Posted by Benjamin Close on February 21, 2009 under Country Living | 
Example Of A Houses Plumbing with / without a hot water loop
One thing that a lot of people don’t fully understand is the concept of a hot water plumbing loop. The reason for this is not really all that surprizing. Anyone with mains water to their house probably wouldn’t even care about the concept. Most builders won’t offer it as an option, most plumbers aren’t aware of it but the benefits of it are huge. Expecially in Australia with drought conditions and water restrictions, even on mains water a hot water plumbing loop makes a lot of sense.
Read more of this article »
Posted by Benjamin Close on under Country Living |
After attending Final selections Monday, Tuesday we received the site plans from our the engineers for both our shed pad and the access track. This is the final piece of the puzzle that we needed in order to make Tea Tree Gully council happy.
In Hills Face Zone, the council requires details about anything that requires earth works. This includes putting in a driveway (aka Access Track). The ironic thing is they actually need the access track in order to approve the house. Sadly the Access track was not included on the House application that was lodged.
So on Wednesday a quick visit to the council chambers and a little explaining solved a lot. I believe the members of planning are happy to work with people but often they get information second or third hand or people blatently ignore their guidelines. Hence no wonder they get annoyed.
Anyway, after explaining that we wanted to lodge plans for the shed AND the access track the lady at the desk refered me to the person looking after our house application. After reexplaining the situation the only alteration they required was a letter from us stating we would not commence construction of the shed before the house had reached “Lock Up” stage. Their reasoning for this is they don’t want people living out of sheds.
Dragon (the person looking after our house) then was happy to accept the shed application and indicated he would use the access track plan on the shed application to also assess the house application. I was even able to lodge the shed application without the letter promising to provide it by the end of the day.
Hence I later emailed through the letter – later to fax it as sadly the council was unable to open the letter in the email I sent.
So after all this we have now lodged everything we need with council! So it really is a waiting game now. We are waiting on council to approve the house, the access track and the shed! Once this is done we can start getting things built!
Posted by Benjamin Close on under Country Living |
Monday Carly and I attended Format Homes for our Final selections. Things went very smoothly and we were very impressed at the range we had to choose from. In the end all we ended up needing to pay extra for was a few optional things we had requested. These included a 3rd coat of paint – due to us wanting a particular colour for the internal walls. We also had to pay extra for both a hot water plumbing loop and an upgrade to 20mm piping for all water.
This these three things were not surprizing since they are all non standard. The rest of selections went very smoothly. So now it’s a waiting game as we wait for council to approve/complain about our house plans!
Posted by Benjamin Close on February 10, 2009 under FreeDesktop |
CGit is now the latest stable (0.8.2) which brings in a number of bug fixes, including some caching fixes and also adds tags and branches to log view as shown below:
CGit Tags and Branches now show up in Log view
Posted by Benjamin Close on under Country Living |
Today a quick call to the council revealed that our plan is currently with the Department of Health. Apparently they are looking over the Septic tank system. I was told it’s been with them for a week now and approvals in general are taking 6 – 8 weeks.
Posted by Benjamin Close on under Country Living |
The right class can make a major difference
One thing a lot of people are unaware of is just how much difference a good glass can make to their house. Many people think of glass as just being something to look through. But glass is much more than that. Glass is:
- A wind barrier
- A heat barrier
- An Insulator
- A protection mechanism
- A sound barrier
Our House Plan
More and more people are building houses with lots of glass. They do this to increase their views, to make the house feel more open and to make a house feel more homely. Take our house for example. Our house has 57.84m2 of glass consisting of glass doors and windows. The entire living area of our house is 224m2. Hence we have a lot of glass.
All this glass is great for view, not so great for cleaning and when it comes to heating and cooling could be a disaster. You see glass is a relatively poor insulator. On a hot day put your hand up to the window and feel just how hot it is. Heat comes through standard glass (normally 4mm float glass) at a rate of 1 watt per m2, per degree celcius. Hence if you had one window of 1 m2, and the temperature outside was 1 degree hotter than inside, you’ld need to put in 1 watt worth of cooling to prevent the room getting hotter, per hour.
