else we want to get done. Also, the rain means our pipe out to the granny flat keeps the ground cold, and that means by the time the hot water gets through the tempering valve, out the pipe, through the ground, into the granny flat, it’s flat out pushing a temp of about 40. That’s got to suck for the person living out there – but they are yet to complain.

The front door needs a coat of paint, it’s previously demonstrated that it will bow if it’s not painted, but with all this rain, it’s hard to get it painted!

If we had a water tank, it’d be great to have rain, but town water is too cheap, and water restrictions manageable for a tank to be desirable or feasible.

We have someone new in the granny flat – the daughter of a friend. It’s amazing the difference between different layouts. If you asked me 3 months ago, I’d have said the granny flat is a cramped, useless space, only fit for someone who really has no life outside a single bed and 34 cm TV.

The layout she has done is awesome, and the place looks much more spacious than I’d have expected. Add to this the place looks overly tidy and I’m surprised this person is a young person, capable of maintaining a space  in that fashion. I suspect part of it is because they’ve just moved in and work a fair distance away – but a surprising effort.

We still have to locate a painter, the interior will need some blinds and curtains. The steps still need a final repair, the front brickwork still might need to be rendered, the gardens at the front remain a pile of dirt – don’t really want to plant with the risk of paint falling into it!

As I look at the clouds outside, I wonder what today’s birthday party is going to turn out like, and what present to get a 5 year old, who proclaimed he wants ‘a real truck, a real car and I don’t know’.

Our builders have finished with the cladding, and the changes are very noticeable.

Some of the existing bits and peices just look out of place, for example, the drive way gate is a rotted brown painted timber fence, collapsing under it’s own weight (the building inspection recommended it’s immediate repair last year). It looks out of place.

The front steps aren’t a desired colour, they fell over when I was removing the plants prior to the work beginning. I sorted that out today with a few besser blocks, placing the concrete slab on top of them, until we can sort out a more permanent solution (to what ever it is we are going to do there). It is surely a redneck solution, sure, but it’s a good one!

The windows are very much different, it’s no longer a chore to open one to get some air, and with the vertical blinds gone, the amount of light that can get in is massive. We plan to sort out the northern windows soon with some Sunscreen Roller Blinds, and some blockout curtains for night.

The idea being, you can see from the sky down, in the day (with privacy from outside in), and at night, you merely pull the curtains closed and you have complete privacy.

The change in windows has forced some internal work (I wanted it all to be completely exterior), because of the architraves, and now, the window blinds / curtains – for now, my partner has invented blanket curtains – cheap blankets from K-mart, tacked behind the architraves, providing blockout from the northern sun in the office. They actually work great.  I know this, because I was literally blinded by the sunlight trying to work out there when the windows were replaced.

The builders were over budget, only due to unforseen expenses though, I imagine the original quote was thought through with ample room for profit. The items that pushed it over were:
– Insulation, because the people who were doing the asbestos removal changed mind on insulation install (all that electrical stuff).
– Sarking, as above, the asbestos removal people were meant to get it to here.
– Locks, the budget was exceeded for locks on the back.
– Rubbish Removal, I requested they take some old concrete, doors that remained from the hot water pipe to the granny flat, and many of the internal cavity doors I ripped out to prevent the kids knocking them out and over.

It was over by $1400.

We are still waiting on the rebates from the Hot Water setup, but they should be coming hopefully soon, to offset some of the expense we’ve gone to.

Painting is still being arranged, we have one unskilled quote of $15 an hour (relative of my partner’s), and another ‘in the works’ with someone else I know. I would get a few others, but we aren’t in the correct situation to address those now.

I’ve had a look at painting the shed roller door (it’s at the back, but visible from street), and it seems pretty easily done. We’ve got 10L of paint ready, for front, back, and shed roller doors, and the fascia boards (which are the worst of orange/brown at the moment). The fascia boards look like shit under the colourbond roof, with the cladding unpainted as well.

