Verdant Dental - Suite 1, Level 1, 326 Keilor Road Niddrie

Hey everyone!

I can't believe how long it's been since I even remembered having this blog. I do recall being totally building-obsessed when we first started this journey back in... 2009?

Clearly the results of that obsession have been well documented here on this blog. Daily drive-bys, and in-depth focus on the details that makes a house a home. We've had hundreds of comments and we hope our replies have helped you on your home building journey!

But this post marks a bit of a milestone... Tina and I have been massively busy obsessing about another project for the last few months, and this post is the reveal!

http://www.verdantdental.com.au

https://www.facebook.com/VerdantDental

Telephone: (03) 9379 3736

I've been working with Dr Joseph Versace for 12 years, and for the last 8 years at our current location at Suite 1, Level 1, 326 Keilor Road, Niddrie VIC 3042. We've had an amazingly loyal patient base, and we perform general, family, cosmetic and emergency dentistry to the inner west area. 

Mostly our patients come to us from Essendon, Aberfeldie, Moonee Ponds, Strathmore, Niddrie, Keilor, Greenvale, Airport West etc, but some of our clients are so loyal they fly in from interstate to see us!

We also do a lot of teaching of postgraduate dental students for The University of Melbourne Dental School. Dr Versace has decided to do more teaching and to step back from private practice, so we (Tim & Tina) have decided to take on the privilege and responsibility of operating the practice - now known as Verdant Dental.

We have a fantastic team around us including dentists Dr Christina Romanella, Dr Alpa Lodhiya and dental prosthetist Mr Jeremy Kearns. All the team are personal friends of mine, and I can vouch for their kindness, care and honest nature.

Some of you have been following this blog for years (or years ago) - and I hope that you've benefited from the effort and dedication we've put into this blog. We've put even more effort into Verdant Dental, to make sure it upholds the ethics, honesty and genuine relationships that have been a tradition since Dr Versace commenced the practice back in the 1980s.

Should you be in the area, or have friends or family nearby, we welcome you to Verdant Dental and promise that you'll have the best experience ever! You can ask us any questions you want, and you'll get an expert, honest and open answer.

Please visit our website at http://www.verdantdental.com.au, or you can email us to make an appointment enquiry at smile@verdantdental.com.au, or even the traditional way of calling us at (03) 9379 3736!

And you never know - I might even keep updating this blog for home building related stuff too!

Signing off for now....

Dr Tim Wenas

Verdant Dental

Suite 1, Level 1, 326 Keilor Road, Niddrie VIC 3042

DIY Deck Part 3: Joists 70% done

After the hard work getting the bearers in, the joists (so far) have gone in pretty quick.

Put down some weedmat first, and a bit of sand/rock to hold it in place. Also set in some crossbracing (probably redundant with all the joists being fixed in, but whatever) and the joists are held in with triplegrips at 400mm centres. 

 

Got the first 10 or so joists fixed in, and will get the rest done probably tomorrow - need to trim them to fit in around the brick pier first.

And then more internal framing to do so the picture border can go in.

Pretty annoyed with how one dodgy ebay seller is holding up progress though.

*EDIT* Turnes out the delay was due to the courier company managing to lose a parcel in the 10km between the seller and myself. Even so, if a seller isn't going to be working for a certain period, they shouldn't be advertising items for sale if they're not going to post them for a week. *



T&T

The Home Building Insurance SCAM.

Just a note - thanks for everyone for visiting, somehow this blog has clocked up 200,000 hits!

The Age recently published an article about the home building insurance scam.

In case you didn't know, if you're building a new house or doing a renovation, you're also paying an insurance premium on home building insurance. It doesn't show up as an item in your renovation quote or new home contract, but it's built into your building contract.

Anyway, it's basically money thrown away. The article states that in the last year, 53,000 Victorians paid up insurance premiums, but only 3 people made successful claims.

3 claims in 53,000. Almost makes the insurers refusing to pay out on Queensland flooding look good.

Anyway, this is one massive rort - its so corrupt from beginning to end, there's basically no way to even start to fix it. As "customers", we must pay the premium, like it or not, and there's stuff all chance of us ever seeing a cent of it, should any dodgy work be seen further down the track. "Government" will promise to fix things, but since their fingers are deep in the pie, there's no chance of that.

