Quads And A New Lifestyle

[professor_jonny]

There is a couple of different methods of joining pipes but now days many plumbers opt for thermowield joins where you stick the pipe in a tool it heats it up then you press it into the socket and it melts it together.

there has been problems with this in the past in older houses as the copper hot water pipes were used as earthing and if a section is replaced with plastic it breaks the earth earth continuity of the earthing system.
many plumbers have injured or killed them selves not being aware of this problem, or left an installation dangerious.

of note xman I see that asnzs has changes and in the new codes of practice in the june update and solar systems need to be certified and inspected by an inspector if the voltage of the exceeds 48v and as you are using inverters it will require inspection.

you have also earthed your frame for the shed?
I saw a home owner get a 20,000 fine in the last electrical flyer for not doing this and one of his kids getting a shock form a live coming into contact the frame in a barn house conversion.

gone are the days the home handy man can wire their own house how ever they want

[xman]

We just use the glue method out here and that is supposed to last 25 years. There is also the clamp method which uses a special tool to clamp the plastic pipe together. Remember, only a couple of areas in this country get to below zero Celsius so that is probably why gluing is possible. As for down the farm where it does get below zero C, about -7C is the coldest I've seen it, I used plastic pipe that is rated down to -65C and push connects which is very similar to the special tool type only you don't need the $7-800 tool, just a set of strong arms. I went this way because my neighbor had copper pipe plumbing and the water froze in the pipe and split it and the plastic pipe will swell, not split and it is guaranteed down to -65C as I said.
This is the system I used on the farm that most plumbers here don't use because of the cost. Much cheaper using copper pipe or plastic that is glued rather than the expensive fittings used with this system but these I was able to do myself so I went that way and the job wasn't really massive however it was still around $300 in fittings and about $150 worth of pipe. .............
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMCO_AI_j8M

Interesting the new codes of practice P.J..None of my electrics is grounded and I did it that way for a reason, there is no potential to ground or for that matter, the steel frame of the house. As it is all battery powered and I don't use the steel frame as the ground return like in a car, (believe me, I was very tempted), the only way to get a shock from an inverter is to go from active to neutral on the 220vAC from the inverter. All the lighting is using 12vDc to 220vAC 75 or 150watt inverters that in turn goes to a handful of CFLs on a circuit that is fuse protected.
5 amp fuses I use on the 75 watt units and 10 amp on the 150 watt units. i know the fuse doesn't protect you from a shock but grounding doesn't either in fact being a steel frame, I figured as the inverters AC and DC neutrals are connected and NOT isolated, it would be safer just to have the whole system a floating ground. Mind you, 75 or 150 watts isn't exactly deadly. When I'm wiring in new circuits and are to lazy to grab my meter I often "touch" the wires and use the "Human Meter Method" that I'm sure you are quite accustomed to.

[xman]

Here's the pics I took the last time I was down the farm of the new dam. I did go to post them some time ago, about 6 weeks ago, but was booted while I was still writing the post and got the shits. Here they are now. I should be down in a weeks time for a few days and the again in a few weeks later for a weeks holiday but until then, you get to see the new dam dry as it is or was as it has snowed since I believe.






That's all I have I'm afraid till I get back down when work and I need another break from each other. Can't be soon enough for me.

[professor_jonny]

Interesting the new codes of practice P.J.....:

the reason for grounding the frame is if you have a neutral short to a frame in one section of the house and a phase short on the sink for example in the bathroom, then if you leaned on the wall and turned on the tap you would get a shock.

all metal has to be bonded

30 ma for 30 ms is considered non life threatening in that time .03*.03 = .009 joules of energy

so a 75 watt light lamp if you touched it for 1 second would transfer 75 joules that is deadly.

