Monthly Archives: July 2018

Shopping For Electronics Overseas

Painted the two corrugated iron sheets for the pump-shed with their second coat of primer then began the first attempt at the rafters for the new pump shed. Later I found that because my jigsaw blade was bent I’d been cutting the thicker wood in a curve which didn’t make for happiness.

Paul finished pouring concrete for the piles and began making up the three lines of base-boards to go around below the verandah floor.

Karola took Bangle round the orchard.

When it came to fitting the rafters I found that the Camellia tree alongside the pump-shed had big branches firmly in the way. I had placed the pump-shed straddling the buried mains cable so had little leeway to avoid the tree. Hadn’t noticed that high above the shed the branches came too close. So, on with the gear and I chain-sawed the offending trunk. Having noticed a small branch fallen off the conifer next to the stump dump I sawed that into firewood too.

Then it was a dash to the scrap metal merchant before he closed, donating an ancient, but not historic, boom sprayer I inherited with the Fergie. Karola has wanted that gone for years.

In the evening I had more computer – well web space & hosting – woes. Intermittent failure for emails to be sent was the main one; the weblogs backup procedure not working was the other. I think I fixed the latter, touch wood.

Having drawn a blank with the supposed agents for DemoPad devices in Australia and New Zealand I emailed DemoPad direct. The MD of DemoPad, Mike Cain, offered to sell me one, a Centro-CM IP Control Gateway it’s called – he then passed me to the support team to arrange payment and delivery.

Then another company, One Product, got involved, another MD, Phil, who was supposed to be on holiday but found time to email me and sent a form consisting of four pages of detail and legal threats, the form they used to sign up new agents. He was reasonable when I pointed out I wasn’t their very latest NZ agent prospect but merely a private citizen wanting a bit of neat kit. Phil passed me over to one of his team, someone not on holiday.

Meanwhile the DemoPad support team emailed me a pro-forma invoice with the rather good price offered by Mike Cain. So I told the support team that One Product had injected themselves into the process, that I’d transferred the money against the pro-forma invoice, and went to bed.

Rough Trial Of The Rafters

From The South, Looking West – The East Verandah

From The North, Looking West – The North Verandah

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—13℃ no rain [74.9]

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Shed No Tears

Karola dropped me off at Hawkes bay Tractor Dismantlers to pick up the Fergie – serviced and with the bent mini-fork straightened.

Then the start-of-week shopping including a visit to Mitre-10 for primer for the pump shed roof and walls plus oodles more large exterior wood screws. Had my quarterly blood test at government expense.

Karola went off to have afternoon tea with Richard and Paddy Bayley (18 Barcroft Street, Frimley) – leaders of the local Founders Society, an historical interest group.

Meticulous Maids came early afternoon and cleaned the cottage.

Meanwhile I took Bangle round the orchard, got the ewes out of the crop and back into the Totara paddock, and then painted one side of the two small sheets of roofing iron with primer/undercoat.

Builder Paul finished putting piles under the homestead verandah columns with one in-between to secure the base boards. He mixed concrete and poured it for most of the piles before he left late afternoon.

The confusion, extra work, and annoyance caused by our hosting provider’s unannounced move to new servers continues. Today they sorted out my access to the server which had inexplicably been revoked. They also corrected settings in their firewall that have for days, and many emails back and forth, stopped file transfers working (FTP/TLS – secure file transfer). All OK by this evening.

Bridget is also struggling, days after the event, to reinstate her system which was working well before the move. I think we found and Bridget corrected the problems that were stopping her send out her payments until this evening.

DeWalt Pocket Tape Measure – The Mercedes Of Tape Measures

UK friend Dave Mitchell sent me an email this evening. I am not the only one doing sheds this year. He said:

Reading the bit in your blog about the pumping shed, you might be interested in ours. I say ‘ours’ – it’s actually in the Leechwell Garden, a public open space that adjoins our garden. I’m the chair of the Leechwell Garden Association (LGA) which runs the garden for the local council (who own the land but the LGA paid for all the facilities – seating, plants, childrens’ play facilities etc).

Anyway the garden has no mains electricity or mains water supply but does have an ancient water course runnimg through it which though mainly buried does fill a pool in the garden. Watering the plants, trees etc has been a problem since the garden opended in 2010 – lots of carrying watering cans from pool to plants. A year or so ago I discovered a company that sells solar powered pumps and we’ve now installed a system that uses two pumps – one to pump water (about 50 yards) from the pool to a large butt in the shed (kept full using a float switch) and the other powers a hose, fed from the butt, to water the garden. …

Total cost incuding shed was a bit under £1000.

Leechwell Garden Assocn – Splendid Shed

Oak Avenue Weather:-2℃—12℃ no rain [75.2]

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Selwyn Turns Up Trumps – Possibly

Still struggling with parts of the website not working and tonight Bridget had more troubles because of the change of server. In her case people are not getting paid.

Selwyn, our multimedia guru, sent me an email this morning linking to a piece of electronics that sounds just like what I’ve been asking for for the last week. Spent most of the morning investigating it. If I read it correctly a rather nice side effect of using this equipment is that the cost of the cables and converters and the matrix switch is much reduced. Diverted me from my Sunday chores for sure.

In the afternoon I continued with work on the new pump-shed with a little help from Karola.

Karola took Bangle round the orchard.

Needing the big trailer for other things I emptied the half a cubic metre of “builders mix” into a neat heap on the gravel hard-stand behind the homestead. Paul will be using some of this for the footings for the verandah piles.

Pump Shed Taking Shape

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—17℃ 0.7mm rain [75.0]

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Red Moon In The Morning Eclipsed By Horizon

Karola woke early and watched the moon as it, allegedly, eclipsed this morning. Sadly the moon viewed from Hastings didn’t turn blood red and did dip below the horizon before the main event. TV had some good shots from the South Island, Karola said.

This is the second day of wrestling with the unsolicited and unexpected move to a different website server. I did get the simple stuff done quickly and it took overnight to propagate the new IP address, and that all worked just fine.

However, as well as moving people they took the opportunity to make big changes to the software, upgrading key tools by several versions at once. Therein lay my problems. Tonight I have fixed the issue that stopped me submitting POSTs to the weblog and also stopped me uploading the associated photos manually. But there are more problems and the tech support do tend to treat me like a small child when suggesting corrective actions – but in their shoes I guess that’s a reasonable default assumption.

I did make some progress on the new pump shed – the floor is in and Karola helped saw the boards for the weatherboard cladding at the back. She also suggested various pitfalls I was creating and ways to avoid them.

Karola took Bangle round the orchard and Bangle, as usual, scavenged an old, wrinkled apple for a treat.

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—16℃ no rain [74.2]

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Adulation Of The Zoe

Paul came this morning and continued with the addition of piles and base boards for the homestead verandahs.

Bangle and I did the weekend shopping including our search for small, frosted, dimmable light bulbs. I may have struck gold at Warehouse; Mitre-10 has overwhelmingly moved to LED lights. I did go back to Mitre-10, returning the lights I got yesterday which, while being small, low wattage, dimmable, bayonet-fitting bulbs neglected to say on the packet that their bayonet fitting was a non-standard miniature one. Grabbed a spare battery for my drill in passing, and a delightful little 3-metre DeWalt tape measure – as one does.

I was accosted in the Cornucopia parking lot, on my way to get the week’s GF bread, “It’s a blue one”, she shrieked, “it’s a blue one, someone said there was a blue one in Hastings and I’ve been looking all over for it”. So said the proud owner of a Renault Zoe, Gillian Wilkes of Te Aute (06 874 8166, 022 601 8316). She bubbled with enthusiasm for the Zoe – they’re putting in a three-phase 32 amp charger they can offer to comrade enthusiasts needing a top-up as they pass. We exchanged particulars. She confirmed my observation that the shiny black dashboard cover causes strong, possibly hazardous, reflections in the front windscreen. Her temporary solution, a black fluffy towel.

