May 14

Repair or Replace?

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Our washing machine broke last week. Oh no! What do we do? Repair or replace?

washine-machine-01This is the third time, there has been a major failure, not counting the warranty repairs. Now you might think that three times (plus warranty work) is a bit much for a modern appliance. And you would be right except…the last time there was a major failure was close to 6 years ago and the time before that was one year earlier, for a different part! The first failure didn’t occur until the machine was 8 years old!

 

We did have a an ongoing problem after the first repair that was finally sorted out after replacing a few components (it turned out that there was a faulty sensor) but, in reality, in 15 years we have only had to replace two controllers, two pumps and that mischievous sensor. I reckon that’s pretty good!

However, last week we had to decide what to do. Repair or replace?

The machine is getting on a bit and modern appliances have a reputation for having short lifetimes due to building down to a price and “planned obsolescence” (a particularly irritating euphemism). We finally got the repair company to give us an indicative, non-binding, “we will not be responsible for any number we give you over the phone” estimate of the possible range of prices that could be in the region of the actual price given that they had not sighted the machine and could not possibly know in advance what the actual problem might be (you know the drill), but they suggested that if we budgeted for between $300 to $400 we would be in the right ballpark.

Now a new machine of a similar size, in fact, the same basic model is still being made, would be not much more than $400 anyway so, we were faced with that, oh so, familiar dilemma. Repair or Replace? Especially when you consider that there would be a minimum call-out fee of $150.

That meant that we could:

  1. spend up to $400 to get the old machine fixed and take the risk that there could be enough wrong with it (eg bearing damage) to make it effectively non-repairable or that it could fail very quickly, or
  2. simply purchase a new machine for a little more than $400 and be done with it.

Of course, if we picked option 1 and it turned out that the machine could not be repaired we would be out of pocket $150 on top of the purchase price for a new one!

Aaaaarrrrghh! What do we do? Repair or Replace?

We talked about it for a while, gnashed our teeth, paced the floor, stared silently into space and then I said, “I really have a problem with throwing out, what seems to be, an otherwise perfectly good machine, I mean the motor is a direct drive and super reliable, the actual body looks in really good condition, the control panel is getting very worn but the buttons all seem to be working okay and it wasn’t making any strange grinding noises or anything before it broke down, was it?”

“No”, she said, “it has been running fine until last night when it slowed right down and then wouldn’t start and just started making that humming noise”.

“Hmmm”, I replied, “I reckon, we take risk of blowing the $150 and get them in to fix it”.

“I agree”, she said, “I don’t like to idea of throwing it away either!”

So we arranged for the repairer to come in and fix it and, that was that!

Or was it…?

washine-machine-02The repairer came in and had a quick look, turned to me and said, “This looks like it might be a expensive repair and this is a very old machine, you know you could get new machine for around the same price. If there are other problems like the bearings for instance, it won’t be worth fixing. Are you sure you want to go ahead?”

Oh no! Again? Really? Repair or Replace?

 

I pointed out that we had already spent $150 when he walked through the door and he agreed that apart from the fault(s) or the bearings, which he couldn’t test until it was running, the machine was in very good condition. So we agreed to have him repair it.

So, one controller and a pump plus about 25 minutes of his time and $388 later, we had a working washing machine! Yay!

He said that, apart from the worn control panel, the machine appeared to be as good as new, so that is good news. This time, at least, we made the right call and the machine should give us many years of service.

In any case, I’m happy that we had it repaired, even if it had cost us the same or maybe even a bit more I would still prefer to have had it fixed. Eventually, however, it will, like most things, be non-repairable and we will have to replace it. But how will we know? Is there a foolproof way of deciding that without spending time and money on the decision? I don’t think so.

question_mark-01

 

 

So next time it breaks down, what will we do?

Repair or Replace?