I tried to make a start on the shed roller door today, but it was already 2pm by the time I got the sugar soap to it, so decided that by the time I’ve coated it, we’d be getting too dark for the paint to truly dry – and lucky I did, it rained at 4pm.

The solar system was installed, but we aren’t generating anything yet. The panels in use won’t fit on the north roof apparently, so we have 4 on the north roof, 4 on the west.

The Hot Water system is not too far past the solar panels, and the west roof has about 3 panels of room left on it.

We are still waiting on an inverter to be swapped over (for some reason, some people, in some areas just can’t do anything right!!). I had doubts about going with the company we did (Nu Energy), but stuck with it.

Considering the payback period is around 3 years, it is a no brainer, solar systems will advance in that time too, making better use of the seemingly limited roof space.

The correct inverter should be done by next Friday apparently, I’m staying on them about it. Then, we have the gross feed in meter, which we can get at 385 through a local Level 2 EA approved ASP. The meter board needs a new meter for Time of use, and the gross meter for the solar system output. The price quoted by the installer for the meter change was 295 (for their guy to do it). I already put the wheels in motion with the other mob, and the bad taste that Nu Energy leaves, with the significant disappointments, means I declined it – (I was more inclined to say “Get stuffed!”).

The installer of the system was also keen to get away from the job, i.e. we had the builders finishing the eaves off that day, there is a corner strip that goes between the eave and wall, he was going to ‘come back next week’, to finish the install because of that.I told him to simply come ahead of where that would be – and so the system was installed, but as we later see, the correct inverter still isn’t installed.

We are way, way, off completion of the house though, with many things outstanding prior to the house actually being ‘completed’:

– A 3rd bedroom needs to be formed out of the current lounge room, requiring a wall to be moved.
– The kitchen / dining split needs to be removed, such that it’s an open area.
– The kitchen needs to be relocated to the east window in that new area.
– The lounge needs to be relocated to the west side of that area, next to the second bedroom.
– The back decking area, and bi-fold doors from the dining area out, need to go in.
– Fencing on the townhouse side, and along the front need to be replaced.
– Internal gates at the backyard need replacing, to split off front from back (and keep the kids at the back til they are older).
– The gardens, front and back need to be sorted.

There is always a bottle neck though, but where we are now (once painted), should be a stable enough point to sit back and then go forth with the rest of the work, when the timing will be a match anyway.

At the moment, the 3rd bedroom would be largely unused (as the baby isn’t old enough for it), the other internal work isn’t critical, and can be done at anytime in the future, so timing it with when the 3rd bedroom will be needed, and the dollars being there, and the interest rate rises ‘fully exposed’, we’ll be able to push on.

I’ll add there are always many different possibilities, just today at Bunnings we ran off the beaten track and looked at flooring – but that has to wait – we just need to finish what we’ve started first!

In just one day, massive amounts of progress occurred.

We had the demolition people out to remove all the fibro and eaves, they took a good 5 hours. They did a good job of it, there remains some flakes and the like around the grass – unavoidable with fragile sheeting.

The insulation was put in, that took about 2 hours. If I had thought of how they did it, I probably would have done it myself – the only issue was how to work around power points – you don’t insulate them at all (i.e. you leave a good space in the wall around them with no insulation).

Then the builders put the sarking on in a matter of an hour or so, and tidied up the edges and the like ready for the cladding to arrive later that afternoon.

The same day, we finally get a call back from Nu Energy, and the advice was that it was going to take another month (that is, we’ve waited 120 days, from their quoted 60 – 90 day turnaround time, and they were going to day 150 days). I wasn’t happy with that.

The next day, we get a call from the local contractor ready to book the install in for Wednesday. To me, Nu Energy seem arse about tit. If I had the choice, I’d have gone elsewhere. I remember when we put the deposit in, I was a bit hesitant. I should start listening to myself (some of the time).

It’s raining right now, but if we have a fine day Tuesday, and the builders are ready to rock on cladding the wall, they should be right to proceed on Wednesday with panels on the roof, inverter on the wall. Then we’ll have to get the meter installed.

