Here we go again.............

[baz62]

Some of my friends on here know the saga we have gone through with EQC, namely we have to date gone through two winters and three snow storms without our main heat source. This was out pellet fire.
June 15th 2011 saw the chimney reduced to the height of the roof as the February Quake had cracked it so there was a real risk of it toppling into the lounge if there was another big one. (Funnily enough while the "de-constructors were up on the scaffold there was a pretty big aftershock!!)
They were telling us that we would be getting a heatpump.
So they packed up and left and Teresa and I carried on with life. About a month or so went by and Teresa asked if I had heard from EQC? No I hadn't.
A phone call was made. Imagine my disbelief when EQC said they had no record that our chimney had been damaged, or even that it had been brought down!
Well I thought now they know we can get our heat pump.
We never got one. despite phone calls and complaints we got bugger all. And believe me when I say you feel a plonker complaining in the summer!! You are talking to a person in Auckland, what the hell do they know about Canterbury weather?
My mistake? Answering the questions truthfully that they asked: Are there any children under 5? Are there any elderly people over 65? Any one with health issues?
I should have said yes to the last one: depression and stress!
I even used my 80plus year old parents when they stayed with us over Christmas and I wonder if this kickstarted the repair job that has finally started.
I was home today (fortunately) so was able to chat with the builder (a top bloke, old school tradesman) and popped out to watch the further demolition of the chimney.
This entailed a chap turning up with a concrete cutting saw which would make short work of the remaining brick work.
So I am on my computer in the office (actually on this forum) while the roar of this saw goes on in the background when there was a "pop" type noise and the light in the office flickered. I looked up and thought that's funny.
Shrugged my shoulders and carried on reading. It was then I went to click on another thread and a blank page came up saying couldn't be displayed check connection.
Oh ho I thought and looked at the icon for the Internet and spied the dreaded red X.
Out to the modem. All the lights were out.
So out i went to the builder and his saw blade wielding mate and asked "What have you just cut?"
They of course were non the wiser so a trip inside and a few tests and we found that the plug sockets either side of the chimney no longer worked!
The builder though was great, straight onto the phone and he organised his electrician to come round and sort it. I of course being creative soon had an extension cord rigged up and got the internet back again (and the TV and Sky!)
After the builder and his mate removed the bricks he soon spied the wire that was cut. Shouldn't have been there but you would have needed x-ray specs to have known it was there!
The other thing which is going to need discussion is the power to the house is right within the 4 metre zone they are not allowed to wok in, unless the power is turned off.
There was talk of moving the lines temporarily but apparently thats not happening.
The builder was saying it wouldn't bother him if they just wrapped plastic round the lines but not good enough say OSH.
Even the electrician was shaking his head as he said the individual lines aren't dangerous, its where they meet at the little junction box which could be moved easily.
So Teresa and I meet up with the powers that be including the project manager(who has been great) in the morning and hopefully we can get everything sorted.
Here's a photo of the offending wire and one of the work done so far.
That one piece of wood has borer (or rather had it) but there's nothing anywhere else. Maybe it was untreated?


The other issue is the red brick work you can see is further back than expected so will need to be modified or removed to suit the new chimney's structure, which of course is a call the builder can't make as its a change and an extra cost etc etc etc.!


Please let the rest go smoothly!

[suthg]

How much cracking was/is there in the external walls? Doors/windows that didn't shut properly and uneven level in the floors? Or have some of these been fixed and some unfixable (cost relative) low level issues remain?

[beagle]

Yes, you are just one of the thousand upon thousand going through the sad and long saga of getting things sorted.
I thank my lucky starts we have no damage what so ever to the house or section. Not one crack anywhere.
Just a bit bemused when the jug boils when i have a shave and the garage door remote turns the pop up sprinklers going, mmmmmmmmmmm that was after the April 1st aftershock....

[Dave Homewood]

Why didn't you just get a brickie to fix the chimney yonks ago? In fact you could do it yourself, surely? Surely they haven't outlawed home handyman bricklaying have they?

I think it is a bit suspicious that they put a guy in charge of the rebuild who used to be CEO of an electricty supply company, and suddenly everyone HAS to have a heat pump. Heat pumps really eat up the power bills.

[obiwan27]

Well Baz good to see something is finally happening and all the best with it getting sorted.

Feb 18, 2013 19:47:45 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

Why didn't you just get a brickie to fix the chimney yonks ago?

Dave, it's not that simple. As EQC had already scoped out the repairs and it's all being run under Fletchers EQR and the Canterbury Home Repair scheme you don't have that option. You do have the option to opt out, but the whole process had started under EQR so basically Baz and Teresa are committed.

Unfortunately there's been a major fubar as Baz has described, so they have gotten to where he describes above.

