[Progress.156] Hot Water System Minor Leaking - Fixed!

Recently, we noticed our hot water system seems to be have water dripping down from the pipe somewhere constantly.

Our hot water system is a Rheem Stella Gas Outdoor Water Heater.

Searched through the manual and it says: "it's normal and desirable this valve allows a small quality of water to escape during the heating cycle".

But the "valve" is on the other side of the system, the leaking is from the side where the hot/cold water pipes are connected, as shown below.

Not sure if this is normal, we contacted our builder's maintenance guy and 2 tradies arrived a few days later in the early morning. They have a quick look, use a big spanner to tighten the nuts above that blue thing and that stops the leak straight away. Too easy!

[PropertyInfo.037] Quality concern for some newly built houses

Not sure how's the property market is going, some says up some says down. But for Epping area, quite surprise to see so many new properties been rushed to market.

Unfortunately when there's rushing, there's always quality issue. We went to this brand new, technically not 100% finished duplex the other day. Upstairs carpet still not finished, kitchen cabinate handle still not installed, big pile of sand and concrete still left at the drive way...etc, can't understand what's the rush to push it to the market in this condition.

On the bright side, we can clearly see the builder/owner spent quite a lot on the robes and cabinets. Even the garage have a full cabinet filling the whole wall, quite impressive.

But then I noticed this small problem in the garage as shown below, can you see what's wrong?


Hope you already pick up the problem, if not, have a look below. When the door been opened, it's blocked by the stairs! I guess technically you can say it's still accessible with the other door opened, but without any sort of protection I can expect that door to be scratched very badly quite soon...

If the quality is in this kind of condition in visible area, wonder what would it be like for other non-visible areas....

[Others.042] Thanks for the execellent service Freedom Furniture

We bought a set of "Lila" bedroom furniture from Freedom Furniture last year.

We noticed started from early this year, for some unknown reason the colour changed from white to irregular yellow spots in different places. We visited one of their shops a few weeks ago and surprisingly their friendly staff said they were aware of this issue and can arrange for a replacement.

After a quick phone call, a replacement was arranged, and we got all of them waiting in the garage to be picked up next day morning. Just look at the awful colours...



It was raining the next morning, a big truck arrived around 7am. 2 guys quickly checked the goods, stick a big yellow note on each of them, and replaced all of them.




After some hard work with assembling everything and rubbish clean up, we leave it overnight to get rid of the smell.


Unfortunately we found a small problem, as below one of the roller wheels for one of the drawers was broken. Since it still sort of works so there's no rush to get it fixed. And with their excellent service I believe this can be easily resolved.

Oh, one other thing I forgot to mention. When we bought the furniture last year it comes with 2 years warranty. The best part is, after the replacement (which is about one year later), they still give us another 2 years of warranty, not bad isn't it!

[PropertyInfo.036] Property Market booming after FHOB extended?

Before the announcement of the budget, there were lots of rumor about property market crashing after the "First Home Owner Boost (FHOB)" finished in end of June. Now that the FHOB been extended (see reports here and here, everything seems to change!

Not sure about your area, in Epping the best example would be this old unrenovated cottage, with 695 sqr meter of land --- perfect candidate for a knock down and rebuild. As it's quite wide it might be qualified for a duplex too (subject to council approval).

In the past 2 open houses it was always packed with interested buyers, most of them intended to knock it down as it's been vacant for almost 2 years and not in a very good condition.

When I was there last Saturday, I saw this old Apple II from 197? (same as the one in the photo below from Internet, with 2 huge floppy drives) sitting on the floor in the corner of a bedroom. I probably spent more time on this little cutie than the old house and if there weren't so many people around, I would be seriously thinking of ..... Sorry, back to the house...

The asking price was $620K, we think it should be somewhere in the high $600K area. Last Saturday we heard that there were already a few offers around $680K, which is pretty good. Wife called the agent this afternoon and was told the highest offer is in the $710K range and might even go higher, wow!

As it's not for Auction, there's really no deadline and would be interested to see how much it would be sold for in the end...

Is your area going well after the FHOB extended as well? Share your story with us!

[Others.041] Execellent tool to control kid's TV/Computer/Game time

If you are like us, having problem controlling kid's TV/game time after school, there's a solution!

According to this report on "Oh Gizmo!", there's this little "tamper-proof" timer device which you can set the timer and completely lock the power point of the TV/Computer/Game Console, not bad isn't it?


Further details can be found in Digital Innovation, it's currently US$29.99 each and comes with 1 year warranty.

It's a very simple 3 step setup as below:

It can be programmed to repeat every 24 hours, and 4-digit pass code to prevent unauthorized timer changes.

Would be good to know when this becomes available in Australia!