Hence, while all builders will proudly state there's a 7 year guarantee on their work, based on the existince of this so called home building insurance scheme, NONE will admit that this guarantee is a fraud.

Be an educated consumer. Don't accept any dodgy work from your builder, whoever it is. Spend the dollars to get an independent inspector to go through building stages - and of course, don't accept that the builder's "independent" inspector is anything but a stooge.

Yet another grumpy mood right now obviously - and if you're the moron in the right lane who decided to swerve into my lane outside of Doncaster Shoppingtown today at about 6pm, you're damn lucky I had the reflexes to avoid hitting you, 'cause one way or another I would've made sure you ended up in emergency with a broken neck, ya f'wit.

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Nothing to see here, move along...

Not much happened on the home front in the last month or two. Kresta finally showed up to replace the 2 blinds that fell down immediately after they first installed them. One of them is fine, the other one in the master bedroom... well, it's the wrong colour. So yet again, another 3-99 week wait for the correct item to show up.

Also got a call from a new service manager at Metricon, who has taken over the last service manager's job (he quit, or something). Anyway... he says he'll chase up the issue of correcting our crooked cavity doorframe. Not holding my breath, I mean - we've only been in our house about 9 months now.

Most recently, a good article in the The Age about changing your mortgage lender. I believe that 99% of mortgage holders probably spend more time trying to save 2c/litre on petrol, than tens of thousands of dollars on your home loan. If you've got a loan with one of the big 4 banks, seriously - read the article in that link, then call your bank or broker tomorrow and get out of your overpriced home loan.

The arguments that used to apply to changing home loans mostly don't apply anymore. Banks aren't allowed to charge punitive exit fees (ie ridiculously enormous, made-up sums to stop you switching your loan). Sure, you might have to go through the rigmarole of providing paperwork if you're changing a lender, but doesn't saving $69,000 in interest payments and/or years off your average home loan make it worth your while? And if you've got a bigger than average mortgage, you'll save even more.

And if you're too lazy, and/or stupid, and/or ignorant to be bothered trying to get the best deal on your home loan, well - it's your life and your money to waste as you will. Excuse the grumpiness, bad case of post-snowboarding muscle pains.

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Long rant ahead in favour of bigger houses!

A bit of action in the week before the Easter break - Tina got a call from Metricon about someone coming over to have a look at our cavity door (the only remaining thing to be done from 90 day inspection). I also got a call the other day from the installer of our blinds apologising for their poor quality - even though he wasn't at fault. Fault for the blinds lies in the manufacturing, so when the 2 blinds are remade, he'll come back to reinstall them and also recheck all the other blinds to make sure they're not going to fall apart. Things are looking up!

"Metricon's signature brand "Monarch" has a floor area of 456 square metres with a starting price of $477,000. Photo: Angela Wylie"

Here's an article that we stumbled across a few days ago, while going through The Age - Room to Move, but is a bigger house better?

Now the article is a decent read - of course, we tend to read everything about homes and housing, having gone through the process. However the real reading is in the 100+ comments left after the article; if you half an hour free, have a read through yourself!

* warning rant begins *

It seems pretty much all the comments have been left by people who have not had first hand experience of building their dream house - let's summarise their small-minded negativity here:

• Big houses = "McMansions", unpayable massive mortgages, huge utility bills, no backyards, too much cleaning, too many unused rooms, too far from the city, self-indulgent, consumerist... the list of whinging goes on and on.

#1: If you want to score easy points in an argument, come up with a catchy label. Obviously, McMansion sounds good as it brings in all the negative connotations with McDonalds. Other labels used to instantly denigrate opposing arguments are "Boat People" and "Cash For Clunkers", for a start.

#2: Affordability of mortgages are relative to the position of the mortgage payer. No doubt many of the comments on The Age are from those unable to fund any kind of mortgage for any sized property, so naturally there is an assumption that "bigger house = bigger mortgage" and the jealous green dragon rears its ugly, bitchy head. Any smart home owner has worked out their own personal level of mortgage affordability risk.

#3: Utility bills? Our first house was a 12 square cottage in Mitcham. We cooked in the summer, despite 2 airconditioners, and froze in the winter despite central heating and a log fire. Our utility bills were all higher in that cottage compared to our new house, which is far more comfortable in all seasons. Our new place has a 5.5 star energy rating, solar hot water, better orientation, better layout... the list goes on.