[xman]

I'm about to take a week off work to go do some serious burning off down the farm before the fire hazard reduction season is over and it becomes impossible to lessen the fire rise for the up coming summer bushfire season. Being a land owner, it is my responsibility to lessen the fire risk to mine and my neighbors properties by reducing the fire risk and if it isn't burnt soon, it has to stay unburnt till next year. Probably hard to understand for some but we here in Australia, take fires very seriously because they are so devastating when they hit in the warmer months. Much better to burn off the excess fire fuel on the ground in a controlled manner in winter at 10-15c than risk it burning in summer time when temperatures are in the high 30s being pushed along the ground by 70-80km/h westerly winds. As a result my next entry will have many pictures of the fires we light. Some of these wood piles are half the size of a house from when we cleared around the farm house.
This was the site of a small fire we burnt off last visit to clear the area of the fish dam wall.


I will re-burn this site this week with all the scrub we clear around this area now that I have a suitable tool for clearing the scrub. It is this weed wacker with a 9" saw blade on it.


I also bought a bigger Husky chainsaw. I have a Husky 16" bar but this one is for the bigger trees on the farm and has a 20" bar..

The weed wacker with that blade can cut down pine trees up to 3" in diameter so it should make short work of the 1" tea tree I need to clear. We were using shears and chainsaws for this work but that is back breaking work and I'm really hopeful this tool will be better at clearing acres rather than meters a day. I do have a lot to clear.

Other work I did last visit was to get the projector in the mezzanine floor. I was after the projector to be in the floor out of view and I got that pretty well I think.



Once the false roof goes back on it will all be in the floor with only the lens hole being visible. I also need to reposition the IR sensor the projector uses to a place that isn't in the front of the projector so the remote can actually control the projector. Not a big issue just requiring pulling apart the projector, pull the IR receiver out and extend the wires going to it so the sensor can be mounted in a suitable place that can actually see the remote.
Here's a picture of my new dam but this time it has water in it. Not much but at least it works aye. We had a day of heavy rain and another day when it actually snowed so I suppose it should have something in it.

By not much I mean that tree is actually on an island in the dam when the dam is full or at least that was the idea. I think I'll be pumping a lot of water to see that this year though, it is going to be a dry spring, summer out here.
Just a picture of a massive tree some animal has decided would make a fine home.

A termite mound. Some of these are massive on the farm. This one is a small one, some are three times higher down the back of the block.

A view of the field we cleared as a fire break from the house. I put some grass seed down not expecting much as winter was hitting and frost every morning but it did come up and should be nice for the wild rabbits and ducks in summer, well within range of the shooting balcony at the front of the farm house.

Ice on the forest dam again.

Well that's about it till after next week and then I'll have a lot of pictures and maybe some videos as well. I am really looking forward to spending a full week on the farm with nothing but outside work to do.

[cashonly]

Once the false roof goes back on it will all be in the floor with only the lens hole being visible. I also need to reposition the IR sensor the projector uses to a place that isn't in the front of the projector so the remote can actually control the projector. Not a big issue just requiring pulling apart the projector, pull the IR receiver out and extend the wires going to it so the sensor can be mounted in a suitable place that can actually see the remote.

how about the cooling?

[xman]

The whole mezzanine floor is hollow so I'm hoping that will be sufficient. If not I'll put a P.C. fan in and that should do but I'm not expecting that to be necessary. I could also put a grill in the floor above the projector so the heat can rise on out. When I saw the fan on the projector, the idea of heat did enter my mind actually so these are not new thoughts but still nice of you to point this out.

[Geeba]

Gyproc your ceilings.....

Plywood + crazy heat projector = asking for trouble

[xman]

Gyproc your ceilings.....

Plywood + crazy heat projector = asking for trouble

I think the projector won't be a heat issue as it looks as though I need to mount it about 1/2 meter under the floor to get it centered to the projector screen. I'm now thinking some kind of retractable platform to sit the projector on that retracts back into the floor when not in use. The remote for the motorized projector screen has a spare channel that I could use for a motorized solution that drops the projector platform when the screen is down. Not the outcome I was really after, the projector mounted in the mezzanine floor was my desired choice but it simply projects the image to high up the screen leaving the lower half of the screen blank. There is a "trapiziod" adjuster on the projector for such events but it makes the lower half of the picture stretched and that suks. Good news is the projector seems quite happy as does the projector screen motor running on a 600watt inverter that converts the 12vDC from the battery bank to 220vAC required to run the projector and the screen motor. I wasn't expecting any issues but this was the first time I actually tested it.

