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Or perhaps install a shade sail instead of a pergola…
try this site for quick reference:
It would also depend on the shape, a yard that leads away from the house to a point could be very useful if you have a garden leading up to the point where you could have a water feature perhaps with a mirror (as you suggested).
Do you want a:
Pergola :- wooden (generally)structure with open roof
Patio :- Attached structure to house generally with a ‘closed’ roof.
There is a difference to both. A cheap pergola could perhaps be a large Arbour (open roof generally for growing vines on). You grow some quick growing vines like Jasmine or Orange Trumpet to create a shady roof for it.
The base for it could be compacted roadbase or bluemetal.
Plants for a garden could be from something that already exists in gardens you already have. Succulent or semi-succulent plants such as Rheo and Mother-in-laws Tongue propagate easily as do the mondo grass varieties. You will need a mechanism for control for these plants be it ‘bordered’ in or for example planted in a submerged pot with the bottom cut off as they do tend to spread vigorously once settled.
Mock orange is a fast growing hedging plant that isn’t too expensive to get your hands on as well.
If you want to plant something that is a ground cover (and your conditions don’t get too dry and hot eg Brisbane around christmas) then perhaps Thyme and oregano as this creates a nice fragrance when you brush them and you can use them in cooking (they can be grown from seeds as well if you really are worried about price).
Just a few ideas for you to think about.
From my experience, many of the ‘odd-shaped’ blocks end up larger than the other blocks in the area. There were three odd-shaped blocks in my street and strangely enough they are the only 3 decent sized blocks in the street. They also end up a good price (per square meter) compared to nearby blocks.
You can still use gardens, paving, sheds or a cubbyhouse to change the shape to a more regular one if it does become an issue though.
Smaller jobs also tend to have a higher ‘per hour’ charge due to travel and basically the fact that many tradies prefer the big jobs where the real money is.
An example would be my father who is a respected fencing contractor. A workmate needed a back fence on her IP replaced since it was falling down and the neighbor out the back has a pool. The fence in question was 12 meters and on pretty flat ground so all that is involved was a quick demolition of the old wooden fence and the installation of a simple fence that conforms to BCC guidelines for pools. She got a quote from one guy for $1300 for a pailing fence. It struck myself as expensive since I had done a little work with the old man in the past and knew prices weren’t usually that much per meter. Found out colourbond fence for the same area would be about 700-800 through my old man but he is too busy to do so at the moment. Anyway she got another quote for colourbond, about $1200… talk about ripping people off… and the old man’s quote wasn’t ‘mates rates’ either.
It took a bit to get those prices out of the other contractors as well. If the fence was say 40 meters then quotes would be leaner as they want the job, much easier to lay a 40-meter fence than fart around with a 12 meter one even if the per meter rate is lower.
It was at least 60k (hence the + at the end[evil4]), he was working in a factory as a shift electrician and he was working in Brisbane. Also it was a couple of years back so increases in his potential wage now was not entered into.
Gee, and everyone was going on about how much money a person would earn with a Degree!
My older brother (sparky) was earning 60k+ a couple of years back before *THE EVIL ONE* left him with Epilepsy and now unable to be an electrician, he is now a saleman on 30k that cannot smell or taste anything.[grrr]
Of course the time he did the wiring in the VW Combi for the oldies with the radio only working if you turned low beam on doesn’t speak volumes for his skill, but them he was skilled at multi-million dollar fuse boards and industrial lighting not archiac autoelectricals.
An installed solar photovoltaic system will cost you three times the kw/hr cost of on-the-grid electricity over its lifetime of 30 years.Solar hot water pays for itself in under 10 years.
You wanna pay three time more per kwh? You think thats viable?
Solar Hot Water pays for itself well under ten years. Most governments in Australia offer rebates on solar hot water systems valuing in the hundreds of dollars. Some calculations have been that these systems pay for themselves in under 5 years for families…
A technology in itself is expensive until its widely accepted. Such as the price of computers years ago when a very ordinary system cost about $3000, yet today many ordinary systems cost just over $1000. If manufacturers find their is a incentive to produce solar for a growing market, then as more producers compete the overinflated prices of solar cells will fall.
For interest sake we don’t even need to talk about solar power for even airconditioning:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/space/SpaceRepublish_1045830.htm
For the record I will post a copy of the link I sent calvin@thirty4 upon the request he sent me earlier.
http://www.extraonline.com.au/story/details.asp?StoryID=9798
I hope that helps some people.
A couple of months back I think Brisbane Extra had a segment on a company that sells near new second-hand kitchens fairly cheap. Most of those shown were in very good condition and still fairly current for a fraction of the cost. Maybe you should look at that angle?
As for “Solar is only good for hot water systems” I do not think, such statement merits any response at all. Sometimes I think we live in the dark ages down under. Should go and visit Europe from time to time, they make good coffee there.And due to the 26,000-year tilt that slightly advantages the southern hemisphere at the moment, they get less sunlight on average per day [aacool]
Currently on the market are mobile homes that have everything solar powered except aircon, sounds like more than ‘hot water’ to me [thumbsupanim]
Probably the biggest issue with the power is our inability to efficiently store solar power or even other renewable sources. Perhaps we could take hydropower into the ‘micro’ environment by basically having large water tanks being filled during the day and emptied at night to produce power, still a very inefficient method though…
How much energy does it take to build a solar energy system[blink], or any system or alternative fuel, what does it cost, and how much energy will it return over its lifetime.
I think you’ll find that at this point Solar is only viable for hot water heating.Its all very well to say, we can build this or that, but you need energy (at this stage probably oil) to build these alternatives, and for them to be sustainable, they need to be able to provide enough energy to replace themselves. Entropy rules!!!!
