gabion update

Since our good friend Lee designed our round gabion pillars we have had lots of great comments about them and the thin gabions that surround the deck.

when I decided to tidy up around the rear steps and build a small deck extension to infill a dead space the natural way to end that was to build another small gabion.

Then I thought I would just show some pictures of the  other gabions that we have done just to remind people.

filling the gabion

round gabion with insulator sculpture

finished gabion

The finished old new fence

Ramp it up

Part of the plans of the extension was a ramp off the deck. Although we have two sets of broad steps a ramp just makes moving furniture etc so much easier. Also gives access to our elderly neighbours.

I decided to make it about 5 meters long  and 1 meter wide with a support saddle at the low end, one near the top where it changed width to go around a rock gabion and then supported at the deck as well. After welding the saddles and concreting them in I laid three 150mm C sections down and fixed them. On top of this I screwed down some left over futurewood decking to match the deck. When building the saddles I had made provision for uprights for a hand rail. These are bolted in and the bannister bolted to these. This is so I can easily remove the whole thing for painting in sections or if I need to move larger objects up the ramp.

Photos tell a thousand words

before the ramp

ramp landing

 

ramp under construction

handrail in position

finished ramp

ramp and step area completed

Post xmas 2012 update

Have realised that I have not added anything to this blog since the end of August!!

Pretty slack!!

It is not that things have not been happening it is just pure laziness on my part, oh and earning a living and walking the dog, and doing community stuff, and so it goes on.

Mostly since August I was concentrating on finishing things off so we could get our final inspection from Council which was granted 06/12/12 A milestone. Does it mean that the house is finished, well NO. Just the parts that were submitted to Council three and a half years ago. Basically the extension, kitchen, laundry and deck.

When troy the building inspector came around he cast his eye around, asked for two things to be done and that was it. Six weeks later I reminded council that they were issuing the Final Inspection certificate, and they got around to it.

So since August I built the ramp off the deck (see post on that under Deck). Had another 2Kw of solar added as a seperate system. We now have a 1kw system and a 2 kw system. Both running seperate inverters etc.

both inverters, 2kw is underneath

1 kw solar and 2 kw solar underneath

The other major thing we have done is to tidy up the area around the steps. As you can see above we have filled with some more decking, built a water tank stand for a 1000 litre zinc tank that we have had for a couple of years doing nothing and created a screen to hang a “Love Life!” sculpture made by friends Zane and Sally.

Love Life !

Other little things include running a grey water divert right under the extension to a large tank with a submersible pump. when it fills the pump comes on and waters our native trees at the end of the garden. Constant garden attention in spring time keeps Mandy busy between working, oh and we replaced the fence. The original 50 meters of paling fence was held together with barbed wire and spit. It only took a day and a half to put the new one up but days of denailing, stacking, sorting and we have only cut up a fraction. Waiting for winter so we can burn some of it in our wood heater.