[Progress.161] Thanks to excellent service from maintenance guy

Recently we have 2 water/plumber related issues which has been bugging us for a few weeks.

First is the toilet in the main bedroom ensuite. We noticed after every flush, when it refills the tank from the rain water tank, the noise seems to be a lot noisier than the other 2 toilets. The loud squeaking noise was really annoying specially during late nights. We tried pressing the flush buttons harder/softer/slowly, but none of them seem to make any difference.

The next one is the shower. Have a look at the photo below, it might look normal, but if you look closely at the bottom, you will notice there's lots of water coming down the hose too.

At first I thought it has something to do with the shower rose/head. Quickly unscrew it and as below, very simple structure.

I tried to wrap it with the white plumber's tape, but there's still lots of water coming out.

Did a few simple test by holding the shower head/rose on different height. Then I noticed it's actually the shower hose that's leaking!

Went to Bunning's Warehouse and as below, saw 2 type of shower hose available both under $40 range. Struggled a bit as not sure it would fit or not, so I just took down some details and went home.


Discussed with wife, and she prefer to give our builder's maintenance guy a call first as he has always been very helpful in the past 2 years.

Surprisingly after a quick chat, the maintenance guy said he will get the plumber to have a look very soon, cool!

That's why I always let my wife handle the builder/trades person, somehow she can always manage to get things done/move forward without much tension/trouble compared to me... That's also how we share the work: I do all the technical things: investigation, research,...etc, while she handles the non-technical "talking" part.

After a few days, a "assistant" plumber arrived and replaced the shower hose within minutes. Somehow after a few attempts, he wasn't able to "quiet down" the toilet on the first visit. He had to go back to ask his boss for further instruction. On the next day, he returned and fixed the toilet quite quickly. Wife asked him what's wrong, and the response was "trade secret, can't tell you"... I am fine with that as the noise is gone, and I saved $40, we were all very happy with the service and quick response!

Special thanks to our maintenance guy for another excellent service. And tip to whoever just moved in to your new house. If there's any problem, before spending any extra money or fixing anything yourself, try give the maintenance guy a call first... And don't forge to have good relationship with the builder/maintenance guy!!

[Tips.018] 2 Bathroom Ideas

Was chatting with a friend about some bathroom ideas the other day. While most of the ideas available on the Internet emphasize on tape ware and/or bath tub, there are 2 little things I like to share with everyone.

First one is shown in photo below from one of the display homes we visited during our last US trip. Did you notice other than the main mirror in the middle, there's an extra smaller mirror on the right hand side? At first I thought it was some sort of Makeup Mirror to allow you to look at different angles (from side/behind?), then I noticed it has some hidden secret in it.

As shown below, when it opens up, there's actually a small cabinet hidden behind. I think that's a pretty cool idea.


The second one is about the shower area. As shown in photo below - from a Domaine (now part of Clarenton) display home back around 2006, by simply extending the bath tub towards the shower area, you can easily create a little sitting area inside your shower where you can either sit down or hold/put other stuffs. This would be quite handy.

We also saw a shower during our US trip as below with similar design.

During our construction, we did ask for similar changes to our main ensuite, unfortunately the price quoted by our builder was quite expensive and it was later removed.

Hope you find this little tip helpful!

[Progress.009] Visited Kellyville Homeworld for the 35th time

After experiencing the one-in-30-year storm for the past few days (see article from news.com.au), we finally have some beautiful sunshine today.

Aother visit to Homeworld
We visited Kellyville Homeworld this morning for the 35th time to check a few measurements. Yes, I made that up, we have visited Kellyville Homeworld so many times in the past 12 months that I already lost count. But it's definitely over 20 times.

We spent the whole morning, going through almost every bit of our drawings. We also checked every cupboard, drawers, robe, vanity, ...etc. And we noticed a few things worth further discussion with the builder.

Kitchen - kickboard is veneer, not Tasmanian Oak
We all thought the whole kitchen cupboard are made of Tasmanian Oak. The other day while going through the colour selection details, we noticed the kickboard material is noted as "veneer". We checked and confirmed today that, unfortunately, as shown in the photo showing from the fridge space, it's indeed made in veneer with a thin Tasmanian Oak colour coating/skin on top.

