OMG, WTF?

Did I mention we're building a pool? Oh, well I have been a bit slack. Perhaps more accurately, everything's been going really well up until now. Well, not any more. First the fence people came and put a fence post in the middle of five pipes to the pool. It's absolutely amazing that they had to cut all five of them. By far the easiest thing for everybody involved would have been for them to dig away beside the pipes a little and push the post in between. But that would have taken them a little bit of effort, so instead they cut through them all.

Today the plumber came and reconnected the pipes. And this is how he did it.

That's an electrical conduit going through the middle. I'm surprised they didn't have to cut it too. I suppose they were afraid of it. Notice in particular that two of the pipes now sit above the level that the pavers will go to. And this is right where the gate is. Anyway, the plumber is coming back tomorrow to try again.

Stormwater Engineering

Ok, blog-watchers (I know you're out there), I have an engineering problem for you. In the picture is a 90 mm stormwater diverting switch. It is basically a T-junction with a rotating baffle which can completely (or partially) block off one of the attached pipes. I have it set up so that it can block off the outlet to the street, forcing all of the stormwater to go into my water tanks. When the tanks are full all of the rain that is collected must go through the tanks and out the overflow, from whence it goes into a soak under the back lawn. This actually works, by the way. There is now a clearly visible snake pattern of longer, lusher grass, following the ag pipe exactly.

Anyway, the switch is definitely not working. It might work if you only put nice clean rain water through it, but when it encounters slightly dirty rain water it seizes up like a rusty trap. I can get it to shift around by tapping the top sideways gently with a hammer, but this damages the PVC and is clearly not going to work for long.

So, the engineering problem is this: how can I attach something to this device to get the additional leverage I need, without breaking the lid, which is only about 2 mm thick? And preferably with a removeable handle, because this diverter is sitting in the ground and would normally be about 50 mm below a cover.

See what you can come up with, blogsters.

Q. How many electricians does it take to change a meterbox?

Hmm, August now. Since my last post it has actually rained quite a bit. Tanks are full (and overflowing in the wrong places), but it hasn't been raining so much that my soak is insufficient. In other words, I still haven't had to discharge any stormwater to the street!

But, to get back to the point of today's topic, I have a bit to say to bring you up to date with the state of my underfloor heating. Disclaimer: this may sound like a lot of complaining, but as I've said several times I think the main point of my blog is to remind myself (and anyone else contemplating building) about all the bad things that happened. So just sit back and enjoy the fact that it hasn't happened to you.

One of the requirements for the underfloor heating is to have 3-phase, off-peak power. I conveyed this information to my builder early on, or rather I tried to convey it, but through a series of unfortunate incidents they did not get the message that I needed a larger meterbox (because it needs to hold 3 meters and a lot more circuit breakers) before the brickwork was complete. And they did not manage to tell the electrician that it needed to be upgraded before the electricity was connected.

So a couple of months ago the electrician finally turned up to try to fit a bigger meterbox. To say that this was a debacle is an understatement. Prior to this there had been several false starts. He had first scheduled this event to occur a month or so prior, but by the time it came around he had forgotten about it! So ETSA turned up to change over the meters and there was no electrician. He rescheduled a few weeks later and this time ETSA failed to turn up. Or so it seemed. Actually, ETSA had changed their procedure in the intervening time so that they now expected the electrician to disconnect power from the site at the pole and they would come by to fit the new meter and reconnect the power. But the electrician didn't know this so at first he thought it was another false start.

But eventually the power went off (8:30 am) and he got going -- I believe he actually disconnected everything in the old box before he realised that, while the new box was taller and would accommodate 3 meters, it would not accommodate any more breakers. In addition, as this board had the breakers at the bottom instead of the top like the old one, it would mean extending the wires for all of the circuits in order to reach the new breaker positions. After some discussions with the electrician for the underfloor heating he decided that with a bit of jiggery-pokery they could probably fit the additional breakers into the original board! So he put it all back together (12 pm) and left it up to ETSA to come and supply the new meters and reconnect the power.

After much hand-wringing on my part, ETSA eventually came back (5:30 pm). But they pointed out that there was no room to fit any more meters, and they do not have a single meter that supplies three phases of off-peak power. In addition, when trying to reconnect the power ETSA's electrician discovered that the other electrician had broken the fuse holder, so he needed to call the maintenance section to fix that before he could reconnect the power -- a job he would have to come back for! Time: 8:30 pm

So after being without electricity for 12 hours we were finally back at square one, and no closer to having underfloor heating.

A. It takes three electricians, 12 hours. And afterwards you've still got the same meterbox.

Lost: one blogger

Ah yes, well. You see it's like this. We actually moved in on 30th January, and it's taken until now to get the internet... Okay, it took about four weeks to get the phone connected, and the internet was working as soon as the phone was. It's just taken me two weeks to get around to updating my blog.

Anyway, enough excuses. Let me give you the quick update of what we've been up to so I can get on with everyday complaining.

Hired the 'Kanga' trench digger and earth mover to dig stormwater trenches and move some soil around. It was good fun, but hard to get to do what you want. I got nowhere near as much done as I'd hoped, partly because it is so big there are lots of places you can't take it.

A couple of weeks later I hired the smaller 'Dickens' trencher. This is less manoeuvrable, in the sense that it has no steering, and only drives itself backwards. But it is smaller, which means you can get it into tighter spots. As you can see we managed to get it right down the fence, even past the airconditioner and the water tank. There's no way I could have operated it without a second person to help reposition it though. Also the trenches it digs aren't quite as wide or as deep so we needed to dig every trench twice, sometimes three times. Even so, I managed to get
more done with this than with the bigger machine.

Here's Rewind Snr, with a tortuous trench in which we (well, mostly he) laid 100mm irrigation pipe. This is a subsurface soak to absorb runoff from the paved house surrounds and also overflow from the tanks. If it ever rains enough again such that this won't hold any more water, I can divert the tank overflow to the street. But I don't think I'll be needing that for a while.

When my tanks finally arrive I'll show off my elaborate (did you say insane?) plumbing in more detail. It is funny that I told Mrs Rewind I could get all this plumbing done in one weekend, if I hire a machine and get a few mates to help. She was of course right, and it has so far taken several weeks. Lucky it doesn't rain anymore.

Well not quite in...

Okay I'll admit I've been a bit slack, but I have been on holiday. And I've been back at work for a week. Okay, pretty slack. Here's the latest update. The tiles and carpet are in. We've painted a 'feature' wall in each of the kids bedrooms. None of the outstanding jobs have been done since handover, and a few new issues have become apparent: laundry sink not emptying, laundry door not closing, roller door reopening, kitchen mix tap needs anchoring and the fridge doesn't fit. Huh? Yes the fridge, which was bought through Coneheads, does not fit under the overhead cupboard. I am meeting Mr Sandwich tomorrow morning to try to resolve all of our 'issues'.

I actually haven't taken that many photos. This one shows the recently-completed and prior to being mopped three times, floor tiles. We still haven't got the stormwater plumbing done. I'm going to try to do that next weekend, and we're planning to move in the weekend after. Still heaps of packing to do.