Today Paul got serious with his levels. There had been movement in the verandah over the past 140 years and the re-piling done in the 1980s hadn’t helped the verandahs despite being very effective under the rest of the house. He spoke of mis-alignments measured in millimetres and has now jacked it up so that it is level. The balcony complained a bit but nothing serious. He’s not going to let it move again. The plan is to put new load-bearing piles under each of the columns plus an intermediate pile as something to attach the base boards to.

Henare TXTed to say his hip op was a success and he is feeling good – that’ll be the medication.

Bangle again led us round the orchard in the late afternoon sun.

North Verandah, Looking West

East Verandah, Looking South

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—16℃ no rain [74.4]

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Builder Paul

Builder Paul, whose Mum died last week, came today and began work on the smaller projects he can handle before Ruth does her building plans in September.

Paul has now inspected the homestead foundations and found them overall to be very robust. He did pack one or two piles where there was some give in the floor above. It’s interesting that the distance between supports is much more than would be allowed these days but then the beams are massive which over-compensates.

Paul carefully deconstructed the upstairs shelving inside the chimney void. The new wood burners, replacing the open fires destroyed in 1931, will each have a flue going up the chimney void, occupying space that at present contains these shelves and our trapdoor into the roof space. There will be space for a new trapdoor into the roof space once the flues are installed.

Paul then began adding piles and base boards along the outside edge of the north and east verandahs. Today was spent in clearing the viciously tenacious Wysteria roots (Paul, me, and the little tractor) and digging holes for piles. Meanwhile Karola rolled up mats of Tradescantia and carted them off to the bonfire.

Karola finally finished her research into the life and times of Geordie Richardson, transcribing his ship-board log from faded handwriting into online text. Discussion of the pleasures of shooting albatrosses and penguins, and plenty of bad weather. After Paul had left for the day I did a little more on the new pump shed.

As usual we accompanied Bangle round the orchard where they’ve just started pruning. They were obviously waiting until the 100 or so sheep had been moved on.

Great dramas as Royston called me asking where Henare was. They wanted to contact him and go over once more his do’s and don’ts for tomorrow. No food after midnight, not even water after 6:00am, and be there promptly at 7:00am. Wanting no excuse for bumping Henare from his hip replacement tomorrow, I rang all the phone numbers we had for him and his wife and son, but no reply. I tried TXTing, no response. I drove over to his place and banged on the door for ten minutes. No lights on and no response. Just as I was leaving his place I tried one more time and he answered – we agreed he should come round later and be briefed. This he did and we wished him well for the op.

Outline Of The Shed For The New Pressure Pump And Water Filters Including UV Irradiation

Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—16℃ no rain [74.9]

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Ethernet Plug Wiring For Seniors (To Be Avoided)

Karola continued her transcription of Geordie Richardson’s ship-board log. In the afternoon she took a break and with her old car and a small trailer went round picking up sticks for the bonfire.

I popped out to Hastings for the mid-week shopping and to pick up the two 1.5 metre long sheets of corrugated iron I’d ordered from Mitre-10 for the new pump shed. I also got a pretty hook for the Zoe tether to hang in the cottage garage (pictured below), a new, heavy, robust, bright (400 lumens) torch.

So, what went wrong today – well I bought four little frosted light bulbs, incandescent so that they can be dimmed without flickering only to find that the bayonet fitting – well I got that right, often returning home with the screw fitting in error – the bayonet fitting was some deranged mini-bayonet. They go back tomorrow.

Karola and Bangle went round the orchard. In Bangle’s mind – yes I’m sure they’re conscious, just rather narrowly focussed on what they care about. Bangle shows no interest whatsoever in discussing the merits of CAT6 over CAT5 ethernet cable, a dead loss in that department – in Bangle’s mind the purpose of training her masters to take her round the orchard as frequently as possible is so that she, Bangle, can snack on old apples.

Mid afternoon I began my quest to put an ethernet plug on an ethernet cable. I had practiced last night so there was hope. The idea was to join the existing ethernet link used by the homestead security system to a spare line going directly over to the garage and hence on to the Internet. The reason was to avoid having the homestead router need an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) so that the security system could send out calls for help even if the homestead power went off. Now that the Internet gateway in the garage is protected by its own UPS these (hopefully theoretical) cries for help can get to the security firm even if Oak Avenue is in darkness, if the whole local area is without power.

First time I concentrated and did a fairly good job lining up the eight fiddly little wires in the right order and forcing them into the eight tiny holes in the back of the plug. But, no go – I’d inserted them in upside down, so the right order but reversed. An hour or so later the attempt succeeded and security was restored.

Hours and hours on the “technical memorandum” about the audio-visual infrastructure for the renovated homestead. Sent it to Dave Moss (Anna’s main – we think only – current squeeze), once an Apple repair freelancer in London, and Dave Mitchell, one of my ex-IBM UK mates, to see what they thought.

Audio-visual Infrastructure for Homestead

PDF File

Tidy Cable, Tidy Mind – Oh Hobgoblins

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—13℃ no rain [75.5]

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The Homestead Audio-Visual Wiring Plans

Stephen Laracy, who intended to come yesterday afternoon, came this morning and we spent a couple of hours talking though the audio-visual cabling I wanted. Selwyn (Cook) and Stephen have come up with a better plan which relies on having an audio-visual matrix switch which can also receive IR signals across the wires connecting it to each TV or computer.

The technical idea is to be able to choose which of four sources of TV programming – the Sky box, the Freeview box, a DVD player, or AppleTV – play on the TV in the room you’re in. Whichever room you’re in you can switch programmes on the Sky or Freeview boxes or the Apple TV. The DVD player is a little different in that it’ll be in the Drawing room and controlled manually from there.

The value of this to us, and in particular to Karola, is that we can put all the equipment except the DVD player under the stairs – no messy and annoying blinking technology in the living room, just the one wall-mounted TV screen with all its wiring hidden behind it in the wall.

After Stephen left I turned off the power to the homestead and attacked the ancient electrical cable conduit up the side of the chimney void. Now there’s a large enough hole for the audio-visual cables to the living room and dining room to descend from the roof space. I turned the power back on and there were no immediate obvious bad effects. It was a little worrying that the wiring inside the ancient conduit looked quite fresh – just a red and a black wire, no extra insulation, but not perished, quite serviceable.

Karola found one of her ewes upside-down at the bottom of the ha-ha slope, “cast” as they say – full of lambs and with a heavy coat of wet wool. Karola righted her and later this afternoon she’d joined the others seemingly none the worse for wear. Karola moved the ram into the Goose paddock and the ewes into the Middle paddock today so no-one else would fall down and get cast in the ha-ha.

Karola also picked up loose branches and other organic rubbish and took it to the bonfire or her bund, a break from her main task of transcribing Geordie Richardson’s diary of his boat trip out to New Zealand, long long ago.

Bridget, with her family skiiing in Queenstown, hasn’t had any email for a couple of days and it now transpires that our provider, AceWebHosting, had moved her account to a different server as part of a server hardware upgrade without telling her. Anyway, by tonight it seems things are pretty much back to normal.

I did make a little progress on the pump shed. The concrete has had ample time to set so I’ve removed the rectangles of wood holing it rigid while it set and I’ve installed the base plates – the rectangle of wood on which the plywood floor will rest. The base plates are wired to the piles.

Finally tonight I though that surely I could make the change to the homestead security system so that it bypassed the homestead router and was wired directly into the system in the garage. Having re-found the LAN cables ending in a socket in the roof space, a legacy of when our WiFi access point was suspended from the ceiling at the top of the stairs, then all that’s needed is to connect the security system to that socket and patch the roof space cable directly onto the unused ethernet cable going underground to the garage.