 

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May 13

The Desktop Manufacturing Plant

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When talking about sustainability, one of the things that pops up frequently is the ability to repair things rather throwing them out. One of the three “R’s”. Where we can, we will repair things rather then replacing them. We are going through this process with the washing machine at the moment. We not sure if we will save much money by repairing but the thought of throwing away a machine that can be repaired just doesn’t sit well with us.

Often, the problem when trying to repair an item, especially an appliance, is not so much the lack of skill but trying the source the part needed. Sometimes it is just ridiculously expensive but, more likely, it is simply not available. Maybe it is out of production or maybe it was never made as a spare part in the first place. Then there’s the problem of having to buy a pack of 20 widgets when you only need one or two. This applies to lots of little items, not just spare parts.

Wouldn’t it be nice, and potentially more sustainable, if you could just specify or design the part you wanted and then “print” it out just like a picture. Well you can, using 3D printer technology!

Cube-3D-Home-Printer-1

3D printer technology has been around for a few years now but it is getting cheap enough that you can by an easy to use printer that can print out all sorts of plastic parts on an 3D Printer costing less that $1500.

3d printer rabbit

Even amongst those who know, 3D printers are a lot better than many people may realise. The little $1400 off the shelf printer can do a very good job at simple plastic parts, gears, toys, retaining clips, ornaments, custom jewelry, odd shaped spare parts for all manner or things. In fact there are websites that contains a plethora of things that you can buy or download fro free and just print directly on the printer. A good starting point is http://www.thingiverse.com/.

 

If you want to spend $10,000 – $30,000, there are printers that can print very high definition, full colour, high impact, high performance plastic parts. These can be used for some serious engineering and prototyping or to make that hard to get replacement part for heavy duty use.

Spend some more and you can print multiple materials, including metals, and the price of all these printers are coming down while the capabilities are going up.

There are even some printers that work with organic material that can print arteries and other surgical implants that are being used now without having to do grafts or wait for donors.

The other side of the coin is that high quality, 3d design open-source software and, more importantly, 3D scanning software and hardware is readily available and dead easy to use. So it is, literally, child’s play to scan real parts and make and/or modify replicas.

go_scan4

With the advent of nano technology, and the advances they’re making in lab’s around the world building things atom by atom, in not too many years the complexity of products that can be printed will truly astound you (and possibly scare the hell out of you as well)

I wrote article for a sustainability magazine (ReNew Magazine) that looked future technologies including 3D printing and, after I wrote the article, I started to talk to people about some of the possibilities. How’s this for a sample scenario that I often use as an example.

It will be possible, using nano technology, to develop a printer that can print, say, a laptop. Now that’s pretty impressive, the case, the screen and the electronics including the computer chip, circuit board, everything! Wow! But how about the batteries? Yep! fully charged! Double Wow!

It would come out of the printer complete and with a fully charged battery! But wait! There’s more…

The software on the hard disk is nothing more than magnetised regions on a metallic platter or charges in solid state memory. So the printer can print them, and hence the software at the same time. Not only that, but it could print the laptop in hibernation.

That means you could take the laptop from the 3d printer, open it up and it would resume from the suspended state, with all the required software installed and a program (probably advertising) up and running and presenting information on the screen!

Once you’ve got your head around concepts like that, the thought of what a few, shall we say, unpleasant characters, could do with that kind of technology is frightening

But equally, the thought of how we could simplify and democratise manufacturing, reduce transport needs, and reduce waste through only “printing” what we needed is truly liberating.

Imagine being able to simply print what you needed, when you needed without worrying about all the processes, overheads and consumer pressure that we face today.

Suddenly, those replicators in Star Trek don’t look so far fetched after all!

nanotechnology-7Image from howstuffworks.com who also have a good article on nanotechnology

What do think, a better world? Maybe! It will certainly be a different world!

 

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May 10

Supporting Renewable Energy

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Today we became household members of a new non-profit organisation set-up to provide funding for new renewable energy projects in Australia.

