[Progress.160] Having fun with Blocks/Paving cleaning

The big garden blocks looks great in our backyard, but after moved in almost 2 years, recently we having been quite annoyed about the dirts all around it. Here's a photo of the stairs area, the dirts are on the capping, under the steps, ...etc everywhere!

A closer look shows all the dirty black things all over the place. we tried scrapping, brushing, ...etc but none of them seem to work as expected. One of our neighbours used these blocks for the fence at the front of their house, and as they probably haven't wash it for years it looks really ugly!

Someone told us about spraying some chemicals to remove it, but we were not really sure if that's a good idea. What if it just changed colour with the dirts still remained there??

Then a quick chat with our builder's maintenance guy the other day and he suggested to wash it with high pressure washer. Have a quick look at Bunnings and saw a few of them within $100-$200 range. Struggled a bit about whether should we buy one as we probably just going to use it once or twice every few years??

Luckily we have a neighbour who kindly borrowed us his little old "Karcher 300" as below:

It's quite noisy, and it took a while to connect the host, the long extension cable and move things out of the way. The machine is at least a few years old (can't find it in Karcher Australia web site any more!) and it leaks a bit, but it does the job pretty well!

We tried it on a capping on the side wall first, just in case anything out of control happened... At first we didn't know how to control the nozzle, and the first few trial looks like kids drawing, but the dirts were removed instantly.

We finally worked out how to adjust the nozzle head and after that was quite fun! Especially when all the dirts were removed, it's big relief and achievement to us!

After about an hour of hard work, we got all the stairs and capping cleaned, the final result as below, looks like brand new isn't it??!!

Few days later (before returning the machine actually :-) ...) we noticed we missed the 2 big sand stone cappings at the front... It's probably only a 5 minutes jobs, but it certainly took a lot longer just to setup and connect everything...

Die! You ^%^$%^&#@~@! dirt! Die Die! Ha ha ha.... Yes I was quite exciting....

After the wash, we have 2 beautiful cappings on the front fence...


Also noticed some of the paving gaps were filled with moss after a few weeks of heavy rain, specially near the water tank area.

Just look at all the dirty stuffs removed by the machine!

A slight issue with the paving cleaning is, the strong water also washed off quite a lot of the sand between the paving bricks. Have to get some more sand to fill it up later...

Any way, the whole cleaning experience was quite interesting and we probably would go ahead and buy a high pressure washer!

[Others.049] Insulation sagga for about 255,000 homes

There's been some quite scary reports about fire caused by insulation, and about 255,000 homes fitted with insulation under the program might have safety problems, substandard batts or installation faults after the government's $2.45 billion ceiling insulation subsidy scheme been scrapped.

Feel really sorry for those home owners. This would also be a huge risk for potential home buyers too. How would you know if the insulation been installed was up to the standard?? Will there be any sort of certificate issued by any authority for this?

Not sure if it's related, I mentioned about possible fire caused by downlights in July 2007 and then another follow up as well. If there's any downlights in your house, might want to check if any proper protection been installed around all the downlights.

I also did this burn latest in December 2007, just to make sure the insulation material we got is fireproof. Surely this wouldn't be a proper/official test method, but I guess if you just have insulation installed, it won't harm for you to grab some of those materials through the man hole and do some simple testing while waiting for official inspection!

[Others.048] Matt's house sold! Congratulation!

Have been following Matt's blog for a while and saw this post from his blog today that's his house was sold after only on the market for 6 days! That's really excellent and congratulation to Matt!!

Did a quick search on the net and found the house as below, with details removed to protect his privacy. A very nice house as you can see from the photos...

The best part is the timing, Matt must have a crystal ball or something to be able to time everything so perfectly.

First we all heard that in 2009 house price in Australia posted 12.1 per cent rise overall for the year (e.g. here, here, and here).

Then there's also quite a lot of reports in past weeks (e.g. here, here, and here) all pointing to almost 99.9% certainty that the Reserve Bank is going to raise the official interest rate next Tuesday. Most people are expecting the property boom to start slowing down a bit.

It would be really difficult to sell a house at such a perfect timing -- almost the peak of the property cycle.

As for us, we're definitely not thinking of selling our house at this stage. After all the effort in past 2 years, we would like to enjoy it a lot longer...

Chat with family about if we should consider selling if the property price doubles in X years time? Urh..... I think we would still prefer to hold it, but borrow against the equity or something like that and then look at other opportunities... The cost for selling and then buy/build another one is just too high in Australia...

[Others.047] What the fork??

Around early December last year, while waiting for wife shopping in Kmart Hornsby, I saw this cheap "Gardener's Choice Fork" around $20 and bought it without much thinking... I wasn't a heavy user, just like to loose the soil for the grass to grow better probably once or twice every 6 months.

It worked ok for a while, then one day while I was working near the brick retaining wall, it snapped into two.... What the fork??!!

A closer look shows it's actually not very strongly made....

From this photo you can see the metal surrounding the timber handler is actually quite thin... No wonder it didn't last long....

Have to drive all the way to Hornsby to get a refund, and on way back, saw this "Stanley" Garden Fork fork in Bunning's on special around $30 and comes with 5 years warranty. Should be much better and stronger than the previous one if it's almost 50% more expensive and clearly specified warranty period, right?

Wrong! I used it near the same spot and snapped! It's broken again! What the fork??!!

This is a closer look of the broken part...

After some explanation, I got it refunded, and was strongly recommended to get this "proper" one called Cyclone Garden Fork which was "Made in Australia" and comes with 10 years warranty.

At about $65 it's not cheap, but certainly felt much heavier and stronger by the look of it...

So, did the new fork work at the place where the other 2 failed? Well, yes and no...

Firstly, I definitely don't want to take the risk for this new expensive tool... Secondly, I thought about it for a while, inspected the spot which killed previous 2 forks and then I noticed the problem... Silly me, I was standing quite close and facing the retaining wall. Which means I was actually working against the big blocks, which is why those 2 forks broke... If I turn and face the opposite side, and work the fork the other way, instead of towards the retaining walls, then there won't be any problem at all!

Any way, I learned the lesson the hard way. Luckily, thanks to the Australian law which protects customers against all sort of stupidity like mine, I got both forks refunded. If I had used it correctly, even that under $20 one would still be working fine I guess...

[Progress.159] Water Tank Filter Replacement

Hope everyone had a happy and safe long Christmas/News Years holiday break!

Recently, we noticed after every toilet flush, the refill from water tank seems to be getting slower and slower, and the noise seems to be getting louder as well. Called the maintenance guy and was told the water tank filter needs to be replaced every 12 months or so, and it's probably time to replace our filter.

Got the supplier contact details, gave them a call, and what? Have to pay almost $70 for 2 filters? Ouch.... A few days later, here's what we received, 2 new filters wrapped in nice bubble wraps.


Removed the wrapping for one of them, the only noticeable sign on it is the word "MEXICO" on one side. Tried to search for the product on the Internet but strangely couldn't find any.... If any of you know where to get the same filter with much cheaper price, please let me know....


Next, I was supposed to open the filter with the little plastic blue handle after turned off the taps. It's a bit tricky as the handle doesn't quite fit (a bit loose)and it took me a while to work out the correct direction to open it - which is clock-wise when viewed from top.


After some hard work, finally got it opened, as below, the dirty old filter in the middle.


With the clean and old filters right next to each other for comparison, you can see how much dirts the filter filtered out after about 12 months of usage.


After the new filter inserted, put the cover back, turned on the tap, and we got the water tank system back again!