The rest of the evening was spent re-learning how to put ethernet plugs (RJ45) on the end of a LAN cable. After several YouTube videos and a lot of false starts I made up a cable with a plug at either end, and it works. My goodness it’s hard to do as you get older – you need sharp eyes and a steady hand.

Rock Solid Base For The New Pump Shed

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—13℃ 0.1mm rain [75.2]

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Preparing To Rewire TVs In The Homestead

Rushed to get the Monday shopping but mainly to get a new 25mm “copper olive” from Harris Pumps & Filtration. Got the olive plus some advice on how to make a good alkathene-copper pipe join. Like the advice I gleaned from the internet last week about creating thread on the outside of metal pipe it will stick with me I’m sure. I wrecked two alkathene connectors using female alkathene to screw onto male metal pipe. Bad idea, always screw a male plastic connector into female metal half. And as for the olive, screw it up tight then back it off, add a twisted bit of hemp or that white anti-leak tape on either side of the olive then re-tighten.

Re creating thread on metal pipe using a ratcheted pipe threading tool, the Google oracle said: three turns to make thread then half a turn back to dislodge the swarf, and use plenty of threading oil.

I followed the instructions and connected the copper pipe to the alkathene, re-started the pump and listened with pleasure to the water gushing into the header tank. This mission accomplished.

Just before lunch I drove the Fergie with forks (bent) to Hawkes Bay Tractor Dismantlers to get the bent fork straightened. They’ll also give the Fergie a service while she’s there. Karola came in her Subaru with Bangle and picked me up.

Stephen Laracy called and will come round in the next day or so to look at the job – this job being the installation of cable runs for four Internet-connected TVs in the homestead.

I spent most of the day on the audio-visual cabling for the homestead. I removed all the un-needed wall faceplates and removed metres and metres of coaxial cable. Got diverted into fixing one of the old kitchen lights that hasn’t worked for years. Removed the back door outside light, well lantern-style fixture really. It had lost its top and rain and rusted the internals, and now the homestead power goes off any time you turn this particular light on.

The satellite dish is on the west side of the house. The associated “set top box” has been in the playroom, the big bedroom that used to be my office. Now, some hours later, the cable, extended, terminates in the living room next to the TV. A little more fiddling and fussing and I have digital satellite Freeview on the TV.

We are surrounded by vibrant bird life, albeit mostly introduced or non-endemic natives like the Pukeko. But it’s not every day that Kirsty, a school-friend of Karola’s, shares her images of their birdlife – they live in deepest Otaki, surrounded by bush on the edge of a ravine plunging hundreds of metres to the river below. Thank you Kirsty.

Kirsty Faulkner’s Fragments of Otaki Birdlife

Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—15℃ no rain [75.5]

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Sleep Orientation Challenged

Karola again let her ewes into the One Acre for a few hours. We were entertained this morning with Bangle, a corgi, digging furiously into a rabbit burrow under the big oak.

On the spur of the moment we switched the bed from running south-north to going west-east. We’’ see how that works. I also changed the bedside power points – two points each side – to plates with two points plus two USB sockets so we can charge our iPhones overnight without power strips and long cables.

While I was in the mood I reorganised the cupboard under the kitchen peninsula in the cottage, making room for the 5-USB charger and the items being charged. At the same time I added a brass catch so the cupboard door can at last be kept shut.

I’m still having problems with connecting 25mm alkathene to 25mm copper pipe but will have to wait until tomorrow to get a new copper olive.

Mowed the cottage lawn – it’s quick in winter.

Karola, Bangle, and I went round the orchard. Quiet without any lambs.

This evening I joined another BINZ video-conference with Michael Kane in Wellington and Karl Matthys in Taradale.

Lawn Mown And Bangle Eager For Her Orchard Walk

Bangle The Mole – Rabbit Beware

Well It’s Deeper Than I Thought

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—17℃ no rain [76.4]

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Copper Olive

Having raked out the mass of rotting leaves from the goose bath yesterday and set a hose running in it overnight, the bath is now full of clear water and just a few leaves, you can see right to the bottom.

I finished digging out the old copper pipe going from the rain water tanks to the pump under the homestead east verandah – hard because of the tangle of fig tree roots and bits of brick and old pipe buried in the ground surrounding the pipe.

I also chain-sawed the tops off the four piles that are the foundation for the new pump shed. The photo below shows the result but includes the temporary support wooden rectangles used to ensure the concrete boots set straight and true.

In the afternoon we all went to see Lyn Sturm, an old but lively biddy who has written and self-published a book about her naturalist grandfather. We went round to deliver a copy of a newspaper cutting featuring one of Karola’s relations, one George Ormond who embarked on a medical degree but then switched to transcendental meditation to the surprise and sorrow of his university tutors. Lyn gave us tea and cakes.

Dropped into Napier’s Mitre-10 on the way home hoping to get a replacement 25mm “copper olive”. None to be had but I did have a brief chat with one of the knowledgeable old codgers, British ex-pats, who seem often to get jobs as the helpers in Mitre-10, especially at the weekends. He suggested I repair the olive I have. “Copper olive” is not a term I knew. It is the flat ring of copper, tapered on either edge, that fits snugly over a copper pipe and is then compressed by an enclosing brass fitting forming a water-tight connection between a bare pipe and a threaded connector, valve, junction, or tap. “Copper olive”, I’m sure it’ll come in handy again.

We whisked Bangle round the orchard while it was still light and not cold.

Henare came and borrowed Karola’s green lawn mower, returning it later in the evening.

Goose Bath Crystal Clear After Cleaning

Foundations For New Pump Shed

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—16℃ no rain [76.1]

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Pump Shed Piles In Place

It was chilly and the sun didn’t really become visible until after 8:00am. I continued digging the four small holes for the piles for the pump shed and began settling the wooden piles (reused quarter-round fence posts) in position using two wooden rectangles made earlier.

A loud crashing of branches slowly seeped into my consciousness and suddenly I realised that the orchard windbreak tree trimmer was at work in the orchard. Not wanting to miss out I ran up to the orchard and waylaid the fearful machine. Turned out he was coming back on Monday anyway so he agreed to do our windbreak and also the orchard side of the Manuka hedge running north-south – I think that it must annoy the tractor drivers the way it sticks out into their path on the boundary row.

And then it was time to get ready for the trip to town. I had a haircut and did the weekend shopping while Bangle and Karola stayed in the warm at home. And from Mitre-10 I got more galvanised wood screws, from Hodder & Son a brass compression fitting to marry a 25mm copper water pipe to 25mm alkathene, for reasons explained below.

After our main meal I got back to the pump project and, with help from Karola, finished the holes and placed the piles and filled each hole with about 12kg of freshly mixed concrete.

The pump shed is positioned next to the main rainwater tank for ease of connection and to minimise the effort of sucking water into the pump. Our new pump model is very good at pushing water out, but not so good at pulling water in. The pump shed straddles the underground mains cable and is alongside a large pipe bringing water from the homestead roof to the rainwater tank. Tricky digging.

An old one-inch copper pipe that took water from the rainwater tank to the homestead years ago was in the way so I disconnected it and dug it up. Unfortunately this did not go smoothly because the current homestead supply comes from the cottage bore in an alkathene pipe which I had joined to the old copper pipe just before it connected to the pump under the east verandah. Disconnecting the old pipe at the rainwater tank allowed water from the cottage bore to gush out onto the ground because, unbeknownst to me, the valve which looked as if it isolated the rainwater tank supply didn’t, instead the pipe snaked round underground and avoided the valve. So I turned everything off and hacksawed away the complications, using the new compression joint I bought this morning to connect the alkathene directly to the inlet for the pump.