Citizens Own Renewable Energy Network Australia – CORENA

CORENA has been setup to provide donated funds from ordinary people to start an round robin funding scheme for large and small renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. People around Australia are tired of waiting for the Government to really get behind renewable energy and they wanted a way to help kick start the process.

pv-smallThe idea is that donated funds provide an interest free loan for small community based systems that are paid back with the savings from using the system. As the funds are paid back they can be used to fund another small system. As more donations are received the project can expand until it is essentially self supporting with a funding pool sufficient to enable continuous rollout of small systems.

 

pv-large

The donated funds can also be used to fund or part fund much larger commercial projects which can provide an investment return which can be added to the total pool for ongoing funding of projects.

 

 

It’s important to remember that this is not a monetary investment and the funds are donated. However, it is an investment in our future. If you would like to find out how you can help, checkout the website and facebook page at:

http://corenafund.org.au/
fbFind CORENA on Facebook

Go on, make a difference.

 

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May 10

A Wonderful Idea

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Sometimes you can forget, working away in your own backyard, that there are so many wonderful people out there who have the same concern and commitment to the environment and passion for sustainability.

Then along comes an event like this

A short documentary that follows the challenges of attempting to feed 2,200 people in the Sydney Opera House audience of TEDxSydney 2013 using only home grown & locally grown food.

Produced by The MilkBar, Sydney for TEDxSydney 2013.

You can find the original post HERE

A totally awesome idea that I felt compelled to share.

Perhaps we can each do it on a smaller scale in our own neighbourhood and create a grow it local event ourselves?

What do you think?

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May 01

A Cunning Chook feeder

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After much deliberation and procrastination, I finally put saw to wood and constructed the long awaited improved chicken feeder that I’ve been promising myself for ages.

Why a new chook feeder? Well, one of the problems with having truly free range chooks that are un-penned during the day (apart from the risk of Bloody Foxes), is that every freeloading sparrow, pigeon, starling, etc. comes from miles around to have a free feed.

This new feeder should fix that problem by allowing only the chickens to open the lid to get the feed.

chicken-feeder-09

Through a clever arrangement of levers the chickens can open the lid by stepping on the tread at the front of the feeder. However, other birds are not heavy enough to get the lid open.

Hey Presto! No more stolen feed.

If you want to build one yourself there are plenty of plans and photos on the web. One I found particularly useful is at http://www.woodworkingcorner.com/feeder.php.

chicken-feeder-01

Using a mix of spare plywood, recycled pallets, a bit of glue and lots of screws plus a great deal of sweat and cursing, I was able to cobble together a reasonably functional feeder.

chicken-feeder-02

The feeder starting to take shape now that the sides are connected to the back. If you look carefully, you can see the individual slats that have been rebated to fit together with a bit of overlap. The main problem doing it this way is the additional screws to hold each slat in place.

chicken-feeder-03

chicken-feeder-04

With the front, also made of individual slats, attached, the overall shape is well defined. It time to start on the treadle and the linkages.

chicken-feeder-05

The links were made by ripping the slats into 25mm wide strips and cutting them to length. Then drilling the holes in the links for the bolts. Drilling them in pairs makes sure that the measurements are the same on both sides of the box. It would be nice to have a drill stand (sigh). But that’s a toy for the future.

chicken-feeder-06

Tada! The finished unit with the feed access closed!

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The finished unit with the feed access open…

chicken-feeder-08

…and with the hopper lid open for filling.

chicken-feeder-09

The feeder in place in the chook shed. The chooks looked bemused when I put in the coop but they seem to be using it without any problems. There is a screw in the side holding the access flap open so that they get used to it.

In a few days I will move the screw so that the access is only partially open so they get used to it moving and then, a few days later, I will remove the screw completely and the feeder will be fully functioning.

It’s taken a lot more effort than I anticipated but it will be worth it because I will be able to place many days of feed in the coop without worrying that the freeloaders will get it. Plus it’s always a nice feeling to make useful stuff using recycled or re-purposed material. It also saves a lot of money. Some of these feeders commercially cost hundreds of dollars. This one cost me less than $20 in bolts, screws and glue. The ply was left over from another project and the rest of the timber was from an old recycled pellet.

