Affordable Rentals: Learning DIY

https://sites.google.com/site/prayersofreconciliation/

Yola.com

How to Control Termites Naturally

Sunday, September 27, 2015

These wooden houses need care

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS THEREIN TO GET IN TOUCH WITH US.
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Welcome to our blog Affordable rentals
and this post, these wooden houses need care
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These wooden houses need care

This is a typical timber house in Brisbane Australia, now this is a smaller version of the houses, sometimes they are called workers cottages, because they were made for people that could not afford the more typical Queenslander

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The timber house have some enemies that eat them away; the white ants can easily destroy an entire building, see what has happened to this one, they have eaten all the wood inside and now the whole lot is collapsing

The natural habitat of the white ants.
Termite nests in the bush of north Queensland, they are strange little creature the white ants, they seem to work always from the inside, except for the worker that sometimes goes out to deposit the soil, and so the white ant mount grows

These wooden houses need care

Dear readers, let us continue to talk about these wooden houses in this post, just to see what these houses need in order to be kept well; it is just as most of us thought, these wooden houses need some maintenance and care

For those people that have not own or lived in timber houses before, they should ask questions about them before they get involved in owning one of these houses; perhaps the first question that would come to their mind is: are these houses safe to live in and how long these houses can last? And then, what sort of maintenance they require? You see, they have a right to know that, so let me try to explain this timber housing situation.

Timber houses need perhaps more maintenance that masonry houses; because first of all you need to paint them for the timber to last longer, otherwise the timber on the outside walls will slowly rot away, but then, there are also some advantages because, you see if you want to change something it can be done easily a lot easier and cheaper than if you have a masonry house, therefore, it is a lot cheaper also to do some alterations, so it can work well after all.

Having said that we need also to say that these wooden houses have some problems of their own, apart that they need to be painted for the external timber to last longer, they also have some vermin enemies everywhere in the houses, because the timber is more vermin friendly than masonry and bricks and cement, but the normal vermin are not a big problem for the house structure itself.

The greatest enemy of these wooden houses are the termites, or white ants as some of us calls them; The white ants can really destroy entire buildings by eating the wood from the inside, a lot of times people don’t even know that the white ants are there eating their houses away while they are living in them; you see, unless you know what you are looking for, it is hard to see any sign of them from the outside. So one day suddenly one can find out by toughing or putting some pressure on a spot where the white ants have eaten the wood from inside, and here one can have a great shock to see this happen, as everything starts collapsing inward and where there was a wall now there is a big hole.

Therefore, it would be worthwhile to learn how to recognize the signs if there are white ants; and definitely call an expert to check the building if you are going to buy it.

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How to defend our homes from these pests

The white ant problem

How to defend our homes from these pests

These is how the white ants (termite) look like, they seem so soft and vulnerable that at first sight one would think that they cannot do any damage to anything, that is until one can see what they can do to wooden structures.

All timber posts under a house should have ants capping to insure that crawling insect and the white ants cannot come in that way

There are a few things that we can do to prevent this pest destroying our homes; the first thing that one has to do is to check that there is a barrier that stops the white ants to enter your building, for instance if your house is a high-set house on stumps, check that at the top of the stumps there is a metallic ant capping; this metallic ant capping is usually a large galvanized round dish or square of metal and it is bent down at the edges so that any crawling insect will find it difficult to enter your house that way; we hope you can see the picture? The ant capping prevents also the white ants to enter through the stump itself, if the stump has been infested with white ants, because when they reach the top of the stump they cannot eat through the metal capping and so they are stopped entering that way, of course there are a lot of different buildings and a lot of different ways to set a barrier; but sometimes the white ants find their way around.

Now there are ways that one should be looking for if there are white ants; here the first thing that we have to keep in mind is that white ants eat everything from inside and they don’t like to be exposed outside for long, so, the first thing one can do is to tap on anything that is made of wood; if the wood sounds hollow then the white ants might have eaten the inside, so a complete check is needed to see what is the cause; another way to look for white ants signs is that if they are forced to go outside to move from one place to another, they will construct a tunnel, so that they can go up and down without being seen, so one has to look for these signs anywhere under the building: Now some expert has told me that what happens here is that the white ants need moisture, so they have to travel to the ground to get the moisture and then they go up again their tunnel to eat the timber; now if the building is solid and there is no other way for the ants to go up they will construct their tunnel from the ground up, so we should be looking for signs to see if there are ants tunnel constructed, and if there are tunnels, it means that there are white ants also, therefore you need a pest control expert to poison these pests, and you need him fast.