Piles For The Pump Shed In Position

Casurina South Boundary Windbreak Will Get A Trim On Monday

Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—17℃ 0.1mm rain [76.1]

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Good Lunch At Bostock’s Organic Kitchen

I moved the possum trap and one of the rat traps. The rat trap counters show I’ve caught five rates recently, not including the semi-comatose one I dispatched outside last week and the one, very dead, caught in a conventional rat trap in the homestead playroom.

Karola & I went to Bostock’s Organic Kitchen for our main meal today – delicious and very inexpensive. We’d go more often but it’s ten minutes in the opposite direction to Hastings or Napier so not easy to combine with anything else. As has happened most times we’ve been there, John Bostock himself was there, a business lunch by the looks of things, and he was most affable.

Karola continued giving her pregnant ewes a few hours in the One Acre each day – lucerne, plantain, and a little red clover.

Karola not only stacked the firewood from two trailers but also raked up and disposed of mounds of leaves in the Goose paddock.

Henare came round late afternoon, after work, and dug us a magnificent new death pit. He then helped me create some 6’ x 2’ rectangles of wood that will ensure the pump shed piles are properly lined up.

The new UPS has been charging for over 24 hours now so I tested both outlets and the UPS did kick in as expected once I’d turned the power off. It is now in the homestead garage protecting the Internet gateway router and modem from power cuts. I also checked that the pairs of ethernet cables running underground to the cottage and to the homestead were all working. Only one of the pair is needed for normal access to the Internet so I’m dedicating the other to security monitoring. It was just a matter of switching cables to get the cottage security using the second cable, removing its reliance on the cottage router. The homestead security needs a bit of rewiring to get it into the same happy state.

Henare Puts Finishing Touches On The New Death Pit

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—14℃ 0.1mm rain [76.1]

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RSNZ Hawkes Bay Branch Talk On Electric Vehicles

Having slept on it yet again I calculated and recalculated the dimensions for the pump shed. Erring on the side of safety – not wanting to be told that the pump and UV+filters won’t fit – I gave up on using the largest piece of 17mm exterior plywood I already have as the floor and will use two pieces instead. Making the pump shed 6-feet instead of 4-feet long provides lots of leeway and by keeping the depth to less than a single sheet of corrugated iron the roof is simple and inexpensive.

Yesterday Gareth left me with the PumpBuddy ballcock device which I had bought last month, and a RainAid ballcock device which is cheaper and he thought would fit my purpose of topping up the rainwater tanks in case of drought. We couldn’t decide whether the cheaper device would refill the tank sufficiently before switching off. The PumpBuddy lets you set a minimum and maximum water level for the top-up.

I called Apex tech support and learned that the cheaper RainAid ballcock fills the tank by 100mm every time it is triggered by the water level dropping. Across 3 tanks that is about 3000 litres which is ample while we wait for rain.

Karola rushed to write grandson Barney’s birthday card. Then we all set off to town for the mid-week shopping. Karola got Barney a little present and posed it and the card to him. After that we got the mid-week food and then did the serious business of buying 20kg bags of sand and cement at Mitre-10. I also ordered a couple of sheets of corrugated iron for the pump shed roof, each 840mm wide and 1500mm long. To arrive next week.

Final stop was at Harris Pumps & Filtration where I was hoping to find Stephen Harris, son of the owner and very knowledgeable and helpful, when he’s there. He was out on a long lunch break.

After our main meal at lunchtime we set about finishing clearing up where the claret ash had been – Karola picked up the firewood and I, using the Fergie with its damaged forks, carted the sections of trunk to join other large branches near Karola’s bund under the oaks.

Karola reminded me what a nuisance spare cement can be and I then remembered that there’s a much easier way than mixing your own concrete just for four support posts – it’s a ready-mixed concrete that just needs added water – EasyCrete. So, Karola drove us back into town again and I returned the 20kg of pure cement for two 20kg bags of EasyCrete.

On the way home we dropped in at Harris Pumps & Filtration and Stephen was there. I returned the PumpBuddy but keep the RainAid. I also bought the Greenway UV + filters system that we’ll be using with the new pump to ensure our fresh water supply to the homestead is wholesome and safe.

We walked with Bangle round the orchard in the warm winter afternoon sun.

RSNZ Hawkes Bay, talk on Electric Vehicles – International Trends & Innovations with principal speaker Nigel Purdy, Manager – Innovation Delivery, Unison Networks. His interesting and fact-filled talk included the following:

  • For heavy vehicles such as kerbside refuse collection with constant start-stop, regenerative braking can recapture about 80% of the energy spent in accelerating and maintaining speed.
  • Electric car batteries now last for between eight and ten years although the range does drop as the batteries age.
  • Very roughly you can expect to spend $10,000 every ten years for replacement batteries with current battery technology.
  • The combination of existing electrical generation capacity and consents granted for additional capacity is enough to support conversion of the entire NZ fleet to pure electric vehicles.

Bridget & Family On The Slopes In Queenstown – Poor Things

Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—16℃ 0.1mm rain [76.0]

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Clearing Up The Claret Ash

Today, I decided, I must finish clearing away the young 14-metre high claret ash, self-seeded, that was growing on the edge of the circle in front (north) of the homestead. So I began by attaching the Caravaggi chipper to the Kioti tractor. This proved not to be the 10 minute job I expected. It can be, if you get everything lined up correctly, but I hadn’t and it wasn’t. The chipper is heavy and unwieldy and the three-point linkage and the PTO shaft all have to be pretty precisely lined up. An hour later it was ready to go.

I took the tractor with chipper attached over to the fallen tree – I’d trimmed all the chippable branches from the trunks with the chainsaw yesterday – and began. I managed to jam it within ten minutes and started thinking it was going to be one of those days.

Gareth the plumber arrived shortly after I’d cleared the jam and restarted chipping so I turned it all off for a while and we attacked the leaking old well head. Gareth had brought a tool capable of making threads on the outside of iron pipes a few inches in diameter, something he’d inherited from a previous generation of plumbers – it’s all plastic and glue these days. He wasn’t thrilled that the water gushing out could not be turned off and, as it was mid winter he suspected the water wouldn’t be welling up so much if it were summertime. But he plunged in and we were delighted to see that the artesian head was only a few inches, maybe 100mm, so he wasn’t going to get very wet.

Gareth re-machined the thread on the outside of the bottom pipe, applied copious amounts of white sealing tape, wound on the top fittings, and screwed it up tight. By the evening there was only the slightest suggestion of seepage, no actual leak, and so we declared success.

We then discussed fitting the emergency automatic refilling ballcock to the rainwater tanks, using water from the cottage well (aka bore). It turns out that the simplest solution is to put the ballcock in the first or main rainwater tank, the one the new pump will attach to. And so we deferred working on that until Paul the sprinkler installer connects up the pump because as part of that he’ll be digging a short trench from the pump-shed to the homestead. That trench will carry the sprinkler water supply pipe, the domestic filtered water supply pipe, and the electric cable for the pump and UV filter. So it might as well carry the pipe for the automatic refilling system.

On next to Gareth’s next task, helping move the heavy lumps of concrete encrusted concrete pipes down to their final resting place in the “stump dump”. The idea was that he would cut the pipes up into lengths and weights I could move with the Fergie and its mini-forks. I thought that I could lift one of the smaller sections without cutting it but all I did was bend one of the mini-forks. That is a darn nuisance. It can be un-bent, I have bent it before, but I feel foolish and it takes time and is expensive.

So Gareth used his tough little digger to frog-march the chunks down to the stump dump; only one was too heavy for his digger and had to be cut with a concrete saw.

While Gareth was here I tested his stormwater drain and began emptying the first rainwater tank of its 22,000 litres. The stormwater drain worked exactly as intended – unsurprisingly – but it’s going to take hours to empty. Paul the sprinkler man will need it empty when he connects the tank to the new pressure pump and we’re not using rainwater for anything at present.