#4: No backyard: OK, this is one thing we could probably have more of. From our outdoor room to the back fence is about 7 metres. However, we tend not to spend much time in the backyard and have no want for a pool. My parents had a massive backyard in Templestowe which again was never used. Other people may have different priorities. Plus we have a beautiful huge park 2 streets away, the Eastlink bike trail is 3 streets away and a fantastic ride, and the dog loves going for long walks around the area.

#5: Cleaning? Rooms we don't currently use don't need much cleaning - we have a couple of rooms reserved for kids when they arrive, at the moment they're used for drying clothes (no need for a clothes dryer). We don't do any more cleaning than we used to.

#6: Unused rooms: We certainly use all the rooms we need to at the moment! The home theatre gets a workout frequently (and all our extended family loves it for movies, Rock Band/Guitar Hero sessions etc), our study is home to 3 computers and a mountain of paperwork, another spare bedroom is used for a home business, and everything is efficiently laid out as we have the space to do so.

#7: Too far from the city: Not an issue for us as neither of us need to go to the city. And when we do, it's a 20 minute drive on the Eastern Freeway. Plus the city sucks anyway - parking is hard to find and expensive, there's too many d!ckheads on the streets and everything we need isn't in the city anyway.

#8: Self indulgent/consumerist: Well, all people have different goals in life. Our goal was to have a comfortable, modern house for us and our future family, with a little bit of luxury to enjoy coming home to every night, and that's what we've achieved. We love cooking in our big kitchen. We love (or maybe it's me) playing video games, watching TV shows and movies in the home theatre. We love our massive bedroom and its ensuite - it's like being in a 5 star hotel every day, without the minibar and pay-per-view fees. Since we spend a lot of time at home, why not make it something you love?

Anyway, my final view is that there's a small subsection of the community out there who feel they need to mask their inferiority complex by being overly critical of other people, other people's choices and strangely enough, other people's homes. Give these people the attention and respect they deserve, which (no surprise), is zero on both counts.

*end rant *

Edit/postscript: Looks like the first article was so popular,an opinion piece was published afterwards. Let the fun continue!

Days of the humble home at an end as goliaths invade suburbia

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/days-of-the-humble-home-at-an-end-as-goliaths-invade-suburbia-20110422-1dreq.html#ixzz1KJEm2Hk3

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Product/Company warning: KRESTA blinds

So now with the wedding planning and event all over, it's back to making our house a home.

We've been in over 6 months now - how time flies. We had the 3 month service review done at the start of the year, and while most things have been fixed satisfactorily, I'm still waiting... waiting.... waiting.... waiting....

...waiting... for the service manager to call me back about when we're getting our faulty cavity sliding door frame in the ensuite fixed.



To recap, before handover our independent inspector noticed this fault (door and frame touching each other, failing to meet basic Australian Standards guidelines to tolerances). The problem was "fixed" at handover, but clearly a pretty dodgy "fix" since a week after handover the door and frame was touching again. Noted at 3 month review, promised to get it fixed, nothing done yet. I will be calling in the coming week to find out what's been done.

More issues have arisen with our window coverings. We were able to grab some standard blinds from Spotlight and Bunnings to hang in some rooms, but for the home theatre and master bed we needed custom ones made due to the nonstandard window widths.

Anyway, here's a timeline of what happens - mostly for my benefit, so I can record what's going on in case we end up taking Kresta to the Small Claims Tribunal.

• late Feb 2011: Placed order with Kresta for 7 blinds: 2 translucent and 5 blockout, 50% deposit paid. Promised to be be done by mid March as a rush order.
• Mid March: No blinds.
• Tuesday March 22nd: Called Kresta to find out where our blinds are since they never contacted us after the deposit paid. Turns out we might get them installed next week. Paid remaining 50% owing on blinds.
  
• Tuesday March 29: Blinds installed.
• Thursday March 31: Noticed one blind in the home theatre room had come off the rail and was lying crumpled on the ground. Could've happened this day or day before.
• Friday April 1: Called Kresta Doncaster store to complain about blind. Polite customer service lady said the installer would pick it up the coming Tuesday.
• Tuesday April 5: Defective blind taken away by installer and quoted 10 days to remake.
• Wednesday April 6: Got home after work and saw the big blind in the master bed also fallen off the rail. Looks like it was two blinds "glued" together by a tiny strip of glue and of course glue isn't enough to hold the big blind up.

