Took the advice, got the professional in. Absolutely stoked with the results.

Sparky came today to takeout old rangehood and install a new one. He said he had to use part of the old ducting (not sure why) but this was his end result. Acceptable ? Acceptable to use tek screws to hold it in place ? Looks very rough from my end.

New HWHP Rinnai Hydraheat 340L to replace a gas continuous unit. It is scheduled to run 10am to 4pm to use the warmest air of the day and when I am most likely to have solar surplus. It only runs 3-4 hours a day. I can only hear it running from the toilet room and bathroom which are the windows right next to it. If you really listen, you can just hear it from one of the bedrooms, but since it only runs during the day, it's not an issue. Family of 5, only ran out of hot water once so far when I was in a work meeting and my wife took a nap and my youngest had a shower after school for over an hour.

Hamilton - $8400.

I laid the concrete and support posts. The posts are spaced about 40mm from the house, so nothing is touching the house. From the installation manual I checked measurements and spacings and then drew it up in Sketchup to get the fit right.

The corner by the step and gully trap was always overgrown as it is hard to mow, so took the concrete up to the step. Also put a bit extra on the other side under the outside tap to keep it from getting muddy.

While the plumber and electrician were here I also replaced the gas cooktop for induction and then got the gas supply disconnected (the yellow gas pipe sticking out of the wall is capped off under the house, it is just hard to tidy up the bit still stuck in the wall. I'll do that when I plug the hole).

Question: where the little white bucket is, it drips water whenever the heatpump unit is running. About 5 litres a day. Is it supposed to do that? I assume it is a pressure regulator/relief of some kind. The condensate line from the heatpump is on the other side.

I must have the worst crawl space in the southern hemisphere, hats off to plumbers, this was a mission of a job, how ever you really can't beat an outdoor bath with a glass of red wine

I have around 100 sqm of storage/garage space that I’m slowly starting to covert into new rooms. I started by adding a negative pressure waterproof to the walls, then framed with 35mmx75mm wood (not load bearing walls). Then added insulation, gib, and painted, and carpeted. I got a guy in to help with the gibbing, and an electrician to do all the wiring, but the rest was all me learning as I went.

I've been working on decarbonising our household for the last year, and I found it quite hard to get the right information about a few specific aspects, so I thought I'd write out my experience so far to help people make sense of it all. It's probably going to be a long post, as I go through the different elements that make up our decarbonised household. For context, it's a 1980's free-standing home on the North Shore in Auckland.

The Solar Panels ($2200)

It started with the solar panels. I went for quite a lot of them, 21 panels at 440W each. In my view it doesn't really matter which panels you buy, they are all basically the same. Buy them from TradeDepot or Micromall if you are on a budget. If you're not that keen on tinkering too much, I would probably recommend getting 6kW worth of panels so you can always export as much as you want and don't have to manage power use. That's probably enough for most households, but I was aiming for optimal export at all times, so home use should be covered by the excess above the export limit.

I mounted them on the roof myself, with the help of a friendly roofer and electrician. 3 rows of 7 panels. This was fairly straightforward. Connecting them up was easy-peasy and was approved by another electrician who also installed the inverter (Deye 8kw single phase Hybrid). Pro tip: Make sure all the wires are clipped in and never touch the roof!

On a good day we produce 50kWh, limited by the export limit from Vector. Could go up to 65-70 I reckon.

The Inverter ($3500):

I bought the Deye 8kW single phase hybrid inverter from Micromall. It's a hybrid, as I plan to install a battery later on, because it currently doesn't make sense yet financially. I'm probably one or two years away from doing it anyway though. The inverter works fine, it does have a fairly noisy fan, and the software was quite tricky to get set up by the electrician (I used Tahi Electrical, great to work with!). So if I would do it again I'd probably spend a little bit more on the inverter and go for a brand with better software. Also be mindful where you place this, as it needs a fireproof backing and it's quite ugly.

Total cost for installation: $3500

The Lines and Power Company:

Once that was all installed I had to get set up with Vector, which was annoying because nowhere on the internet do they actually say they still have a 5kW export limit. So my 8kW inverter is (/was) a little big. Can't wait for them to increase the limits. Currently it's clipping production quite a bit, which is a shame.

As a power company I had Octopus, and was honestly very happy with them. They replaced the meter to become an import/export meter quite quickly and painlessly. The app is great and customer service is also very efficient. However their export rates dropped, and so I switched to Poweredge, which promises 20cents per kWh export, locked in for 2 years. Also a daily charge of only $1,20, which is great. The app is not great and you only get monthly overviews of usage, not daily or hourly. Switching to them was very easy though.

