This blog post is mostly for my own purposes, to mark when I bug-bombed the house, which I have done over the weekend. I last did it about 5 years ago, and it seemed to be relatively effective… for a while. But over this past summer, there seems to have been about a cockroach per ... [More]
On the way back from Walhalla, we decided (at Peter’s suggestion) to go via Yallourn. He said there was a lookout with a good view over the Latrobe Valley, and the power plants, and the road through Yallourn was very close to one of them.. We started off by diverting off the road to a ... [More]
Well, I’m getting there. Last week I had a ceiling fan installed in the livingroom. It’ll help on hot days, and because I have ceiling ducted heating, also helps distribute heat better on cold days as well. To do this, the old light fitting was removed. I’m hoping it might be worth something — I ... [More]
Things I learnt when we lost power: Take-away pizza by torchlight a bad way to have dinner. A Smart Meter won’t keep the juice flowing if there’s problems in the local distribution network. I don’t have enough torches. At least one per person would be good. The Dolphin mini LED torch I got recently is ... [More]
In October 2007 I switched to a fixed interest rate of 7.85% for five years. It turned out to be a terrible punt. The Global Financial Crisis hit the following year, with interest rates dipping to record lows. I shudder to think how much money I might have saved if at that point I’d locked ... [More]
They finally installed a new electricity meter at my house. This was after receiving three sets of letters saying “we’re about to install it”. It wasn’t one of those much-criticised allegedly-defective Smart Meters though — oh no, it was an Advanced Meter. So much better. Will be interested to see what effect it has on ... [More]
I spent about 4 hours in the roof on Sunday, with an industrial vacuum cleaner from Kennards, trying to clear out some of the residual insulation and other crap from up there. I had thought the half-day hire would be enough, but man, it’s hard work manoeuvring around up there, let alone with a big ... [More]
I thought I’d be clever and change all the washers in the bath, and show the kids how it’s done at the same time. The shower ones were okay, but when we tried to take off the bath hot, it broke away. Result: nothing to grip onto. I assume the whole bit will have to ... [More]
New for June… a Lego house with solar panels on the roof. Here’s a few thoughts on the carbon scheme announced yesterday: 1. I simply don’t understand how the deniers can continue to be taken seriously by anybody when the vast majority of climate scientists agree there’s a problem that needs to be fixed. It ... [More]
The lack of insulation in my roof at the moment does make a noticeable, tangible difference. Normally I have my central heating set to 20 degrees until 9:30pm, and I used to have it set to 12 degrees… I came up with that on the basis that when the insulation was in the roof, overnight ... [More]
Got an attic ladder put in a while back. The bloke did a lot of chopping and cutting, and an electrician moved one of the lights to make way for it. The result is very pleasing, and it makes a real difference to getting up into the roof space. Stage 2 was getting some of ... [More]