[xman]

Well after a full week down the farm with a mate and I hard at it, a lot of the clearing and burning off is done. I feel the farm is ready to face the summer fires much better than in previous years. We were blunting a chainsaw blade daily and the saw blade on the weed waker got changed twice in the week. Between the chainsaws and the saw, we went through near 20 liters of fuel. Add to this, 9 car or truck tires used for starting the large fires, see I must be a Green, I recycle old tires even if they are used to start bigger fires. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy knowing I have done my bit for the environment. .
The first day. Couldn't light any fires because of high winds so we cleared this area up...


The second day. Wind stopped and the fires started....
One wood pile going up....




Another wood pile going up....




The first pile the following morning after burning all night...

And the second pile...


The third day. This was what it looked like straight down the hill behind the house....

Half way down the hill using the weed waker for a couple of hours I took this picture...

Burning piles of trees and tea tree as we go down the hill...

And after a day it looked like this...

The fourth day. We are clearing down the creek bed, the site of the fish dam when it is cleared and the dam is built. These pics are prior to clearing the area....



Now it is clearing and burning....





All the rubbish trees and scrub was put in the creek bed and burnt to clear out the creek bed, don't want the fish hooks getting caught on while catching fish now do we?...








This shot is from the house again with the trees....

And then the trees gone, all chopped up to become next year's firewood. You can now see through to the flat down near the creek bed we cleared the day earlier....

And from the shooting balcony....

We were actually amazed that the wildlife started using the cleared area down near the creek the following morning. We could see a kangaroo and a rabbit on the flat along with a collection of birds through the scope on my rifle although we didn't attempt to shot any.
The last day was a quad ride down the back end of the farm to check things out as I haven't been down there for a couple of months. Half way down one of the steep hills we come across this tree branch right across the track...


It come down from up there...


We also moved the water tank using the 4 X 4 and a snatch scrap or two and that was about it, my week down the farm done till next time I go back down.

All in all I'm quite happy at what we got done. We started over 15 fires and chopped down about 40 trees that were either burnt or cut up for next year's firewood. Shoulders are sore from carrying logs, legs are sore from all the walking and the knees are sore from tripping over shit in the scrub but I figure I now have about 5 acres more usable land and cleared a lot of potential fire hazard. Like I said earlier, better to burn it in winter when you can control the fires to some degree rather than waiting for nature to burn it and it can't be stopped in summer.

[dratstab]

Long time admirer of your posts, thanks for keeping the updates flowing

[xman]

Really looking forward to getting back down the farm. Work and life has been busy of late. I'm real eager to see what effect the 160mm of rain the farm has had in the last 15 days on the new dam. I'm not expecting it to be full but it would be good to see it with a nice amount of water in it before summer hits. It's also the 1st day of spring here today so I can start planting grass seed. No more burning off this year, the fire season has been declared, 1st of September this year so any burning now has to be done in a very controlled manner, inside the steel drum as we normally do. There was a chance it was going to be October 1st because of all the rain but no, the whole state was declared today.

[professor_jonny]

im still wondering how the water will fill up that dam also been waiting for you to show it full of water.

[xman]

im still wondering how the water will fill up that dam also been waiting for you to show it full of water.

