Tree Lopping

Tree Lopping is a mild term for what we did this weekend, but I think we will be in for quite a bit of real tree lopping in the months ahead, so this was a taster.

We started, with a dead tree—no idea what it was (except that it was %#!@ annoying, because of the way the branches were tangled up together**)—overhanging the back corner of the house.

Every time the wind picked up, I expected the whole thing to fall into M's study. So it had to be removed. The only problem being, as aI said, that it was hanging over the back corner of the house, so any branch that was lopped off it would fall straight through our tissue-paper roof. Cut a branch and "instant-skylight"!

Here is a crappy photo of the tree from before we moved in (it is the twig, on the far right, next to the steps).

And here is another photo, taken from closer to the house, mid-demolition.

(To give you an idea of scale, that ladder is four meters when it is fully opened up like that, so the "twig" was about eight meters high, and the main trunk, about ten meters long.)

Anyway, with the help of some well-placed rope, we were able to safely bring down one branch at a time. (Safely, but not without a regular dollop of fear.) Eventually, it was just a stump

We have left the stump intact so that we can use it as a lever when we dig out the roots, a much less pressing—and less stressful—job.

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While we were removing this tree, we had another visit from a Telstra technician (our fifth?) to move the modem which was installed a few weeks back. The signal was so weak that we couldn't actually use our computers without first running a data cable the full length of the house!

Now we have a computer connection that works, but our digital TV thingy (the T-Box?) still doesn't work. So we will, no doubt, require another visit from a Telstra technician to finish the job started some moths back, back in the before-time.

**The branches, even when safely on the ground, were almost impossible to break down into pieces without injuring yourself because of the way they clung to each other in unexpected and bloody-annoying ways. It was like trying to disentangle yourself from a cupboard full of coat-hangers, or a Barrel full of monkeys (as in these!).

Our New Top-of-the-Range Stereo System

This is our new Sanyo, "All in One" Quadraphonic Stereo system: a DC 8500K.

It was an epic journey picking it up today from Ivanhoe, and I still haven't tested it, but am hoping to be able to play some records for the first time since I left home!

It was another eBay find: I bought it for $200, after the auction ended without attracting any interest at $280. (See here.)

What is wrong with everyone? A genuine four-channel sound system! Just plug in your ipod or your CD-Player and off you go … I hope.

BTW: this is what I found out about it online (here).

These units were sold around 1975/1976 and were top of the range due to being not just a radio but a very nice piece of furniture (by 1970s standards).

Amplifier Section

Peak Music Power 160W (120W music power)
Frequency Response 20—50,000 Hz ± 3dB
Power Bandwidth 30—40,000 Hz
Tone Controls BASS: 100 HZ ± 10dB
TREBLE: 10 KHz +/- 10dB

What's the bet they were advertised in Playboy?

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Actually, now that I think about it I did abandon a lovely 60s (valve-powered) Radiogram when I departed Mt Nelson at the end of 1987, but kept one of the speakers from it for years. The sound was amazing. I am looking forward to hearing "Song to the Siren" on this one. (And I will post some photos in situ once it is in situ).

We Are Connected; Therefore We Exist

I can't hope to do justice to the excruciating torture that was moving. M. and I made many trips—in convoy—in our cars, hired a van for a day on two separate occasions; and coughed up the best part of $2K to pay four men to spend ten hours moving the books and the furniture.

This ten hour day—sixteen for us—was the main move, and it would have taken a lot longer than ten hours had the removalists not called up a ute to ferry the boxes and furniture up the drive from the monster truck that they had been forced to park on the road (the strapping young removalists took one look at the drive and nearly fainted).

Two weeks later (our first night sleeping here was the 20th—Day 23) we have unpacked most of the boxes and have arranged most of the furniture. We also have phone, internet and TV.

Telstra & Co. did not actually show when they said they would—shocking, I know—at which point I realised they had no idea what they were doing, and I could not believe anything they said they were going to do. So I gave up on them, and all things telecommunicational.

To my surprise, everything was connected last Friday—no photos of the closed highway, alas. We were not given a phone to connect, so I connected my old one. On Saturday night we had our second big storm** and in the morning the phone stopped working. So, after six weeks of waiting, we had the phone on for just over 24 hours!

Another three days later a technician came out and declared the old phone dead. Who killed it? No idea, though I suspect they took one look at the Optus logo and sabotaged it. M. thinks I am paranoid. Whatever. I fished a funky phone out of a bin at work and connected it last night and hey-presto! We are connected to the world again.

Today we spent another small fortune having a new power-board installed, with circuit-breakers and so on. Beautiful. And safe. Our intrepid electrician made it up the drive with a little more grace than last time. He even offered to return to do more work for us once the roof is fixed …

The roof. *sigh* We were told it was cactus. In fact, the bank didn't want us to buy this house because the roof was described in a building report as needing replacing. It took us the entire settlement period to persuade them they were wrong, that it didn't need replacing before we moved in. Well, um, they might have been right.