After Gareth had gone I finished the chipping without incident and chainsawed the bare trunks into manoeuvrable lengths.

Meanwhile, Karola had been busy on her historical work, digging out old files and correlating places and dates, stopping only to make our main meal at lunchtime and to take Bangle round the orchard in the afternoon.

Late afternoon I emptied the big trailer onto the bonfire and rushed up Omahu road to Winstones, arriving at 4:29pm, (they shut at 4:30pm) to find the operator sitting in his ute, waiting to go. He very kindly got out and loaded my trailer with half a cubic metre of builder’s mix. It’s for anchoring the four piles of the new pump shed.

So it wasn’t such a bad day after all.

The Old Well Head – Fixed

Concrete Encrusted Concrete Pipes Laid To Rest In The Stump Dump

Claret Ash Branches All Chipped & Shredded

Emptying The Main Rainwater Tank

Ha-Ha Bottom Is Level With Bottom Of Roadside Stormwater Ditch

Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—16℃ no rain [76.3]

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Just About Enough Sport For Now

Watched recording of the World Cup final at 7:00am, after breakfast. Karola also watched Wimbledon tennis, men’s semis & womens final.

Paul Libby came round and we surveyed the trapdoors and the shelving in the chimney void upstairs that needs to be disassembled carefully. He’ll probably come round and survey the foundations tomorrow.

I did the start-of-the-week shopping with Bangle.

Meticulous Maids came and cleaned the cottage mid afternoon.

Karola is combining re-discovery of her family history records with sorting out the huge jumble of stuff in the Apple room – which is destined to become part of the homestead kitchen.

I did more sorting out of timber for the pump shed and checked and re-checked the design – but I’m still apprehensive that I’ll not have enough room for the plumbing as well as the pump itself and the UV zapper and particle filters. I want to use the materials to hand – offcuts from earlier projects, and so smaller is better from that perspective.

Moved the rat poison paste sachets from the chimney void in the roof space to the header tank platform – well away from where the workmen will be installing flues, audio-visual cables, and a sprinkler riser.

Continued chainsawing the felled claret ash so that all except two major trunks have been sawn into firewood or stuff that could be chopped and shredded.

Ready For Chipping & Shredding

Stump Made Neat

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—18℃ no rain [76.8]

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That’s One Rat Who Will No Longer Nibble Our Wiring

In the morning Karola & I made a concerted effort to find and open the trapdoors in the floor at Karamu in preparation for Paul the builder coming to inspect the foundations. As far as I could ascertain, leaning down through each trapdoor with a flashlight, there is access from a trapdoor to all parts of the under-floor area except for the front door and hallway. Solid concrete foundation walls partition the underside into areas with no go-betweens.

Despite the intermittent showers I sorted out plenty of short 4×2 boards for the new little pump-shed and some short fence posts for the piles.

Walked briskly round the orchard with Bangle before lunch, our main meal of the day these days.

Richard Bayley (Founders Society) called round to chat to Karola and sign her up.

Late afternoon I did manage to trim up some of the claret ash I bowled yesterday, focussing on the branches that potentially would get in the way of Gareth the plumber sawing the large concrete-encased lengths of pipe in half. With the bad weather tonight I doubt he’ll actually come tomorrow as planned.

Despite my latent Buddhist leanings I mentally cheered when I saw I’d killed a large rat in the trap upstairs in the homestead playroom.

This evening I participated in the second video-conference meeting of the BINZ task-force on “values, purpose, and vision”. There are four of us on the task-force.

One Down, But How Many To Go?

Beautiful Old Chairs With Legs That Need Mending

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—14℃ 20.8mm rain [76.3]

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Well Head Mysteries

Finished recording the Google SketchUp tutorials.

After breakfast we all went into town where I bought some replacement flanged nuts for the chainsaw, having lost one of the two nuts that secure the chain, dropping it into leaves and earth at dusk last night. Also bought a replacement rake handle. Both rake and chainsaw now ready to go. We also visited several shops looking for a 25mm (1”) pipe die – for making a thread. No-one stocks dies that big apparently – no call for it now that all the piping is plastic.

Spent much of the afternoon trying unsuccessfully to deal with the leaking old well head, damaged yesterday while pulling out a couple of sapling oaks that inconveniently grew up intertwined with the well head and associated pipes. I tried to find a way of turning the water off but my preconception was wrong. I thought that the old well was decommissioned when the new bore went in but to avoid lots of pipe rearrangements the top of the old well was joined to the new bore. I dug around at both well sites but could find no linking pipe. My current hypothesis is that, contrary to the regulations, the old well was not actually sealed off, or not properly. But for everyone’s peace of mind I will continue the fiction that the new well is somehow feeding the old well head.

Bangle took us round the orchard late afternoon on a lovely sunny winter’s day.

Old Well Head Still Leaking

Excavations At The Site Of The New (1980s) Well

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—14℃ 3.5mm rain [75.8]

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New Battery For The Tractor

Bangle and I went early and did the weekend shopping.

Builder Paul called today and expects to come round on Monday. He’ll probably begin his inspection of the foundations and get started on the new pump-shed.

I split my time between recording many hours of online video tuition about Google SketchUp and outside tasks connected to the new stormwater drain.

Bangle and I went to Newport Auto Electrical and got a new battery for the Fergie tractor. Big, big improvement not needing to jump-start it every time. I started up the tractor and when attaching the mini-forks I bent the sway-bar, the thick metal strip which stops things hoist on the three-point linkage from swaying side-to-side and banging into the tyres.

I used the Fergie to uproot two oak saplings next to one of the old wells near the big oak. I did get them out although the larger one, 7 metres tall and 100mm in diameter, left substantial roots behind. It also shook the old well head which has since started to leak copiously – just through the natural head of artesian water. Strangely so far the water just seeps away as fast as it leaks out. I hope it remains doing that overnight. I hope to find a solution tomorrow.

Karola drove me up to Hawkes Bay Tractor Dismantlers who kindly straightened the sway bar for me – no charge.

Karola took Bangle round the orchard late afternoon.

I used the tractor and mini-forks to take seven heavy concrete culvert pipes, discarded while re-making the stormwater drain, to their new home in a pile in the stump dump. I then chainsawed down a large Claret Ash tree growing on the edge of the circle in front of the homestead. It was 14 metres high and 500mm thick and, very very luckily for me, fell exactly where I’d hoped, missing trees and shrubs to the left and the corner of the homestead verandah to the right.

Claret Ash Downed – Was Potential Homestead Hazard

Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—15℃ no rain [75.8]

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England 1 – Croatia 2

Karola woke me before 5:00am and so we were in plenty of time to watch the world cup match between England and Croatia. TV coverage began at 5:30am but of course the match didn’t begin until 6:00am. Result was a mixture of sadness and relief. England lost but not in a penalty shootout. A France-England final would have been quite stressful. Felix TXTed from Berlin where he’s on an inter-rail trip with school chums. He didn’t seem too upset, thought England had been lucky to get that far. Anna was at home in Ealing, also TXTing.

While there’s obviously a lot of skill in soccer there seems to be a tremendous amount of luck too. I don’t think I could get addicted to watching for 90 minutes regularly. I suspect being present at the game is a very different experience.

Shortly after the game ended Ivan the electrician turned up. He too had been watching the match, not as an avid soccer fan but his family has Croatian roots. As Ivan remarked, England really has a major handicap because the professional teams in the UK are heavily populated with top talent players from around the world. That means UK talent seldom gets the opportunity to join the elite teams. Come the world cup and the foreign nationals go home to play for their countries.

Ivan rearranged and tidied up the homestead fusebox, mending the wires freshly damaged by rats since his last visit. He also disconnected the downstairs hot water cylinder. It doesn’t have a wall switch and is ancient. Ivan said the wiring had perished and was basically dangerous. After Ivan repaired the damage the homestead water pump burst into life and water once again was sent up into the heading tank in the roof space. So we have running water again and still have hot water when we need it in the HWC upstairs.