Not if you have to run power cables over hundreds of kilometers to supply power to houses which don’t need that if they have solar power with rechargable batteries. Look at all the solar lights you can buy these days just for your garden, they are getting more popular than the ones you have to roll cable out for and they are not that expensive either.
I wouldn’t want to look at net or gross power consumption in the production of solar power cells compared to the infrastructure and maintenence required on the dangerous overhead power lines….
so room for 11 people or probably 9 bedrooms with the 4 adults are two sets of partners. Unfortunately the more rooms the proportionally more expensive I have found the placed to be to rent. A better option would would two properties of 4 and 5 bedrooms each to accomodate the large group. Would be good to find adjoining places..
Re: Peter Garrett..Maybe just Clever Marketing and a ‘talking point’ by Latham..keeps them in the news at the very leastRedwing,
This has the feel of a slick production in action for several weeks/months. They timed it to try to weaken the recent coalition gains. It may have been brought ahead since Bush’s unplanned assault on Latham as well. They have to put so much planning into everything Latham does or says since his brain goes on automatic pilot at times while the mouth keeps going.
How much worse can it get under a labour Government????Rob,
Crean’s the treasurer right? I think that answers everything.
From that report it seems that skilled vocational qualification is probably a good option still.
The female comparison was very interesting, could this result be a representation of the fact that a decent % of women with degrees may still leave the work force for the family (and the ‘glass ceiling’). In that one the skilled vocational qualification still performed well.
You can now pull the weight and rope through the hole you have exposed and replace the rope.To re-feed the rope back up the hole/cavity, stick some rigid wire say 8 gauge, down from the top, hook the rope to a small loop on the end of the wire and pull up through the hole/cavity.
Would it not be easier to attach the ‘wire’ at the point you originally pull the old rope through? saves you any hassle feeding it through yourself. I’m no handyman but for some reason the logic of it just screamed out at me….
Didn’t Garrett do a backflip on Pine Gap???It looked more like a inverted two and a half somersault from the pike position to me with a full twist [lmao] How can the people look at any politician no matter how proud and honourable and think they will truly stick to their guns these days?
Apart from not voting for the last ten years, not being enrolled to vote and not even living in the area he is supposed to now represent, he stated that he supports ‘ALL’ the policies of the Labout Party. I was unaware that Latham even knew himself what those policies were as they seem to keep changing. Garret has been against Labour for years. I might have to move now!!!I’m sure he has been brainwashed by some evil organisation to throw the political process into chaos. It would be easy enough to blame it on ‘faction fighting’ if Labor do grab power….
Ultimately though I think property investing will gain nothing by Latham and Garrett getting into power. When the budget falls on its face, just like in NSW, they will turn to easy markets such as property investing to grab a buck…. then it will be a ‘tax we will have to have’.
The Leeching part about coke in general (and too a lesser extent the other carbonated drinks) is correct. Similar results have occurred ironically enough from water, water where most of the mineral content has been filtered out. This results in the body, through osmosis (I think), in dumping minerals back into the demineralised waters to equalise everything…. the result is that important minerals are leeched out of the body just from drinking pure water.
Carbs for dieting are generally a no, for the normal intake they are fine in moderation though. Atkins diet due to the exessively high intake of meats and other protiens increase the chance of developing colon cancer greatly too.
Maybe it would be best to reduce carb intake by substituting ways of having your favourite foods. For example Turkish style pitas with pizza toppings instead of having the heavy bread based pizzas. Far cheaper too
.BTW you can’t win if you drink poppers and many juices, too high in sugar so go figure [confused2]
Financially we would be screwed (we as in the whole country not just property investors) if Latham got in. Labor fundamentally as originally the voice of the workforce had good policy. Unfortunately they turned it into a popularity contest (Hawke was popular but generally didn’t help many with policy).
In the past Labor governments whether they be state or federal fail in basic budgeting. currently you have Labor state governments receiving mammothly larger payments than in the past yet still cannot get it back into the +ves.
We will end up under Latham spending billions upon billions of dollars to changing from Federation to Republic with very little constitutional change, so why waste the resources doing it? Popularity contests….
So do we remain with a economically upbeat conservative government that is morally corrupt or a wishy-washy spurr of the moment Labor government that will put us well into debt again? Tough choice really, certainly wouldn’t want to completely waste my vote on Democrat or Greens considering ‘morally corrupt’ would be a nice thing to say about them these days [grrr]
What a load of
Okay now with that out of the way lets look at the faeces, it could very well be the saviour of our comsumer climate with the oil companies controlling alternate energy technologies I remembered an article from over a decade ago that was about turning faeces into fuel pretty much in a 24-hour period. This wasn’t the old Mad Max methane bit (though that would probably work as well) but more along the lines of crude oil type.
Many oils used in cars are synthetic these days anyway. Some people may say that ethanol could be a winner but unfortunately the more recent cars cannot handle ethanol properly as it damages the many delicate components in the fuel injection area of the engine…..
So what would this mean? Well if you had a solar or wind-powered house you would probably be on a winner at some stage as coal will also have to have issues and increased demand from higher energy using items per household plus more households will probably outstrip the infrastructure’s expansion. I seem to remember a house in Sydney that gets paid every power bill since he returns more power to the grid than he uses…. from a solar house (in fact the house recycled nearly everything if I remember rightly).
Once the problem manifests itself those with units close to city centres may end up on a winner though currently that may not be the case. Of course if the oil industry does collapse then the amount of economic hardship to follow may mean cheaper accomodation and even boarding houses would be the better buy….. solar or faeces powered of course [lmao]
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