Posts Tagged ‘DIY’

My Dad broke my porch!

Friday, October 29th, 2010

It all started when my Father visited us in March this year. I forgot to mention to him, not to touch the porch, he’d only been standing outside the house for less than 30 seconds, and said “this isn’t looking very good”, and continued to pull off a lump of wood off the porch”

This is the damage he caused

My Dad broke my Porch

My Dad broke my Porch

So in August over the Summer, we called in the joiner to remove the rotten wood, and rebuild the porch. It’s almost but finished, but needs the door gloss-ing with white paint.

Here are the photographs from start to finish of the repair. Use the new slideshow option, it might be quicker!

My Father did contribute a generous £10 towards the repairs!

I’ll upload a final picture of the exterior all painted, apart from the door!

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These times are changing…

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

These times are changing it’s been five years, I’ve been blogging, and the software I’ve been using has run it’s course and it’s time to upgrade to something more current. Over the next coming months, I will try and merge aquablog and our house blogs into one blog, with different categories, rather than two seperate blogs which is how they exist at present. This will allow me to blog in more specific categories, fish house, garden DIY, car, computers, internet etc, you get the general idea. So you can select a category (section) to read, rather than ready all the rubbish I blog about.  The FishHouse Blog! and Our House blogs haven’t moved and are still there. Just click the links to access them. Eventually they will be merged into categorys (sections) here.

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Polar Bear Killer!

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

207kw
20.7kW (realtime reading of electricity being consumed at 1.30am 27/10/07)

Maybe I need to change the subject title, doesn’t seem very nice, and what’s this go to do with the FishHouse Blog. You’ll probably hear this term more and more, as we all strive for a greener planet and reduce our carbon foot prints! Has the penny dropped yet! But we all need electricity to run our fish houses, every year I see more and more people leave the hobby, and close fish houses, and it’s not surprising with rising energy costs. But don’t all hobbies cost money!!!?

To celebrate my big birthday coming up in November, I’ve purchased myself a present from Better Generation, it’s a Smart Electricity Meter called a Wattson by DIY Kyoto. I’ve already got a few power meters, that I purchased in October 2005, see my review here these record the power being used by an individual appliance, or if you use a four/six-way adaptor, you can measure combined power, I’ve been using these in my fish house for years. But want I wanted was a device that could measure total power consumed after the electricity meter before the consumer unit (fusebox), transmit it remotely to a display in the house, and finally output and record the information to a PC, so I can compare electricity consumption versus temperature in the fish house and outside during the winter and summer months. Also looking at the electricity used by our Economy 7 Storage and Immersion Heaters.

I pre-ordered this unit, at the beginning of October ’07, and it arrived yesterday it’s FANTASTIC!. I’m not going to write a review, because there our lots of fab reviews out there about the product, check Better Generation for one.

It’s a designer gadget with mood lighting that measures electicity consumed and outputs it to a PC.

Wattson01
The Wattson smart electricity meter showing 21,000 Watts (21kW) being used at 1.30am last night, when the storage heaters came on! Average consumption is about 3kW in the house. This is mainly the fish house and computers in the house, most other electrical appliances are negligible by comparison, but if high wattage appliance is turned-on, e.g. kettle, Wattson spots it! and flashes changes from purple flashing to red!

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Polar Bear Killer!

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

207kW
20.7kW (realtime reading of electricity being consumed at 1.30am 27/10/07)

Maybe I need to change the subject title, doesn’t seem very nice, and what’s this go to do with the House Blog. You’ll probably hear this term more and more, as we all strive for a greener planet and reduce our carbon foot prints! Has the penny dropped yet!

To celebrate my big birthday coming up in November, I’ve purchased myself a present from Better Generation, it’s a Smart Electricity Meter called a Wattson by DIY Kyoto. I’ve already got a few power meters, that I purchased in October 2005, see my review here these record the power being used by an individual appliance, or if you use a four/six-way adaptor, you can measure combined power, I’ve been using these in my fish house for years. But want I wanted was a device that could measure total power consumed after the electricity meter before the consumer unit (fusebox), transmit it remotely to a display in the house, and finally output and record the information to a PC, so I can compare electricity consumption versus temperature in the fish house and outside during the winter and summer months. Also looking at the electricity used by our Economy 7 Storage and Immersion Heaters.

I pre-ordered this unit, at the beginning of October ’07, and it arrived yesterday it’s FANTASTIC!. I’m not going to write a review, because there our lots of fab reviews out there about the product, check Better Generation for one.

It’s a designer gadget with mood lighting that measures electicity consumed and outputs it to a PC.

Wattson01
The Wattson smart electricity meter showing 21,000 Watts (21kW) being used at 1.30am last night, when the storage heaters came on! Average consumption is about 3kW in the house.

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A year on!

Saturday, August 25th, 2007

It’s been 12 months today, since we moved into the house. Still lots to do, the lounge is almost finished, I was going to post a few more entries of DIY around the house, but I didn’t think hanging up pictures and the mirror was very exciting, so I didn’t bother. The three wall lights we purchased were all smashed, so they were returned to the shop for a full refund, and we’ve ordered three new wall lights from another lighting shop, the wall lights ordered should be with us, by the end of the week.

Angus and Tilda are growing, and getting up to more mischief, as they are learning bad habits from Esther.

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Summer’s Here

Thursday, August 9th, 2007

We’ve just started to let the kittens out in the house during the day with Esther.