• Thursday April 7: Called Kresta Doncaster store again to complain another blind was defective. They said they'd call me back to organise another check.
• Monday April 11: Kresta called and said they couldn't check the defective blind until Saturday 16th April.
• Saturday 16th April: Kresta called and says installer is sick. Can't fit us in again until Saturday 30th April. Clearly I'm not impressed. I take the defective blind into Doncaster store and leave it with them.

So, we're in the middle of some issues with Kresta. At the moment it's too early to judge whether or not there are going to be issues with this company - it's OK to make mistake as we're all human, but it's the complaint resolution process and customer satisfaction that will make or break companies. So far, not so good. Will keep updating progress, should Kresta come good on their service claims, we will acknowledge this.

On that note, here is some tips for you new home builders to avoid some of the basic errors that we made when choosing suppliers for our house. Consumer Affairs Victoria reviewed basic contracts for several manufacturers and you are legally entitled to demand a change in the contract should they state:

• contradict or do not allow for consumers’ statutory rights in relation to implied warranties.
• limit the performance obligations of the supplier.
• require the consumer to pay in full before completion of the contract.

Should any company have any clause relating to these terms, first request they change them to comply with the directive by Consumer Affairs Victoria. Should they refuse, DON'T ORDER WITH THEM, take down as many names as you can and contact Consumer Affairs Victoria who will investigate on your behalf - and find another company who trades fair. Unscrupulous retailers will take advantage of the fact that most consumer simply don't have time to research their rights prior to signing a contract - we didn't. But now we are aware that Kresta are in prima facie breach of the Consumer Affairs directive for asking for full payment upfront, we have a strong case to push for a full refund on defective items, even outside their stated "warranty period". Also be aware Vista part of the Kresta Group (Kresta Holdings Limited)

• Google search for "company name consumer affairs complaints" - sometimes provides information on major offenders.
  
• Also, if you're an iFan, get this free app for your iDevice: My Shop Rights.
• Consider reading ProductReview and NotGoodEnough.org - however these kind of sites tend to be negatively biased - bad experiences tend to be publicised more than good ones. Still, a good way to hear of real-life experiences. Similarly Homeone is a great resource for all home builders.
  

*sigh*

Keep fighting for YOUR RIGHTS people! On a related note, I recently reported Micro$oft for selling defective game consoles. While on that particular issue Consumer Affairs decided it wasn't a big enough fish to fry, I was able to claim repair costs through my credit card insurance (though it did take 5 months to be approved). Worth checking to see if your credit card provider offers this service.

T&T

90 day service: Reviewing unfinished work

So, many many month later... still working on getting things fixed from the "90 day" service inspection. Our ensuite has 2 cavity (sliding) doors, one of them is fine, but the other one has a bowed frame so the door scraps along the frame itself.

It was like this before handover, it was "fixed" at handover, some kind of dodgy job obviously because a week later it bowed again, and it's still like this now.


The service manager at first said it would be fixed - the tradesman sent around to fix it said he couldn't do it. When I called last week to find out what was happening, the manager then said he "probably couldn't" fix it. Obviously not happy to settle for that answer, so I got him out here today to check it again. Since it hadn't magically fixed itself, he called Canterbury who supplies these things - no reply apparently, so when he gets in touch with them, he'll call me. If I don't hear anything by next week, I'm back on the phone - again.

And don't even get me started on the work in the garage.

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Broadband - naughty Optus! NBN failboat.

So Optus is getting a slap on the wrist for advertising "Unlimited" broadband - with some limits.

ZDNet reporting on Optus misleading advertising

The analogue equivalent here is of a restaurant advertising an "All You Can Eat" seafood buffet for $29.95 - but after the first plate of food, you're only allowed to have dry crackers and water. Naughty Optus (but then again, they're not alone in misleading advertising!)

When we were planning the house, it's wired for cable broadband, but we decided to go with ADSL2+. Mainly because there's only two players in cable broadband in our area, Tel$tra and Optus, and a duopoly is no better than a monopoly. Oh well - the cable provision could always be used for Pay TV, though I reckon that's an absolute waste of time & money.