Yesterday, I had to smash out all the rock work from the gardens (so the builders can actually hammer the Weathertex in place). We trashed all the plants, smashed out much of the rocks, but a lot of it is stuck in place with brick surrounds in the ground as well. So, I finished it off by clearing the affected areas only, then at a later time we’ll clear it all out, level it off, and plant some new plants.

Another decision to make – what plants will we have! My partner is keen on low maintenance, that’s little concern to me, I just don’t want the plants I had to spend a good 30 minutes each ripping out yesterday.

We should focus on those that can survive with little water, but also look OK when they don’t flower.

No, I didn’t just rush out in a last minute rush to buy Windows – Ubuntu can be annoying, but it *works*.

Our new windows arrived, and so we are inching closer to the builder booting up, clicking his start button, clicking Run, and executing the required task. However, as of today, his startup is delayed due to a large swap file waiting compression, which creates a few days to a week delay.

As I looked at the windows this afternoon, I was reminded of the very weight that a bit of glass and aluminium can get to – we have some relatively small looking windows – yet they weigh about 3 times as you’d expect.

I was thinking double glazing too, for temperature purposes, but we are insulating instead. The bathroom renovation will allow access to the ceiling, making insulating the ceiling more possible.

The windows seem larger than I would have thought, but then the current windows open ‘upwards’, so the new windows give that impression.

We got them done in Primrose, as the colours currently planned for the exterior are Classic Cream (or another variant) for the cladding, and we already have Colorbond Deep Ocean on the roof. We’ll be painting the fascia the same colour to match.

The front door came into consideration today too – we could paint it the same colour as the roof, so it stands out amongst the cladding, or paint it the same colour as the cladding – but that’d look a bit ‘plain’.

I’m looking forward to ripping up the front gardens though and putting in some new plants there, and across the fence at the front, hedges come to mind, but I might not go there. That’s a fair way out though, so we’ll cross that bit later.

Fencing. We have a chain link, post fence at the front, down the side is a timber fence rotted over with the granny flat wall providing some support to it (I think our noisy townhouse neighbours backed into it once, in a drunken trip to the pub… )

We wanted to put in Colorbond (… why is it we immediately thought Colorbond for fencing.. ), but recently it appears the owner of the townhouses might be doing something – hard to say yet, we haven’t been told, haven’t told them anything either.

Across the front, I want to put something better up – the hedge could act as a fence, but I think we’ll put something across there – when it works. Or, as I suggested previously, build a reinforced concrete wall – no one gets in or out.

Nu Energy should be contacting us soon to get the work beginning on the solar system, assuming we haven’t become a victim of the industry standard delays that you see are all too common on Whirlpool when you buy from such a company. We aren’t in a ready state anyway.

We now have our solar hot water system in, so far so good, first night it used 6kW of off peak, and nothing since. We are still keeping tabs on it to be sure (as I’d rather spend 40c heating water than have none at all).

After seeing it, I got thinking – what on earth was the first person thinking to think of getting water heated by the sun, and then placing such a setup on their roof?

Did they have a sun shower and realise the water dripping out of a leaking gutter was very hot, or was it a red neck concept, based on a hot water system that exploded?

Every aspect of solar hot water since that point have simply been improvements or reinventions of that very basic concept – and the system we have, the Apricus, in my opinion represents leaps and bounds for innovation.

The system is great, the controller keeps tabs on the temperature, so the pump only kicks in when there is a feasible gain in doing so. The tank heats up to 70oC, and the roof can be as hot as 158oC (as it was today). The system incorporates safety shut down features too, so that the water in the tank doesn’t overheat, and the pump doesn’t get warn out from pumping water all day.

I’m yet to figure out the exact consumption of the pump and it’s controller, but from the size of it, and it’s function, it wouldn’t be much worse than a fish tank pump. The tank is an increase from the old 315L, no reason in particular as the 250L served our needs fine, aside from future expansion.