Well that is a very good question P.J.. The dam isn't actually in a water course but neither is the small dam behind the house. That small dam behind the house was being feed from the left rear side of the house but since I connected that down pipe to the 9000 liter tank as the right rear side has always been, that dam is lacking a bit this year. The case is the same for the new dam. At present it is being feed by the two down pipes that service the front of the house, one left and one on the right They are literally dumping there water on the ground and then that water via the level of the land is running down the slope and into the new dam so that is why the dam is actually getting a fair bit of water in it. A lot of this water is being lost though because the field it has to run down on the slope is freshly bulldozed and is socking up a lot of the water. You may have noticed last visit we moved the 28000 liter tank down near that dam.
The idea is to have the two down pipes from the front of the house as well as the down pipe from the workshop roof, there isn't one ATM, will all join and go down the slope under the dirt and that will feed the 28000 liter water tank. Once that tank is full, shouldn't take very long, it's over flow pipe goes back down under the ground and leads across to the new dam. The 9000 liter tank is over flowing right now and has been for over 3 months now and I really need to hook up it's over flow and feed that back into the dam behind the house.
This over flow idea is fine however it won't keep up when we have showers and start really using the tank's water seriously. I have two creeks that will come into play soon. One is down the hill behind the house and although it doesn't run at all times, I have posted pictures of it bone dry in the past actually. The other one is 3kms away at the back of the farm. These two source of water are what I really want to use to fill all my dams.

[Kozz]

Wow thats a bang-up job you've done installing a dance floor at the farm looks top-notch, and was that a big arse Jacuzzi tub thats nearly 2 stories ?

[xman]

Wow thats a bang-up job you've done installing a dance floor at the farm looks top-notch, and was that a big arse Jacuzzi tub thats nearly 2 stories ?

Yep dance floor turned out well. Much better than concrete. I am getting 3 pool tables from work any time I can pick them up so that last section of the bare concrete slab is about to be built on. I thought I was done with building the house bigger but it seems not the case. I was only after one pool table but the deal is take all three or none so I will have two to sell and the one I keep will live in the "pool table room" along with the pinball I took down a couple of weeks ago. I'll do the pool room the same way I did the kitchen extension/ guest room moving the insulation out of the soon to be inner wall and put it in the outer wall and extend the roof out over the top. I'll leave the sliding door in place as a divider between the pool room and the guest room, I never did like having a glass sliding door as an external door anyway when the other two entry doors are solid core with deadlocks. I'm not putting any windows in, silly to advertise a pool table and pinball inside the house. Where the window is at present, I will take that out and make an open doorway right next to the wood fire heater that can heat the house and the pool room. I still have an air hockey table that will join the pool table I keep and will live in the pool room as well but that isn't available yet. I was expecting to get back down this weekend but that will be the following weekend now.

[xman]

I had a quick visit down the farm over the weekend, actually got there early Sunday morning at 3AM and left at 4PM the same day. The whole purpose was to get some pool tables I acquired from 120kms away and deliver them out the farm for future use. I hadn't been at the farm since burning off 7 weeks ago so it was good to see how things were going. On the drive down I hit my first wombat. Lucky I was in the 4 X 4 because these animals do a lot of damage if they go under the car instead of being hit by the wheel in my case this time. Sad to kill him but I simply ran out of road to avoid him. I had already swerved the width of the road and was just starting to go off the road when I hit him. This is a wombat for those of you that have no idea.

They're about the size of a medium sized dog but twice as thick and full of muscle. They can be like hitting a rock.
Got up in the morning and looked at the new dam to see how much water it had in it after all the rain we had there of late. Looking good I think but no where near full yet.

Not quite enough rain to see the tree on the island effect yet but it will come I think.

The grass I planted is starting to come on good now that the frost has stopped as we are well into spring here now.



Good to see I didn't waste my time or grass seed. Should make a fine grassy field as it grows. And the reason I was actually at the farm for, the pool tables.....

They're on there sides obviously without the legs bolted on but should look quite good and play well once setup.
Here are the legs..

One needs a new cloth, not the one facing out, and the legs need a paint job but other than that, quite nice units with coin mechs attached as they were cash tables. Was nearly worth all the lifting to get these things transported. They are slate tables and anyone that has lifted them knows the weight involved. They sat sideways in the trailer strapped to each side of the trailer and after a 120km ride including a couple of kays of dirt road, they're now at the new home waiting on my next visit, may be this weekend coming, to set them up.