The first descent storm (it has been raining for the last forty days and forty nights) sent sheets of water washing over the gutters and all over the stuff that was sheltering under the eves and under the back verandah—stuff we needed to get into, but couldn't get into, the house.

With the down-pipe cleared, the guttering doesn't leak anywhere near as much, but it ain't water-tight out the back. And crawling around on the roof, meant I got a good look at it, and it is awful: dented everywhere, patched and glued, it should leak like a sieve!

And today I got to clear the gutters at the front. The guttering is fine, but the roof has bowed up, two or three inches clear of the rafters, high enough that you can see right in under the roof, see the rotting insulation and the electrical wiring. High enough that I can't hose the gutters clean after brushing them.

It will certainly not last another winter. I just hope that it lasts the summer and that it doesn't mean we have to wait until the summer of 2011/12 to enclose the car-port.

Speaking of which: the first step in getting the car-port enclosed was trying to establish what sort of cement slab is in it, so we can work out if it will support brick walls etc. To that end I ordered copies of the original plans from council, which arrived shortly after we moved in. What a revelation! I will save the plans for a separate post but one fact needs to be mentioned: the date. I was told when I ordered the plans that this place was built in 1975.

It seems that this is wrong. The plans are dated 16 July 1969. Of course, even if the house were approved and built without delay, the house would not have been completed until early 1970—so it is still Our Seventies House but, it is only just a seventies house. M. thinks that it is possible that it was not built until 1975 … but I think that the 1975 date must refer to something else. I will do some digging and find out.

**The storm brought down two very large branches from our gum trees. One of them—about ten to fifteen meters in length—fell about twenty or thirty meters onto the street number and the drive. The boards and poles were completely destroyed and the drive was blocked. Another branch, long dead, and not quite as large, missed the house by about three meters at the back. I punished this branch by chopping it up and burning it!

The Night Before the Morning After

After half-a-dozen conversations with at least three times as many people it seems that the phone will be connected tomorrow. I say "seems" because English is not the first language of anyone who connects the phone, the internet, or cable TV. All of the people I have spoken to use as many acronyms as words (none of which they can explain*), and they use words like "cable" in a their own unique way.** They also assume that every human being is as familiar with the internal structure of Telstra as they are. Mad. So, fingers crossed and cameras at the ready.

On a more positive note, I spoke to the owner of the house we have been renting for the last four years and managed—somehow—to sweet-talk him into selling us the original dinning room wall unit from this place, which we both love. I assured him that removing it would be a breeze. Now I get to find out if it is.


Also on a positive note, and in the same picture, we got this sensational copper zodiac plaque. it looks like it was made to go on ths unit, and it will be perfect for the shoebox.



*It is actually quite amusing to ask. "So what does BFS mean?" [ignores question] "You said the cable appointment had to be made with the BFS. Who are they? What does BFS stand for" [prolonged silence] "You don't know, do you?" [pause] "No."

** You might assume that "a cable" was any wire (phone, power, TV, internet) attached to the house, or that "Cable" was Cable TV. But no, cable refers only to your internet connection. If you work in a Tesltra call centre that is. I discovered this special meaning only after spending three-quarters of an hour trying to find out why I was told one minute that the phone was going to be connected in the morning and then told not five minutes later "the cable" was not, now, going to be connected until the end of the month. It turns out that phones do not have cables. Nor is "Cable TV" connected with a "cable." Who knew? I did ask what on earth they called the things that dangled from phone poles and that carried phone and TV signals into the house (and possums onto your roof) if they were not called "cables," but he couldn't answer that particular puzzler.

Cool Magool Chairs

Check 'em out! They (I have two of them) start out rusty and a little dusty. Apply elbow grease and they become cool magool and oh so comfie!

 I have a desk now too, and it is in need of love and care to make it shine. But alas it wont actually fit through the door... yup I am gonna knock down walls to get this gorgeous desk in my room. Failing that it will be a dining table for a while until the renovations on the new library for P. are complete. Then I can really knock down a wall and expand my current postage stamp study into a mega fun house for Me with desk, funky chairs and Great Dane (hey it's a 70s house I have to have sleek Scandanavian design!).

Just Close the Highway Already

Yesterday we had a visit from the electrician and from the men from Foxtel. The men from Foxtel were there to connect the phone and connect us to the internet and digital TV.

Have I mentioned that the driveway is steep? Like, really steep. And curved. Like Lombard Street, just like Bill Cosby describes it:

[It] goes straight down … not satisfied with you killing yourself that way … they put grooves and curves and everything in it, and they put flowers there where they've buried the people that have killed themselves.

