It really poured down this New Year’s Eve. A good test of my drain. And the result is a big FAIL.

I even dreamed about house renovations. On waking up I went and checked downstairs to find the water slowly seeping in through the floor. I don’t think the water is coming in from the side from where I’m trying to drain it away from. The bottom of the drain doesn’t seem to have much water at all. I think it is just the water table rising on my section and the downstairs room is the lowest part, so not much the drain can do.

Not much water in there

I made a homemade drainage pump from the bits of my old dishwasher. I wanted it to pump right out of the room. The hose reached and I knocked a hole in the wall for it, but the pump was just not capable of pumping all the way up to ground level. So, instead I used my empty garden clippings wheelie bin as a reservoir and used buckets to keep that from overflowing.

That’s a 240 litre wheelie bin, and I had to keep taking bucket loads out to stop it overflowing, so that would have been easily over 250 litres.

Isn’t it dangerous mixing water and 240 volts? You bet!!! Notice I was using an RCD, but still I don’t recommend doing this at home. Especially when the drain hose comes off and water starts going everywhere. Fortunately I didn’t electrocute myself.

I think my plan now is to cut a hole in the floor, dig a sump, and get a more powerful drainage pump installed permanently.

I am going to get my house re-painted. Just as soon as I get the rotten weather boards replaced and decide what colour scheme I want.

It is currently a drab mix of browns. As this is my house I’m going to change this. After all I am famous for my sense of colour. Just ask any of my former web designer colleagues about my eye-gouging use of lime.

I have been using The Gimp to get an idea of what different colours might look like and what I like.

Right now I’m leaning towards the yellow-green2-red option (the fourth option above).

And just for Rebecca here it is in blue-blue-blue, but no I’m not going to choose that for my house.

So, what are your suggestions? And if you’re really keen have a go yourself in The Gimp with my housecolours.xcf file.

I have an indoor swimming pool .

I started thinking about getting a new vacuum cleaner after almost destroying my old one with rotten wood and concrete. Managed to repair it ok, but was thinking it was time to make the move up to a two vacuum cleaner household. And what’s better than a robot vacuum cleaner?

I bought an iRobot Roomba 530 from Noel Leeming. Was a bit unsure about how effective it would be, but it is great! It is shocking how much dust and hair it picks up from carpet that had just been vacuumed manually. It uses three brushes and a little vacuum to pick up the dirt and dust. And in spite of what the salesman warned is much better at getting in to corners than I am. It doesn’t have a huge capacity, but instead of vacuuming being a weeklyish chore it can now be nightly entertainment. For a proper clean it’s better to limit it to one or two rooms. That gives a better chance of 100% coverage, and it will be able to find its way back to the base station for a recharge when it is finished.

It can be quite judgmental though. When it finds a dirty patch the blue dirt detect light goes on and it gives a slow disapproving shake of it’s head (well whole body really) as it concentrates on cleaning that patch.

There is also a serial interface connector under the top plate (which just clips off, took me a while to work that out) with a published API of commands. I’ll have to have a play with that when I get time. Moore details to come.

The builders have started working on my porch, and it seems it is more rotten than first thought. The power connection is interesting too.