Some natural enemies of the white ants

White ants have very few enemies because they live and hide inside the timber, but there are some natural enemies of course in their natural habitat, a couple of which are pictured here. As I said before, one needs to learn the signs how to spot the white ants presence, and do something if you find that they are there, otherwise they could eat your house away pretty quickly.

Here under we have pasted two links about termites that other Huber’s have written for you to check them out.

Termite Control

Good luck to all the houses owner!

Dear readers, our intention here is that we are going to write several hubs and talk about houses, how to own them, how to maintain them and how to build them, because that is what I have done during my life; so, even though in our next hub will be talking about: is Australia the land of opportunities, we will be talking about the opportunities that I had in the house building industry. So, see you soon in our next hub.

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Affordable Rentals
Australia wooden houses

IS TO BE CONTINUED;

Next time with, Australia land of opportunity

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Some helpful links here under

https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/

https://sites.google.com/site/prayersofreconciliation/

Yola.com

https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/

Monday, September 21, 2015

Australia wooden houses

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS THEREIN TO GET IN TOUCH WITH US.
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Welcome to our blog, Affordable Rentals
and this post, Australia wooden houses
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DEAR READERS, IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR OUR RENTAL POST, NOW IT WILL BE AFTER THIS POST.
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Australia wooden houses

A large Queen-slander, note the pretty design, all the open space on the verandas and also all the open space under the house, which could be used in very hot summer days to catch the breeze and stay in the shade.

This is a typical smaller version of the houses, sometimes they are called workers cottages, because they were made for people that could not afford the more typical Queenslander

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Some fret works that can be found in and outside those old houses, there is a lot more than what we are showing here, but this will give you some ideas, about what we are talking about.

The Australian wooden houses

Welcome to our post, Australia wooden houses in Brisbane

Here we are talking about the Australian house in general, as seen from the eyes of a new comer. When we came to Australia in the early sixties, we found that the houses here were made of timber, which were very different from the houses we had left in Europe; but we found also that they were convenient and perhaps even pretty.

You see, for us Italian migrants that had lived all our lives in solid masonry buildings, when we arrived in Australia at the beginning it seemed a strange thing that in Brisbane lots of houses were made of wood and most of them were set on wooden stumps, but then we started thinking that after all they were still good to live in anyhow, so, we got used to live in them rather quickly.

So, we had to forget about how we used to live in our motherland and also my native town of Genzano di Lucania since we were living now in Australia the Australian way, after all as the saying goes, when you are in Rome do what the Romans do, and we did that; but then, what were the reasons and why these houses were made of wood, or to use another word for wood how the locals called it here, they were made of timber.

So as you can see, this question arises, why these houses were made of timber and not masonry? And then try to see if they were better or worse that the houses made of bricks or masonry. If we use logic reasoning there is no difference whether houses are made of timber or masonry, as long as they are able to give the people that live in them that filling of safety and privacy that we aspect from them, when we live in our own home.

Having said that now let us see or guess the reasons why these houses were made of timber, and why they were set on wooden stumps.

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Wooden houses on stumps

The wooden houses on stumps of Brisbane and/or Australia

As we have already said above in Brisbane a lot of houses are/were made of timber, but not only are they made of timber, they are set on wooden stumps. So let us see the reasons why they were made this way.

From what explanations we have heard, and also by using our own imagination and intelligence one can come to the conclusion that there were several reasons why houses here were made of timber. The first reason is that when the first settlers started to build Brisbane, there were plenty of trees that could be cut down and make very good timber to build those houses; and then the people that came to live in Brisbane and Australia had a very good knowledge of how to use timber, since they came by boats and in the boats of those days, there were always carpenters and carpenter tools on board, so to build timber houses was the easiest way for them, since they had the knowledge the tools and plenty of timber in the woods surrounding Brisbane ,an also other parts of Australia that needed houses.

