Transportable Pod Homes, Small Cabins, Tiny Houses, Simple Living, Money Matters, DIY and Green Living.
I noticed that the intake air hose between the Air Filter Box and the Carburettor had been repaired with tape, so I repaired the crack/tear in the rubber with by replacing the tape with ‘Gorilla Tape’, which lasted a few years.
More recently I bought a new hose from Mazda Spares, and pleasantly surprised that it cost $79 dollars.
The replacement was quite simple and only required loosening the Air Filter Housing to get enough wiggle room to unclamp the old hose an refit the new house
Here here we go again, after a trip to Sydney in the pouring rain our Mazda MPV started to miss fire. This has happened previously, and so I knew where to start solving the problem. Even so I pulled over at a Service Station three quarters of the way to Sydney, NSW and sprayed WD40 over parts of the electrics I suspected may be at fault. All I managed to achieve/create was create a foul smell in the engine compartment.
I purchased two new ignitions coils online, and this easily and painless solved the misfiring problem, however during my checks I notices that I had a spark plug with a very pointy ignition tip, which I initially thought was wear and tear but after a bit of reading I discovered that it was an iridium spark plug, designed to last a long time, and withstand very high temperatures.
So that leaves me with wondering if this single spark plug was replaced by my mechanic when I previously had this issue, or if when I replaced all my spark plugs a couple of years ago I had very wisely fitted iridium plugs? I’m not sure, so I shall check all thee plugs on the side of the engine to which I have easy access.
The spark plugs on the far side the engine (fire wall side) are extraordinarily difficult to gain access to replace.
I quite enjoy my van, however I have not really had an opportunity to take it on the open road, for a couple of reasons.
Firstly it’s winter, and camping and touring during winter is not as much fun as Spring Summer and Autumn
Secondly my van battery won’t hold a charge, which has left me stranded a couple to time, now,
I suspect it may be a simple earth leakage, which if it is, is easily fixed, however it would also be it’s a very new fault since it has previously held charge for a very long periods of time while it was in the car port waiting for roadworthy and for the few patches of rust to be removed.

Photo shows the alternator released from the engine but with the wires connected so that I can correctly refit them after it has been serviced.
Wiring Display
Side View of Regulator
I have taken the alternator and regulator to Scott Mountain for servicing,
Hopefully Scott will get it to produce the full 14.x volts required to keep the battery fit and healthy.
I’m Seriously considering learning to weld, and why not I say!
It would be very useful around the home, and I will be able use my new skill to design and make metal bases for my cabins.
These days you can easily source very affordable mig welders, and a good quality welding mask. Just check them out on eBay.
I expect I will need one of the more modern masks through which you can see very clearly while you are setting up, and when, you begin the weld, it senses light and activates to protects your eyes.
I few years ago my son and I built this chook shed “chook house” thingy together. It was a bit bulky and needed bigger wheels to move around the property effectively. What surprised me was how many people wanted it when I put it up on Facebook Market Place. I have always thought that if had chooks again I would build something decent for them. Hopefully I’ll get round to it one day or oneway or another.
We all have things to do each day and we feel that we must do what we know before we make our lists that we simply could not do everything on the list because we have a finite amount of time available each day (and we don’t know how many days we have left) and we know deep within us that the free time that we do have available should be devoted to our families.
In my home, Havilah House, a Queenslander which has a a rate of decline, Queenslanders they recognised and are known in Australia require a significant amount of maintenance and attention.
Havilah House is also set on two acres of land which means quite simply that there is a an unending list of ongoing maintenance required to keep the home and land in reasonable condition, for example no matter how often I mow the lawn is going to begin growing the moment I park the lawnmower in the shed, branches are going to fall, and trees will need taking care of.
I also have a swimming pool, again this is a high maintenance feature, it’s fantastic when it works and the sun is shining, but at the best of times it requires a lot of maintenance and up keep.
This is a lengthy preamble to a post about fixing one thing a day but I want to ensure that the reader understood the background to my own thoughts of staying on top of things.
For me it’s a seemingly futile effort to:
Fix and repair things more quickly than they are breaking or falling into disrepair
Save more than I am earning (or earn more than I am spending)
I feel I am winning while I am fixing things quicker than they are breaking and if I am spending less than I am earning and I feel I am loosing while my list of things to fix and repair grows longer and longer.
Fix one thing a Day: At some point over the past 24 months I have come to realise that if I simply fix or repaire or created one thing each day I would be well on the way to making my home and environment a better place for my family and myself.
It does not have to be a big thing: for example I have a roll of felt and a tub of contact adhesive which simply want me to spend some time shaping and sticking to the underside for my furniture. This simple act would protect and take care of my hardwood timber floors.
Do things which will have long lasting ongoing benefits: For example I live on road which has become increasingly busy and therefore noisy over time and as the region grows, as so my solution is to plant trees, shrubs and hedges, these are still only 1.2m high but in 6 months (before Christmas) they will be 2m and in less than 24 months they will be 3m high and will form a noise barrier and be pleasing to the eye.
