Why we moved...

All this house stuff can get a bit overwhelming at times, and living in Christchurch can be dismal in winter - the days are so short and the city is bleak. However, when I get up and see this view out our living room window, I remember why we (well, Matt) wanted this house so much, and why Christchurch is actually not that bad...

Water issue number 2

Since we moved in, there has been a wet patch down the front by the garage...


It is worse when it's raining, but it's there all the time, even back in summer when there had been no rain for days.


I had a plumber here the other week who needed to turn off the mains water (which, by the way, had taken Matt and I about an hour to find as it was buried deep beneath the flax bush by the garage)....anyway, he saw all this water and declared that we had a leak in our mains. Bummer. He also pointed out a stretch of plastic piping that was sitting above ground that he reckoned was our mains water - apparently if they are above ground these pipes become brittle and will easily break. He told me that we had a HUGE problem on our hands.

So this weekend we had Alistair over (the only person we know with some DIY knowledge) and investigated.

First, they dug away around the start of the water pipe..


Then they tried to access the side of the garage where the "above ground" pipe was running (ah, not a very easy job as you can see)...


Then they realised that this pipe was no water pipe...it carried the phone cable...!? So, basically this plumber was wrong - there was no above ground water pipes showing...

The question remains though about whether we have a leak, or if the run-off is simply stormwater drainage from further up the hill?

For now, we're taking the stance we have had up until this point - ignore, ignore, ignore.

When Dad gets back from his overseas junket we will maybe get him in there with the chainsaw (oh, I forgot to say - it took something like 14 weeks for his knee to heal after the last incident and he hasn't picked up a chainsaw since), so that we can really see what's going on.

Water issue number 1

Turns out there are three water-related issues with our house which have become apparent during the past couple of months as we have experienced ridiculous amounts of rain. The first is the washout through our section of the clay cliff that sits behind the house...


That's a clay river washing down from the cliff, and around the fences where it forms a puddle of clay on the lawn...when it dries, it is a solid clay platform. When we moved in there was evidence of this, but we had assumed it was some sort of old sandpit or something...

We're glad we didn't do any landscaping before now, as it would all have either washed away or been covered by this. I'm not sure how we will eventually address it, but for now we're just letting it accumulate. So attractive!

We have bigger problems towards the front of the section...

Keep your eyes peeled....

So, we had the baby and have been kind of tied up with him for a couple of months, but now the house is crying out for more attention...specifically, we have a few "issues" with water. Inside and out... I shall expand further in day or so.