Oxley Woods Living

Life in an Oxley Woods eco house

 
 

Posts Tagged ‘smell’

 

Morning in our George Wimpey Oxley Woods eco house

May 28, 2009

What a start to the day today.

A Nuaire rep came around following a smells from our eco hat pretty quickly, couldn’t find anything wrong with the filter, did discover other problems (more on that soon!) and changed the filters, despite saying he couldn’t really see a problem with them.

The smell did seem to go, or at least fade beyond recognition. However, this morning, it’s back with a vengeance. We have a message from Nuaire to call them waiting on the answer phone, but work and family commitments got in the way of making that call, but now the bad smell is back, and bad, we need to phone them ASAP.

I only managed to get a whiff of the eco hat mystery smell after breaking out of our bedroom. The door handle has broken this morning! One side, the inside, turns but doesn’t move the latch so we were locked in our bedroom for some time while I fashioned a hook out of some pipe cleaner we had handy (thank heavens for kids!) and levered things open.

I can’t fathom out the door mechanism, but seeing as our baby’s door is jamming, the bathroom door latch is sticky and the door has moved and knocks, and now this is broken, I think we need George Wimpey and/or Wood Newton over ASAP to sort things out. However, they seem to be doing their best to ignore us and our increasing list of problems lately.

When the school holidays are through and I’ve met a few deadlines they can expect a LOT of hassle from yours truly.

On a positive note for NEW builds, George Wimpey and Wood Newton have decided to try and waterproof the window surrounds on the newer builds. Smart idea that. Not sure where that leaves the unfortunate souls who, unlike us, haven’t had waterproofing retrofitted. Clearly a fault in both design and construction that could lead to serious damp problems for home owners if left unchecked.

The longer we live here, the more we like the neighbourhood and neighbours, the less we like the appalling and “would be comical if not so distressing” pile of problems that just keep mounting up and up and up.

Our ecohat stinks!

May 5, 2009

And by that, I mean quite literally stinks!

Yesterday and today are the first time for a while we’ve felt cold enough to have the windows and doors all closed up for any considerable length of time, the result of which has been rather unpleasant.

A short while ago we left the house empty for a day, came back, and there was a strange, unpleasant smell about the place. I gave the cat a grilling and she denied any wrongdoing, and after leaving doors and windows open it seemed to pass. The smell was only really obvious in the halls and landings, the other rooms were all closed off, which made me think it was either something unpleasant the cat had left somewhere, or that some smells had made their way in from outside, perhaps something to do with building work, and become “trapped” in the house.

Anyway, this morning we awoke to a horrible, horrible smell through the house, again most obvious in the halls and landings. After much sniffing and wondering around the house like a badly trained tracker dog, it turns out the foul smell is being vented into the house care of our less than impressive Nuiare ecohat. The vent is on the upper landing, and blows in the direction of the stair well, which would explain why we’ve smelt this in the halls and landings, especially when doors are closed.

Checking the warranty to make sure we hadn’t missed anything, the only serviceable part, the filter, should only need replacing after “three to five years” and a red light should flash to tell us when this is due. Well, we’ve been here since July 2008 (just over seven months) and the little red light isn’t flashing.

We put in a call and left a message with the George Wimpey site managers this morning and pulled the plug on our ecohat completely. So far nothing has come back from Wimpey, so I may have to try again soon. May have to call Nuiare direct, as the builders seem to either have completely forgotten about us and our outstanding issues, many they themselves caused, or they’re avoiding us. Either way, we’re not best pleased.