Regarding heat pumps - I disagree. Provided you have a properly insulated home, the right heat pump installed for your size of house and location, and you are also operating it correctly, then they are very economical to run.

Our place is just over a year old, full insulated and with double glazing. Our primary heat source in winter is the heat pump downstairs and a micothermic heater upstairs.

There are only two of us, but our power bill for the last 12 months was comfortably under the maximum for Contact Energy's low user plan, so we have switched to that.

Heat Pumps do take a bit of getting used to how to set up and operate effectively and efficiently in my experience.

[beagle]

depends how you use them.
you have to use them correctly.
don't let the mrs have it going all day with doors to the whole house open and even an outside door open.

[obiwan27]

Actually with the work already done in Baz and Teresa's place, the new carpet has made a huge difference to insulation and when the pellet fire is operational, they'll have to have the hallway and other room doors open, otherwise they'll pass out from heat exhaustion!

[Dave Homewood]

Meanwhile the fireplace uses zero electricty, as opposed to a heatpump. I am sure Orion Energy are ringing their hands.

Heatpumps are fine in new homes with proper insulation. Get an old house with wafer thin window panes, wooden windowfames and other older style construction and you're never going to be that efficient.

[Dave Homewood]

I have seen photos in the really olden days of NZ where the chimneys were just corrugated iron sheets bent round to funnel out the snoke. Couldn't something be bodged on these fireplaces to get them operational till the EQC man dips his hand in his pocket?

[suthg]

Don't they have an embargo on wood fires in Christchurch due to the smog they add (cars and diesel trucks also add to it) esp on winter evenings. I remember riding my bike to uni - it wasn't so bad in the morning, but the smog at 5pm going home was atrocious.

[obiwan27]

Exactly, pollution is another issue. Electricity generation in this country is something like 75% from hydro. I'd rather use electricity as a form of heating unless I had a home with a good woodburner. Again that needs to be operated properly with dry wood of course, be 'clean air' compliant etc. It's another range if issues that muddy the waters with regards to heating your home in the winter in Christchurch.

If you're the owner of an old house with wafer thin windows. older style construction then it's your responsibility to do something about improving the insulation etc. or choose the best form of heating that suits your circumstances. (Depending on where you live and what the local authority will allow.)

Much harder, of course, for tenants living in an old cold dump in the winter time - been there, done that!

[baz62]

Why the hell should I be fixing something which someone else has the responsibility to repair AND we have been paying levies for? When you get told something is going to be fixed you expect it to happen, not drag on with endless bullshit and outright lies.
And you wouldn't be allowed to do the repairs yourself unless you opted out. If I'd known the crap we were going to be put through I might have done just that.
Even now I've come home and nothing has been done since Monday.
So I'm onto the Project manager to find out the council has put it on hold because they think the drawings aren't right!!
So he has got an earful from me about the house no longer being weather tight.
The builder has just arrived (so at least the non-Fletchers and Council side is on the ball, plus he's just round the corner on a private job)
He's pulling his hair out because the engineer has got a change in place which means you have to go in from the lounge. And even I as a non builder can see its overkill and they will cause damage to the wall, no matter how careful they are, its Gib and plaster not timber!
And our fireplace does use electricity as the pellet fire is electric (fans and auger).
Although there are now some approved woodburners I'm glad I don't have to stack firewood and nip out to get wood in the rain and cold plus I still get the nice flames (and its instant heat.)

[kiwithrottlejockey]

Gerry's spin moves into top gear

Despite Gerry Brownlee's best PR spin, everything
is not going swimmingly in Christchurch.

By JAMES DANN - The New Zealand Herald | 4:02PM - Wednesday, February 20, 2013

I DON'T need to tell you that the two-year anniversary of the quake is coming up. As I wrote about previously, Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Gerry Brownlee is well aware of it, and is fast trying to turn what many people from Christchurch would describe as an example of torpid mismanagement into a PR win. His latest attempt is an optimistically titled press release, "Wellbeing survey reveals positive outlook". Gerry has hand-picked some stats that suggest that every thing down here is going just swimmingly. For those of us that don't just read headlines, you can actually dive in and read the full survey. It's not exactly as Gerry says.

The key to this survey is in the methodology. It was undertaken between August 29th and October 15th last year. 2381 people responded to the survey. 1156 of them were from Christchurch City, 618 from Selwyn District and 607 from Waimakariri District.

So that means that of the people who did respond, more than half (1225) aren't actually from Christchurch. I mean no disrespect to the people of Rolleston, Lincoln, Rangiora, Kaiapoi etc. I am sure they have had a hard time. But they don't have the same issues that people who actually live in the city do. They haven't had to deal with a lack of services, portaloos, red zoning, TC3 land, roadworks to the same extent that people who live in the city do.

