Renovating Tip #74 - Fresh Paint Fixes Everything

Following on from this:

As of last weekend, we now have this:


Isn't it pretty! It's a removable hills hoist - the top folds down and you can pull it out of the ground, and hide it away. Helpful for:
A) cyclones, and
B) driving over it to get into the back yard.

I've also learnt that I'm only marginally better at concreting than I am at paving, and I suck pretty bad at paving. Still, with 5 x 10kg bags of concrete holding it in, it shouldn't be going anywhere any time soon. I'm a bit concerned with how plastic-y the new hoist is - doesn't really seem built to last. But considering that the old one was *completely* galvanised (even the crank handle), and even ran wire rope for the clothesline part, anything even slightly younger is probably going to use more modern materials in it's construction. Still, I'm not going to guess how old the old one is, and it still works perfectly...

The line itself is slightly smaller than the old one, which suits us fine. We didn't have that much space to put it in, so this size lets us keep it down the side near the laundry, but without cutting the garden back too badly so clothes don't snag on trees. It's the smallest one they make, in fact. It wasn't until the concrete was all set three days later that I realised that it might not be long enough along the sides for drying queen-sized bed sheets. I still don't know if it will be - I guess I'll find out on the weekend.

Also, on the weekend, we painted the back fence. It's still dangerously decrepit, but at least now it looks less hideous. As Stevie would say - "Good from Far, Far from Good".

What it used to look like:


What it now looks like:


$25 worth of fence paint well spent! We've obviously only painted till just behind the second palm tree - as we uncover more of the garden we'll paint the exposed fence as we go. Hey - I already said it wasn't a good job! We painted everything - the fence, the sheet of iron we attached 3 years ago to cover a large gaping hole, star pickets which hold the iron up, as well as other star pickets that hold the fence itself up - everything got a coat of Ironbark Blue. Trees near the fence and creepers growing on it simply got brushed aside for long enough to slap some paint underneath them, then they got moved back. It's hard to tell from my dodgy photo, but it's really made it so much nicer than it was.

Talking about fences - we've got a visitor for a couple of days:


Max is up staying with us while Trev & Kelli get a new fence put it along the back of their place. Badger's kinda ready for him to go home already though. They mostly get on well, except if there's food involved. Max doesn't particularly want to eat the food, but he'll be damned if he lets Badger eat any. Meal times usually involve dragging each dog to opposite ends of the patio to feed them (something which confuses Badger greatly, as he's a little OCD about where he should have his dinner), and then standing guard in the middle. It's good fun. That said, he's no problem to have, and it's nice to be able to repay our dog-sitting debt, after BAdger has spent so long living at their place every time we're away.

It's Here!

Woo-hoo! That was quick! Superb service from BikeBiz - can't recommend them enough! It even arrived with a little handwritten note saying thanks for shopping with them, and they hope I enjoy the gear! How nice is that!


Love the retro, Italian-coloured packaging! Everything was wrapped up in bubble wrap and air cushions, and the mug even had extra bubble wrap around the outside of it's box as well. I certainly wasn't waiting till I got home to open it all up - just ignore the messy office desk and apple!


And with the tinted visor fitted:


I love it already! Fits perfectly, looks cool, nice and light - everything I wanted. Now I'll have an excuse to ride to work tomorrow!

New Toy on Order

After months of uming-and-ahhing about it, I've finally ordered my new helmet. Should be here early next week. It's a Nolan N41 in matt black - I decided to go something a bit different this time. I've ordered a tinted visor to go with it, and because they offer discounted shipping if the order's over $300, a Yamaha coffee mug to just nudge me over that magic mark. I'm looking forward to getting it - the few places that do stock the N41 only sell the N41 "classic" in white or gloss black. I really wanted the matt black, even if it was a little more expensive. The obvious option was to buy a cheaper gloss black one and take to it with a matt black spray can, but I don't trust my abilities with matt paint that much! It's more than I wanted to spend, but Nolan is a good brand, so it should last a long time.

I tried an N41 on in Moorooka Yamaha's showroom last time I was in Bris, and the Medium size seemed to fit well (I'm a Large in the Arai), so that's what I've ordered here. I don't like ordering helmets or other safety gear online - as a rule I want to try on the exact article I'll be buying, to make sure the fit is perfect. Plus, if I'm going to take up a dealership's (and usually also a salesman's) time, and browse through their selection, then I like to support them with a sale, even if I can get it cheaper online. Part of that's purely selfish though - if everyone bought online, then the dealerships would stop stocking helmets, and then I'd have nowhere to go to try them on and make sure they fit. So it's a bit self-serving as well. However, with only a few dealerships actually stocking the N41's (none up here), and, as mentioned above, none of those stocking the colour I wanted, we had to take a punt.