This will be where the room goes that will have the pool tables in it. I'm building the house out to be level with the existing extension to the front of the house. Leaving the sliding door in place to form a doorway between the guest room and the pool table room and the window on the side of the house will become an open doorway. Well that's all I have till at least next weekend. Hope you all enjoy.

[xman]

The family went down the farm last weekend and we set up one of the pool table. Not in it's room that I haven't built yet but in the lounge room after reorganizing things a little bit. I think this table is going to get heaps of use if the weekend was anything to go by. Once it was set up, it was being played constantly. Amazing, it looks like I may have found something that doesn't cost money, doesn't involve a screen and doesn't use power of any kind that actually entertains my boys for longer than 10 minutes. I never thought this possible but are glad to be proven wrong.


I spent a bit of time on the machines, they haven't had much loving of late, and needed a few hours but I had good success. The wife's buggy finally had the gearbox cable replaced so now it has forward and reverse again and was put to use straight away collecting logs I had in piles around the place for next year's wood fire supply.

It actually had a collection of issues. The cable that without it, the machine could only go forward. The carburetor had a blocked main jet from fuel in it that had started to turn to jelly as it does when you leave old fuel in small cabbys for extended periods of time and lastly, a flat battery from trying to start the motor with the jet blocked. Anyway, all fixed now.

We have picked out this site as the location of the ducks and quail enclosure. Should be ideal because the seepage of water from the dam will keep the ground moist and should have the grass happy. I hope to start on this enclosure real soon. I'm planning on half burying colour bond steel sheet into the ground about 400mm in the ground as the boundary to stop predators from digging under the mesh wire fence that is above the ground. So what you will see is a wire perimeter fence that is mesh wire fence with up to about 500mm from the ground steel sheet that goes down into the ground under the ground height. I'm hoping this fence is able to stop snakes, foxes etc from getting inside.

I actually decided to bring back the farm's trusty Xbox for some added content. As you can see it has had a hard life but has never missed a beat since I made it over 3 years ago. It was the 3rd 2TB sata machine I ever made and since being built, has never run on mains power, only off an inverter powered from the farm's battery / solar setup I use for power as we are not grid connected and it hasn't been net connected either as we have no phone, cell phone or internet connection. Believe me, it takes some getting use to being so remote but this trusty Xbox and the radio is all I need to keep me sane. As you can see, I never took off the original build stickers I put on all my machines when I build them and the machine is covered in a layer of dust, drywall dust from sanding and God knows what else. The build stickers all have a purpose. The big white one is the customer's request sticker. Basically what customer wants as extras. In this case, just a 2TB HDD.. The yellow sticker on the lid is the customer, in this case M is for "mine". The front sticker with 2TB means the 2TB is fitted and lastly the OK means it was all tested including the DVDrive in this case prior to shipping. I still use this sticker system because it helps when I have more than one customer's machine being built at once. I did once ship the wrong machine so I adopted this system and never stuffed up since.
Another big issue I was having was water pressure out of the kitchen's sink tap. I was set to start replacing the pipe to that tap in 3/4" pipe up from 1/2" all the way back to the pressure tank on the tower and just before I started I decided to check for bent flexible pipes that go from the wall to the tap mixer itself but no, it was fine but then I spotted the spout had a mesh in it and removed it and bammm, full pressure. It looks as though crap from cutting the pipes originally had made it's way along the pipe and blocked the mesh. Turned out to be a 10 minute fix instead of a 4 hour task. Well that's it till next visit. See ya'lls.

[xman]

It's been a while since I've added anything here. Simple answer, I haven't been down the farm for a long time. I've been busy with work in Sydney and that pays cash to spend on the farm. . I did however duck down last weekend and it rained pretty solid the whole time. Just getting to the farm was an adventure with water over the road across the causeways that I need to go through to get there. Not the desired thing to do when I'm in the work's company car in the middle of the night driving through flood water across the only road to get to the farm but the Holden Rodeo had no issues with the 400mm of water. This one..

