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 …

I have a few friends who have had a go at cutting their own venetian blinds. One cut down some privacy eco blinds (white PVC blinds) and managed to do a fairly decent job at it using a jigsaw. Another friend tried cutting back some timber venetian blinds down and ended up hacking up the ends of them pretty good.

I kind of decided early on that for me cutting venetian blinds down to size was not a DIY job, so we have paid people to cut ours down when needed.

As we have fitted out under the house with white PVC eco-blinds we had to cut one of them down to size. The glass louvers in one of the bedrooms was 56cm, instead of the standard 60cm in width, so we had to get 4cm cut off. Thankfully all the other windows were a standard 90cm wide, so we could purchase those right off the shelf, which was nice …

It cost us $15.00 to get the blind width cut down to the right size. For another $5.00 they could have set the height for it as well, but that is a pretty easy job, so I did that one myself.

To get our venetian blind cut down to size here in Townsville, Queensland we went with Ted the Blind Man. He did a good job and had it back to us on the same day.

Below are the details for Ted "The Blind Man":

Ted ‘The Blind Man’
129 Bergin Rd, Cranbrook, Townsville
Queensland, 4814
Australia

Telephone: (07) 4773 4573
Mobile: 0410 642 563

Since we had the back stairs removed from the house we have had a "door to no where". It has looked pretty funny to tell you the truth (as you can see on the left).

The door has been screwed into the frame so that no one could open it, but it has still looked a bit dubious, especially from the back yard.

We are replacing the back door with some floor to ceiling louvers. Louvers should give us a good airflow through the house and help to cool it down, especially with summer coming.

We had considered getting timber louvers, same as the window next to it. After thinking about it we decided to go with tinted louvers. That would allow some more light to come into the stairwell, which is just next to the new louvers.

The screen behind the louvers is a security screen. We didn’t actually specify a security screen behind the louvers, but I was very relieved when I saw them put it in, especially after seeing the kids playing around the louvers. Jessica seems to like to throw her stuffed tiger on the louvers for a view of the back yard.

This week we replaced our Amplimesh Security Screen with a Magnetic Insect Screen. Here are some photos of the window. The first photo is with the Amplimesh Security Screen, and the second photo is our new MagicSeal Magnetic Insect Screen.

The magnetic fly screen has made a huge difference in the dining room with greatly improved appearance, more natural light and increased air flow. Although it is not as secure as the previous security screen, it would take a very determined person to get 4 metres up the exterior wall to get into the house.

We had a fantastic experience in getting the Magnetic Insect Screens. From our first phone call to installation was less than a week! The company that did it was Freedom Retractable Screens. It’s run by a gentleman named Kevin who, with a partner in Cairns, covers North Queensland for retractable screens and magnetic insect screens.

The Magnetic Insect Screen cost us about $300 for three windows, which we felt was quite reasonable. For the three windows that we had the magnetic screen installed we paid the same as we did for one window with the Amplimesh Security Screen.

Here are the contact details for Freedom Retractable Screens:

Freedom Retractable Screens

Phone: 07 4775 4000
Mobile: 0438 136 945
Web: www.freedomscreens.com.au

You can read a bit about the MagicSeal magnetic insect screens on the Freedom Retractable Screen web-site here, and if you want more information then you can read about them at the MagicSeal website.

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