Category Archives: House

No Time To Blog

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With two children and a household to maintain, there never seems to be any time to blog. There’s nothing monumental to say, of course; just the trivia of daily life. On the other hand, it’s precisely the trivia of another that many people find so fascinating.

Our house has had some more work done: the sealant around the glass panes in our conservatory has been completely renewed. We’ve had a lot of rain lately and I’m pleased to say that it does, indeed, appear that the ground floor leaks are now all a thing of the past.

Of course, you solve one problem and another one soon appears. Alarming cracks are appearing across inner walls in various rooms and if I place a marble on the floor in the dining-room, it rolls to the other side of the room. Hmm. The joys of owning a house built on a bog. I hope I won’t soon be blogging from the bottom of a pile of rubble.

Anyway, we’re off to the Canary Islands this afternoon to escape the end of the Dutch winter.

Cycle Of Maintenance

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Maintenance on one’s own house, at least when that house is an old one, never really stops. To quote Neil Hannon, it’s like “painting the Forth Bridge with a toothbrush”. By the time you get to the end, it’s time to start again from the other end.

Last week, a membrane was sealed into place on our bathroom balcony, hopefully eliminating the seepage responsible of the brown stains on the ceiling of the conservatory.

I do hope so, because today, the painters were in to paint the ceiling of most of the ground floor.

Back in October 2008 and while we were away in the US, we had a leak in the pipes by the boiler in the loft, which caused the boiler to cleverly empty itself via a very indirect route onto our dining-room ceiling.

The actual area that sustained damage was only a few square metres, but because our dining-room flows seamlessly into our kitchen in one direction and our living-room in the other, the entire surface area of the three rooms needed to be painted. Happily, the insurance is coughing up for this little job.

And so we had them do the ceiling of the conservatory, too. Everything’s looking pristine again and the smell of water-based paint fills the ground floor. As it pours with rain outside, I find myself hoping that the roofer did a good job and really did cure those conservatory leaks. The balcony is located directly above the conservatory, so if it’s not watertight, the conservatory gets it.

Even now, almost a year and a half after moving in here, this house is still yielding surprises. Take, for example, the last time the heating people were here to do their annual maintenance on the heating and air-conditioning systems.

They alerted us to the presence of an unused heat recovery ventilation unit (I must admit that I had to look up the English name for a warmteterugwinapparaat) in the crawlspace under the house. It had never been plugged in, because there was simply no socket in the crawlspace.

So, when the electrical people came to do their annual maintenance on our alarm system and security cameras this week, I had the electrician run electricity to this device. It’s now quietly humming away, hopefully providing us with better air than we’ve been hitherto breathing.

Can you believe that this machine was just sitting there, lurking in the inhospitable nether regions of our house, unused for all the years it had been in situ? No-one had had the gumption to run electricity to it. Presumably, the previous owner of the house had paid good money for it. Perhaps he didn’t even know it was there; or perhaps he didn’t care. We’ll never know.

I also had the electrician fit a fluorescent light in the cellar, so that we (and the heating people on future visits) can see around down there. All I can see now is piles of rubble, other debris and evidence of subsidence; not recent, I sincerely hope.

Speaking of casting light and banishing the darkness, I also had them fit a fluorescent light at the back of the loft, so that the boiler area is now also illuminated. Up until now, there was light only at the front of the loft, by the folding stairs. Again, this will primarily benefit the heating people, who have been a regular fixture at this place for one reason or another since we moved in. They’ve already made two visits to us this year alone, to fix yet another problem with the boiler, unrelated to any we’ve experienced before.

More outside maintenance on the house is planned for this coming Wednesday. I just keep ticking the boxes.

Gadgets Galore

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We installed our eighth Sonos zone yesterday, with a new ZP-120 in the bedroom. This is also our first wireless zone, because we don’t have Ethernet running to the bedroom.

A couple of modified KEF iQ50 speakers provide the sound, via the KEF wireless system. The wireless receiver units, which are usually externally attached to the back of the speakers, have been manually built into the chamber of each loudspeaker. One of the speaker connectors has been removed from each of the rear panels to enable the receiver’s power cord to pass through to the outside. The connector isn’t needed, because the receiver is attached on the inside.

This was the perfect solution for our bedroom, where running cables isn’t really practical. We’ve been very happy with the KEF wireless system that powers the satellite speakers in our TV room. That the shop we’re dealing with was willing to perform this unique modification for us is testament to the great service they offer.

And so began another glorious gadget day.

Our three year old Philips 37PF9830 TV went upstairs to the bedroom, to be replaced by a full HD Sharp LC-46HD1E in the living-room. Thanks to the ZP-120 in the bedroom, we can also play the sound of the TV over the iQ50 speakers.

Similarly, our old Logitech Z-5450 digital speaker system has been consigned to the cellar. Our existing KEF iQ9 speakers and Rel Quake subwoofer have now been connected to a new Cambridge Audio Azur 740A amplifier, which finally allows us to integrate them with all of our living-room equipment. Our old Sonos ZP-100 is now connected to this, as is our MythTV box and a new Sony BDP-S550 Blu-ray player, which replaces our rather awful old Philips DVDR 7300H DVD player.