At the beginning the houses were just simple shelters, but as the time went by they became better and better, because the builders also became aware that here around Brisbane and northward when the wet season comes the ground becomes too wet for the houses to stand on the ground, in hot summer days everything becomes too hot and there were lots of vermin on the ground, so they found a way how to build houses that would avoid most of these problems; that is why in those times the houses on stumps became a necessity, of course slowly they became even better and even pretty, that is how the Queenslander house was born, which is a large house with verandas around them that keeps the weather and the hot sun off the main walls of the house. One can see these pretty Queensland houses if you look around even today.

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The Queenslander houses

The Queenslander House

The Queenslander house is a large timber house; some of them are pretty too and they serve the inhabitant very well, as they have been built to take the advantage of the hot climate in Brisbane and north Queensland regions. Now since I have been working in these houses to maintain them, let me describe them to you a bit more in details. As anyone can guess there are a few different types of these houses, but here to make it easier we are talking about the large real Queenslander and the workers cottage, which is a small and cheaper version of the real Queenslander.

As we have already said above in this hub, when the first settlers arrived here, there were plenty of trees around to make timber, a lot of this timber is called hardwood, which as the name suggests is hard and very strong, some of this timber are even stronger and longer lasting than the European oak or other strong European woods. So the houses were strong and secure, the only natural real enemy of these houses were the white ants (termites), which are able to eat through the wood and destroy the houses. The termites are native to Australia and if one goes up north in Australia one could see strange ground made mounts of earth springing up from the ground, these is how the white ants live, they eat wood from the inside and they make these mounts of earth.

So as you can see this was another reason why the houses were built on stumps. The stumps were made of whole sections of trees that are very resistant to rot; of course the white ants could still be able to eat those stumps, but they were treated with some paints and at the top they all had a capping of metal that would make a barrier to the white ants if they came from the inside of the stump and also a barrier to the other ants or crawling insect from the outside.

We have to say that some of these timber houses have been made also pretty, because timber can be cut to different shapes easily, so they were somehow pretty compared to the house made of masonry, which would be very expensive to decorate them with masonry, so the houses are usually square boxes with a roof at the top.

Decorative fretwork was easy to make with timber and a lot of these houses had some decorations, in them in one way or the other. Now I can go on telling you how these houses were made, but that would be hard to do, so I am going to search the Internet for photos that could show you what I mean, about fretwork and other timber names, anyhow there are a lot of names given to these pieces of timber that would be hard for me to name and for the readers to understand what is meant by that particular name. So I am going to leave it to your imagination, once you see some photos of the houses and the fretwork in them.

Anyhow I think that I have said enough in this post, so see you in our next post called, these wooden houses need some care.

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Affordable Rentals
Australia wooden houses

IS TO BE CONTINUED;

Next time with, wooden houses need more care

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Some helpful links here under

https://sites.google.com/site/prayersofreconciliation/

Yola.com

https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/

Friday, September 4, 2015

Life means whatever you want

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS THEREIN TO GET IN TOUCH WITH US.
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Welcome to our blog, affordable rentals
and this post, life means whatever you want
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IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR RENTALS THERE IS ONE HEREUNDER
Life means whatever you want it to mean even when it hurts
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Every one of us believes his own way about life; therefore life means whatever you want it to mean to yourself.

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My life experiences and observations are like my own shadow it follow me anywhere I go.

Life means whatever you want it to mean even when it hurts

Dear readers, here we are going to continue our previous posts about life, as we have said we don’t have lots of properties to rent and other things, so let us talk about life, as we have done in our previous posts. Now, let us look at my life like a philosopher would look at it, let us learn whatever we can learn from it, and so let us talk about the hurting part of life in the farms and the personal consequences that it brought to us young farmer:

Here I need also to explain that while I was editing this hub I have realized that I want to add the following article in this hub, it seems to me that it is the most appropriate place to write this; here I am talking about the hurting part of live that we had to go through in our young life, because it left us in a disadvantaged position, and how all this has affected my entire life.

But first of all let me explain also that life means whatever we want it to mean even when it hurts us, as we always learn something from it, so even if I am going to lament my bad luck here-under, we all should take it as a lesson from life. Here let us be a bit of a philosopher and let us study the fundamental problems of life from our own life.