That is our drive: murderously steep, with curves and flowers. Not sure about the buried people.

Well, the men from Foxtel looked terrified. They looked at the drive, they looked at the Highway, they looked at the pole on the other side of the Highway, they looked at the pole on our side of the highway, and they looked at the house. Then they stood toe to toe and gesticulated and mumbled and pulled out their phones, and talked seriously into their phones while they looked at the drive, at the Highway, at the poles etc.

And then they informed us that this was the worst, the most difficult and the most terrifying installation they had been called out for. "Mission Impossible" one of them said.

It seems that the cable we need is on the other side of the Highway to us, the pole on our side can't be reached by a ladder, so they'd need a "bucket" (a big cherry-picker with a bucket on the end) to reach it and attach a cable to it, that they will then have to string across the road and attach to our pole, and then from that pole up to the house.

To set up the cherry-picker they have to close two lanes of the Burwood Highway twice, they'd need Traffic Control, first on one side, then on the other, they'd need three men with lolly-pop-poles controlling the traffic. It'd take two hours at least.

We might have to use ADSL one of them suggested.

Since we were standing on the deck I reached over and showed him the frayed end of wire that had once been a telephone cable. It hasn't been connected for eight years, and I reckon—judging from the the shredded condition of it—that it was brought down that long ago by a falling branch from one of the monster trees in the front yard.

Having explained this, he looked even more serious. He looked at the drive again, at the Highway, at the pole on the other side of the Highway, at the phone pole next door, and at the house. He and his mate has a smoke, they stood toe to toe, pointed and mumbled and pulled out their phones again, and had another serious conversation on their phone while they looked at the drive, at the Highway, at the poles etc.

Then they returned and explained that they were going to have to call in their supervisor to do a site-visit. He would get to look at the drive again, at the Highway etc and decide if they could connect us or, as he put it, if we "actually have access" to Foxtel. (That is, whether they reckon it is worth their while doing all this for us, and what they are likely to have to charge if they do.) Apparently, that is going to happen sometime today.

Anyway, with that they left. Or tried to. When they arrived there were three cars on the drive and on the turn-around, so they had stopped on the curve of the drive. After the electrician left they had three goes at nosing further up the drive, so they could reverse onto the turn around, so they could down the drive forwards.

Three times they lurched forward and stalled, and three times I thought they were going to roll backwards over the retaining wall, down the embankment, to land on the arse of their van on the Burwood Highway. Where they would get to look at the sky for about one second before a passing car ran into them and they were vaporised in the ensuing explosion.

Fortunately, they decided to swap drivers; the younger of the two Foxtel technicians negotiated the hill, backed onto the turn around and departed—probably hoping that they have nothing to do with the cherry-picker and connecting us to the internet!

Not mentioned in this post: the electrician passed the house three times before he found our drive, and nearly burnt out his clutch backing up the drive. His car had leaves and twigs stuck in every groove on his car (wheel arches, mirrors, bumper) and he looked like he'd rather face a bull in a bull-ring than return. Nevertheless, he is coming back in a fortnight to replace the power-board. Heroic man (and friend of a relative, which definitely helps).

Also not mentioned in this post was my epic trip out to the HeatCharm factory to get all the bits (the fan and wiring) that had eveidently been ripped out of the wood heater by the previous owner. Why is a mystery. Anyway, $250 and quite a bit of sweet-talking later I had everything we needed, and the electrician was able to install this for us. All it needs now is to be bolted in place. And that, I hope, is the easy bit!

Fun fact: the wood heater was made in 1980, so it was installed five years after the house was built. They must have been five miserable winters!

Also not mentioned in this post, I discovered that the posties do not deliver to our house. It seems that a postie was killed not that long ago trying to deliver mail to the houses on our stretch of the highway. So we have to have a P.O. Box.

Reading back over this post I can't help wondering if we'll ever get any visitors!

1975, of course!

Well, today we found out when our 70s shoebox was built: 1975.

This happy discovery was the side-effect of finding out how to order copies of the original plans of the house.

Which was the side-effect of finding out how start the whole process of enclosing the car-port.

(Although, actually, the whole process of enclosing the car-port really started with a visit to the council offices on Day 2 (Saturday), when we discovered [1] the building approvals process has been privatised and [2] there is a sewer-line that runs right by the house.

The second of these isn't really relevant, but I was pretty happy to hear this, 'cause I have a profound distrust of septic tanks.)

Since the building approvals process has been privatised I was given the number of a local building surveyor. I called him this afternoon and had the whole process explained to me.

What I discovered was step 1 is to get plans of the existing structure. So tomorrow I will order a copy of the original plans and in about three weeks we will find out what, exactly, was built back in 1975.