Yesterday, talking to Gareth, he thought the way the header tank controlled the pump worked would be through an electrical solenoid operated by a float switch mounted on the header tank. Solenoid open and water gushes in, close the solenoid and the back pressure in the input pipe would be sensed by the pump which would switch itself off.

But Ivan today pointed out that the pump under the verandah didn’t have a back-pressure switch. We had a look in the roof space and in fact, as Ivan explained, it was exactly what I thought – a mercury switch that opened and closed an electrical circuit. But I could only see a single electrical wire going up to the box on the header tank, surely there should be a cable in and a cable out. But of course the solution is simple – in the one cable the ‘live’ red wire is the live current coming in, the ‘neutral’ black is actually the live wire going out. Mystery solved.

We took Bangle round the orchard early afternoon and on the way back I noticed that the ram’s companion wether, #537, had died sometime in the last 48 hours. I think he poisoned himself, Karola suggests maybe pneumonia. We buried him in the communal death pit and filled it in, so we need a new death pit before lambing begins.

Aside: Eventually another ram was chosen to be a back-up for #299, sired (we hope) by the short-lived #1032, ram lamb #829.

Gareth the plumber turned up around 3:00pm and completed the new storm water drain. He also dug out the stump of the palm tree that used to grow near the north-east corner of the homestead. At Karola’s request I cut it down earlier this year. And Gareth pulled up the stump of the fig tree on the south east corner, the fig tree that I cut down to harvest the fruit for a Maundy Thursday passover feast on 29th March. It was too awkward to climb to pick the figs and anyway the tree was getting much to big to be growing right next to the house foundations.

I cut Bangle’s toenails tonight, she wriggling a lot.

Fig Tree Stump Hole

Palm Tree Stump Hole

Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—12℃ no rain [76.5]

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New Stormwater Drain

All go today.

I began watching the recorded TV for the France-Belgium world cup match only to be interrupted by the arrival of Gareth Donnelly to begin the new stormwater drain. He anticipated trouble with the pipes encased in concrete where the old drain crossed the 133 front driveway but it all came out quite easily.

Gareth is a fast but careful driver on his little digger and by the end of the day all but the last few metres at each end were complete and back-filled. He plans to come sometime tomorrow and finish the drain and he may have time to do the rainwater tank automated emergency supply.

Leaving Karola and Bangle behind I did the mid-week shopping and also picked up the new front for the homestead fusebox. I stopped briefly at JayCar – the electronics shop – and asked about calculation of the specs needed for a UPS to keep the Internet connection up for 20 minutes or more during a power cut.

I also looked in at SwimGym – dozens of workmen and a big notice saying CLOSED, re-opening late August under new management.

Rob Findlay came as planned mid afternoon. We told him of our choice for the hearths, honed Steel Grey. This is a mottled / flecked granite from India greys with touches of white and brown. Rob suggests that the sprinkler pipe in the chimney space should be done before the fires go in but an electrician would have plenty of space to add wires after Rob’s team have finished. Also, if there is to be maintenance on the foundations that would best be done before the hearths are laid.

I fitted the new fusebox front and doors. When checking that all was working I discovered that the pump which fills the header tank has stopped. It may be that the loose wires in the fusebox are to blame, or rats chewing wiring elsewhere in the homestead, or maybe the pump has died – it’s very old.

Karola is taking our many hundreds of thrillers and detective novels from the Apple Room out to the Sun Porch, thus exposing the trapdoor in the Apple Room to allow foundation inspection. I screwed a restraint strap onto each of the three extremely ticky-tacky bookcases Karola moved out to the Sun Porch – in case of earthquake.

Old Drain Enclosed In Concrete Where It Crosses A Driveway

The New Drain

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—15℃ no rain [76.1]

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Oh Rats!

Taking over where I left off yesterday, Karola vacuumed out the chimney cavity between the living and dining rooms. Bless her. Last night I was so covered in dust I needed a shower before bed and fresh clothes this morning.

I happened to check the homestead fuse box and was dismayed to see more bare wires where something had done more mischief overnight. So I turned the power off, taped up the disconnected or chewed wires, and turned everything on again.

HHS, our security firm, called to say that their monitors hadn’t received a “reconnected” message they expected. They had seen that I’d turned off the power but wondered why they hadn’t been notified when I turned it back on. It’s amazing how hard it is for two people to agree on a simple story of events about when the power was off or on and what messages, precisely, were received by the monitoring station and when. And it’s far from being one-sided confusion and misunderstandings.

The upshot after several phone calls was that when I switched the homestead motion-sensing alarms on, then went into the homestead and set off the siren, the monitoring station got both events – the enabling and the triggering. So we put the missing messages behind us and moved on.

Karola finished cleaning the hearths and went back to organising our light fiction on temporary bookshelves in the homestead sun porch.

I set rat traps in the kitchen and playroom, both sites of significant rat activity, and I laid poison in the roof space. Well, enough is enough.

After our mid-day dinner we all set off for Bay Audiology in Napier where Karola was indoctrinated with the use of her new and fiendishly expensive rechargeable hearing aids. Apparently they feel and sound almost identical to the previous aids, just adding the convenience of rechargeable batteries.

We left Bay Audiology several thousand dollars lighter and with yet another appointment in a couple of weeks. First stop was Mitre-10 to get lots of those little plastic inserts that fit into holes drilled in the inner sides of inexpensive book cases and hold up the shelves.

Then on to the shop that Rob (wood burner) Findlay suggested, Granite & Stone, where Ahmed demonstrated the various options for a granite hearth for the homestead living room and dining room. We plumped for Honed Steel Grey as a sufficiently innocuous mottled matt finish. It is also so popular that G&S always have plenty in stock and customers only pay for what they use. For the more exotic finishes the customer pays for the entire sheet. So, no tiles, just greys flecked with white and some brown.

On from there we called in at Cory’s Trade Electrical and I tried to buy a replacement front for the kitchen fuse box just two minutes before closing time. Normally these fuse boxes are bought complete, you can’t buy just the front. However, some influential electrician had ordered a couple of fronts and doors and just today had cancelled the order. So if I go in tomorrow I may be able to get one of those at considerable cost saving.

Finally, responding to a phone message left by Annemarie earlier today, we dropped in at Briscoes – they stay open until 6:00pm – and looked at kettles. Annemarie alerted us to their kettle sale, selling them below half price. We bought a Breville “smart kettle” even though its half-price was rather more than most other kettle’s full price. That sort of kettle scored highest on Consumer Magazine’s review of electric kettles last month.

Harlequin ladybirds still crawl over my screens, the keyboard, across my desk, on the stairs. Not as bad as cluster flies but they keep turning up.

Kitchen Fusebox With Fresh Rat Damage

Steel Grey Granite – Our Choice For The Wood Burner Hearths

Oak Avenue Weather:-2℃—12℃ 0,2mm rain [76.5]

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Rat-Related Cleanups

Mild with occasional showers – a bit like a mild English winter’s day. Ivan the electrician came just after I got up and fixed the rat damage to the fuse box in the homestead kitchen. It turned out to be quite limited, thank goodness.There seems to be no way from the inside of the fuse box into the wall cavity so we’re mystified as to why the rat attacked the fuse box.

Karola went off in her Zoe for a mid-morning doctor’s appointment and to get the start-of-the-week food.

I checked that the way was clear for the wood burner man to do more measurements this afternoon. I cleared the mantlepieces. While checking the chimney void in the Bee room I was astonished to find that some of Karola’s books, old, leather-bound heirlooms, had been scattered on the floor. And the door had been chewed aggressively at the bottom on the corner furthest from the hinges. The rat didn’t actually make a hole through so must have used other ways of getting about. And get about he/they did because there was a pile of chewed plastic in the playroom where a rat had chewed up the end of a vacuum cleaner flexible hose.