I need to say that, when one goes through all these hard life experiences in the farm, one knows that it is really hard life farming, but we the farmers of those times kept working in our farms to feed the rest of the community anyhow, and even if we were working our guts out, and while we were doing that we were becoming dull, but we did our part to support the rest of the community anyhow.

Now you mark my words, because what I am writing about here is something old, but for me it is as if it only happened yesterday, so let me say this like in the present tense; at the time when this was happening the rest of the town’s community doesn’t see it that way, and they think that we are stupid people that just work our guts out, because we are dull and don’t know better.

So this attitude of the community hurts every farming hand very much, and most of all the young farm hands and those who would become young farmers later on also, since this are the harsh thanks that we receive from the town’s community for doing what we had to do.

But what’s hurting us the young farmers most of all, it is when the towns people seem to laugh at us because we have become dull compared to themselves; this is the way that we are being treated from the rest of the town’s community and it hurts too much: So we the hurt ones, we feel that we want to shout into their faces that they should be ashamed of themselves because; They have first sacrificed us, as they have put us in a position where we could not improve ourselves, instead of treating us in the same way as they did for themselves, and then they laugh at us because we have become dull. What a shame! Genzano town’s folks, (including also all other towns around) you should be ashamed of yourselves! Because you first sacrifice your own children by sending them to work at a very early age, and then you laugh at their sacrifice, only because through their sacrifice they have become dull. Shame on you Genzano’s folks!

Anyhow, whatever has been, it has been and we can only learn something from it, if we have observed what has happened and learned from it.

What I have written above has been my life and the way that I have lived it up when I was young, and now allow me to say that I have been unlucky to have lived such a hard life when I was young, but at the same time I feel that it is all over and I am lucky now. I have to think that way, because that is the only way to find peace within oneself.

I suppose that what I have been saying above seems already out of time, as if it is hundreds of years old, but it is not, because it all happened during my life, so how are today people going to compare my life story to today’s living is hard to tell, but it would be helpful if they could.

But now let me finish this article by saying that somehow I have written already the story of my life when I was young, but there are a couple more articles that I need to write before I start the second part of my life story after I migrated to Australia. This two article one is about the poor outcome of my psychological love life, due to the facts that I was poorly prepared, and therefore I will lament that, because that has affected me all my life; the second one is about to compare the way of farming and how better off we are today. Then I will have to start my second part of my life story, beginning from when I migrated to Australia and what I did in Australia.

In this second part, I will be speaking from Australia, and therefore I will be telling you to start with about the town that I came from, which I believe that might very well be interesting to know, so that you my readers may understand better what was going on during my entire life. So, after I have written my next two articles, I will start telling you about the town that I come from, Genzano di Lucania, this town is called with this longer name, because there is another Genzano town in Italy and that one is Genzano di Roma. Anyhow let me close this article by saying that next hub will be about buildings or something like that.

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Affordable Rentals
Life means whatever you want

IS TO BE CONTINUED;

Next time with, building something, or just another rental post.

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Some helpful links here under

https://sites.google.com/site/prayersofreconciliation/

Yola.com

http://myreligioustheory.yolasite.com

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Our life observation

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS THEREIN TO GET IN TOUCH WITH US.
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Welcome to our blog, affordable rentals
and this post, our life observation
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OUR LIFE OBSERVATION

Our life observation make us ask first of all, what it the meaning of life? There is no clear answer to this question, but really life is whatever it means to you. But to have a meaningful life we should observe and learn.

My life observations are like my own shadow they follow me wherever I go, sometimes they are helpful, as I could come to the right decision by using them.

Simple man life observations

Welcome to our post of ‘Life observations’.

These are part of my life memories and observations

Dear readers, in this post we are going to talk about our life observation, just to start another side of interest , so, this article may seem at first sight that it is not well connected with this blog, because we have said that we were mostly going to talk about rental accommodation or properties, but if you stop just for a moment you will be able to see that it also connects with our main aim of building and properties, because whatever we do we have to learn it from our own life and our observation of life.

Therefore, first of all let us just observe what I am doing just now: Well I am writing my own life observations in this article, so, I am going to tell you about part of my life and slowly reach where I am involved in real estate, we will call this first part, simple man life observations; and then, observe and learn from life. Here we have to make to following observation, which is that this hub or article could have been the beginning of our life story; which is the story of my life before I migrated to Australia.

