Do Gutter Guards Mean You Never Clean the Gutters? What Actually Happens on a Melbourne Roof
Gutter guards are one of those things people fit hoping to cross a job off the list for good. The pitch is simple: a mesh over the gutter keeps the leaves out, so the gutter stays clear and nobody has to go up a ladder again. On some Melbourne houses that is close to true. […]
Does Duct Cleaning Help With Hay Fever? What a Ducted System Does With Spring Pollen in Melbourne
Melbourne is a hard place to have hay fever. The grass pollen season runs through spring into early summer, north winds carry pollen in from the pasture country beyond the suburbs, and a warm, windy day in October can be miserable for anyone who reacts to it. Somewhere around now, people who have spent the […]
Evaporative Cooler Pads: Clean or Replace Before Summer? How to Tell in a Melbourne Spring
Somewhere in the last two weeks of September, Melbourne gets its first afternoon that actually feels warm, and evaporative coolers across the city get switched on for the first time since autumn. What comes out of the vents in the first ten minutes tells you a lot about the pads. That is the point to […]
Is Attic Insulation Installation Still Worth It in Springtime?
As we head into early spring in Melbourne, most of us pack the winter heaters away and look forward to longer days and crisp mornings. It’s a season of chang…
Why a Fireplace Smells Worse in Warm Weather, and How to Stop It Before Summer
The fire has been out for weeks. The room still smells of smoke. On the first warm afternoon of spring it is noticeably worse, and it gets worse again on humid days and after rain. Plenty of Melbourne households assume this means something is wrong with the chimney. Usually nothing is broken. The chimney is […]
Does Winter Mould Go Away When the Weather Warms Up? What Happens in a Melbourne House in Spring
Around mid-September the heating in most Melbourne houses goes off for the year, the windows start opening, and the winter mould gets found. Behind the wardrobe. Along the bottom of the bedroom curtain. In the corner of the ceiling above the shower. On the underside of the windowsill in the room that never gets sun. […]
Which Side of a Melbourne House Goes Green First, and What It Tells You
Walk around almost any house in Melbourne after winter and the green growth is lopsided. One wall has it, the opposite wall does not. The path down one side of the house is slippery and the path down the other is fine. People often read this as a sign that one part of the house […]
Dryer Vent Runs: Why Bends and Sags Matter More Than Metres
Almost everything written about dryer vents is about how often to clean them. That matters, but it skips a question that determines how quickly a run fills up in the first place: what shape is the run, and where does the air slow down? Quick answer: Length is only part of what makes a dryer […]
Where Are the Filters in a Melbourne Ducted System, and Which Can You Clean Yourself?
The filter question comes up every spring, usually in the same form: the system smells or the airflow is poor, someone has read that the filters need doing, and then nobody can find them. It is a fair confusion, because ducted heating and cooling is laid out almost the opposite way to how people picture […]
Where a Melbourne Roof Blocks Up After Winter, and Why Spring Storms Find It
Roofs do not usually fail during the storm. They fail quietly over winter and then get found out by the storm. In Melbourne that timing is fairly predictable: months of leaf drop, bark and grit settle into the drainage path while the rain is light enough that nothing ever overflows, and then the first serious […]