Later I did more of the online SketchUp course interspersed with the bills and things I didn’t get to yesterday.

Rob – the wood burner man – didn’t turn up this afternoon as he said he would but I hope he’ll come tomorrow. In case he arrived we’d picked up the scattered books in the Bee Room (aka the Sewing Room).

Karola began the huge task of sorting out and clearing space in the Apple room. We need to have that done before builder Paul can get through the trapdoor and inspect the foundations, well the ones in that part of the homestead. I opened up the two fire places and cleaned up the considerable mess of nasty dust, old walnut shells, plenty of rat droppings, and a couple of elderly well chewed corn cobs. I set aside the marble fragments Karola was storing there, fragments of the fireplace surrounds before 1931.

Just before I finished for the day there was much scrabbling in the walls as several rats played games within the wall cavities.

I took Bangle round the orchard between showers.

Early evening I participated in a small task-force for Basic Income New Zealand, (BINZ), attempting to codify the vision and values for BINZ. The four of us video-conferenced using a tool called Zoom.

Rats Climbing On The Bookcase In The Bee Room

Hungry Rats Chewing Plastic (Vacuum Cleaner Hose Connector) In The Playroom

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—16℃ 3.7mm rain [77.1]

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Too Much World Cup Soccer

Karola insisted we watch the England-Colombia game in Russia at 1:30am our time. Just as well England won.

We got up at 10:30am. Karola got ready for her Founders Society meal and film at midday; Philida Russell was showing the film about her husband’s father and his involvement in the first and second world wars.

Meanwhile I trimmed back the Titoki tree avenue down the 121 driveway, anticipating big trucks needing access to work on the homestead – bringing diggers, concrete and the like.

I moved the ewes to the front paddock and left the ram and weather in the Holding paddock, Long Acre, and Goose paddock.

Also took Bangle round the orchard.

Mowed the cottage grass – the grass outside the cottage garden proper. It’s mostly leaves.

When Karola came back we watched a recording of the Russia-Croatia world cup match. As with the England-Columbia match it ended in a penalty shoot-out. I think I am pleased that Russia is now out of the cup, sad though it is for the Russian supporters. I do not like the cynical use of world sports events by Vladimir Putin’s people to try and paper over the vicious, immoral, unfair society he perpetuates where the line between criminals and the state are decidedly blurred.

Bangle is 17.2kg today. Her weight is so consistent I don’t think I’ll keep weighing her and just use her body conformation as a check on whether we’re feeding her too well.

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—19℃ 2.0mm rain [78.8]

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Firenzo – Onekawa

Up in time for the Country Life radio program as usual on Saturdays.

Just before lunch we drove over to Onekawa to Firenzo Wood Burners in Niven Street. They had the fire going for us, a Firenzo Forte Bay model and all their other models were on display too, just not lit.

We met the owner and designer of the Firenzo wood burner range – he and our plumber/installer for the homestead wood burners, Rob Findlay, are old friends. They recommend him very highly. The Bay model with a plain fascia and the slightly protruding glass-sided door is the one we chose as having the most visibility of the flickering flames. Karola wants the door frame and the convection bars above the door to be black, not brass nor aluminium coloured. Then we tootled home smoothly and quietly in the Zoe.

We and Bangle walked round the orchard. Karola gave her ewes pea straw and sheep nuts as a treat. As we did the sun shone weakly – otherwise it had been an overcast day.

Karola got stuck into some sorting of papers, beginning with the over-burdened table under the TV in the cottage living room.

Hannah Richardson (later Ormond nee Richardson) had a brother Geordie and he preceded her in coming to New Zealand in 1857. Geordie was passenger on board the Southern Cross and he kept a diary on the voyage from London to Auckland, arriving in September 1857. Hannah came out the following year.

Karola began transcribing Geordie’s hand-written diaries on her iPad; the hand writing is badly faded and not terribly legible.

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—17℃ 0.1mm rain [76.3]

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Frosty Friday – Sunny With It

Cold morning and did a few circuits of the big oak on Karola’s mountain bike in lieu of the currently defunct SwimGym.

I whipped into Hastings with Bangle and did the weekend shopping – Zoe is warm and quiet of course and the ride is smooth. Also looked for an example of the wood burner I favour, “Firenzo Forte Bay” and found out that the manufacturers have a showroom over in Onekawa. Too far to go today as I had to get back in time for Karola to go to her haircut late morning.

After lunch, our main meal of the day, Karola cleaned up the homestead kitchen and I helped somewhat. No signs of further rat assaults. Karola also used her other car and trailer to move a lot of weeds and shrub prunings to the rubbish heap she calls her “bund”.

Spoke to Gareth the plumber and he plans to come and start on the stormwater drain late next week. Karola read in the paper that this was the wettest June for a long long time and so maybe Gareth’s postponements due to bad weather are justified.

Swotted up on “brick slip” chimneys – where a modern circular metal flu is given a brick surround made of slices of bricks, restoring the old look. Particularly popular in Christchurch after the earthquake, especially on old or historic houses. Our wood burner flu will be designed so we could fit a brick-slip rectangular box round it if we wanted later. We have plenty of old bricks.

Spoke to woman at Firenzo Woodburners and she says she’ll light a fire in their showroom model of “Forte Bay” if I’d like to come and see it tomorrow morning.

Spoke to Rob the other plumber – we have Paul the plumber for the sprinklers, Gareth the plumber for the domestic water supply, and Rob the plumber for the wood burners. Rob says the wood burner Bay version will require larger hearths. He plans to come out next week for some further measurements.

Took Bangle round the orchard.

Did some more online learning of SketchUp, hours and hours. I follow along on a second computer.

A Dozen Pukeko (Purple Swamp Hens) Under The Big Oak

Grandson Felix – After The Exams, Now The Prom Night

Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—13℃ no rain [76.5]

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Sirroco Susurrations

Watched Colombia play England in the soccer world cup in Russia. Whew.

Contacted Ivan Alach, electrician, about fixing up the homestead fuse box. Also Selwyn Cook of CooksAVS to ask why our security system stopped working just because the power in the homestead went off.

Simple answer is that, although his technology is run off the backup battery for the security system up in the roof space, our access to the internet depends on a router, my router, in the homestead. So I need a UPS – uninterruptible power supply for each of the routers in the homestead, the cottage, and the homestead garage. That way security alerts will get out even in the case of a local area power outage.

I also asked if he would come and set up the multimedia wiring for the homestead renovation. His solution is to eschew expensive HDDMI cables in favour of Cat6 cable runs providing both TV HDMI and Ethernet Internet at each point where I intend to have a TV.

Karola suggested I try to find a new electric kettle online. How depressing, dozens of choices, all very similar and with owner comments that they all leak or break within a few months. I think heating water in a pot on the stove is the way to go.

We walked with Bangle round the orchard

Ben the BIL (brother-in-law) sent striking photos of the largest ground parrot in the world.

Dr Ben Bell contribution concerning the “sounds of Sirroco”

The Sussurating Sounds Of Sirocco


Notornis, 2013, Vol. 60: 265-268

0029-­‐‑4470 © The Ornithological Society of New Zealand, Inc.

The male kakapo (Strigops habroptilus) “Sirocco” was hand-reared on Codfish I/Whenua Hou (46°45′S, 167°38′E), New Zealand, in 1997 after contracting an early infection as a chick. For treatment, he was held near to the island hut in Sealers Bay and as a result of hand-rearing became imprinted on humans (Balance 2010; D.K. Eason, pers. comm.).

