FreshDuctBox Gutters Overflowing Into the House: Why It Happens in Summer Storms
Most gutter problems announce themselves outside. Water sheets over the front edge, splashes the path and leaves a stain on the fascia. A box gutter is different. When it overflows, the first sign is often a brown ring on the ceiling, a drip through a light fitting or water running down the inside of a […]
Dryers in Apartments and Units: Vented, Condenser or Heat Pump, and Where the Lint Goes
In a house, a clothes dryer usually sits against an outside wall and vents straight through it. Apartments and units are different. The laundry is often a cupboard in the middle of the floor plan, the nearest outside wall is rooms away, and the dryer came with the place, so nobody is quite sure what […]
Short-Stay and Holiday Rentals: Aircon and Duct Cleaning Before Summer Bookings
If you host guests over summer, the cooling is one of the first things they will judge the place on. They walk in after a hot drive, reach for the remote, and within a minute or two they know whether the air smells fresh or stale and whether the room is going to cool down. […]
Moving Into a New Home: Should You Clean the Ducts Before You Unpack?
Spring and early summer are busy moving months in Melbourne. Contracts settle, keys change hands, and suddenly there is a long list of jobs to do before the removalists arrive. Duct cleaning rarely makes that list, but it is one of the few jobs that is genuinely easier, and more useful, before you move in […]
Not Using the Fireplace Any More? Your Options for an Unused Chimney
Plenty of Melbourne homes have a fireplace that has not been lit in years. Maybe a split system or ducted heating took over, the previous owners stopped using it, or you simply do not want the work of wood fires any more. The fireplace stays, but the question becomes what to do with the chimney […]
Office Split Systems Before Summer: A Checklist for Small Businesses
In a small office, the split system is one of those things nobody thinks about until the first hot morning of the year. Someone turns it on, a stale smell drifts across the room, the air coming out feels weak, and by lunchtime half the team is complaining. Most of that can be caught in […]
Cleaning Mould and Green Growth Off Fences and Retaining Walls
Walk down the shaded side of almost any Melbourne house after winter and you will see it: a timber paling fence gone green along the bottom, a sleeper retaining wall streaked with black, a brick garden wall with grey-green crust in the corners. It is one of the most common exterior cleaning jobs we see, […]
Mould After a Water Leak: What Dries Out and What Has to Go
A burst flexi hose under the vanity, a storm that finds a weak spot in the roof, a blocked gutter overflowing into the wall cavity. Water gets into Melbourne homes in all sorts of ways, and once the drip stops, the next question is always the same: what can be saved, and what has to […]
Evaporative Cooler Not Cooling on Humid Days: Is Something Wrong?
It is one of the most common calls of a Melbourne summer. The cooler worked brilliantly on a scorching dry day last week, and today, on a warm, sticky, overcast afternoon, the air from the ceiling outlets feels barely cooler than the room. The natural worry is that something has broken. Often it has not. […]
Selling in Spring? What Buyers and Building Inspectors Notice on the Roof and Gutters
Spring is the busiest selling season in Melbourne, and most sellers spend the weeks before listing on the inside of the house: paint, carpet, decluttering and styling. The roof and gutters tend to get forgotten, yet they are in almost every front-of-house listing photo, and they are one of the first things a building inspector […]