Month: August 2006

How many Power Points do I need?

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I am trying to work out how many electrical points I need to put into the new ground floor that we are adding to our house. I have been able to find regulations for the US, but I can find nothing for Australia. I am almost starting to think that there are no regulations for Australia since my owner builders course says that I can not perform a whole bunch of work unless I have specific certification, but electrical is not listed.

Below is the new floor plan for the ground floor on our house.

New Floorplan for our Queenslander House

If anyone out there had advise for me about where to find information about Australian or Queensland regulations for electrical work please let me know in the comments.

Also if you have any advise with how many power points to install, how far apart, etc. please let me know in the comments as well.

Why our Spa Bath Leaked

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This weekend I pulled apart the iron around our spa bath to fix it. What I discovered was that whoever installed the pump did a VERY dodgy job on it.

The spa bath pump wasn’t even bolted or screwed down. Most of the weight of the pump was being held by the actual pipes with part of the back resting on a piece of timber.

Not only was the pump pretty much “floating” there, but there was also no o-rings actually installed between the pump and the pipes. This is why the bath leaked so freely.

I had a lot of good help from Twin Cities Pool Supplies, which is only a few blocks from our house. They gave me good advice over the phone and were able to provide everything that I needed to get it fixed. Here is the link to their web-site:

I had some good photos of the pump and the spa bath with all the iron removed from around the spa, but unfortunately all the photos were deleted before I got them onto my computer.

The spa bath no longer leaks when the pump is off and the pump is now screwed down to some timber. It looks like the pump itself has a broken seal on the inside though, so I still can’t run the pump without it leaking. Since we want to redo the bath in the next few years though we decided just to disconnect the power for the pump and won’t be using it as a spa.

How To Fix a Leaking Spa Bath

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Ever since we have moved into our house we have only been able to have baths that are about 10cm / 3″ deep. This is because if we fill up our bath more than that it leaks out the spa jets.

I have been resistant to fixing it because it means having to pull off the iron that is on the outside of the bath, then having to find the leak and finally having the actually seal it. Then after sealing it I will need to put the iron back on and probably re-paint the iron (I did this originally in the article Painted – Bathroom).

How to fix a leaking Spa Bath

Well we have finally found someone to build in under the house (sort of, it’s a long story). Since they have started that I will need to fix the leaking spa bath sooner than later because we don’t want the spa bath leaking after we have put in the sheeting on the ceiling under the house.

Tamara found a fairly detailed article about how to repair the leaks. Here is a link to it:

That does bring up another problem though, what happens if it starts to leak again? How will I know until it has actually destroyed the ceiling under it?

Given the option I would just get rid of the spa bath all together and redo the entire upstairs bathroom, but I can’t see that happening any time soon…