The trench wasn’t an issue for the plumber, there was a pipe coming from the cabin to the old outhouse carrying hot water, I would have thought the outhouse was build before 1986, as the ‘workshop’ that is infact our granny flat, appears to be the last structure council have on records. The sewer line turned out to be a brick, buried (but the shape and outline of it was very suspect – I wasn’t about to smash it to find out).

The hot water reaches the flat in about 25 seconds, which isn’t as bad as the 1 minute the plumber thought of. As well, the system has a tempering valve, which is designed to prevent scalding by mixing hot and cold water to deliver 50oC at the tap.

The leaky hot water system that was attached to the granny flat can now go to the scrap heap, along with the – relatively good condition – 250L tank from the house, and some other scrap items we’ve seemingly gathered inside of a year.

Our power consumption though seemingly is higher again, we’ve checked and can see the usage is hanging around 17 – 21kWH, which is disappointing, but there are a few causes of that. The granny flat fridge is on, the pump for the hot water might be doing worse than I expected, or the LCD TV we bought a few weeks back to replace the old CRT that finally exploded might be using more than expected.

Today, I got a sample of the mesh we are using on the windows – Invisigard. I limited my testing to what I could use, a screw driver and tried to make a hole, I failed. I then tried to get a cordless drill to it, it failed.

I took out a small, sharp drill bit, and at last, I had a very small hole. I decided I would try and capitalize on this acheivement and take to it with a 22mm hole drill bit (the kind you’d use on making a door hole), it removed the layer of powder coating, but didn’t create a hole. The battery in the drill gave up.

So, I got out a hacksaw blade, and used the hole to try and get that to eat through it – it failed. I tried from the edge of the material, thinking it might be weaker on the edge, but no dice.

The sample is too small to take an axe too, but I’m fairly sure if it was in the frame, and a relatively sharp axe was hit against it with enough force, it probably would get through it. That begs to question though, how many criminals carry an axe? A cordless drill? An angle grinder?
I was considering this on whirlpool recently, and it seems I’m not alone in the thinking that an alarm system is a useless noisemaker. If you want to keep shit secure, make it as unattractive to a criminal as possible.

I thought the same about the car – no need for an alarm, a 3 point immobilizer will stop most determined car thieves, without the noise.

We are still deciding what type of insulation to use, and whether to go with R1.5 or R2 for the added benefits – and then who is going to go about installing it (at the moment, the people doing the fibro removal are hopefully able to do insulation), and then the builder will do his work, and then we’ll have to figure out color and painter.

Today, we dug out the trench for the new pipe to go to the cabin at the back for the new solar hot water system.

We managed to get the trench dug out, I thought it’d take most of the weekend to get it right, but after smashing out the concrete with a sledge hammer and breaking out the pavers, the ground breaking ceremony began.

The trench has to be a minimum of 200mm deep, so we’ve aimed for that for the full length, and I’ve aimed to keep it as straight as possible, because if the plumber wants to use copper pipe (or anything that won’t bend easy), it’ll be difficult to get the right angle. What we’ve done is come off the house straight for about 1m, and then diagonally across the yard for about 7m.

After we started the angle, we found a bit of material that looked like brick, some careful prodding revealed the sewer line, and it sits at a wonderful 150mm – right in the way of the trench. So, we’ve allowed 300mm – one of the pipes is going to have to move, and I’ll assume it won’t be the sewer.

We continued digging out further, and come across another pipe – thin, doesn’t really make sense as to were it goes, as it’s many meters away from the cabin, and seems to come off from the house. Perhaps it’s the drain from the Kitchen or something.. Anyway, it’s higher than the sewer, so we can work around that.

Next, continue digging and find a tree root as thick as conduit. We let it live, it’s not in the way.

We approach closer to the granny flat, and run into cold water pipes, at about 150mm, and about 50mm below them is a 100mm thick storm water drain. It’s at this point that we attempt to consider how on earth the plumber is going to reach the hot water pipe anyway. The walls on the cabin are fibro, behind the ‘landing’ area for the new pipe is the bathroom basin, so that’s the closest point to get the hot water into the cabin – the problem is, how is the pipe going to get past the mess that sits in the way of it’s finishing spot, and how is it going to get into the granny flat.

