Saturday, 28 November 2009

[Progress.158] Daikin Air Con "E0" error

It was so hot the other day, we decided to turn on the Air Con. Surprisingly, it showed this "E0" error and the machine refused to start.

Tried a few times but still couldn't get it to work.

Wife mention she received this notice from the Air Con servicing company last month (or earlier?) saying it's time for our annual service and also mentioned something about needs service to maintain the warranty.

Wasn't happy about this and as it's after hours, got no choice but to bring out all the the old fans from the storage area to cool everyone down -- have to wait until next morning.

Next day had a nice chat with the servicing company, who said they wouldn't do such thing as programming the machine to stop functioning if any service schedule was missed. That "E0" error was simply the Air Con couldn't get enough electrical power to start up the motor. It can be easily fixed by restarting the Air Con circuit switch in the meter box with a 5 min delay between the shutdown and restart.

Sounds quite reasonable to me, as wouldn't surprise if most houses in Sydney all had their Air Con turned on that day, causing the power shortage problem.

Tried the restart when back home and it worked as expected! Another lesson learned, and we happily booked our Air Con service. Wouldn't want to have any more problem with the Air Con...

Remember someone asked me what are the other maintenance cost after the house completed? Well, I mentioned the TermGuard in previous post, Air Con maintenance would be the other one you have to pay every year to keep the warranty. Will let everyone know if I can think of anything else.

Saturday, 24 October 2009

[Others.046] Where on earth is "Toowoon Bay"?

I read an article talking about property investors using real estate web sites to look for cheap houses.

Just for fun, I did a quick search for "Town Houses" under $300,000 in NSW on realestate.com.au, and it returned quite a lot of hits. I switched to "Map" view and moved around, the first one I checked was as below, this 2 bedroom townhouse in Toowoon Bay (The others were all too far away...)

I've been to The Entrance a few times, but have absolutely no idea about the rental market over there. So I switched to the "Rent" view, entered "Toowoon Bay" as suburb and as below, it returned 3 houses, all with 2 bedrooms and within $210-$245 range.

Next is the fun part. I switched to "Map" view again to see whese these 3 houses were located, and as below, strangely I got a blank screen. The bottom of the map says "Map data 2009 Europa Technologies", ok, but where is this?

I zoomed out a bit and as below, noticed some arabic writings all over the places. What the??

Walla! I zoomed out a few times and as below, found that it's actually pointing to Algeria in Africa, with Barcelona/Madrid of Spain just above. And the top of the page still says "Displaying 3 homes for rent in Toowoon Bay"!!

Must be my first time lucky, as I tried a few others and none of them seems to have this problem...
Any way, will report to realestate.com.au and hopefully they can quickly fix it...

Sunday, 18 October 2009

[Others.045] Nice features of new houses in California

During my short stay in California, I found quite a few nice features which I like to share with everyone.


The most impressive feature is the high ceiling, which I think is about 10 feet/ 305 cm high. The dark brown door in photo below is the main entrance, the plain white door at the far right is the garage door which is about the same height as the normal door we have here. Compare the gap between the doors and the ceiling and you can see the difference.



The next feature I like is the smooth/round edges for all the walls. This would certainly be more child friendly than the sharp ones we have here.




I also found they all have a big tray under the washing machine in the laundry, similar to this one. This would protect the floor from been damaged.



There's also wallpapers been applied in some of the rooms. And as below, the light switches were beautifully covered with the wallpaper.

The switch at the far right has some sort of built-in sensor, which probably would turn on the light when it detects any movement. This certainly looks better than a separate sensor been installed on the ceiling corner and less wiring required.

Monday, 12 October 2009

[BlogSite.028] Home Sweet Home

I was away for a while, stayed in the sunny Los Angeles California for weeks, enjoying the beautiful sun shine and inexpensive food/shopping thanks to strong Aussie dollars.

Also visited some new display homes and found lots of interesting ideas which is quite different from what we have here in Australia. Will post some information to share with everyone later. It's really great to be back home again...

By the way, I decided to change my blog template back to the previous one, as the new template isn't wide enough.

Thursday, 20 August 2009

[Others.044] Call the police! Someone stole two lanes from Epping Road!

This is quite funny, but unfortunately it's the NSW government who stole the two lanes from Epping Road, trying to force everyone to use the expensive Lane Cove Tunnel...