When I got to the farm, I noticed the dams were looking pretty good but not full yet. You can see the 'island effect" starting to happen in the new dam we just built. I think I'll be getting out the tractor and digging a bit more. The idea of the island is to give the native ducks somewhere to sleep at night that the foxes can't get to...


The pumpkins we planted last time down have done nothing since we planted them. The soil is just to acidic so I need to tend to that, I just need to buy a shitload of lime. I did a soil analyses test a couple of months ago and found the PH level was about 2-3 levels up from neutral meaning the soil is good for growing Australian natives and potatoes and that is it till I get that acid level down.

Funny, the lemon, mandarin and orange trees seem quite happy growing in it.


New pool table cover for the pool table to keep the dust off it...

The forest dam had water right to the track to the house and was over flowing. I took this pic from the car.

Same as the house dam..

One job I did do was run some temporary storm water pipe to send the rainwater off the front of the house and send it down the hill into the new dam. This pipe will be used to carry the rain water down to the 28000 liter water tank and will be in the ground, not on it but that wasn't happening this visit. Once the tank is full, then the tank's overflow pipe will direct the water into the dam.

After a night's rain, and the new storm water pipe, the dam looked as if it was benefiting from the extra water it was getting from the house roof..

I bought in some quad lights from China that I can attach to the quad's handlebars so when you ride at night, the light turns lighting where you are going rather than just straight ahead of the quad. I just had to mod the attachments, because nothing out of China that is cheap ever seem to work straight out of the box. They are pretty good, bright lights, 9watt LEDs, but there was no way to adjust the lights to enable you to point them in the direction you need so I added a swivel to the bracket. Now they are useful..

Sorry boys, nothing real exciting in this lot but I will be down next weekend. It's a 3 day long weekend down here and my son's are coming down so I should have something of substance next time.

[xman]

It's been a while but here is a few things I have going on. Last August a mate and I went down solely to burn off. Well this is happening again this year so I started preparing. Last year we cleared one side of the creek crossing. This year it will be the other side of the crossing so I started knocking down trees into the creek so they will be dry to burn come burn time. I also have a lot of black berry in this side of the creek. This weekend I sprayed it so it should be dead come burn time. The problem with the spraying is it has to be done when the plant is flowering or else it simply doesn't kill it. As we are heading into Autumn or Fall as some know it, I was quickly running out of time but I think I got it in early enough.


That was a good start for that job I think. I chopped down about 15 trees, I'm only targeting the crappy small trees by the way. The only big trees I cut down are when they really need to go or I need the wood for something.

Another job is how to get the tractor, trucks or anything that I need to get to the other end of the property that is larger than a quad which are the only vehicles I can get there at the moment. There are a couple of problems I need to over come here.
I need to put a track through here roughly where the fence is.

It goes right past this smaller of the pine forests which is handy. I will be needing to build a creek crossing from these pine trees.

The log bridge will be for crossing the creek upstream from this, the only crossing I have at the moment that is some of the reason why I can't get vehicles to the back now.

Now for the big one.
I need to get the track past the log bridge to link to the existing track but only to the steepest climb on the property and then I need to build a new road through the large pine forest half way down the farm. At the moment the track turns sharply and climbs straight up a hill that not only is steep but slopes bad to one side as it goes up the hill. Again, fine on a quad but nothing else. Here is the plan.
Instead of going up that hill I bring to track through here.

Go up the hill to where the quad is parked and go right straight into the forest making the track though the forest about 400 meters slowly climbing rather than straight to the top in one hit as it is now.

The track will start here.

All this so I can get vehicles to the back of the farm which looks like this about 3kms away for the farm house.

By the way, that fence is exactly the same fence in the earlier photo. It runs basically down the center of the farm from one end to the other and is of no use other than making other fences out of.
As you can see I have my work ahead of me. Problem is I can't get the tractor in to help until I can get over that very first creek and that is only 50 meters from the farm house right at one end of the farm. Until then I can only use quads. I'm thinking a simple trailer for the quads to hold one end of the logs up off the ground with the other end of the log dragging on the ground. It would be one log at a time but that is better than man handling the logs to the bridge location.