At first I wanted TPG, but all their nodes were full in our area, so we went with iiNet. Slightly more expensive, but probably the best customer service I've ever experienced, so two thumbs up for them!


And is anyone else wondering how much more Australia can screw itself up by building the NBN? Let's invest bazillions of dollars into a "broadband" network that's outdated and overpriced even before it gets started. Sending data through bits of wire and glass is as outdated as the landline phone. Plus the argument that Australia is a bigger country with less population density compared to everywhere else is a fallacious argument - population centres are dense and localised. As usual, Stephen Conroy shows how out of touch with reality he is by stating Australia's population density is 2.7/square km - even a Year 7 student knows that stating an average value is meaningless, because the average human has one boob and one ball. Myki fiasco x 10,000.

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90 day service: Antenna saga FINALLY ended

Got a txt yesterday from the antenna people - called them back this morning, and by the afternoon someone had come around to finally connect our antenna.

So this is how it goes - when you build a house, you don't get an antenna. Your choice is to

1. Add the antenna into your contract - let's say it's $400. This is maybe double what it would cost you to do after handover, but you should be able to move right in, plug in your TV and start watching whatever you want to watch.
2. Organise the antenna to be installed after handover. Might cost you $200. Much less than the builder, but you have to make a few phonecalls.

Anyway, I thought we'd bite the bullet and pay the builder to install it for us... and get the benefit of having it ready to go as soon as we had the keys. Instead, we ended up getting it finally connected nearly five months after we had handover, despite me constantly reminding, calling, emailing Metricon to get it fixed - and it only took a 10 minute visit from the antenna technician.

Anyway, moral of this story is for anyone building a house, whatever you can get done yourself, do it yourself. Things like higher ceilings, floorplan changes, door locations etc you can't really change yourself after handover without spending huge amounts of cash so you'll have to get it drawn into contract.

Here are some things you may consider doing yourself once the house is yours.

• TV Antenna (See above rant). But not extra TV points, easier & cheaper to do it through the builder.
• Driveway, outside decking, rendering, stackstone, exterior tiling etc. You could pay $5000 to render your facade through whatever builder, or pay a tradesman $2000 for the same thing, avoiding the builder's markup.
  
• Light fittings. You will get standard builder's light fittings in most rooms, which are the cheapest, nastiest things you can get - bare lightbulbs and a plastic hat. But you can choose exactly what light fittings you want, and get an electrician to wire them in later. Note that downlights are a tricky issue -you should put in downlights downstairs (in a 2 storey house) through the builder as it can be impossible or very difficult to add them in after plaster is up (floor trusses can block transformers etc).
• Flooring (carpet, timber etc). You'd probably find better quality and range available cheaper if done yourself after handover. We used Fowles Clayton for our carpet and they did a great job.
  
• Window coverings. Same as above. Except don't call Spotlight - they were meant to show up today to measure our remaining windows for custom blinds, and never showed up. Shitty customer service (by not keeping basic promises) is the easiest way to lose not 1, but 1000 customers. Ever been to a Spotlight store and watched 1 person try to serve 500 frustrated customers?
  
• Feature walls - if you're handy with a paintbrush, cheap to DIY.

So, things that are integral to the house that you want, or if you're too busy to organise things yourself, get it through the builder. Everything else, organise it yourself if you want better range and price.

So, now only a couple of remaining items for our 90 day inspection - bowed cavity frame in ensuite, and plaster repair and paint in garage.

Ultimately, I'm happy I finally got my antenna connected, but since I paid the builder's premium to get it done during the house construction, it should've been ready at handover 5 months ago, not now. Or at least fixed within a few days of moving in - it's not like it was an expensive thing to organise, and it really soured our new house experience. You don't need a postgraduate degree in marketing to figure out what I'm trying to get across here - but if you do, my consulting services are available!

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90 day service: General fixing

Had a couple of guys subcontracting from Metricon come in this morning and stay for about 3 hours doing most of the general service items. This included

• checking all doors for open/closing and latching properly
• checking all windows for correct opening/closing
• fixing other misc items from 90 day inspection list
• checking plumbing - correct filling & drainage and overflow operation

Anyway, the only thing they couldn't fix today was the cavity door in the ensuite - the door is not bowed, but the frame is slightly bowed. Apparently there's a couple of ways to fix it, so when he ges in contact with M they'll let us know how it'll be done.