The old Arai was still perfectly fine on the outside, but the inner lining had disintegrated. It's probably 5-6 years old now, and the recommendation is to replace a helmet at the 5 year mark, even if it's still in perfect condition. The reason being that over time and use, the foam that actually protects your head degrades, hardens and is compacted. The end result is a helmet that doesn't fit as tightly, and that doesn't afford as much protection in a crash. I'm still a bit annoyed that I didn't spend the extra $100 originally and get the version with the removable liner. In that case, I could just replace the liner itself now and keep on using it. But for the crash-worthiness reasons mentioned above, it's probably better that I'm not tempted.

Of course, Jess' solution to the problem of needing a new helmet was to sell the bike. A perfectly rational response, given how much use it gets. However, now I've gone and done this, I may as well pay the rego and insurance on it that's currently due. That should neatly take up what little money we do have at the moment!

Garden Attack!!!

This weekend saw the latest instalment in the popular and exciting not-made-for-TV series Garden Attack!!!. Today's episode focuses on our backyard, where, bucking popular trends, we didn't install a water feature or a dry creek bed. Crazy, I know.

What we did do was cut the garden back by about 2m. The original gardens were around 4m deep at their narrowest point, and well overgrown. By cutting them back we'll gain more lawn area, and be able to keep the actual garden beds clear of junk (fallen palm fronds, dead trees, etc). Another good benefit from reducing the size of this garden is that eventually we'll gain vehicle access into the back yard. Which has the knock-on effects of making gardening easier, as we can load the crap straight onto the ute, as well as keeping the gardens easier to maintain, since we can dump a load of mulch straight off the ute and into the garden beds.

Here's a dodgy photo stolen from when we had the trees removed. You can see how deep the gardens were, and you can't see the (extremely dodgy) back fence at all:


You can clearly see here how far we chopped it back - the dirt/grass edge used to be the edge of the garden:


As you can see from the "Before" photo above, the garden was really quite thick and overgrown. All in all, we took two very-well-loaded ute loads to the dump. Some nice plants unfortunately had to go, we now have the opportunity to plant the gardens up how we want them. As as previously mentioned, the ability to dump mulch onto the gardens should keep them looking nice.

We still have a bit of work to do with this side garden - there's a couple more golden cane palms that I want to chop down before they get much bigger, and there's a medium sized fishtail palm in there as well that needs to go - this is what they look like when they get big, and then they cost heaps to get cut down (as we learnt two months ago):


You can see the stump that that big tree left on the far right-hand side of this photo, and the medium-sized fishtail on the left:


With those bigger palms gone, however, the maintenance of the yard will be so much easier, and we won't be constantly taking old rotten palm fronds to the dump. Part of the impetus for doing this work was a notice we had left in our mailbox from the Dengue Patrol people advising us that we had water collecting in palm fronds out the back, and that we needed to clean it up before they came back.

For those who don't know, Cairns had a very bad season this summer for Dengue Fever. It's quite a debilitating disease, and if you catch it twice, you're at high risk of it developing to Haemorrhagic Fever, which really is just as nasty as it sounds. People can, and do, die from it, often quite quickly. Dengue itself is pretty nasty, and is one of those things that you don't completely recover from for a number of years.

Dengue is spread my Dengue mosquitoes - a special breed of mozzie that carries the disease. They're different to normal mozzies, smaller, only come out at night, hide in dark places, etc. But they can also breed in very small amounts of water - smaller than what normal mozzies would use. So an old palm frond laying on the ground can hold enough water for them to breed in - obviously not something you want around your house.

Because of the seriousness of this year's outbreak, the council formed a special Dengue Patrol unit, which went around inspecting people's yards for potential breeding grounds. They had the power to fine you big dollars if they thought the situation warranted it. In practice, only a handful of people were fined, and that was for persistently ignoring their requests. But still, if you had your house inspected (like we did), it was still in your best interests to heed their warning. In the past we've just left the back gardens as a jungle, since it gives good privacy from the neighbours, but it's now time to clean them out.

Unfortunately one side effect of cutting the garden back as aggressively as we did is that you now have a clear view of our back fence. The back fence was a point of contention when we bought the house - we wanted the current owners to replace it before we bought it, and they didn't want to. I suspect it's made out of asbestos fibro sheeting, and it's really not in a good way. It's busted up, cracked, and generally falling down. You can see in the above photos the sheet of second-hand corrugated iron that Trev and I bought when we fist moved in and screwed to the fence to cover a large hole and keep Badger in our yard. The rest of the fence is being held up by a combination of star pickets, fencing wire, cable ties and concentration.

