Author Archives: Bill Hutchison

Asbestos Awareness Week – November 26 to 30

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The first house that we owned in Australia was built in the 1950’s with fibreboard siding. When we had an inspection done on the house we were informed that the siding contained asbestos, a very dangerous and potentially deadly material.

Australia is having Asbestos Awareness Week from the 26 – 30 November, 2012.

There are still a very significant number of buildings in Australia that contain this dangerous material and significant care must be taken when dealing with it. Here are some tips that are offered by the Asbestos Awareness web-site.

  • You can’t tell whether building materials contain asbestos just by looking at them!
  • If you are in doubt, it is best to assume that you are dealing with asbestos and take every precaution
  • The safest way to manage the removal of asbestos is to hire a licensed asbestos removal contractor
  • Where asbestos fibres are loose and not bonded into building materials, you must use a professional licensed asbestos removal service
  • There are government regulations and your local council may also have policies regarding the removal of asbestos

There are many other good resources on their site and if you are concerned about asbestos or need to deal with it then check it out…

What’s That Smell?

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We had a look at a house a few weekends ago that from the photos on the real estate site didn’t look too bad. The backyard actually looked like it had quite a nice outdoor living area …

Unfortunately though the first thing to hit you when you stepped outside in the yard wasn’t the nice outback veranda, but rather we were overwhelmed by the stench of dog poo!

I don’t think that these people ever picked up after their dog or dogs for all the years they lived there. It was certainly the overwhelming memory that we took from the house when we left that day, and didn’t really encourage us to want to go back and have another look…

So a bit of advice if you are selling your house, clean up the crap!

Is That Window Even Legal?

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We got to Adelaide, Australia about three weeks ago now and have begun the job of house hunting. It is a rather daunting task to once again be looking for a new house (number 4).

One of the houses that I was looking at on the Realestate Australia web-site had me a bit confused by the tiny window in one of the bedrooms. The house was built in 2010, so I wanted to see if the window was even legal…

According to the Adelaide City Council building codes dealing with ventilation (.pdf link) the natural ventilation of the room has to be 7.5% of the total floor area since there is no ceiling fan in the room.

The bedroom that the window is in is 3.11 x 3.11 metres, or 9.67 square metres. With that in mind the opening in the window has to be 0.725 square meters. Since it looks like a sliding window that would mean that the total window would need to be about 1.45 square metres…

Does that window in the picture look like 1.45 square metres?

It doesn’t look like a legal window to me …