Still antenna connection and garage cornice fixing also outstanding.

Finally got around to fixing my laptop last night - again, another product warning - DO NOT BUY HP BRANDED STUFF! Overpriced, underperforming, poor product support, zero long-term support (apparently a 3 year old laptop is so obsolete they're not supporting it in any way anymore) and crappy product design (nearly as bad as the xbox 360).

The main problem with HP notebooks - if you should be so daring as to want to actually open or close the screen on the computer, the hinge design is so poor that about 100% or them (more or less) will fracture. See this picture below - there's all the stress of the movement focussed on about 4mm of thin flexible metal. Idiots. Google "HP laptop broken hinge"and see how many million dissatisfied ex-customers HP have made enemies of.


Anyway, I was just about to do this to my DV9000...



but ended up buying some ebay hinges and replacing them myself. Next notebook computer - maybe an Acer (I have one from 2002 that's slow but otherwise works 100%) or Toshiba I think - definitely NOT HP JUNK!

T&T

Product warning: Zone Hardware brand roller blinds

One of the roller blinds we installed was a Zone Hardware blockout roller blind sold by Bunnings. Fine for the first week, but then with the week after putting out some hot sun and heat, the blind started to produce an intolerable, unbelievably intense odour, something like bleach, chlorine and poison gas all mixed in together.

It was so bad that when entering the house, all you could smell was this stench! We had to open the window in that room and close the door so the whole house wouldn't get contaminated.

I sent an email to Zone Hardware through their website reporting the problem, but after a week of no reply, no answer, I got fed up and called Bunnings to tell them I was going to return the blind.

To their credit Bunnings had no problem in giving me a refund (of course the blind had been installed and I'd thrown away the original plastic packaging). I did say I wouldn't mind an exchange providing they could guarantee the smell wouldn't come back, but they said because they were all made in large batches, the next blinbd might/could/would have the same problem.

Anyway, just a warning for anyone consider the Zone Hardware brand roller blinds. It wasn't that cheap, the blockout blind I bought was definitely not suitable for use, and the importing company doesn't seem to care about customer concerns or health of the products they sell. I suspect poor manufacturing quality assurance, and the local importer probably has no idea what chemical cocktails and ingredients go into the overseas manufacture of that blind.

T&T

Unrelated: Why Micro$oft still sucks

So, finally moved our bigscreen plasma from mum's place into its rightful position in the family room, hook up the xbox360, and... nothing.

Well, not nothing, but lots of this:


Yep, the shining example of Microsoft product development and hardware testing. My 360 is rooted, and not for the first time - this problem came up a couple of years ago and I had it "repaired", and now it's happened again. Checking my xbox live account, turns out the warranty expired in Jan 2009, despite the repair being done within the warranty period.

No wonder I've hardly touched the 360 - I've also got a Playstation3 which is superior in pretty much every way - free online play, worldwide game compatibility, better interface, builtin wireless, Bluray, PlayTV, easily changeable hard drives. I'd be quite happy to burn the xbox360 except I've got a lot of Guitar Hero/Rock Band hardware on the 360 format, and with xmas at our place this year, all the cousins will want to rock on.

So, for all you people looking to buy a game console, STAY AWAY FROM THE 360! It's unreliable and you have to fork out more money each year for the assumed pleasure of online gaming. Buy a Playstation3, Wii, a pack of cards, a blackboard and chalk, some mouldy cheese, all these options will give you more gaming pleasure and will certainly last longer than any Microsoft product.


On that note, now that we've got broadband going again, I was in the market for a new computer, and it ain't going to be powered by Micro$h!t, that's for sure. And what am I going to do with my stuffed xbox360? Something I should've done a long time ago - I'll take it to a console specialist, get it repaired, and modchip it like mad so I can play all my *cough* "backed up" games. Yeah, that'll show 'em.

T&T

Evaporative cooling booked in

So far in Melbourne we've had a couple of moderately warm days - mid 20s or so? In our house, we found the ground floor very comfortable - not hot at all, which is a big benefit to the thermal mass of a big concrete slab. Upstairs - bit of a different story. Quite warm, even with only 2 west-facing windows. Definitely need some proper cooling for when the massive Melbourne heatwaves hit!