That said, we actually have the good end of the deal. For years now it's been hidden behind a thick garden, so we haven't had to look at it. But for our back neighbours who share this fence, this fence is part of their pool fence. So when you're in their pool area, lounging around, you have an uninterrupted view of this dodgy old fence, complete with "windows" of shiny corrugated iron peeking through. It must be a good look. Last year the new owners of that house dropped a note in our mailbox saying they wanted to get it replaced ASAP with a nice new colourbond fence, and would we pay half. We gleefully accepted, and told them to get some quotes and we'd go ahead ASAP as well. We've not heard from them since. Which hasn't been a problem, until now.

In the meantime, I'm probably going to give the fibro a quick and dodgy coat of paint, so at least it's mainly one colour, and will blend in and disappear a bit. But I think the long term solution will be to talk to the neighbours again, and see if they're still keen to replace it, and have it swapped out for a nice new presentable fence (that's not going to give us all Mesothelioma).

One unexpected side effect of being able to see the fence, however, is that it's made our back yard appear to be very small. Before, the yard looked huge. You knew there was a fence, but it was way back there somewhere - behind all that garden. Now that you can see the fence, despite the additional area we've uncovered, the yard looks quite small. It's an interested effect, and one that we really didn't expect. Hopefully as we fill in the garden with plants and paint the fence, it won't be as noticeable.

Our plan is to work our way around the back yard, slowly cutting all the gardens back and clearing them out, and eventually we'll be left with some pretty, easy to maintain and safe gardens. As we go we're going to be dropping some of the bigger trees and palms before they get too big for us to handle, as well as taking the top out of some of the bigger trees that are starting to just get too big. Hopefully it'll all look good at the end of it!

One job that has been on our list is to remove the existing clothes line. It's right smack-bang in the centre of the side yard, which is great for it, but means that we can't drive a car up there. Which is the whole point of all of this! We want to replace it with a lift-out-able hoist, so that when we need access we can simply pull the hoist out of the ground and drive over it. Best of both worlds!

After taking the second load of rubbish to the dump yesterday, Trev jokingly asked "any more jobs you want me to do?". So I jokingly answered "well, you could always pull out that clothes line if you were desperate!". So before you know it, we had the crowbar and pick out, and were digging it out. We also found a block of cement right next to it where the clothesline had previously been - it had been cut off with an angle grinder, and re-positioned to where it is now! After digging around for 10 minutes and still not getting it to budge, the 4WD was called into action. A length of rope and some low-range action later, and this is what we'd achieved:


(Note the Safety Chair positioned over the hole!)

So I guess now we need to:
1) get rid of the clothesline somehow? Keep it somewhere in case it comes in handy later on?
2) buy new clothesline
3) decide where we want it, and
4) dig a new hole and cement new clothesline in.

Sounds like fun, eh???!!! Stay tuned for next week's episode where we try and use a 4WD for more inappropriate things! Will we actually manage to put the clothesline through the radiator next time? Tune in to find out!!!

My Pathfinder cracks - let me show you them

Doesn't look so bad, does it? After all, that's with the camera on it's macro setting. Let's zoom out a bit, and we'll see if you can guess (if you haven't already).


Any clearer? For those that are unfamiliar with the engine bay of a Pathfinder, that's the airbox. You can see the crank case breather line attaching at the top. It's an awkward photo - taken back towards the front of the car, hence the weird perspective.

No big deal right? Well, normally, no. But the crack being where it is places it on the engine-side of the air cleaner. Pathfinders have their air intake tucked up nice and high inside the inner guard, to keep dust and water away as much as possible. From there, the intake feeds into the engine bay and comes into the airbox from underneath. The air then passes up through the filter, and continues on into the motor. So, as it sits, it's likely to be sucking a small amount of air in through the crack and past the filter. The air itself is not the problem - it's whatever dust/sand/general crap is being carried along with the air that's Not So Good(tm). As you can probably tell by now, that's not something that you want happening in any car, let alone a 4WD that gets taken to some dusty, dirty and wet places.

Incidentally, I've got no idea how long it's been like that. Hopefully not long. But we discovered it on the weekend whilst camping when we had the bonnet up. So this weekend's job is to pull the airbox out of the car, and epoxy that corner back on. Hopefully that will hold, and we won't need to get it plastic welded or replaced. I doubt either of those options would be cheap.