Anyhow, as I said we have to observe and learn, and then when we can try to use our observations to guide us during our life; our observations of life if we remember them well, they would be like our own shadow that follows us everywhere we go and it never fails, so let us all learn from life by observing whatever happens around us. I know that sometimes we might want to forget what has happened to us, because it is painful to recall, but even those painful memories are worth remembering, because they might teach us to avoid them next time. Now let us look at my own life story and observation and perhaps compare them with today’s living.

Looking at the ways that we live today, one could certainly say that living today is not as simple and easy as it used to be, because of the changing ways of living that progress has brought with it, and living one’s own life today is a very complex event that needs to be looked at closely, even if it is just a normal simple life of a simple man like me.

You see, in the old times it was easier, because life usually would follow the same pattern as the generation before us, so everybody would copy the previous generation. But today is different, because things have changed and continue to change, so, we have to change also if we want to succeed in life.

Today when we start thinking about the beginning of our own life no one could ever tell and no one could ever even guess what life would or could be bringing to any of us. Of course the best way for any of us is to plan ahead how we would like to live our own life; and here I mean that we should really make up our own mind about what we want to do with our own life, and then try hard to keep to the chosen plan if we can.

But even if one plans well ahead, there are times during our life when one has got to do whatever is most appropriate at that particular time in order to survive and thrive, and be able to earn our own living. Therefore even if we have made up our own mind, and perhaps we have decided that we wants to study, or we wants to learn a trade, or do something special during our own life, it may not happen just the planed way, because life events may override those decisions, so we may end up doing a different job, or being something else other than what we had planned to do in the beginning. But then because these things happen we learn from life what we need to do and we do them since that is the best way to solve the problem. You see, we need to observe and lean, it is necessary to do that even if it is done just to survive those times that we happen to live in.

Now just to link this sort of thinking that we are talking about in this post, we could say that in life we learn everything from observing, and the trying to copy what we have seen, for this reason we may end up learning about real estate, or we may become a tradesman able to build our own houses and many other things. I hope that now you would be able to see the link that links this reasoning with building and rentals.

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Observe and learn from life

We should observe life events and learn from them

We have to learn to accept life just the way it comes, because sometimes this is the only thing that we would be able to do, without upsetting ourselves too much; I am saying this because, during my life I have had a few of those experiences that are not the best; but I could do nothing about it to change the outcome, so I had to accept them and continue to live the best way I could.

Today, I am looking back at my life that I have already lived, and I am thinking that I have already lived the most important part of my life. You see, I happen to be in my sixties while I am writing this page here for the first time; so, I can look back at my life and wonder at the great changes of lifestyles that we have been living in this new present era including my own life. While I am looking at these changes I also wonder at the events that have changed our lifestyle, and also of how it all has been happening and still keeps happening and changing even now while I am writing here this article.

Therefore, right at this very moment I am wondering why I am writing this at all, because writing articles is new to me and so it is still another one of my lifestyle changes, which has been brought about from those changing life events, You see when I was young I could never have guessed that one day I could be writing something and be able to publish it in something called the Internet, and I would be writing in a language that was and is not my native tongue.

All this has happened to me, because there have been lots of changes since I was born, there were life events that have changed my lifestyle during my life, and so they have forced me to change and to adjust with them as required; and it was one of these changes during one stage of my life, when I felt the need to start writing, so that I could fulfil one of my emotional personal needs. And in doing so I have written a few things, which I would very much like to preserve at least for the time being, although sometimes I wonder whether my personal written articles are really worth to be saved.

But here I am talking about my own personal writings, and even if they are worth nothing to the rest of the world, they are my personal writings and my experience of life, and therefore I would like to keep them forever while I am still alive, and perhaps even after I am dead, if they could make sense to anybody, so that, if one day somebody happens to read my personal writings they will be able to understand them. So, now I will try to write them down in a way that people will understand them. So here are my life events and changes, according to the observations of my own life, as it evolved starting from when I was a child, so let me talk about my childhood now and the problems that I went through when I was very young.

We believe that we have said enough in this rather long post see you in our next post, where we are going to talk about my childhood and its problems.

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Affordable Rentals

Our life observation

IS TO BE CONTINUED;

Next time with, childhood problems

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Some helpful links here under

https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/