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The APC was deployed on schedule with a minimum of fuss at sometime just before sunset. A few hoses to connect, a backwash and filter run, then a brief pressure adjustment and in she went. I’m talking of course about the insertion of a Kreepy Krauly, that most favourite of South African domestic servants requiring very little in the way of contracts or daily care, not even air. APC = Automatic Pool Cleaner. I couldn’t figure that one out at first, either.

I was amused by the CD enclosed in the box. Other than the reply mail warranty card there is no other paperwork to be found. But fear not: the 19 page manual is handily stowed away electronically, sure to be safe from water and related dangers.

Naturally my PC isn’t anywhere near the swimming pool and, after drying my hands carefully, I slotted the CD into katana. Lo and behold, the makers of Kreepy Krauly are aware of the multi-platform issues facing modern computer use: a Mac version of the manual is included!

Everything has been considered, down to the Printer friendly PDF manuals. Don’t be too surprised when your pool specialist next shows up with laptop in hand; for northern suburbs folks it’ll be a Mac, of course.

In both cases, you’ll need to spring for the ink and paper if you want to refer to the installation instructions where it matters most, however. And that would be somewhere near the pool…

Our latest DIY project is virtually completed: a timber deck that finally connects three doors to the outside with a reliable platform (so far) to walk and sit on. All that remains is for me to complete the stairs. As with the paving of the driveway, this turned into a DIY project once the incumbent BEE deck installer never supervised his staff. They were incompetent to the extreme: measuring 40cm seemed a challenge and the installation of the joists alone took more time than the entire job. In a fit of desperation I kept the Ryobi mitre saw I’d bought the installer in lieu of some payment to assist with the trimming of the individual decking boards.

Rhodesian teak is not a very hard wood. Ten cuts later, the 1200W motor of the R795 motorized saw went up in a rather impressive puff of white smoke. In that way, Makro cannot be faulted: the unit was returned and a full refund issued. I headed off to the tools section and spent five times more on a decent, German piece of equipment: the 1800W Bosch GCM10 blue line mitre saw. The difference in performance is absolutely astounding, with the Bosch reliably cutting through the wood like a knife through very soft jam, as Alexander would say.

The Ryobi biscuit joiner performed admirably. The method of fastening the decking boards we chose is rather new and results in a deck that is completely free of unsightly screws. EasyClip is a South African product, though similar fastening systems have been copied or invented in New Zealand and the USA.

A biscuit joiner is essential, as the EasyClip is effectively little more than a nylon biscuit with a single hole in the centre for a screw and two protrusions at the bottom that rest on a joist and automatically enforce a spacing of roughly 5mm between adjoining decking boards. The two major advantages of this system are the fact that no decking board is very drilled and screwed down directly and that the installer needs to take no special care to ensure consistent spacing between the boards. Our deck has an overall size of almost 42 sq. m, and it is unavoidable that a slight kink will develop after a couple of rows of the decking have been installed. This is easily remedied if periodic measurements are made and the offending row slightly adjusted by increasing the spacing ever so slightly. I had a constant 5mm shift on the right-hand side every two meters or so, but managed to adjust the difference quite easily.

The first row has to be drilled and screwed onto the frame, but after that each other row is simply inserted and held down tightly by the screw inserted into the joists. It’s a tedious, lengthy process – to progress a single meter from where I’d start each session would take me at least five hours.

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Wonderful to come home after a weekend off-planet and discover that the house is still intact. That feeling dissipates rather quickly when the opening of a tap results in nary a trickle. Run to the pre-paid water meter to check what the problem could be. Error 41 indicates No Credit, a rather strange occurrence given the fact that I’d charged the damn thing with almost R450. R450 is a lot of water, make no mistake.

Run off to the store to add some credit to the pre-paid token, shove it into the water meter and listen for the shouts indicating I should close the main tap, pronto! Before the shouting started, I observed the rather disconcerting rundown of the digits indicating the amount of credit remaining – more than R10 gone before I could blink.

The problem? The cut-off tap at the entry point to the house ordinarily looks like this:

More than likely 30 seconds after we locked the house and left, some inexplicable event ruptured the seam where the pipe meets the fitting. End result

and water gushing out of the main pipe. Thankfully, we’re on prepaid water – this could have gone on all weekend. Within three hours, I had a plumber on site and shortly afterward, a shower running.

For a tap that’s scarcely two years old and has been operated less than four times in that period, that’s a pretty crap display of product quality. Cobra bill their products as Tried. Trusted. Perfect. I’ve tried it, don’t trust it and think it’s nowhere near perfect…

Next up: a call to their head office.

Paving is classified as an improvement to any house or structure. In our case, that is certainly true. We’ve paved more than 500 square meters of driveway to get out of the dust and mud and into zone clean. If you want supervised workmanship, you’d expect to pay for it. But, you’d certainly not be willing to pay an agreed price for lack of supervision and a team that is obviously incapable of handling standard paving duties. With an immense effort, we’ve come out with a decent job, but only because we were willing to put in hard work ourselves and pester those bodies on site to at least put some effort into their livelihood.

In the end, bargaining down the price was a rather harrowing affair but we came down to an acceptable price per square meter. One tiny consolation: the paving contractor acknowledges himself to be an absolute turkey on his invoice to me:

So, we ended up with gobble paving. If you have the pleasure of having to seek out a paving contractor in the western half of Gauteng, I strongly recommend that you avoid Advanced Paving or any of its subcontractors.

Unless, of course, you’re willing to do their job for them!

We installed about 45 double plug sockets. They’re nothing fancy, but still cost a fair bit. Even though we haven’t used them a lot, we’ve noticed that the removal and insertion of plugs is a bit of an issue…

So, I mailed CBI, the bunch that make them. Got an immediate response, and yesterday the sales rep and product manager personally dropped off 45 units to replace the faulty ones. That kind of service needs to be commended! Thanks, CBI.

It’s here…

Originally uploaded by MHertenberger.

Winter time is fire time… This one frightened the hell out of everyone. Took a lot of effort and dedication to eventually put out…

Great news! We have electricity to one plug in the house! After a run-around involving two sparkies, laying 400kg of cable, connecting everything and discovering that the supply from Eskom didn’t work, we are now ready to plug in the fridge and cool some beers

This plug point deserves an honourable mention! Read more about our building project here.