Anyway, this is something we planned for back when designing the house. The cost for refrigerated AC as provided by the builder was something like $20,000+, and the large running costs of AC are a bit offputting. We pulled out the tiny Breezair evaporative cooling unit that was in the old house we demolished, installed it in the top floor of my parent's house and was surprised at how effective it was.


So for anyone wanting a quick comparison between evaporative and AC, here goes:

AC pros: Gets very, very cold, even on the hottest days.
AC cons: Expensive to run, recycles the air.
Evaporative pros: Cheap to run, cycles fresh air through the house.
Evaporative cons: Possibly will struggle on the very hottest 40+ days.

And the arguments to and from could run for years - if you're so inclined to read more, check out this great lengthy discussion on Whirlpool. I love being ice-cold with AC, but I figure we might only need it a few days a year. So the plan is to install the evaporative cooling upstairs and maybe add in a split system AC downstairs if we find we need it. We paid for upgraded roof trusses, roof water & powerpoint for future evaporative cooling installation, but after speaking to a few evaporative installers, they said it doesn't really make much difference. Oh well!

Anyway, I'd booked in a few quotes today.

Coldflow were meant to be first, but seeing as they couldn't even be bothered turning up or calling to explain why no-one came, they're immediately off the list. If their attention to detail and customer service is this bad even before making a sale, why would I ever bother buying anything from them? Thumbs down. Weather World didn't want to send someone out, so they emailed a quote for a Breezair 210 with 8 outlets based on floorplans I emailed them prior.

Finally, Maroondah Heating & Cooling had the final visit of the day, and got the job. Damien had a peek up into the roof, spent some time measuring up the rooms and discussing the various options available. Ultimately we settled on the Braemar 550 with 7 outlets; with specific attention to the size of the outlet in each area plus placement of the unit itself, he reckons we should get pretty good cooling to the whole house including downstairs - here's hoping! Installation is booked in for next Tuesday. Chose the Braemar instead of the Breezair as they're made by the same company (Seeley International), but the Braemar have fewer problems due to their fan design.


And for those still at decision-making stage, should you get evaporative cooling done through the builder? Well, Metricon wanted $5500 for a 5 outlet Bonaire Summerbreeze, which was undersized for our house. Our quote for a 7 outlet Braemar was over $1000 less than that, with the top-of-the line unit.

*warning rant beginning here*

Finally, while he was up in the roof cavity Damien confirmed for me what I had suspected - my antenna isn't connected to the Starserve system, with the coax wires just dangling out in open space. Good job by the data installers, real good job there.


Unfortunately here is another area that Metricon is failing in after-sales customer service, having reported to my SS, my CSC and to the girl who did a follow-up courtesy call that my antenna hasn't been connected, what's been done about it? Nothing, zero, nada, zilch. I'll be writing a rather pointed letter come three-month review time, because after paying about $1500 for an antenna, Starserve and a bunch of TV points, you'd think you'd actually get a working product rather than something dead-on-arrival. And the worse thing is, a technician could splice the cables together in about 5 minutes to solve my problem. Instead, I get to complain endlessly to everyone who walks into my house about a problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place - "Yes, I know I've got rabbit-ear aerials on my TVs, because my antenna isn't connected". So, to everyone building, make sure your antenna is connected to whatever TV outlets you've paid for, because when's something broken, it's probably going to stay broken for a while. Not to mention all the other issues from the "completion" inspection - all little fiddly things which could be easily fixed but aren't, and I guess they'll just be added to the 3 month problem list.

*rant expired*

T&T

Getting ready for handover...

Organised for after handover.... driveway, stairs, carpet.

Not organised before handover... final cheque.


Though the T-shirt should really read "I HATE BUILDING SOCIETIES" because at the moment, it's Heritage Building Society letting us down. I think they recently revised their internet site, because when I logged on tonight to organise funds for the final cheque for our house, it says we have all of $0.00 available to withdraw - but on the main page it says we have 100% of our loan available. After being stuck on hold for 30 minutes, a nice young man admitted he couldn't figure out what was wrong, and someone will get back to me tomorrow.

