Originally Posted by
Scouse
Black cats? I think I've killed a million of them.
We've owned this house for 3 years now & it's been disaster after disaster since then.
Bought house, repainted inside, all good.
Replaced kitchen, found no wall behind (not unusual I believe) but found several termite eaten timbers (old damage) & a few new pieces put in. Think: OK, it's semi-rural, termites have been, they've been taken care of & the damage has been repaired.
Remove the carpets a week before we move in & find termite tracks coming from virtually every external & INTERNAL wall along the slab.
Find lots of drill holes in slab where it's been treated but there's no obvious signs of repairs to the walls so I assume nothing has been repaired/inspected internally. The roof is still up so what I don't know, won't hurt me.
Have a pestie (family friend) come in who drills God knows how many holes in slab. 2 guys, all day with 2 hammer drills - hundreds of holes - and all saturated with double strength whatever they use.
So the termites should be good for the next 20 years.
5 months after we move in, we cop a big storm & discover that the land around the house is actually higher than the slab. The water escapes through a couple of drains which quickly block up so we have a moat. It doesn't take long before water (and next doors sewerage overflow) is coming in through the window sills.
Wifey is 6mths pregnant so can't help much. I remove as much wet material as I can & slip over on the cork tiles. Broke a few ribs.
Insurance company starts playing silly buggers & thinks they can clean the carpets but I've already removed them........they get replaced eventually.
So, there's 3 of us living in a bare floored house with everything piled into the one room that escaped the water.
3 weeks after the flood, wifey has complications with the pregnancy & calls an ambulance. The ambo takes an hour to get there after apparently going the wrong way & getting stuck in floodwater.
Anyway, gets to hospital, bleeding badly so #2 son has to come out there & then, 2.5 months early. He's rushed to another hospital who can look after him.
Pleased to say, that part has worked out OK, he came home on Anzac day 2012 (new carpets laid 2-3 days beforehand).
August 2012 & I'm trying to shift a 6' diameter tree trunk & cop the Tirfor handle in the face. One broken cheekbone. Off work for 6 weeks.
November 2012. Riding to work, come off bicycle & smash collarbone into 4 pieces. Off work for 7 weeks.
Start sorting out drainage issues around house, have 480 tonnes of soil removed so house actually sits higher than most of the land (concrete driveway still higher through - WTF?) & then start to sort out why our sewerage pipes need clearing out every month or so.
Turns out there's been a few repairs over the years, using whatever came to hand. Like ice cream containers to cover broken / cut pipes - WTF?
So, rip out all the sewer pipes & start again - sorted.
Lay approx. 200m of 100mm pipe & another 200m of agpipe for the stormwater. Fill with 50 tonne of gravel & dig 6m wide / 50m long trench alongside house so water has somewhere to go - sorted.
Hot water dies through all this too, and it's right where everything is dug up so access is real beaut.
And now the shed.........