Growing and up to more mischief. I think we were lucky to get Angus back from the cattery the other week, because the owner loved him so much!

Angus and Tilly on bed
It’s all quiet as Angus and Tilly are asleep!

Latest Angus and Matilda photos

Not really done much with DIY, I’ve been adding more fish tanks in the fish house, and generally tidying up the fish house.

We’ve found some wall lights for the lounge, so the lounge decoration is almost finished, and then there is the curtain rails to fix!

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More Fish Tanks!

Monday, July 16th, 2007

You can never have enough fish tanks…

I’ve finally added a rack of three 30x15x12 additional fish tanks to the fish house. These will help with the fish breeding program. These should have been added months ago, but I’ve been trying to paint them outside, and the weather has been foul – it’s not been easy touching up the paint job, when it’s been raining, and also busy with new Kittens, DIY etc etc

I’ve filled them with water, and added Algarde Bio Foam 200 twin foam filters.

I’ve not added any heating or lighting at present. I’m checking to see if there’s enough heat present in the fish house, to heat them spatially.

I’d add a picture if my computer hadn’t overheated and died!

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Under Pressure!

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

I’ve been using two Hailea piston based, ACO-308 and ACO-208 air-pumps to provide air in the fish house, using a 22mm ring main “air-reservoir”. I purchased the first ACO-208 in September 2005, and when my generic 40lpm “Hi-Blow” failed when I moved just under tweleve months ago, purchased another larger ACO-308 to add to the “air-reservoir”. I’ve never really been happy with the amount of air, especially in the deeper tanks (> 2 foot). I switched to Hailea because they were cheaper to run, but I’ve since found, they cannot deliver the pressure and are noisy, my master bedroom is above the fish house, and I can hear the pumps through the floor!

So I’ve recently purchased a Japanese Secoh SLL-50, but I still wasn’t getting the required pressure required. After consultation with a DIY expert, we will call him SimonL at work, he mentioned that I needed to use 15mm and 22mm inserts in the Speedfit piping, and also cut the pipe using a poly pipe cutter, not a hacksaw (I knew this bit, but I didn’t think it would really matter!). I borrowed SimonL’s poly pipe cutter to re-cut all lengths of pipe, and disappeared to ScrewFix to purchase some pipe inserts (well I didn’t know, it didn’t say it on the pack!), re-assembled the ring main “air-reservoir” and like magic plenty of pressure!

Re-visited the fish house, 30 minutes later to find no air! I thought the ring main had failed, it wasn’t the ring main but the back-pressure on the diaphragms in the Secoh SLL-50, that had failed! I’d forgotten to open the bleed valve on the ring main, which usually feeds into a large volume of water, that I use to change in the tanks. So I purchased a Service Kit from KoiKit by JustKoi. Fantastic service, the service kit arrived promptly, Secoh pump serviced, diaphragms replaced, and to prevent this happening again I purchased Pressure Relief Valve and Pressure Guage Assembley from partsandpumps.co.uk, again Fantastic Customer Service, tell David I sent you!

This pressure relief valve is a pump protection device against over pressurisation. The valve will safely vent off any pressure over 0.2 Bar, and it’s been doing that!

I think I’ve got too much air now! But the leaks in the “air-reservoir” are fixed – Thanks SimonL

Secoh SLL-50
Secoh SLL-50 “Hi-Blow” Pump, with pressure relief valve and pressure guage assembley inline and connected to “air-reservoir”

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Rescued Firework/Galaxy Rasbora or Celestichthys Margaritatus

Monday, June 4th, 2007

Sorry, I’ve been pre-occupied with DIY on the house, but I’ve also spent some time on water experiments for the fish house. I need to store more water for water changes, and the RO unit, which will go live in several months time, so I’ve been plumbing two water containers together.

Whilst on my travels locally, I found a local tropical fish shop, which had a approx 20 Galaxy Rasbora in pretty poor shape, colourless, very thin – considering the current status of this fish, believed to be endangered in the wild, I would not normally have purchased them, but due to recent success of breeding Microrasbora erythromicron and the terrible state these fish were in, I thought they stood a better chance in my fish house, than left in this tropical fish shop. I would have purchased all 20, but parted with only five, if all five survive, I’ll return for more.

They’ve currently gone into a planted quarantine tank, and have started to colour-up instantly, and are feeding well. I’m going to start feeding them newly hatched brine-shrimp from tomorrow.

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Hector’s House is finally finished

Sunday, June 3rd, 2007

The weather has been so hot this weekend, I’ve been able to get on and give the final coats of paint to Hector’s House. Thanks to Lindsey because she touched-up the door and windows.

Final Shed
Shed completed.

So, onto the next DIY project, I’ve just bought myself a new toy, to replace a busted cordless drill, I’ve bought a new 18v combi cordless Makita drill, with electronic clutch, I’m just running around the house, drilling holes everywhere now! This is to enable me to complete the second loft and fully board it out, to free-up Bedroom 3 for the Nursery!

UPDATE The slugs and snails have still been eating my Hostas, the used coffee granuals did not work, so I’ve emptied 12kg of used coffee granuals on my garden for no reason! Strange because a friend, states they have been working fine for her, on her allotment, but she does get them from Starf***s! Maybe their coffee has something nasty in it! Unlike the Freetrade coffee granuals I’ve been using. But I’ve got a secret weapon for the slugs…!

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