While I'm in there, I might remove the ridiculously crap splash guard around the battery, which is more falling-apart than guarding splashes. It'll give me a good excuse to do some measuring, and see if there's any chance of stuffing a second battery in there. My currently plan is to mount a second battery in a big void under the car aft of the rear passenger wheel, but it would certainly be easier to keep it in the engine bay. However, I think that the size of the battery I want to run will dictate the rear mount position, where there's much more room than in the cramped engine bay.

Just call me Mario

So we arrived home tonight to find water all over our back patio. Again.

The culprit this time was the tap at the back corner of the patio, which is conveniently located above Badger's water bucket (and about 3 feet from the new hole in our paving). For some reason, it's picked right now as a good time to start leaking. Has never leaked before. It had spent all day running, had filled up the bucket, then continued to flood out over the patio.

So - off went the water, and out came the plumbing tools again. At least I knew where they all were without needing to look.


At least this was an easy repair. A quick valve seat grind, a new valve and washers, and the tap is back to working like a brand new one again.

But it's starting to make me nervous as to whether we're going to find something else broken every night this week? At least so far all our water issues have been outside...

(And for those playing at home who are still confused about the title, click here for a hint)

Camping at Tinaroo

This weekend just gone was a long weekend for the Labor Day public holiday on Monday (May Day). Rather than waste it around the home doing much needed jobs, we decided to go away to Tinaroo for the 2 nights. Trev & Kelli and Graham & Karina wanted to come with, so it had to be somewhere 2WD friendly. Since we had such a good time at Kauri Ck last year, we booked in there again.


We left early on Saturday morning in order to bags a good camp site. Even though there's only so many camp sites at Kauri Ck (and they all need to be pre-booked online), we had reason to believe that NPWS were overbooking the sites. Leaving early proved to be a wise decision, since there was only one campsite still available when we arrived at 9:30AM (despite us actually booking 3 sites!!!). People continued to roll in throughout the day, with many needing to set up camp on a spare bit of ground, instead of at a dedicated campsite with a level pad and a firepit. I know I'd be cranky at NPWS if I was one of those people.


After getting our site together, we strung a number of tarps together to provide some shelter from the expected rain. The BOM had been forcasting rain towards the end of last week, which hadn't yet arrived, but they were still promising would come. It eventually arrived Sunday midday, and stayed around all afternoon and evening. Not heavy rain - just very light, swirly, misty style rain. Just enough to make you damp, wet the grass and threaten to collapse our dodgily-errected tarps. Dodigly errected or not, we were glad we had them, and had taken the time to set them up in the dry.


As always, we ate like kings all weekend. The girls whipped up a camp oven roast on Saturday night, which fell prey to some over-zealous cooking, and ended up rather well done. At least the middle of the meat was edible, and that's more than I could say for the potatoes (shown above in their foil wrappings). Whilst disappointing, we know what we did wrong, and it was just laziness that caused us not to check it earlier. Sunday night Jess made up some of "Roothy's Cheesy Balls" from a 4WD Action DVD - essentially beef and pork mince rissoles, with a cube of cheese in the centre. They were the hit of the weekend, and well worth the messy preperation!


In amongst a lot of sitting around and not doing much, we managed to do a couple of easy bush walks around the campsite and into the rainforest.




Of course, being Tinaroo on a long weekend, there was more than a couple of ski boats out and about all weekend. As we later found out, the Wake Board Nationals were being hosted over at the Fong On Bay campsite, just across the lake from us. Thanks go to them for the fireworks display on Sunday night!


Special mention must be made of the little tinny with the bimini top in the photo above (it's the one on the right). Despite being a flat-nosed punt (IE, not a pointy nose, but a blunt, square nose) with the smallest outboard you could buy hung off the back, it didn't stop all weekend. It spent 3 days continually pulling little kids around the dam on tubes behind. When you got up in the morning, it was already working hard, and only pulled in at dusk when then light went - after which the ski gear was disconnected, and it headed back out with some fishing rods. Goes to show that you don't need a million bucks just to have a blast out on the water.

Despite the rain, we all had a great time. Was good just to get out of the house and away from all the home chores that usually consume a weekend. The rain even held off on Monday morning just long enough for the tents and tarps to dry out, and we could pack them away dry. No sooner had we got the cars packed and started to head home, than the rain started again. Good timing!

Next time we hope to venture a bit further away from the crowds. Trev might be (finally!!!) buying a dual cab Hilux this week, assuming it's RACQ report checks out. So we might be able to start venturing out to the more interesting places that require 4WD access! Fingers crossed on that one!