So with a house with 57.84m2 worth of glass, we’d need 57.84 watts for every degree difference outside. So image it was 40 degrees outside. We wanted to keep the inside temperature at a plesant 26 degrees. That would require 40-26=14 degrees, 14*57.84 ~= 810 watts/hour. That’s a lot of heat you’ve got to offset! If your on solar, that’s almost 1Kw/h which is very hard to maintain!
Comfort Plus Glass Makeup
There is however a way to make a difference. One that doesn’t need artificial cooling/heating. There is lots of glasses around now. Each glass has different properties. There is double glassing which separates two panes of glass with either an air gap or inert gas. There’s ‘Low E’ type glasses which have a special reflective coating to prevent heat getting in, but allowing light in. There’s glass which helps knock out all the UV rays so it’s better for your eyes and doesn’t fade your furniture.
We’ve chosen to go for a glass called ‘Comfort Plus‘ glass. This glass has a much better thermal properties
as it is two sheets of 3 mm float glass with a silcon wafer sandwiched in between. Hence it effectively works like double glazing without the cost of double glazing and without the problems associated with double glazing. (Double glazing suffers from not being able to have sliding windows, weight issues, condensation issues). Comfort Plus is by Viridian glass and hence Dowell, the window maker used by Format, is able to source it (as they use viridian glass). Whilst it is a little heaver than standard glass, the benefits it has are certainly worth it. If you look at the glass comparision compared to standard4mm float glass comfort plus Clear #82:
- Blocks out 99% of all UV light
- Reduces Heat Gain/Loss by 2.3w per m2/degree celcius/hour
- Is a thicker glass (6.38mm vs 4mm) so has better sound insulation, is more resistent to breakage
- Lets more visible light through!
- Reduces solar radiation
- Is laminated, hence it’s suitable for a medium bushfire region
So in the long run, whilst comfort plus glass might cost a little more than standard glass, the benefits outweight the downsides.
So whether your building a new house, replacing a window or extending an existing house, stop to think about the glass. It could save you a fortune!
Viridian Glass Comparison Document
Posted by Benjamin Close on February 5, 2009 under Country Living |
Westinghouse GGP475S
When deciding to build our home, Carly and I very quickly realised an Electric oven was not a practicle solution. With our electricity being generated from Solar, a standard electric oven using 2-3Kw of power per hour would drain our backup supply very rapidly. (We will only be generating about 10kw a day). Hence we decided very early on we would use a Gas oven.
A little research also revealed this to be a good choice. Gas ovens are generally more efficient than electric ovens. They heat up quicker and use less energy to maintain the same temperature than electric ovens.
The down side however is the European market now has gone mainly electric. The most likely cause for this is the lack of natural gas and also the increased green energy now available. This sadly ment that most ovens are now electric.
Hence we had a limited range to chose from. In the end we decided on a Westinghouse Gas oven. Not only are Westing house Australian, the internal oven space is much larger the other gas ovens on the market – and much larger than many of the electric oven on the market!
This is where some of the drama’s started. We did a quick ring around for the Westinghouse GGP475S oven (as shown). The best price we found was $1400 from Spartan electrical. We figured since the RRP for the electric oven used by Format was $990, and since we had an allowance of $350 in our contract for a gas oven, the difference in having this oven would be minimal.
Yesterday Carly and I received a variation form from Format Homes indicating an additional $1,183.00 would be payable to have this oven. We were a little astonished. Today I rang format and was told that they didn’t realise we had the $350 allowance and the price difference would now be $833 ?!?! This was nuts! This is over 2/3 the price of the oven. Hence after a long discussion we’ve decided not to get the gas oven installed by Format Homes. Instead we’ll get a credit for the Electric Oven (said to be $550), the $350 allowance refunded and put the oven in ourselves after handover. So $1400 – $550-$350 = $500.
We can get the plumbing done for free!
Posted by Benjamin Close on February 2, 2009 under OpenSource, UniSA |
Recently Ben and I have been trying to get a FreeBSD box to join an Active Directory domain. The domain controller was running Windows Server 2008. After a *lot* of stuffing around to get this working we finally found the solution to our problem – the version of samba.