Not good enough! Not only do we get to pay a big upfront application fee and ongoing monthly fees, but then we can't get access to our loan! Hasn't been a problem up to now (of course) so I'm back on the phone to them first thing tomorrow morning - and I'm not getting off the phone until the problem is fixed!

I should go to a branch and get it sorted, right? Easy - if they actually had any offices in Victoria *grumble grumble* stupid building society based in Queensland. So just a heads up to anyone thinking of a home loan or line of credit - forget these guys!

T&T

Non house related: Movies to watch!

So, we're pretty big movie-going people - that's why we're building this house with a kick-ass home theatre room (one day!). We've been invited to a couple of movie previews soon (thanks heaps!), so thought we might give a heads up on them.

First one will be Easy A tomorrow night. which so far has received 8.4 out of 10 on IMDB, which is actually a really good rating to achieve on that website!

Brief summary; hot chicks, gossip, romance. More geared towards Tina than Tim, but has Emma Stone in it, which gets two huge thumbs up from me - mainly because she was in Zombieland which was one of the most awesome movies of 2009 that no-one saw (with Woody Harrelson in a totally non-sucky role).

The next movie preview is TOMORROW: When the War Began next Monday.


Really looking forwards to this one - I mean, who didn't read the John Marsden books as a kid in the 80s? Plot synopsis: Kids go away on a remote camp holiday, and when they come back home, they find "unknown" (but probably Asian) invaders have taken over. And my brother & sister both tell me they know Chris Pang who plays Lee Takkam (last bloke on the left in that movie poster). Should be awesome - let's hope so, as an Australian screen adaptation of an Australian book series!

Also saw Inception last week... now, I'm a huge SF fanboy (with all the Star Trek series on DVD, HD-DVD and soon to be on BluRay, and don't get me started on how Joss Whedon should seriously be president of everything) but WTF was that movie about? Seemed like it was scripted to be deliberately confusing in order to get people to watch it again at the cinema, or at least buy it on disc. Might have to re-watch it sometime..

T&T

Saving water = higher bills for all!

Warning, totally non-house building content follows...

Now, I'm not a mad greenie environmentalist, nor am I a rabidly selfish consumer. I'd like to think I'm somewhere in the reasonable middle - I'll separate plastics and paper for recycling, but I won't stop driving my car and loving it (the stupidity of electric cars - now that's another rant for another day!).


The seed of this story begins in our latest water bill. Of course, there's not been much consumption in the last 3 months - which only highlights the fact that of our $200 water bill, only $10 (or 5%) was put down to actual consumption. The rest comes from service charges, parks charges, disposal charges.



This comes back to the Target 155 campaign - no-one in our country could doubt that we're in a pretty dry land, recent downpours excluded. But just think what happens when we all start to save water... consumption drops, water companies make less from consumption. Now we can't have our poor utility companies making anything less than record profits, so naturally it's entirely justifiable for general rates to increase by up to 60%. Not to mention raising unavoidable non-consumption related charges....

Anyway I'm sure I haven't really thought things through thoroughly and our charges are more than reasonable and fair in order to have safe drinking water straight out of the tap. If you like to drink "designer" water from plastic bottles because it's "better than tap water", then obviously you like burning money (since you're paying a 432345443232454% markup on the water content) and poisoning your body, not to mention the environmental effects of all these plastic bottles being pumped out. So just stop.


Where were we going with this? erm... water usage? Right - now if the "responsible authority" really wanted to reduce water consumption, and believes in the kindergarten level teaching that if something's more expensive you'll buy less of it theory, they would scrap noncontributory fixed service charges and focus purely on a consumption charge. ie the more you use, the more you pay, with a logarithmic scaling so that really excessive users end up paying $15/l of water. As it stands, the average family could double their consumption and pay maybe $200 to $400 more per year, not chickenfeed but not really a deterrent.

Don't get me wrong - I'm definitely in favour of saving water and have been using heaps less than Target 155; I don't shower, don't brush my teeth, and drink tequila rather than water with my lunch. The problem is, apart from the nice smug feeling you get inside from being a water scrooge, you don't get any tangible reward from saving water, and you certainly won't get lower water bills.



T&T

Postscript: All comment in this post originates from Tim (not Tina) and is based entirely on the theory that anyone who can write anything on the internet is an instant expert and cannot be disputed, but endless arguments may follow.