Solar and Cracked Up

The boys from FreeSolar were up on the roof for most of yesterday in the blazing sun installing the solar panels for our 3kw solar system. From what I can see on the ground they have done a neat job. The inverter has been positioned over the electricity meter box so as to keep thinks looking tidy as we didn't want a random box just anywhere with loads of conduit running here there and everywhere. A few roof tiles paid the price during the fitting and apparently there were 3 broken ones up there anyway. So the asked if we had some spare tiles to replace the damaged ones - well the answer to that would be NO as Metricon didn't leave us any. Oh hang on I'm not being fair there - yes they did lave us some but....... they were all smashed so they went in the bin. Quick call to a couple of tile stockist who told us they'd need to order them in, followed by a call to Boral who told us that our tiles have been, wait for it wait for it, DISCONTINUED. Shock faint horror! You build a new house, have no spare roof tiles and the ones your builder used are discontinued. What to do now. Phone Metricon explain the situation and now they have promised to see if they have any that they can bring over, I reminded them we are still under our 6 month service and maintenance period so they better come up with the goods. In the meantime we have ordered 30 tiles from the supplier as there is stock but no more being made. That'll cost us around $175 (might send M the bill and see what happens ha ha).
The solar guys have moved all the broken tiles to the front row of the garage and sealed them up with silicone for now so if it does rain heavily before the replacement ones arrive and we get a leak it will be over the garage and not into the main body of the house. Also it will make it easier to swap them out.

Oh now I come to think of it we better order some ridge cap tiles too as we plan to live here a long time so don't want to get to the stage where we can't get hold of what we need if something gets cracked or dislodged.

The solar is all installed and on but we are not yet connected or is it producing electricity until Energex do their bit whenever that will be. Sorry to be so vague but I had some much other stuff happening yesterday that I didn't fully take it all in. I'll have to give FreeSolar a call and double check the facts.

Sometimes you can be generating power but not yet selling it back to the electricity provider and when that happens it actually makes you meter run backwards so your bill is smaller but you aren't getting the extra credits yet - not sure if that is true or whether the solar fitters were pulling my leg and having a joke at my expense. Time to do some research.

Visuals

Rear of Garage

Dingo Action

No More Moonscape

Resort Furniture From Freedom

Outdoor Seating

Outdoor Dining

Cleared Ready For Veggies and Puppy

Feature Bed Near Outdoor Room - Pony Tail Palm Should Get to 2m Eventually

Feature Bed Near Pool - The Grass Here Will Be Replaced With Gravel In The Future

Citrus Grove - Left to Right Orange, Lemon and Lime

Dingo Bingo and Outdoor Seating

How lucky are we? We rang a local dingo company (a small bobcat not the wild dog) to see if they could come and level out the land near our laundry and aircon areas and dingo bingo they could come the next day or in a months time! So they came out on Wednesday and after about an hour of running the little digger over the 100sqm of land our interesting moonscape is now relatively flat and weed free. This means we can now look at getting some concrete slabs poured for a step and small paving area out from the laundry door and another one for the shed. We need to do some measuring and rough sketching of what we need before hand though as we need to allow for raised bed as vegetable plots and a little piece of land for the dog toilet (sorry too much information?). We've decided to have a "that'll do for now" garden and make additions and changes as time goes on.

That same day we got a delivery from Freedom and now have our new outdoor set which fits our outdoor room really well. I finished work at 4pm came home had a swim in the pool, cooked a lovely meal on the BBQ and broke in our new table and chairs. I felt like I was still on holidays. Fantastic.

The renderer should be coming soon to finish the wall around the pool and we still have no idea what colour to paint it now that we have a blue pool not grey. The fencers will also be back soon to add side gates so that the garden is secure and hopefully this spell of dry weather continues and we can finally get the driveway sealed with the polyurethane coating.
We also need to hire/borrow/cajole/bully/press gang a couple of guys to help us move our old sofa upstairs and the spare sofa to the apartment at work as we do not have the physical strength or stature to do it alone.

Off to look at more plants today as well as feature pots, garden art and statues that we can use to add interest to the garden.

Where Are The Photos?

My apologies for getting really behind with posting photographs, I was away at a workshop for a few days and had left the camera with the family so they could follow progress. There now follows an awful lot of pictures as I wasn't sure whether to add them to previous posts or just put them all in one big photo journal.

See photo journal Parts 1 -5

Brickies and Unexpected Arrival

The brick layers are back in town and have been very busy, when we arrived on site this morning they had nearly finished the 4 brick columns in the outdoor room and were frantically sending loads more bricks up the conveyor belt on to the scaffolding ready to do more work on the upper story.
Had a quick peek through the windows but it didn't look like we'd had anything else delivered to site yet.....

Brick Piers

Brick Piers Near Completion

The SS rang me later on today and told me the garage door is on. (Already!?) [no photos yet I couldn't get back on site today]. He also informs me the bricks will take about one more days work and then we will be at enclosed stage. That means Metricon will be wanting a very big chunk of money soon.
I asked him about how under the stairs will be finished and it turns out this will be boarded and will have a door on it so we will have a nifty storage space, cool! seeing as we had no idea about that as there is no indication on our set of plans.

The carpenter is back on Monday to start on the exterior cladding and the inside joinery and hopefully the kitchen cabinets will arrive the same day. I asked if he could give us a rough estimate of a finish date he explained he couldn't at this stage but said that once the painter starts it would normally then be another 6 to 7 weeks. Will we be in before Christmas? Most definitely will be (yes! yes! and yes!) and if not he has told us we can stay at his house so he must be very confident it will be completed by then.

We have been pondering what mail box we can have as we'd like something quite contemporary. However as we are not allowed to do any construction in the nature covenant at the front of the land we will only be able to have a post going into the ground, hmmm not much scope there then when you see what they have in the local hardware stores! Some serious web surfing later and we have come across these designs by a company in Noosa, what do you think?