This led to his having an advocacy role for conservation, including being viewed in captivity by the general public during tours to several New Zealand sites. At other times, Sirocco has been maintained by the Department of Conservation in a managed but largely wild state on Maud I/Te Hoiere, Marlborough Sounds (41°01′S, 173°53′E), where he mostly roams freely, without other kakapo present.

During a visit to Maud I/Te Hoiere over 21-27 May 2012, we heard a number of unusual vocalisations from Sirocco at night while he interacted with us in and around the accommodation house (Comalco Lodge). These appeared different from any calls previously reported from other male kakapo (Williams 1956; Merton et al. 1984; Powlesland et al.

o o o

These distinctive but relatively quiet calls are unusual as avian vocalisations, instead resembling wordless ‘mutterings’ from a human voice, at times with an almost urgent character.

o o o

The ‘muttering’ calls were given when Sirocco was with people, more persistently when he was being touched or stroked, or close (1-3 m) to a person.

Sirroco Up Close

Dr Ben Bell & His Big Green Budgie

Hmmmm, Interesting

Oak Avenue Weather:-2℃—13℃ 0.1mm rain [76.5]

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Animal Trapped In The Homestead

Yesterday Karola spotted a stoat lolloping across the grass under the big oak. Coincidentally, or maybe not, I found a dead black & white half-grown kitten on the grass near the rain water tanks. Karola kindly disposed of it while I was in town.

Mid afternoon I went out in Zoe to look at a choice of fire surrounds and doors for the new wood burners in the homestead. I returned home via New World for groceries.

Margo Grant called from Havelock Hills Security to say that the overnight report from the homestead had not been received so I went to check.

In the kitchen there was broken crockery on the floor, animal dropping – rat and/or possum – over the shelves and surfaces, and the homestead fuse box had been attacked. Something had forced the doors off and part of the fuse area leaving wires stripped of insulation gleaming in the gap. The main switch had gone off – hence no electricity and I suppose no security heartbeat last night.

In the hall books on a large round table had been jumbled and some lay on the ground. A large flower vase atop the corner cupboard lay, unbroken, on the floor. A dolls house usually perched on top of tall book shelves lay in pieces on the floor.

Somehow a possum – my guess – or a rat – Karola’s guess – had become trapped in the house and couldn’t get out. It was presumably very thirsty after several days without water and went berserk. What we don’t know is whether it did get out or if it’s now died in the walls. We hope it isn’t the latter.

We walked with Bangle round the orchard.

Kitchen – Possum (Or Rat) In A China Shop

Fuse Box On Kitchen Wall Attacked

Books In Hall Pushed About A Bit

Insert Wood Burner Firebox

Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—13℃ 0.1mm rain [76.8]

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Sprinklers Are Go

I spoke to Paul van Weerden and then emailed our acceptance of his quote for installing sprinklers at Karamu. I spoke to Rob Findlay about his suggestions for back-to-back wood burners in the homestead living room and dining room. He invited me to inspect a Firenzo Forte AG insert wood burner tomorrow at his shop in Hastings.

Off to Bay Audiology in Napier for a 1:00pm appointment. We spent quite a while locating old bills etc to see how much Karola’s hearing aids cost initially, and when she got them (July 2013 – $5999). We also poked around with Google looking for recent info about hearing aids and NZ’s hearing aid industry.

What triggered this was Karola’s desire for rechargeable hearing aids – a man we met at this year’s IDS meeting in Dunedin had some and really liked them. No more fiddling with batteries that run out at odd and often inconvenient times with no warning. Just recharge every night and be confident they’ll last all the next day. Makes sense to me.

Karola visited Bay Audiology, had an appointment with John, a few weeks ago and at that time John wasn’t very helpful. Today we find that only last week his hearing aid suppliers have started shipping rechargeable hearing aids to New Zealand. So I think we’ll get Karola some.

We took Bangle round the orchard before our second trip of the day into Napier.

Went to a Royal Society New Zealand (Hawkes Bay branch) talk tonight. Peter Offenberger was also there. Another scientifically good but rather dull talk from an American woman researcher based at Waikato University. I kept falling asleep, but I don’t think I snored. Karola was annoyed that this was the second interesting-sounding talk where the speaker was an American academic reciting a talk they’d given a hundred times before with rather too much scientific jargon.

Despite tuning out for quite a lot of the talk I did find some ideas interesting. It was about “ecological restoration” in cities – restoring pockets of native forests in urban areas. The experimental work is going on in Napier and eight other New Zealand cities – it consists of the monitoring and measurement of plots of vegetation in each of the cities. At the end there’ll be some corroboration of the importance of factors such as the age of the trees, their average size, and the openness of the canopy.

So what I remember is that, based on data gathered to date, it takes about 20 years before a new forest develops enough canopy to create a micro-climate beneath it with a more consistent and warmer temperature than the surrounding country, and with much reduced sunlight. In this micro-climate the seeds and saplings of the main forest trees will prosper; herbaceous weeds cannot survive in the half-light and the saplings need the more consistent temperature.

The Zoe glided us effortlessly to and from Napier twice today – to Bay Audiology and to the NZRS talk at EIT (Eastern Institute of technology). I did note that just these two trips totalling 54km gobbled up 100km of capacity – must be my driving.

About eating, for the record:

1. Peter Offenberger introduced us to the idea, later backed up by Michael Mosley, my dieting and exercise guru, that if you reduce the window between first and last meals of the day you may well lose weight. We are trying that

2. For the above reason, and because I think it’s healthier to eat the main meal before or during the working day, not sleeping on a full stomach, we’ve just started having our main meal at lunchtime.

Karola’s Candid Camera Snap Of Ian’s Starvation Diet Midday Meal

Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—11℃ no rain [77.0]

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Zoe’s Wall-pod Installed

Hadyn came around 8:30am and connected up the wall-pod charger for Zoe. I immediately started charging and by the time I went for fish & chips for lunchtime meal it was showing over 60% having started at only 34% full.

Henare came and borrowed the Landrover and one of Karola’s trailers and completed yesterday’s fruitless mission – to take a fridge from his older sister Ira’s place in Napier to his home in Flaxmere.

After lunch Henare used earth in one of the small trailers to fill some of the deep ruts made a week or so ago when the big truck came and emptied our “waste management system” (aka modern septic tank).

My to-do list program popped up with “Get fire extinguishers checked”, something that is recommended we do once a year. So I went to see Haden of Almak, 19 Carnegie Road, Napier (06 843 3482), taking with me the three extinguishers he sold us in December 2016.

Janet Scott called in to chat with Karola – apparently there was a nasty road accident just outside our gates at the weekend and we didn’t even notice.

Meticulous Maids came and cleaned the cottage, as they do almost every fortnight.

Later Henare helped me clear a bit of space in the homestead garage and I squeezed the Landrover and Subaru in there for the night. More rearrangement is needed for a comfortable fit.

We went with Bangle round the orchard.

This evening I received the fire sprinkler quote from HSM – it was several thousand dollars more than Paul van Weerden’s quote so we’ve completed our due diligence and I can now give Paul the green light.

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—17℃ 0.9mm rain [76.9]

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Golden Wedding Anniversary

In the morning I continued pulling up some old alkathene pipe – got that finished.

Felicity & Geoff Rashbrooke had their GWA in February; Noel & Jenny Hendery in May, and now here we are. We had a rather good meal at The Mission with Noel & Jenny in calm celebration. Karola drove there in her Zoe, I had my first drive in it as I ferried her home again.

Henare and son Scott borrowed the Landrover while we were out, to pick up a fridge donated by his cousin Ira. Unfortunately it had started to rain and Ira sent them away saying it was too wet. Karola thinks it would not have fitted in the Landrover anyway, they should have also borrowed the big trailer.

Took Bangle round the orchard just as a light rain started.

Bangle weighed 17.1kg today.

Zoe – Under The Bonnet

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—14℃ 2.1mm rain [75.4]

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