One scenario – pull out the basin, to find the pipe for hot water, punch out from there, add a T-join to the pipe, and then feed that through under the storm water drain (meaning we now have to go 500mm or so deeper I think).

The other, use poly pipe which can bend and flex around the spaghetti mess in the way, and feed that into the granny flat, through the wall into the hot water pipe. Remove the hot water system and cap off the plumbing.

Still, that means punching one hole through as there is no external pipe for them to get to.

Tuesday will be interesting, as the cabin will either have hot water, or we’ll need to sort out something else to get it hot water from the new system, and also of interest is how hot the water will actually be, that will give us an idea of how effective it is.

One of the issues lately has been the rain, it’s been overcast and rainy a lot lately…

Now we are committed to the work.

The price jumped from our expectations by another 7500 for the Invisigard security screens we decided we’d stick on.

They seem to be worth the money, rivalling Crimsafe products at a cheaper price, yet using a stronger marine grade stainless steel mesh.
Invisigard seem to have figured out how to keep criminals out, yet, let you out with their Invisiscape product. We tested the escape feature, and the older kid can open it,  without much hassle, so it seems ideal.

Unfortunately, the sample wasn’t suitable for testing the mesh as it was too small to jump on, or throw a brick at, or try and damage, but the test details speaks volumes about the product, here.

Crimsafe have a video of the testing they do, with Marine grade 304 stainless steel, and it seems to hold up to their brutal attempts here – Invisigard is Marine grade 316, apparently, it’s better than 304 if you take Invisigard’s word for it.

Of note in the Crimsafe video, in the first attempt, beside the screen door is a window with no screening. Smash it, and your in. Some criminals are stupid. Which reminds me of another point – the builder didn’t initially agree as to the requirement to cover the fixed panel of glass. It just didn’t make sense to me to protect the opening, yet leave a fixed panel of glass ready for the breaking – it’s a clear weak point, unless as Crimsafe’s video suggests, all criminals are stupid (I’ve not ignored that possibility, but I’m also betting on their intelligence increasing).

That leaves only a few ways in, bring a ladder, rip off a colourbond roof panel, crawl along the roofing beams, find the manhole, and jump down.
Get under the house, start smashing up floor boards, then rip up the carpet.
Smash through the new weathertex, rip through the sisalation, cut through the fibreglass insulation, and smash through the Gyprock.

To me, all that seems a bit too much work (and fibreglass insulation makes you itchy, so they’d want to bring a long sleeved shirt, and dust mask to prevent lung irratation). On the other hand, leave the fibro on the walls, and they might end up with mesothelioma in around 30 years.

Invisigard comes with a 10 year guarantee, and if the tests Crimsafe are comparable (similar tests), then the glass shouldn’t get hit by a rock or the like when lawnmowing, etc.. making the glass last longer. Not that a guarantee means much if the company goes broke though…

Add to this, we’ll have to add in Insulation (I’m contemplating R2 or R2.5 for it’s thermal efficiency, else R1.5 for it’s dollar value), and Sisalation, and talk to our own arranged asbestos removal contractors to ensure they are up to speed on installing insulation (so they don’t go packing it over a power point), and it makes for extreme expenses.

And we are yet to decide on what type of exterior paint, what colour exactly, and who will be applying this paint, and we are over budget by $5000 at the moment. I look through it, and there’s nothing I can change easily, without a significant setback. Change the screens to fly screens, and there goes the ideal security for the place. Change the weathertex to Hardiplank and it won’t look as nice. Everything in the contract seems required, with very minimal in excess spending.

Our internal work is going to be off by years due to the simple fact money is actually an object, and when you are spending thousands on a house, choosing quality should be a key decision as opposed to price – my impression is if we did it in Hardiplank we’d be ripping it off down the track and getting Weathertex as it’s a better profile. If only money was no object.

We’ve got indications of around $25k to $40k for the internal work (this might be on the high side of the scale, but then I can see blow outs adding to that anyway). The bathroom is about $1k in demoltion, and a further $5k plus in replacing. Then we’ve got the Kitchen, and we know that’s going to be more than the Bathroom.

