Renovate Australia

 The door to our attached garage goes directly into our laundry room. It’s a decent size room so we are looking at making better use of the room by also using it as a family mudroom.

We already have a decent size shoe rack in the laundry room since it is our most used entrance to the house (post to follow), so now we are looking at adding a mudroom bench and hooks. Since there are five of us we will be building in five different sections and cubby holes in the bench.

The plan is to build the mudroom bench against the wall and then add the wainscotting look to the wall above it. At the moment we are still unsure about what we want to do above the hooks. We have a few options that include putting a narrow shelf above the hooks, leaving it flush like in the drawing, or putting a larger shelf that will be big enough to take more baskets.

The maximum length of the bench will be about eight feet as that is how far I have between the corner of the wall and the door to our under stair storage. We also don’t want it to stick out too much as if it’s too deep it will block the walkway.

Given how slow I’ve been on other projects lately I’m not sure when we will get to this project, but it’s in the planning stages…

On one of my previous posts about our Blueway Air Conditioner I have had quite a few people ask me about the error codes that people come across with the unit. Although we never had a problem with our Blueway air conditioner quite a few other people seem to have experienced problems.

Here is the list of the error codes:

• E2 - Indoor temperature sensor failure
• E3 – Indoor pipe temperature sensor failure
• E4 – Outdoor unit abnormality failure
• E5 – Indoor fan motor failure
• df – Unit Defrosting

I hope that helps the people who are needing them…

If you are looking for a house for removal in Australia there are a few places you can go. I remember in Townsville there was actually a lot where they had a number of old houses for sale, but it was quite hit and miss with what was available, and there was never really all that great of a selection.

You can always try looking on ebay, but the selection there is pretty pathetic at the moment with only five houses currently listed.

The best place that I have found where you can find a house for removal in Australia is the private selling listings over at Drake Homes. There are over 50 homes currently listed for sale on the site from all over Australia. They also have a specific page for houses for sale by Drake Homes in SE QLD and NE NSW.

In addition to the listings of removal houses for sale Drake Homes also offers the following services:

• Sell your house for removal
• Buy a house for removal
• Get an assessment of your house
• Move your house to another location

There is also come great resources on their information page that will help you with your decision about purchasing, selling or moving a removal house.

If you are looking for more information you can also check out their House Removal and Recycling Blog. There are some great articles there including this one about Removing, Recycling and Renovating a house.

I was watching an episode of Holmes Inspection and Mike Holmes had a very easy and quick way to check on the insulation and heat loss in your roof in the winter.

Go outside the morning after a heavy snow fall. The snow fall has to be sufficient to leave snow on the roofs in your neighbourhood for this test to work. Have a look at the roofs in your area to see how much snow is on the roof.

If you see that you have had more snow melt off your roof than your neighbours then it is probably a safe bet that you have increased heat loss through your roof. This could be because of a lack of insulation, insufficient ventilation, or any other number of causes. Whatever the case, it is something that you should investigate if you want to increase the efficiency of your heating and decrease the amount of heat that you are loosing through your roof.

To view the snow depth on the above photo I had to turn up the contrast and turn down the brightness, thus making the image vary dark. Based on that photo from last winter I would say that I have minimal heat loss through the roof as I believe the only place that the snow is shallow on our roof was caused by the wind. Thankfully there appears to be no significant heat loss through the roof.

I’m going to have another look at this after our first significant snow fall this upcoming winter and will post the results and photos on this site. I will also put some photos of other houses where you can see the heat loss by the melted snow on their roofs so you can see what I’m talking about.