The Sony Blu-ray player can be made region-free for DVD playback (not for Blu-ray), but rather unusually, this can’t be done using its own remote-control. One has to use codes that the standard remote-control is unable to send. Normally the installer would have done this for me, but he had forgotten his master remote-control. I was pleased to discover, however, that I could perform the operation myself, using the IR transmitter on my mobile phone and a program called irRemote. That’s the first time I’ve found a use for the IR capability of my phone.

The amplifier is also connected back to the auxiliary input of the ZP-100, which, by linking Sonos zones, enables us to pipe the sound of the TV through the ceiling speakers in the kitchen and dining-room. That’s a nice bonus.

Last, but not least, after eight years of sterling if not stylish service, our trusty old IKEA TV furniture has been retired and replaced by a sleek-looking piece of slim-line glass furniture from Spectral. I’d become so used to the sight of the old thing that I was desensitised to it and finding a replacement that was both practical and attractive has proved surprisingly hard. The new piece is much more in keeping with our living-room.

In the process, the plate of spaghetti behind the furniture has been thinned out, shortened, bound and hidden. This removes an eyesore that has persisted for years, which pleases Sarah no end.

I do love big gadget days like this one.

TV Room

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Not everything to do with the house this week has been devoid of an element of fun; quite the opposite, in fact.

Pakjesavond for me came a day early this year, when the long-awaited installation of the gear for our new TV room finally took place.

The new TV room has been my project since we got back from our summer holiday. It started with an order for a new couch, a couple of side tables and a lamp, and ended with the largest single order of audio-visual equipment I’ve ever done.

The room is now wired for sound with two KEF iQ70 speakers at the front, an iQ60c centre speaker and two wirelessly driven iQ50 speakers at the back, on either side of the couch.

The subwoofer is a T3 from REL. I have a couple of their [Quake](http://www.rel.net/t3.htm] subwoofers on the ground floor and have been very happy with them.

To handle the music, a new model ZP90 controller provides our seventh Sonos listening zone.

The centrepiece of the room is an absolutely stunning Sharp LC-65XS1E television, mounted on the wall. Its picture quality, particularly the purity of the black in films, is breathtaking.

A Sony BDP-S550 provides the ability to watch BDs (Blu-ray Discs) and DVDs. The DVD function has been made region free, as we own a lot of foreign (mostly region 1) discs.

Normal TV viewing is courtesy of a UPC HDTV cable box, but only a few channels are currently offered in HD over here, including one from National Geographic and another from Discovery. Even then, not all of the programming is in HD, but when it is, it looks simply amazing.

Rounding out the experience is a Sony Playstation 3, which I’ve barely had time to mess with yet.

All of the above is currently hooked up to a Rotel RSX-1057 receiver, which drives the 5.1 speaker system described above. The receiver itself is actually on loan, because I’m still awaiting the arrival of a brand new RSX-1550 unit, which has support for the new Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD lossless audio codecs (needed for Blu-ray), as well as HDMI 1.3a, which enables Deep Color support.

In anticipation of the arrival of all this gear, I patched the room’s network ports through to my main switch, so the Sonos, the Blu-ray player and the Playstation all have wired Internet access. All the ports on my main switch are now in use, though, so any further expansion will require the purchase of a new switch.

All of this new equipment added another five remote-controls to our already extensive collection, so I purchased a second Logitech Harmony One universal remote-control to manage the new stuff. I really like the relatively new Harmony One model and find it to be a big improvement on previous models, such as the 885 that we used to use.

To celebrate the arrival and installation of this grand new cinema set-up, we watched our very first film on Blu-ray, the director’s cut of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which had been beautifully remastered and looked as if it hadn’t aged a moment. The difference in picture quality between Blu-ray and DVD is impressive, but DVDs are still good enough that you really don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve witnessed a Blu-ray.

Anyway, I’m like a child in a toy shop with this new set-up. It’s like my birthday, Sinterklaas and Christmas all rolled up into one.

Life In The Colander

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Three more leaks in the conservatory came to light during the week, after snow and wind probably drove moisture into nooks and crannies not normally reached by the more usual watery precipitation.

Just when you think you’ve had all the necessary maintenance done…

Yesterday, we had the old shed floor ripped up and replaced by a new one. The old one was rotten and our feet had already gone through it in several places. Walking around in there had become hazardous, as one had to watch out for the potholes. The new hardwood floor beams should hopefully stop the plywood plates on top from succumbing to the moisture in the air.

We’ve also had a new stone sill placed in the doorway, because the old one was rotting away.

Considering that we had a new roof, including beams, put on the shed last year, much of the structure is now new. Only the outer walls, doors and ceiling are the ones that were in place when we purchased the property.

Our first floor garden balcony was also ripped up and inspected yesterday. The balcony wall had its top recovered with mortar.

In an effort to prevent future leaks from the balcony, we still need to have a waterproof roofing surface burned into place on top of the concrete floor. This work will probably be done between Christmas and New Year, while we’re in the US.

Before we go to America, we also need to have a window replaced and the grout along the conservatory window frames renewed. Some of the frames themselves may also need to be renewed. This work is currently scheduled for the last workday before we leave for the US, which makes me slightly nervous, but I choose to acquiesce to the schedule of the people doing the work, rather than risk their being unable to find a slot early in the new year.

I hope next year’s maintenance costs are low, because we’ve had an expensive twelve months: a new garden, repairs to the brickwork all around the house, boiler problems, etc. And the damaged dining-room ceiling hasn’t even been repainted yet, although our insurance will hopefullly ultimately cover that.