Much of what we want to complete will be years off (and this will be with conceding to a 30 year mortgage instead of the previous self imposed 8 years – not gonna happen).

I was thinking of snapping up some pics and posting them, but I’m not sure I’ll go that far. I’ll get the photos, probably won’t post them though.

I love a good day, when everything falls into place, there’s no real problems / difficulties.

And, after previously deciding to tell CBA to shove it, I’ve since changed my mind and took up a Personal Loan with them for the renovation work. When you consider the discounts we get for bundling all the products, the interest rate at 15% over 7 years is pretty high.

But, being a variable loan we can pay it down, play with redraw a bit so that we take full advantage of the redraw on the personal loan, and avoid paying the loan off in 2 years, and we could theoretically come out near interest free (well, nearly.)

This works out massively cheaper than the refinancing costs, even after reducing the amount of the increase to $15000 because of the refinancing costs alone.

The downside is we don’t get near as much done. I’m still waiting on updated quotes from our builder (I hate waiting), on the exterior being done in “Classic Ruff Sawn” Weathertex. This will allow for paint to be changed in the future, which PVC would not allow for.

New Windows, and we’ll add Crimsafe’s Safe S Cape after as suitable replacements for the jailhouse bars currently on the windows.

As part of the Green Loan, I plan on insulating the ceiling and walls – this will improve temperature and reduce heating / cooling requirements. One of the quotes for exterior removal was a third of the builders price, and offers sarking and insulation as well. We are going to toss up on their skills, insurance and licensing, to ensure nothing nasty comes of it.

We also have the solar power going in, a quote outstanding for another meter from Energy Australia for the workshop, which will allow for better expansion of the solar system there too, and hot water.

That will leave Air Conditioning as the one remaining item, which will need to wait til we can get the interior quoted and done, which, depending on circumstances will be around 18 months or so away (depends on how aggressively the loan is paid off).

Hopefully, there’ll be a gap in the middle, where the bathroom finds itself.

We have some funds in redraw we can put towards the renovations. The new mortgage paperwork arrived today, and I’ve thought about it in detail after seeing the final figures and having some questions raised.

I contacted our Loans rep from RAMS tonight with some questions, particularly around the refinancing figures, and suggesting a Personal Loan would probably see us better off. He has a commission to make according to the documents, so I’m keen to see what he’ll do to make the logic work, but have also thought that he might not be able to do much – he did a fair bit to try and make the figures work, and we are ‘approved’ for this, but a Personal Loan, we’d pay more interest, but save thousands in refinancing fees.

Alone, we’d lose the LVR fee we paid to CBA – $2500. Then we’d pay another to RAMS – $3500, valuation fees, lose the flexibility that we do have with CBA at the moment, and end up paying more interest over the life of the loan due to the amount and duration.

I realised I wasn’t comparing like for like, we got him to assess $40 000, but since this will put us at a significant disadvantaged position, and the granny flat was later revealed to not be council approved, we’ll do those later / ourselves. The house is what matters, so we’ve asked the builder to change from PVC to Weathertex, submit a house only quote, and we’ll go with this.

I’m hopeful of a quote less than $25000, as we are aware we can get a James Hardie product on the outside, unpainted, the bathroom stripped and lined, the laundry redone in new, new ceilings in both, for just over $20000. Considering he suggested Weathertex would be cheaper than PVC cladding, and the extent of his would be less, I’m hopeful of a smaller quote.

Assuming the financing falls into place, however we go, probably Personal Loan now (yes, I’m indecisive, it’s a failure of the research), the work is still 6 weeks off starting, and the builder advised his busy. The solar panel group are due to contact in 2 weeks.. I’d say that’s getting rescheduled for sure.

A Home Loan would be $25000 in interest over the life of the loan, a Personal Loan would amount to $7000 in interest – it seems sensible in that respect, despite the higher interest rate. We’d do as we did with the mortgage, aggressively attack it until it’s gone, Relax a little on the mortgage, then revert to attacking it.

