Clanwilliam - How often do we consider how the chemicals we use in our homes can impact negatively on our health and on those who work for us?
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit recently. Maybe it is because I am working on a project where the client is conscious of the environment, or maybe because, as it gets hotter up here, I have to spend more time in the garden and am looking at insecticides and other nasties, or maybe it’s because I saw someone rinse his mouth out because his pool chemicals were blowing in the wind.
I want to encourage you to begin by looking at what you are using around your home and how you are storing it.
There are hundreds of stories about people drinking poisons from unmarked containers because they thought the contents were water and ending up sick or even dying.
So please, go through every spray bottle you have and if it does not have a label, dump it in an approved dumping area, and then clearly mark what you have left.
Question and answers
QUESTION: I have tried for a number of years to find reputable contractors to re-build my decks and to fix leaks at my home in Hout Bay
The house faces the sea and is a 160m2 double-storey wood-framed house that has fibre cement cladding. The roof is covered with fibre cement corrugated panels.
I am a pensioner and I need to find an experienced contractor to fix my roof leaks and someone who understands a wood-framed house. I have contacted a number of contractors and received a strange range of prices for the roof leaks, from R3 600 to R10 000 (rubberised method) and even R25 000. I have limited funds so would opt for the rubberised method as it is cheaper. I was given a five-year guarantee for the rubberised method.
I have been told by a reputable builder that my top deck is at risk of falling down because of a lack of proper foundations. Unfortunately, this builder turned the job down.
The person he recommended gave me a quote of R25 000 excluding the wood. I am able to source saligna wood for free from my brother-in-law.
I thought R25 000 was a lot to pay although this may be the going rate. Please can you advise if saligna is an appropriate wood to use and whether R25 000 is a reasonable rate to pay? There is a deck upstairs and one downstairs and they are built one on top of the other.
I would be most grateful if you can give me some advice and give me the name of reputable contractors to fix the leaks and a person who could rebuild my decks.
Gwynne
ANSWER: The roof sheeting that was used when Gwynne’s house was built is no longer available and it is essential to get a few opinions on the best way forward. Continually repairing a roof where the original material is no longer available could prove more expensive in the long run than biting the bullet now and reroofing completely using a different material.
Also she has had a quotation to repair the roof with a “rubberised” method. This is not a term with which I am familiar, and as it was recommended by a contractor who replaced her hot water cylinder, I would really tread carefully here; but she is getting more quotes. The roof has lots of valleys and looking at the photographs she sent me of the internal leaks, I would suggest she begins by having the valleys checked.
The house was built on the sand dunes behind Hout Bay harbour and it appears that all of the problems stem from the foundations not being properly designed or constructed in the first place.
With regards to the timber decks, saligna can be used. It might not be the first recommendation of some decking contractors, but it is often mentioned on websites for use on decks.
SALIGNA – Botanical name: Eucalyptus Saligna. Saligna originates in Australia and is well-established in New Zealand and Africa. In South Africa eucalyptus has been declared an unwanted species because of its water consumption. There are, however, commercial plantations in the eastern part of SA, which should provide enough timber for quite a few years ahead.
the best money you can spend when building a new house is to have the ground conditions properly assessed by a geo-technical engineer. Based on this your structural engineer can then design the correct type and size of foundation.
This is of course a complete waste of time if the builder does his own thing and the engineer is not employed to check the work as it progresses. Plus you should also have the services of your local building inspector to monitor the works.
So my first advice on this one is not to spend a cent until the house and especially the foundations have been inspected by a structural engineer and the necessary works are carried out to stabilise, enlarge or underpin the foundations.
If the house is moving, then any new repairs might be easily damaged and, as Gwynne admits, her bed shakes regularly.
Every builder thinks they know all about underpinning and many do, but it is important to employ an engineer who accepts the responsibility of the design and method to be used.
Again I would suggest not repairing the deck until the design has been rechecked by an engineer.
As with most things proper maintenance on an annual basis is necessary for timber decks to stop them from getting past the point of no return.
The ABCs of drill chuck removal
Reader Tony inherited an AEG hammer drill (model SB4-500 (500W) from his late father. The drill, he says, is in excellent working condition. For a number of reasons, and also because it is “old-school”, manufactured in West Germany circa 1970, he would be loathe to discard it. However, after many years of layman usage the drill chuck (made of West German steel) spins slightly unaligned and he wants to replace it.
I’ve had informal discussions in this regard with hardware tooling retailers and they have advised that there is an Allen-type fastener deep within the drill bit that must be loosened which will then loosen and remove the chuck. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Could you and your team advise?
I am hoping that one of our readers will come back with advice on this one because it is a out of my field of expertise. However, a bit of searching on the internet has revealed that your dad’s drill is a collector’s item, so even if you can’t get it fixed it is worth displaying.
As for getting the chuck off, there are quite a few YouTube videos on how to do it.
* Open the drill bit holder jaws as wide as possible.
* See what is at the bottom of the chuck between the jaws (there should be a screw, bolt head or a slot for an Allen key).
* If there is something there, loosen it.
* Then place the body of the drill in a vice.
* Put a large, heavy and strong Allen key into the chuck and tighten the jaws as you would with a drill bit.
* Turn the Allen key to loosen and remove the chuck. If that fails then you are going to need to go to a power tool repair shop.
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