[Others.050] Cheaper supplier for water tank filter found!

Good to be in beautiful Spring time again!

In the past few months, I didn't do much except:
1. Spent a few weeks in Shanghai, mainly visiting World Expo 2010 with family.
2. Finished my 4th City2Surf 14 km run.

Other than that, basically quite busy with work.

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I mentiond in this post around Dec 2009 about paying $75 for 2 water tank filter.

We went to Parklea Market the other day and saw this stand from a company called OnTap Water Filters selling $25 each or 4 for $50.

Yes, the sign says "Today only", but based on the amount of dust on it, I don't think it's new, probably showing "Today only" price everyday...

The stand is right next to the "Information Centre" near one of the gates, you won't miss it.

As below, they also have many other filters on the shelf:


The size for ours is 10 inch. We weren't very sure if the size is correct so we only bought one, later compared with the existing one and the size is exactly the same! Yes!


So, there you go, another tip to save some money for everyone (around Sydney I guess :-P )!

[Giveaway.002] Result of my first giveaway announced

This is to announce the result of my first giveaway. There were 42 comments, the result is as below, the lucky number is #30.

My template doesn't show the comment order numbers, so I manually counted each of them (twice), and added in the screen dump as below, congratulation to "Annette D"!

An email will be sent to Annette to contact the CSN Stores marketing team within 48 hours.

Thanks everyone!

[PropertyInfo.040] I can hear the bubble cracking....

I mentioned in this previous post "Bubbles, bubbles everywhere the other day about the almost crazy, wild rush we witnessed in a few auctions. Remember the little timber cottage with only 404m2 land with a long queue outside I mentioned? I went to the auction last Saturday and guess how much it was sold for...


I can give you the sold price of 2 other properties as reference:
*A 2 bedroom brick veneer with 316m2 land sold for $726K on 27th March in Auction (mentioned in the same post)

*A 3 bedroom timber cottage with slightly bigger land of 416m2 sold for $760K on 16th April.


The answer is as below:

$806,000 !

Yes, this is really crazy.

There's this article from The Australians today talking about Edward Chancellor, of US investment management firm GMO who predicted the GFC, saying:

"estimates Australian house prices are more than 50 per cent above their fair value -- a once in 40-year event. " If house prices were to revert to their historic long-term average (ratio of average price to average income) they would fall quite considerably,"

He said prices would have to fall by more than a third to reach fair value -- although some of this fall would be cushioned by income growth."

There's also reports about RBA might announce another rate increase tomorrow afternoon due to the soaring house prices. Let's wait and see how everything goes... But for sure, I can hear the bubble cracking...

[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!!

[Giveaway.001] [CLOSED] My First Giveaway - Blomus Tewo Key Board - Ends on 20/May/2010 [CLOSED]

[Update] This Giveaway is now closed! Please see this post for the result.

Thanks to CSN Stores, I'm excited to announce my first ever giveaway!

CSN is an online shopping center which has over 200 online shops where you can find practically anything for your home: TV Stands, tools, kids stuffs, pets and lots more.

Now, the giveaway: this is a very stylish stainless steel key board for you to hang your keys by the door, and you don't have to worry about losing your keys or wasting time searching for them any more. Just slide your key through the well designed opening, and it will keep the keys in order within seconds. The gorgeous design adds to the ambience of any setting and it's definitely a perfect accessaory for any home or office.

Dimension: 2.4"H x 8.3"




Win It!!
Here are the rules to enter:

Please leave a separate comment for EACH entry and include your e-mail or have it in your profile so I can contact you if you win.

Mandatory:
Visit one of the CSN stores and tell me which is your favorite item and from what store! Please be specific, any duplicate entries will be deleted. This first entry is mandatory and must be done before any extra entries.

For extra entries:
1. extra entry (maximum 3): comment on other posts in my blog and tell me which post you commented on
2. extra 3 entry: follow my blog via Google Friend Connect (on the left side of this page) and leave a comment to tell me about it. If you are already a follower, please indicate this in the comment.
3. extra entry (maximum 5): tweet about this giveaway - make sure to leave a separate comment for each of them!
4. extra 5 entries: if you have a blog, blog about this giveaway with link to this post and TV Stands, and leave me the comment with a link to your blog post.

Unfortunately, this giveaway is open only to residents of the US. Sorry to my Aussie readers and others from other countries/continents... Will try to arrange other giveways in the future!

This giveaway will end on 20th May 2010 (AEST) and a winner will be chosen through random.org. Winner will be announce on the next day, notified via email and asked to respond with full contact information within 48 hours of being notified. Failure to do so will result in another winner being picked.

If you have any other question or further information required regarding this giveaway, please send me an email, my email address: building(dot)our(dot)first(dot)house(at)gmail(dot)com

Thanks to CSN who supplied the products for the giveaway and good luck everyone!

Buy It!!
As we can only have one winner, in case you were not chosen you can still buy this stylish key board from here.



[Update] This Giveaway is now closed! Please see this post for the result.

Disclaimer:
*The Blomus Tewo Key Board being given away in this post has been provided by CSN Stores. It will be shipped directly to the winner of the giveaway by the sponsor. Prize distribution is the sole responsibility of the sponsor, this site and the individuals associated with it are not liable for prize delivery.
*I have not seen or tried the product for myself. I was not paid to give my opinion and the opinions are mine alone and may vary from others.