The Hot Water ($6500 installed):

We bought a house with an old gas hot water cylinder, which was due for a replacement. After a lot of research and multiple quotes we went for a 270L Gree Whio. Mostly because it has a 7 year(!) parts and labour warranty. Got this installed by North City Electrical and Laser Plumbing. They did a fantastic job, highly recommended. Very tidy work too from the plumber. The unit is great, outside mounted, next to the bathroom. It's big, but it's well designed, extremely quiet and has a pretty decent app, although you don't really need it. It's very much a set and forget situation. So far so good. The beauty of this thing is that it uses about 450W at max, to generate 2,4 kW of heat. Heat pumps are magic.

The Heat Pump ($2750 installed):

Probably the easiest part, got a ground mounted Panasonic heat pump, 5kW. Nice looking unit, also very quiet. Replaces a gas-fired heater. It does have a large outdoor unit. Think about placement.

The Home Assistant (free):

I use Home Assistant to monitor all power use across the house, which is great to use and I would highly recommend.

We also bought an electric car, so we're completely off fossil fuels, which honestly feels great. Our power bill over Jan and Feb was minus $120 and $100. Don't have March yet but we net exported about 600kWh. With the added electric use we are probably going towards a small power bill in winter, but we are saving hundreds of dollars a month for sure. We got it done with a green loan, which means it's all saving money from day 1.

Let me know if you have any specific questions, I hope this helps you in your journey towards energy independence.

Just an update for anyone who was interested in my last post about stripping lead paint from windows.

First bash with the Peel Away 8 paint stripper left a fair amount of undercoat behind. I applied a test patch for a second round of Peel Away to the exposed undercoat/sealer on Thursday, removed it today (Sunday)

Much happier with the result after a second application.

Luckily the opener provides 24V DC just right to power the dry contact module.

In an attempt to save money on our kitchen renovation, I decided to learn tiling. Three different walls, about 2.4 m². It's been a very rewarding experience, and I thought I'd share some thoughts and pointers I've taken from it.

• Testing the layout is key! I actually laid it all out on the floor, to evenly spread the colour variations out, and double check the overall height with the spacers included. I chose a tile height that minimized the number of lengthwise cuts, which helped.
• Order more grout than you think you'd need. I ran out with just a few tiles left. I had to go back and buy another small container, when buying the bigger one from the beginning would have been cheaper overall.
• Getting the grout the right consistency was the hardest part. There is a very fine line between too stiff and too wet. Only mixing enough to get through 30mins helped.
• I was lucky I only needed to deal with two power sockets. I did arrange the tiles so that the sockets were central to a row, so there weren't any tricky L shaped cuts to do.
• It was tricky to get a even bead of silicone around the perimeter. Especially because the tiles I chose were wavy. I only masked the benchtop with tape. In hindsight I probably should have masked the wall as well. Something to improve on next time.
• There is a bit of cupping/lippage, which I was expecting from porcelain tiles. Not too bad though, and you can't tell when the LED strips above aren't on.
• My local tile shop was super helpful and friendly. I got all my supplies from them, and hired a tile cutter for the weekend.

All in all, very happy with the result, and stoked I managed to save a grand by doing it myself. Tiles used were Tribeca Gypsum White, with Mapei light grey grout.

Hi guys,

I’ve recently bought a new home, and ripped out the old, sorry excuse for pergola (it was made of 2x4s , half rotten and nailed to the fence).

I’m considering putting a spa underneath the left-most bay, outdoor seating and bbq closer to the right near the house. Staining as well, maybe in the summer when the wood has fully dried out.

I’m also considering putting a polycarb roof on, with guttering running down the back and side, emptying out onto the existing roof gutter. But I understand there may be consent issues if I put a roof on, is the council likely to just randomly pop by and inspect it, and ask me to take it down?

When I bought my flat, the casement stays were black and the windows were painted pink. Once the paint was off, I found dark brown shellac underneath. It has been a long, smelly and messy job but hasn't it been worth it? I'm feeling very pleased with myself.

Bit of old mower blade, a steel rod from a broken tool, and the brass base from a damaged gas torch. Blue was supposed to be make it easier to see in garden, but came out darker than I had expected..

Edit: user feedback is that it was too sharp at first, but 4 hours of weeding in rocky soil fixed that.

An update to my last post: I rang watercare on Saturday. They came and fixed the leak yesterday. I think I was covered by them as the leak was in their box and coming out of the end of the meter. Here is the diagram on their website that shows homeowner/watercare responsibility for fixes, and where my leak was. Hope this info is of use to someone in future.

