Oliver - our Burmese Cat

Oliver is about 16 years old now. He doesn't really cope that well with all the changes that happen during building. But he does enjoy polyester wall-insulation. He just loves it.

Andy the Miniature Pony

Our neighbour has two miniature ponies, and her acre is running low on grass. So Andy and his girl-freind have spent about a week with us, getting very full of our grass.

Pressure System

My plumber has a great apprentice - Brendon - who does great work. He came on Friday to install the Grundfos pump I bought to run the pressure system on our water tank. He has arranged two circuits for me: just toilet cisterns and one garden tap; and/or the rest of the house (although for the latter we need to up our tank size from 12000 to 36000 litres. That won't happen until next year.

Verandah Flashing

Because our verandah has radiused (curved) rafters, I could not get a standard steel section rolled to fit the hips (apparently they can't roll to this shape). So I had to fall back on the traditional solution - lead. The down side is that we collect water from out roof - and we don't want excessive lead in that water, even though we don't drink it. Fortunatley lead can be bought pre-coated in acrylic sealer - it's grey and matches our colour scheme well.

Now here's the clue on how to do this. To shape the lead into place, the best thing to use is another piece of lead, cut in the shape of a strap about 30mm wide and 250mm long. By hitting the lead with this strap it forms it into shape smoothly with minimal ripples. I was pleased with the result. Many thanks to Tony our plumber for this hint.

Kitchen Exhaust Flue

Its taken ages, but the flue for the kitchen exhaust fan is now in place. The cowling used has dampers in the top to stop back-flow of air into the house when its not in use (an energy requirement for our house). Unfortunately, the cowling is rectangular in shape, which means that I could not get an off-the-shelf sealing system for it.

Its an ugly looking cowling, but fortuantely its nestled out of sight in the internal valley of our roof. This also avoids having to put a penetration through the visible slate section of the roof.

The photo shows the first seal - silicon around the perimeter. Tomorrow I will finish it off with acrylic-coated lead flashing left over from the verandah hips I did recently.

Maid's Bell & Room Indicator

Julie will throttle me one day for this. I bought a maid's-bell and indicator-board on ebay for A$30. I've installed it in the kitchen, and have run wires to switches in four rooms, so I can call for a maid from the bedroom or lounge! The bell is yet to be wired in place, but the indicator board is up on the wall. When a call is made from one of the rooms, a tell-tale drops down into one of four windows displayed on the indicator panel. The maid will then know to come to "room 1" -- the lounge for instance.

....unfotunately there is no maid, so this is just meant to be for fun -- although Julie is a bit worried about having any such system in the house!

Verandah - Curved Rafters

Our rear verandah has always lagged behind the rest, primarily as I elected to do it myself. We recently finished the roof frame for it, and clad it with galvanised (not zinc-alume) corrugated steel. This finish dulls-off over the years to look old, although it is not as durable as zinc-alume (so maybe when I am 80 years old, maybe I'll have to re-clad it!). I was pleased to show our carpenter the end-rsult -- although what took me four week-ends, he could do in a day!

Window-to-Brick Sealant

Contemporary windows have a strip of timber called a "wind mold" that protrudes out from the main window frame on the outside. The brickies then place the bricks so the rear face of the brick is covered by the wind mold. Our window supplier talked us out of this idea, as Victoian windows were not fitted with wind molds. This meant that the gap between the rear face of the bricks and the window frame had to be filled with a sealant. I'm not sure what was used in the past, but we have used a coloured poly-urethane sealant from Sika.

The guy that did the work for us suggested that the window frame be taped so that a clean, straight line of sealant would be seen against the window frame. He did a really good job, and we are very pleased with the result (as well as the colour - "Redwood").