The response rate to this survey was barely half — 52%. I would hazard a guess that if you were in the battered East of Christchurch, struggling through two snow falls in an broken shell of a house, answering some questions from CERA were lower on your list of things to do than they might have been for someone living on a lifestyle block in West Melton.

The survey does actually acknowledge this discrepancy, as early as Page 3:

As an overall observation:

Residents of Christchurch City rate their quality of life less positively than residents of Selwyn District and Waimakariri District.

Higher proportions of Christchurch City residents have experienced issues as a result of the earthquakes that have had a strong negative impact on their everyday lives.

Yet the survey then merges these three population groups, and continues to extrapolate from the combined population for another 100 pages. If you get to the end of the report, you'll find the populations of Christchurch, Selwyn and Waimakariri. They are 289,000, 30,000 and 36,000 respectively. More than 80% of the adult population lives in Christchurch, and yet more than 50% of respondents come from less than 20% of the population, a section of the population that the survey shows have a more positive response in this survey. In the appendix to the report, it says that the survey has been "weighted" to factor in this bias. As it does not explain how, I remain dubious.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

The Herald pretty much ran the press release from CERA without digging down into the numbers. There is this sentence, for example:

When asked about their confidence in Cera's decision-making, 68 per cent of respondents were very confident, confident or neutral.

Why is "neutral" included with "confident" and "very confident"? If you add in percentage for neutral — 28% — certainly makes for a better headline for the Government. I would argue that if you wanted to, you could just as easily add the "neutral" numbers to the "not very confident" and "not at all confident" numbers, which would then give you 57% of people not confident in CERA. Or you could take out the neutral people all together, and you have 39% confident, and 29% not confident, which would be far more balanced.

This is a flawed survey, which almost half of participants failed to respond to. The government and their cheerleaders will try and spin it as best they can, but most people living in Christchurch want more than just PR. We want solutions to real figures such as 70% of quake claims not yet dealt with 2 years after quake.

www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10866637

[baz62]

Feb 18, 2013 19:16:15 GMT 12 suthg said:

How much cracking was/is there in the external walls? Doors/windows that didn't shut properly and uneven level in the floors? Or have some of these been fixed and some unfixable (cost relative) low level issues remain?

Not too much outside, a few cracks mainly near windows and they have been fixed. Inside was cracked paint at joints in most rooms. We got off lightly that's for sure at least we still have a house and good land. (Hopefully!!)
Most doors were fine, although some were a pain before the earthquakes ha ha!

[Bruce]

Feb 21, 2013 15:05:34 GMT 12 kiwithrottlejockey said:

Gerry's spin moves into top gear

Despite Gerry Brownlee's best PR spin, everything
is not going swimmingly in Christchurch.

I read somewhere that 70% of statistics are made up anyway...

I have lost all confidence in that particular minister, who is not only responsible for things that shake, but things that move. I had hoped that whilst he was totally ignoring the aviation sector he is responsible for he might at least be concentrating on making Christchurch work again... seems not. I don't mean to make this political, but the results of his "oversight" speak for themselves.

[Dave Homewood]

Sorry Baz, I wasn't meaning to be critical of you. But I don't get why people cannot bodge up a repair in the meantime till the builders finally arrive rather than waiting two winters in the cold. Is that strictly off limits legally?

Also if your fireplace is electric, why does it need a chimney? Confused.

[obiwan27]

Dave, it's a wood pellet fire. More details here:http://heatstore.co.nz/portfolio-type/classic-insert/

[obiwan27]

Feb 21, 2013 15:05:34 GMT 12 kiwithrottlejockey said:

Gerry's spin moves into top gear

Despite Gerry Brownlee's best PR spin, everything
is not going swimmingly in Christchurch.

By JAMES DANN - The New Zealand Herald | 4:02PM - Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Yes, plenty of spinning going on:

www.elections2010.co.nz/2010/candidates/james-dann

www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2013/02/herald_repeats_misinformation.html

[beagle]

have been in a house with a pellet fire Dave, not the same heat as from a good log burner plus the fan etc in this model was quite noisey.

[baz62]

Feb 21, 2013 17:40:51 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

Sorry Baz, I wasn't meaning to be critical of you. But I don't get why people cannot bodge up a repair in the meantime till the builders finally arrive rather than waiting two winters in the cold. Is that strictly off limits legally?

Also if your fireplace is electric, why does it need a chimney? Confused.

No I should apologise, I'm afraid I was really furious when I got on here. Maybe it should be a new rule, don't post when angry!!
It did cross my mind to see about sorting a temporary flue but the advice was not to as i could have got into more trouble with no permit, council inspection, engineers report, the list goes on!
Yes the chimney is for the flue from the pellet fire, bit like a woodburner.