You see the problem we were facing was:
# net ads join -U cis-closebs
cis-closebs's password:
Failed to join domain: Improperly formed account name
Now we checked the logs, checked kerberos, samba, but could not get this working. The debug logs showed something but nothing really useful:
# net ads join -U cis-closebs
cis-closebs's password:
Failed to join domain: Improperly formed account name
# net ads join -d 3 -U cis-closebs
[2009/02/02 12:55:26, 3] param/loadparm.c:lp_load(5031)
lp_load: refreshing parameters
[2009/02/02 12:55:26, 3] param/loadparm.c:init_globals(1430)
Initialising global parameters
[2009/02/02 12:55:26, 3] param/params.c:pm_process(572)
params.c:pm_process() - Processing configuration file "/usr/local/etc/smb.conf"
[2009/02/02 12:55:26, 3] param/loadparm.c:do_section(3770)
Processing section "[global]"
[2009/02/02 12:55:26, 2] lib/interface.c:add_interface(81)
added interface ip=130.220.236.62 bcast=130.220.237.255 nmask=255.255.254.0
[2009/02/02 12:55:26, 3] libsmb/namequery.c:get_dc_list(1489)
get_dc_list: preferred server list: "130.220.64.77, uninet.unisa.edu.au, *"
[2009/02/02 12:55:26, 3] libads/ldap.c:ads_connect(394)
Connected to LDAP server 130.220.64.77
[2009/02/02 12:55:26, 3] libsmb/namequery.c:get_dc_list(1489)
get_dc_list: preferred server list: "130.220.64.77, uninet.unisa.edu.au, *"
[2009/02/02 12:55:26, 3] libsmb/namequery.c:get_dc_list(1489)
get_dc_list: preferred server list: "130.220.64.77, uninet.unisa.edu.au, *"
cis-closebs's password:
[2009/02/02 12:55:27, 3] libsmb/namequery.c:get_dc_list(1489)
get_dc_list: preferred server list: "130.220.64.77, uninet.unisa.edu.au, *"
[2009/02/02 12:55:27, 3] libads/ldap.c:ads_connect(394)
Connected to LDAP server 130.220.64.77
[2009/02/02 12:55:27, 3] libads/sasl.c:ads_sasl_spnego_bind(213)
ads_sasl_spnego_bind: got OID=1 2 840 48018 1 2 2
[2009/02/02 12:55:27, 3] libads/sasl.c:ads_sasl_spnego_bind(213)
ads_sasl_spnego_bind: got OID=1 2 840 113554 1 2 2
[2009/02/02 12:55:27, 3] libads/sasl.c:ads_sasl_spnego_bind(213)
ads_sasl_spnego_bind: got OID=1 2 840 113554 1 2 2 3
[2009/02/02 12:55:27, 3] libads/sasl.c:ads_sasl_spnego_bind(213)
ads_sasl_spnego_bind: got OID=1 3 6 1 4 1 311 2 2 10
[2009/02/02 12:55:27, 3] libads/sasl.c:ads_sasl_spnego_bind(222)
ads_sasl_spnego_bind: got server principal name = not_defined_in_RFC4178@please_ignore
[2009/02/02 12:55:27, 3] libsmb/clikrb5.c:ads_krb5_mk_req(593)
ads_krb5_mk_req: krb5_cc_get_principal failed (No such file or directory)
[2009/02/02 12:55:27, 1] libsmb/clikrb5.c:ads_krb5_mk_req(602)
ads_krb5_mk_req: krb5_get_credentials failed for not_defined_in_RFC4178@please_ignore (Server not found in Kerberos database)
[2009/02/02 12:55:27, 1] utils/net_ads.c:net_ads_join(1470)
error on ads_startup: Server not found in Kerberos database
Failed to join domain: Improperly formed account name
[2009/02/02 12:55:27, 2] utils/net.c:main(1036)
return code = -1
Turns out that it was the version of samba we were using. Version 3.0.28 had issues with joining a Windows Server 2008 Active Directory domain. This was fixed in Samba 3.0.28a and as can be seen with the FreeBSD ports commit:
|
Revision 1.169: download - view: text, markup, annotated - select for diffs
Thu May 1 16:32:53 2008 UTC (9 months ago) by timur
Branches: MAIN
Diff to: previous 1.168: preferred, colored
Changes since revision 1.168: +2 -2 lines
Update port to the 3.0.28a revision.
Major changes:
o Failure to join Windows 2008 domains
o Windows Vista (including SP1 RC) interop issues
Approved by: shaun (mentor, implicit)
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So if you find yourself hunting around chasing something that surely should work.. consider upgrading samba!
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