Frank Greenall. 03 February 2015 Wanganui Chronicle photograph by Bevan Conley.
I MOVED into a recently renovated house a while back. All very nice and tickety-boo, except ... except ...
Take the bathroom, for instance. It has a fancy combined lighting/ventilation ceiling unit. The twin light bulbs, each the size of a large saucer, also act as heat lamps, combining to emit the thermal power of seven suns.
My sparse pate receives a fair old blistering whenever I have to venture into the ablution block. As for the bulbs, I'm praying I never have to replace either of them, entailing as it would the probable remortgaging of the house.
Surrounding the twin orbs is a vented channel through which a turbo-charged fan tucked away somewhere slurps up steam and sundry vapours. In combination, this is a serious unit capable, one would think, of instant termination with extreme prejudice of any hint of moisture.
Except ... it doesn't quite seem to work that way.
What does happen is that the combined heat and draught onslaught drives the moisture ceiling-ward with such vengeance that a goodly amount of it hits the ceiling before finding the thin exit vent. And there it stays.
For some time after the shower I have to leave the power-guzzling twin orbs burning to eventually lose the moisture. I can't have the fan operating during this phase as that simply sucks the heat out before it's had a chance to work on the damp residue.
All this was great news for my power company. I'm sure it broke out the champers every time I stepped into the shower box - it knew its Christmas bonus was assured, as the rotating disc in my meter box went into overdrive registering the great gouts of raw power being sucked off the grid to power this little set-up.
But no more. I made a startling discovery. If I simply opened the bathroom window, the steam would gently wend its way out in its own good time without being slammed against the ceiling in the rush to forcibly evict it. No seven suns, no noisy fan, no power usage and no lingering ceiling moisture. How brill is that? Now that's what I call innovation.
Still a bit of work to do, though. For the nocturnal bathroom visits, it means I still have to activate the overkill twin-orbs simply to get a bit of illumination. A little battery LED lamp should do the trick.
Then there's the fancy stainless steel spring-loaded pop-up plug in the hand basin, designed to eliminate the onerous task of engaging the old-style plug.
Only trouble is, the fancy pop-up seems to constantly non-perform and, because it only pops up about five millimetres, you can't see what the problem is.
No doubt a plumber could sort it but, then again, I'd need to remortgage the house to afford one.
In the meantime, I keep a rubber plunger on hand to hasten drainage from the basin, at least until I figure a way to rip it out and replace it with an ordinary old plug that actually works.
Moving on to the piece-de-resistance, the HRV supposed heating/ventilation system.
You would have seen the TV adverts for this set-up. Dad is in a Hawaiian shirt as the family enjoys ebullient quality time in a blaze of light and, implied, heat, thanks to the magic HRV system.
This is the system that reroutes heat in the roof cavity back down through the living areas.
Only trouble is, if there's no heat in the roof cavity, there's nothing to reroute. And there's no heat up there at the times you need it most, like in the evening and early morning.
In fact, then, it's even chillier than the rest of the house.
Oh, people say, but the circulation keeps the house dry.
Guess what? There are these marvellous inventions called doors and windows which, if opened regularly, do exactly the same job free.
I ceased using this thing quite a while ago, but recently I had a call from the HRV outfit.
For the very reasonable price of $200 it could have someone check and clean the filter on this circulatory wonder.
I thought for a nanosecond of how many bottles of nice wine this amount could purchase before politely declining.