2009-05-05, Camping at Tinaroo

Water, water, everywhere...

What have we here?

A week ago, Trev bought up the big petrol-powered pressure cleaner with the walk-behind disc cleaner, and we cleaned up all the concrete and paving around the house. Since then, we've had some intermittent water under the hose reel outside the laundry. No big deal - we used a lot of water when we were cleaning, so it's not out of the question for the pavers to still be a bit soggy. I noticed it again on Thursday night when I was watering the garden - the area looked to be wet, but on the other hand that hose reel leaks a fair bit (due to our abnormally high water pressure), so it's not uncommon to get water dripping there.

On Friday afternoon, however, my curiosity had got the better of me. When I went out to have a look, I found the adjacent garden full of water, and looking closer, you could see water bubbling up between the pavers.



uh oh.

So out came the tools, and up came the pavers. The more we dug, the worse it got...



Soon we had our own little fountain...



Resigning ourselves to the fact that it probably wasn't going to magically stop by itself, we resorted to turning the water off to the house at the mains valve. At least we could now excavate the area without splashing gunk everywhere.



The problem turned out to be a cracked fitting. In the top-left of the assembly shown above, there is a white PVC T-junction, that has a screw-on fitting on it's left, where the hard copper line attaches. That screw fitting is cracked along it's length. So that's our culprit. Being right outside the washing machine, it's possible that the crack has been caused by the high water pressure, and the washing machine's filling valves opening and closing quickly, causing large backpressure in the lines right outside.

Whatever caused it, we needed to fix it. After looking at it for a while, we decided that we didn't have the tools, or the parts to attempt to fix it ourselves. So we needed outside help.

It was now late on Friday night before a long weekend (Labor day on Monday was a public holiday), and we were scheduled to go camping all weekend. After weighing up the pros and cons, we decided to fill the bath with water (so we had a small reservoir for flushing of toilets and washing of hands), then turn the house off at the mains and go away for the weekend. We didn't like our chances of finding a plumber on a long weekend who wouldn't charge an arm and a leg, and after all, we weren't going to be home anyway.

After getting back on Monday, we phoned a local plumber and left a message detailing the problem and our contact details. We called from Trev & Kelli's place, where we'd gone to have a shower. He called at 10 to 7 on Tuesday morning, and said he'd come straight around to look at it. We showed him the situation, explained what we'd done, then went off to work. We arrived back that evening to find the fitting patched up, and the mains water turned back on.



Note the larger plastic sleeve on the LHS of the t-junction, complete with new plastic screw fitting. Best of all, no leaks! We made sure the hot water system was full, and then could enjoy the luxury of having running water inside our house again.

I even pulled the toilet apart, and have stopped it's running problem (for now). Following on from the last toilet post, the problem had resurfaced again as anticipated, although not as bad this time. Investigation showed that it was actually running because the cistern was filling up too high, and overflowing down the centre of the flush mechanism. After adjusting the float level back down, the toilet now fills, stops, and doesn't run any more! I fear that the aforementioned water pressure is to blame here as well, and it is forcing water into the tank with more pressure than the cistern float can exert on the valve to close it. It's fixed for now, but I fear the pressure is forcing the float arm to bend, so anticipate it to come back. But for now, we have a perfect toilet again!

Our next project, then, will involve this:



That's our mains connection, with the tap valve and water meter. We need to install a pressure limiting valve to the left of the meter here, so that the water pressure inside the house doesn't exceed the 500kpa that's outlined in the building code. Without this, I fear we'll continue to blow pipes, as well as damaging washing machines, dishwashers, toilets, etc. Plus, as it currently stands, the pressure is sufficient to blow outside hoses off their tap fittings, and to wreck the internals of spray nozzles and such. It's a certainty that if you go out to water the garden you'll have water spray out from the hose-to-nozzle connection all over you, and then the connection will blow off the hose, or the nozzle itself will blow apart. It's really quite wicked.

I've been given advice as to what pressure limiting valve would be best, so we need to work out whether it's something we can DIY ourselves, or whether we'll need to call a pro in. We'll wait and see how much the plumber charges for the repair above, and if it's reasonable, we'll probably just call him out again and get him to do it.

Oh, and while we were taking the photo of the mains connection above, Jess noticed that there's a considerable drip from the mains valve where the tap enters the body (you can see the water trail on it in the photo above). It's on council's side of the meter, so we're not paying for it, but we'll need to call them up and let them know to come and fix it.

It never ends!