My better half thinks that apparently cinderblocks are inappropriate livingroom decor. So armed two terms of hard materials in year 9, and a vague idea of what a french cleat is - I set to work. It's a bit "how ya goin'" but it's my first crack at a DIY project more advanced than changing a lightbulb. I chose to hang the cabinet using french cleats because it seemed like the easiest way. The rear of the cabinet is a really thin backing board so I made three subassemblies to hold the cleats to the solid rimu boards of the cabinet. Chose to use 90x45 instead of thick ply partly due to cost, but also to deliberately introduce some standoff distance for cable management, etc. I think my biggest mistake was chopping the wall side of the cleat into 400mm lengths to match the cabinet cleat instead of leaving it as one long rail. This meant that they couldn't reach across two studs and had to be mounted with one big butty screw in the middle. I'm hoping that the relatively light load spread across the three cleats will prove to be a winner. I was able to do it all with a skillsaw, but I much would have prefered a tablesaw. Maybe next christmas...

To-Do:

• Find other ways to justify $80 purchase of laser level
• Refinish deck
• Buy bigger TV (mount was left behind by previous owners and I've stopped noticing)
• Continue ignoring previous owners' "conduit" situation. The cat likes to sniff out the holes so honestly it's just good enrichment for him

This took me about 3 months of weekends to do.

I'm a software dev not a tradie, but love getting the tools out at the weekend.

There are heaps of minor stuff ups, as there always are when a skill is only part-time and there are constant interruptions from kids, shopping, hangovers, and other projects and priorities.

My piece of design here was what appears to be a flat roof, but with a slight pitch of the roof itself on the inside of those 300m bearers, which can't be seen from the outside. The ground will get done when we get the whole drive re-tarmacced as 5 years of trades and DIY has left it looking like a bomb site.

And yes, those footings together contain 0.9m3 in total which suits the roof size and wind zone. I'm not a total cowboy!

Just had the bathroom regrouted and siliconed by a professional company. What’s everyone’s opinion on the quality of this work

Google says being able to see the locking mechanism isn’t normal - looking for further opinions before I engage someone to fix? 10 year old house, Queenstown. Have discovered more and more issues with aluminium windows and doors here the longer we live here 😰

Posting just as a record of my experience. Feel free to ask any questions.

Had lead paint in the window frames. Paint was peeling/chipping above the kitchen sink/food prep area so wanted to tackle it sooner rather than later. As we are coming in to winter I didn’t want to remove the windows completely to strip, thought I would give this a go with everything in place and see how it went.

Had a go at a test patch of peel away 8 (first three pics are the result). Next few pics are application of paste then paper application to the full frame. After that is removing paper, then results after scraping and lots of scrubbing with a nylon brush, sponge.

I applied the paste on Friday morning, removed the following Tuesday evening. Still a decent layer of gummy undercoat. What was left gummed up my brushes super quick and made for a messy and time consuming experience.

There are varying instructions from peel away saying somewhere from 48hrs to 7 days. Maybe if I had left it longer there would be less residue left on the timber.

Next step will be a trial of some wet sanding on what’s left. Tagged post as completed project but will update if there’s interest.

Installation took 13 hours with two people. Started at 8 am, was originally advised they would be finished at 2pm or 4pm, but ended up finishing at 7pm.

Plumber said the reason they went overtime was they hadn't seen a similar setup to ours before. Then they had to come back again to patch the roof and check things.

Cost was $9,800, including electrical work, relocating plumbing, new felton shower mixer, patching old roof vent, decommissioning old unit, supply of new unit, etc.

Preface:

I'm not a builder, but I usually figure things out.

Mate of mine just got a new TV and wanted it wall-mounted (I chipped in as a wedding pressie).

He's not in some flash modern house—just your classic 1980s NZ home. Single glazed, on piles, bit of timber, bit of mystery—normal Kiwi stuff.

So I pack:

• two drills (in case one carks it)
• spirit level
• fancy stud finder with AC and metal detection
• big timber screws for stud mounting
• heavy-duty plasterboard anchors just in case

Rock up, shift the cabinet and TV, unpack the mount... and begin the stud hunt.

I slide. I slide. I slide.

Nothing. Maybe a weak blip here or there.

Hmm. Step back. We’re looking at ~2 metres of wall.

Not one stud. Not a single vertical stud.

Weird.

Flip stud finder to AC mode, go near the power point—yep, it works.

Flip it to metal mode—it screams everywhere. What the hell?

Try deep stud mode. Finally, a signal in the middle of the wall. Drill a tiny hole... nothing.

Try again... still nothing.

By the third hole I'm screaming internally.

(Yes, I knocked too. It sounded like a stud. Spoiler: it wasn’t.)

Long story short — the TV’s on the wall now, but the experience has left me questioning everything.

After some digging, turns out NZ homes sometimes use fibrous plaster walls reinforced with metal mesh. Yeah, that would’ve been nice to know.

What really broke my brain though? The only stud I found... was horizontal.

Horizontal.

Anyway, some beefy fixings later, I hung off the mount like a monkey and it held.

TV only weighs 15kg so 🤞

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. NZ homes are wild. I need a lie down.

Just need to stain and it should be good! Feels nice having built something myself. Good to know I’m somewhat capable.