Very happy with the result. 8-)

What have you made using recycled materials?

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Apr 16

A Little Flat

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Sometimes, a good idea doesn’t come off so well. This was the case yesterday when I decided to add some of the left over honey and water mixture left over from collecting the beeswax to our normal bread mixture.

Oops! There must have been too much sugar which stopped it rising properly and this happened…

unrisen-honey-bread

I think (hope) there was some other reason as well. It kind of tasted like it would been nice if it had only risen properly and not burned.

Anyway, I quickly made another loaf on the fast setting of the bread-maker and used less of the honey syrup and ended up with a much better result.

risen-honey-bread

This loaf would have risen more on the standard setting and was a bit dense, but yummy just the same.

At least the new chooks had a nice surprise today :)

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Apr 13

Waxing Lyrical

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uncapping 003

Another post about bees
Or more precisely their wax
And what to do when
you simply have stacks

Don’t throw it away
or leave it in heaps
where the honey and mess
through it all slowly seeps

Just gather it up
into one pot
the bit’s and the pieces
and heat up the lot

Together with water
to wash off the gunk
heat ’till it’s melted
and floats on the junk

The wax will go hard
as it cools in the ooze
you can then lift it off
and use as you choose

Use it for ointments
or maybe a candle
for polish and sealant
it’s hard to mishandle

You can even recycle
it back to the supplier
for the sheets in the frames
that are strengthened with wire

So think before tossing
or throwing away
this wax is worth keeping
it’s the sustainable way!
cappings
wax001
wax002
wax003

 

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Apr 11

You Can Lead a Chook to Water

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waterer-old-001

Well, the automatic watering system I built a couple of years ago finally bit the dust as the plastic hardened and cracked after being exposed to daylight. It was a good system, but it was always meant to be an interim solution until I fired up and built the proper, you beaut, whizz-bang one.

The system I had in mind would use an external tank and a float valve to control the level in a mini-trough

 

 

 

Using mostly parts I had lying around, except for the float-valve, hose-connector and end caps for the section of storm-water pipe, I commenced construction.

I wanted the tank to be on a stand to provide small amount of positive pressure for the float valve. I had some old bits of scrap length of metal fence post offcuts so I welded up a table and topped it with some old pieces of treated pine (I figure using treated pine waste increases it’s useful life and prevents it from going to landfill, for a while at least).

waterer-stand-001waterer-stand-002waterer-stand-003waterer-stand-005waterer-stand-006waterer-stand-007waterer-stand-009waterer-stand-008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is seriously over-specified and took a lot longer to weld up than I anticipated but that’s what I had lying around.

 

 

The watering trough was considerably easier to put together, although I spent ages trying to decide how to provide a solid base. The trough itself was just a short section of 100mm plastic pipe with two end caps glued on and a section cut out along the length.

waterer-new-002

 

After that, it was just a matter of filling it with water and playing around with the location of the float valve to make sure it didn’t overflow. Once the location was determined a hole was cut into the end of the trough and the float valve was fitted.

 

waterer-test-001

 

One last final test to make sure everything was working correctly before doing the final assembly. Because it was getting a bit late I left it set up overnight and rechecked it in the morning and added the feet before installing it in the chook shed.

 

The next morning (well only just, as I had a leisurely start to the day) I moved all the pieces into place and installed it in the shed. It sounds easy when you say it fast like that but in reality, it wasn’t much more difficult. There was a bit of fiddling, cutting a hole in the wall, getting the hose lengths right, making sure the trough was secure enough etc. but it all came together quite well.

waterer-install-004waterer-install-005waterer-install-003

 

 

 

 

 

Well, not quite!

waterer-install-002

 

There was a leak at the connection on the tank. I thought I had sealed everything and I had used teflon tape etc. However it turned out that the rubber seal was damaged. I quickly cut a replacement from an old bike tire inner-tube, fitted it and voilà, perfect!