This is not a major issue as the colour looks exactly the same. In the worst case, can cover the whole kickboard with tile, if the budget permits...



Kitchen - big gap inside bottom drawer
We also discovered a big gap inside the bottom drawer under the oven. The funny thing is, even the Princeton Kitchen has the same problem. Will discuss with builder and see if they can do anything about this.

Photo from Palace Regent Kitchen

Photo from Princeton Kitchen


Kitchen - cooktop with battery operated ignition
The standard Palace Regent kitchen cooktop has a "battery" operated ignition. I checked under it and found this ugly little battery holder hidden at the back. Luckily we upgraded to the other model using eletric ignition. I wouldn't want to change battery all the time just for that!


Bathroom - no mini-tap under vanity
Checked all 3 bathrooms, none of the connections under the vanity has a mini-tap for cold/hot water connection. This means if there's any service required with the tap above the vanity, you have to run all the way outside the house, to the main tap near the water meter to shut it. We experienced a bursted pipe under the vanity before in our old house and that wasn't fun. Will also discussed with builder about this.



Bathroom - why there's an extra mini-tap near the floor?
As the displayed items in the Palace Regent and Princeton are a bit out-of-date, we also visited the newly built model to have a better feeling of the interiors. Again there's no mini-tap under the vanity, but I noticed there's an extra mini-tap near the floor in every bathroom.

As shown in photos below, the one in Powder room downstairs is next to the shower hob, and the one in the ensuite is behind the toilet. Don't know what's that for, may be for cleaning the floor? Personally it would be more useful to have it installed under the vanity for each tap.

Photo of extra mini-tap in Powder room

Photo of extra mini-tap in ensuite


Laundry - new tub
The Palace Regent still shows the old plastic laundry tub, with a sign saying all new houses will get a stainless one. We finally saw it in the newly built house.

Originally we paid to upgrade to the Princeton laundry bench, also paid extra to upgrade to 70L tub. We then decided to drop the height for about 5cm and the builder wanted to charge us for that as well! We are really unhappy about that and decided to cancel the whole thing. We will just keep the basic tub and install a new benchtop by ourself after hand-over.


TermGuard
We heard about this "TermGuard" thing for Termite protection quite a few times and today finally have a good look at it.

Update: have a look at this discussion from homeone.com.au forum where further details about TermGuard are been discussed.

This is the cover, there's a few of them around the house.

With cover removed, the pipes shown.

This is the old one installed in the Princeton, looks much bigger and the pipes seems different.


Water Tank
Also from the new displayed house, we finally have a better idea of what the water tank system looks like. We have a slimeline one exactly the same as the one on display.
This photo shows the control box.

With the cover opened, shows the motor and filter

A few other equipments connected as well, looks like some sort of leaf guard or filtering thing. Read from one of the web site that talks about the first flush diverters and this might be it.

[Tips.001] Do you have a hob under your shower screens?

We are currently living in a house not far away from where we are building. It's a duplex and according to Council record, the house was built around 1995.

This house has 2.5 bathrooms. Both bathrooms upstairs have a shower area, but none of them comes with hob under the shower screens. That is, the shower screen was installed directly on top of the flooring tiles. There wasn't any tiled barrier (hob) normally constructed from masonry to divide the shower area.

Since we moved in about 3 years ago, there were some cracks on the wall next to the Main bathroom shower, recently the tile starts to crack as well.

Spoke to some plumbers and tilers, they all said the same thing - shower screens installed directly on top of flooring tiles won't last long and will definitely leak after a few years.

This is one of the reasons we choose our builder, they have tiled hob included in all bathroom shower areas as standard. If you are building a house or renovating, strongly recommend installing a hob for your showers.

Found a few links related to this:
Link #1
Link #2

Photo of Tiled Hob in builder's display home Ground Floor Bathroom


Photo of Tiled Hob in our builder's display home 1st Floor Bathroom