The interior will be on hold indefinitely unfortunately. It’d be a better world if money was no object.

What lunatics do we have elected in our federal governing body?

I’ve had a look at the Environment Minister’s website tonight after hearing a news article about the Insulation / Hot Water rebate being scrapped.

Immediate disappointment struck as our subsidised, yet, still to be installed system would face a $1600 increase.

My thoughts earlier today were that we’d then need to find another $1600, it turns out that it’s now $1000, so the result is $600. Not too bad, but different.

The issue was flawed though, they shouldn’t be bundling hot water and insulation in the one program, they should be two seperate programs, and if they want to determine eligibility, then ‘you must not have Hot Water rebate’ – etc.

The other screw up is the Green Loans program, we narrowly made it with being through the door on the 17th, but as you’ll see from this Whirlpool thread, many, many, many, many, many others have been met with an engaged tone after several telemarketing bodies have taken up ‘free assessment’ telemarketing calls. This means the hotline customers AND assessors call are bogged down from the moment they open, to the moment they close.

My partner has been trying to follow up on the promised but not delivered $50 green card – for spending on ‘green’ products. The elected officials must be held to their promises, else they’ll go on breaking them.

We had a somewhat difficult experience with the green loans office, week after week of follow ups, no report, it took them several weeks to actually get the report emailed, months after the assessment was done.

I thought to myself this has to be the easiest report ever to produce – get the assessor in, get the readings, he supplies the data on the website, they script the retrieval of the power / water / GHG data from the appropriate supplier, and print and email the report.

No, not the case – they fart and f#$k around for weeks on end, claiming they will call or email you back, with no result. “Oh, it will be done by next week” the polite, but foreign female lady would say. Next week would come – we’ll email it to you. Next week, no email.

So, Peter Garrett goes and touts to the media:

• the discontinuation of the less popular loans component next month to provide for the significant boost to assessment availability;

I read that line and immediately thought of the numerous people on Whirlpool alone, having numerous difficulties getting through, and then I recall the rejections from Community First Credit Union. Look at the name and description of the program, “Green Loan”, “$10000 for Green Improvements”, etc. These are what people are getting them done for (at least, prior to the telemarketers artificially inflating the statistics).  The reason they are ‘less popular’, is because the call centre is difficult to get a hold of, reports aren’t getting delivered to the users, the banks have credit policies that vary and range from very relaxed, to very restrictive (requiring the invoices to pay the supplier directly..)

The proper process is easy, takes little thought, and could possibly be done whilst high – yes Peter, whilst high as a kite:
– The government makes the decision on who the money is lent to, they do this by guaranteeing the funds to the bank.
– The government changes from whatever poorly thought out and ill conceived ‘green’ assessment system they have, to one of numbers and email / print and mail outs.
– They abolish the telemarketing crap, and allow people who WANT it to seek it out (as we did, and many others).

Sounds simple, ensures that only those who seek it, get it, removes the delays in production of the report, and ensures more people have access to the green loan.

Then, there is the Insulation cockup. As with the First Home Owner Grant, prices will rise to meet whatever perception the installer has of available funding (which reminds me to scrutinize the builders quote when he finally gets it here). If he knows $1200 is available in grants, then damned it, he’s going to ensure he gets it – so he’ll charge that. $600 insulation in the roof, 2 hours of his time. $1200 in his account.

That’s flawed, but I’m sure it wasn’t a fore thought. The claims process is better, and should allow for the insulation prices to drop back to reality. We aren’t getting insulation done by an ‘insulation professional’ (professional, as if). We’ll get the people who are doing the exterior wall removal to insulate before they put the sarking on. They’ve offered to do it for free, we supply insulation and sarking. Bargain (and they are friends, so we know they aren’t ‘cowboys’).

It’s still a bit of a road before we see the power meter spinning backward, and the hot water flowing freely. I’ll do that in a separate post in a moment.

Who the hell elects morons to run the nation? Less popular green loan, my arse. More like poorly managed department. Typical.