Solicit Help: I have been fortunate enough to acquire the help of a young man named John, who started out mowing my lawn after my ride on lawn mower broke. John looked a the mower and said he could fix it, and he did. John has since fixed or performed and maintained all my many vehicles. He does oil changes, light bulb fixes etc.
I have also been fortunate enough to be introduced to a Handy Man called Ian Mckee, the inscription on his truck read Ian Mckee from Mount Mee, Works like a Bee, Charges like a flea.
Both Ian and John require payment but they both are able to do more fixing and mending more easily and cheaply than I can do myself and because we work together on each of the projects we probably get more done together.
A few of my recent Pinterest Pins
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This jam contains only three ingredients: strawberries, cane sugar and lemon juice. Done.
Safety Warning: Don’t let the mixture boil over ! It creates one hell of a mess, not to mention on an open gas flame it may catch fire … and sugar has an awful lot of energy in it. ( my Mom used to get her winter anthracite fire really going with a 1/4 cup of sugar thrown on it !!!)
That said, I do like strawberry jam, or strawberry preserve, or even just plain old strawberries which we pick from the garden (or the ones we buy from our favourite store)
What I don’t like is the fructose corn syrup or the large amounts of sugar and other junk that ends up in a lot of commercial jam.
So we make our own jam ( mostly Strawberry or Marmalade it has to be said). It’s not difficult, and kids like to help too.
Sometimes it works out well, sometimes it doesn’t set and is too runny ( because I don’t put in enough sugar or pectin or both). But I don’t care because its also delicious over ice cream! Most people add store bought pectin to thicken it up to jam consistency, Unfortunately the pectin we paid good money for also contained dextrose which made it even sweeter, so I just got over it altogether.
What happens is the water slowly evaporates off the mixture and the the strawberries and sugar reduces down by about half.
We decant it into jars and it goes into either the fridge or the freezer, mostly it goes into the stomach via toast, most of it never actually makes it into the freezer.
Whatever you do with it it wont last long, before its all gone!
This was our attempt at building a bird box, it might be our only one, but I hope not 🙂
“Freestyle” … no dimension plans, in other words just making it up as we go along.
The idea was to try to think of something useful, and then try to make it out of “nothing”.
I had a “scrap” piece of wood that I had incorrectly trimmed (messed up), and was too short for it’s original use (the soffits).
The paint is color samples.
I had one piece of cedar plank, that was 7 feet long, and 5 1/2 inches wide.
Adam designed it, painted it, and helped screw it together.
We didn’t bother with glue, we just used self-tapping screws.
I cut the wood (only because the saw is a ye olde 1980’s radial arm saw, without any safety features!!!, because it missed the safety recall period … scares the living daylights out of me, that thing, so unfortunately Adam’s not allowed to use it).
Our bird box made from one piece of wood.
Over the last two weekends, I built a Panel Table out of recycled timber. We have a fairly small kitchen, and I felt it would make sense to have the kitchen equipment we most often used more visible and readily available, because we don’t have the space to store kitchen appliances and electronics on on the counter top.
I might have already mentioned that I collected a fairly significant amount of recycled timber which was being thrown out. (I work at a rapidly expanding school, and this wood was the result of a building relocation.)
I maintain a few Pinterest Boards where I pin things I would like to own or make, for example http://www.pinterest/draymum/diy Pinterest is a great way to get new ideas, or to bookmark using images instead of links.
The success of any project can only be measured by it’s fruit, and only a few days after completion I noticed my my son Julian had made himself a milkshake, most probably because the Milkshake machine was close at hand and readily available. (The milkshake machine had previously been stored in a cupboard, and was last used more than 6 months ago.)
Last winter, (I think it was last winter), Julian and I built a chicken coop. It was a fantastic father and son project and we had a lot of fun and it took a lot longer than we thought it would. I thought this time I would try documenting it using a video social assembler as best I can, and hopefully it’s worth looking through.
Let the reader beware! Keeping chickens is a lot harder than one would think. For example, chickens don’t always get on with each other and when you do let them free range they make an awful mess of your garden.
I’m not altogether certain that keep chickens is economically viable. It may well be cheaper to the local shop and buy fresh eggs.
At the request of my lovely wife Lydia, I got round to making my first planter box and as usual I got my design inspiration on Pinterest and found some boxes I liked, http://pinterest.com/draynum. I modified the design to suit the materials I had available.
I ought to give credit to my friends Chris and Marge who live in Chicago and grow their own vegetables each summer. They have been a great inspiration to us and have helped me to get motivated.
Here’s the finished planter:
Should we plant in rows or just plant anywhere? In the end we went with the higgledy piggledy layout.
You should know it took me two Saturdays to complete this project, and I collected the herbs and vegetables from Caboolture markets. I layered the bed with mulch, sand, mulch, sand compost, mulch, sand, so it will settle in time and soon I will need to ad more of something or another. The lady from whom I purchased the seedlings suggest that I may need to enrich the soil with chook poo pellets. ( I will try get some at some point this week.)
I had some secondhand corrugated roofing and some old balustrades which I got from my place of work (a school).
It’s always hard to choose where to put them and how large they should be: for example should they be a waist height or should you need to bend down sightly to get to the planter boxes. (I’m not even sure why planter boxes are raised from the ground.)