 

 

All in all it has been a very satisfying exercise, although the extra time, effort in welding, grinding and cutting somewhat offset the use of the free metal offcuts I used for the tank. The overall price, only for the parts I had to purchase, was about $50. If I had to purchase all the parts it would have been considerably more, but that’s the point really, re-using “waste” items or found objects to provide a useful function. The watering system should provide many years of fault free service and it will certainly be a lot easier to provide water to the chooks.

 

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Apr 08

Glutton for Punishment

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As if I hadn’t already been obsessing enough over bees and all things bee related, on the the Easter weekend I went to a mate’s mum’s place to help him clean up some of the hives and rubbish left over after they sold most of the hives his dad used to keep.

beekeeping panorama

After his dad passed away over a year ago they had sold around 150 hives but there were 4 or 5 left that were in particularly poor condition and/or were my mate’s hives. In addition, a swarm had taken up residence in one of the empty hives left scattered around in the yard.

beekeeping-cleanup-001 beekeeping-cleanup-003

We went through over 90 boxes and retrieved around 25 that were in good enough condition to reuse or repair. The rest are slated for the fire. We also went through hundreds and hundreds of frames looking for those that could be reused. Most of them went straight into the incinerator to get rid of them and to reduce the risk of disease spreading to the working hives. The frames that can be properly cleaned and restrung will be used to start managing the hives properly again.

beekeeping-cleanup-002burning-down-the-hive

On the second day we tackled the hives and rehoused all the colonies in boxes that were in better condition. They still need a lot of work to rehabilitate them fully but they are in good enough condition to give my mate time to refurbish and repaint the remaining boxes so that he can get the hives back into good working order.

hive-repair-001 hive-repair-006 hive-repair-005 hive-repair-004 hive-repair-003 hive-repair-002

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It took a bit longer than anticipated to complete the rehousing but it was a satisfying days work. Although I got a bit of stick from my better half for not being able to spend a day sightseeing like I had promised.

Next Easter, Guaranteed!  I promise :)

 

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Apr 06

Bloody Fox

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Thursday night before the Easter weekend, about 20 minutes before I went out to lock up the chooks, a bloody fox got in and killed the lot.

I went out there a bit later than usual and the dogs next door and two doors down were going berserk. I found two, still warm, bodies inside the coop and another two near the hole under the fence where the mongrel animal got in. There was no sign of the fifth chook and presumably the fox carried it off.

evil-fox-2

Apparently it’s been hanging around since Australia Day and was seen raiding the table at the BBQ when everybody was inside. I should’ve been more vigilant but I wasn’t and without a dog now it was much more likely to happen. Now, three of the chooks were quite old and destined for the pot anyway but that’s not the point. We should have had the place more secure and I’m changing the layout of the enclosure to help prevent any problems in the future. In the meantime, I had to source some replacements.

The place I normally go just up the road is convenient but a a tiny bit more expensive at around $20 per point of lay birds but they didn’t have any and wouldn’t for a few weeks. For some reason it is getting harder and harder to source birds locally for a reasonable price. Another place near Mansfield was a possibility, particularly since a mate was up that way and coming back on the weekend.  But they told me they no longer do Gate sales and the next delivery into the local area wasn’t until next Friday! I finally found a place in Bacchus Marsh that had Isa Browns for $18 each. So, up I went yesterday afternoon and had a good chat with the owner Mark, about birds, bees and life in general. I got six brand new chooks for $110 plus around $8 for fuel there and back. All in all a good result.

I checked the birds today and realised that the automatic waterer is broken so that’s another job, but the chooks are healthy and settling in fine. To top it off, imagine my surprise when I found six eggs in the nesting box. You ripper! Very happy with the outcome now.

neweggs

So here are the new girls in their new home and lets hope we have many years of productive association. I’m still working out how to deal permanently with that fox. There’s still a bounty on them and I’d love to collect.

sixchooks

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