Spa: Begone!
Since I’m off work for a month, it’s a good time to do all those projects around the house we’ve been putting off due to lack of time and physical energy, such as getting rid of the spa tub on the back patio.
So last week, I put an ad on Facebook on the various local buy/swap/sell groups, selling the heater, pump, filter, and bubbler. I mentioned in the ad that you can take the tub too, I just don’t know what condition it’s in (I’m pretty sure the previous owners drilled holes in it to stop it holding water, to avoid bringing it compliant with the new regulations in our state).
I listed it all for A$400, which is spectacularly cheap for that heater, which you can still buy for around A$3000, but I figure who knows how long since the thing has operated, and we’re unable to test it (the plumbers unhooked the gas connection to it in order to connect the furnace, as the line was not big enough for it to share), so whoever bought it would be taking a gamble. If they come away with an amazing deal, good luck to them.
After a couple of days, a local plumber contacted me about it. It sounded like he was keen to take the tub too, but after thinking about it and talking with his spouse, decided to just take the heater and everything else bar the tub. The resulting funds got me a reciprocating saw though, and that let me cut the tub out over a period of about four days. Duncan helped smack the bricks apart, load everything into the trailer, and drop it all off at the tip.
Next, I put another ad on FB asking if anyone had any leads on “clean fill” (basically dirt without bricks and shit in it). I reckoned using some cursory measurements and being extremely pessimistic on how much it’d pack down that I’d need between 4 and 8 cubic meters of dirt, and if someone dumped 8M of dirt on our driveway I’d just use any excess on the garden or to level the lawn out. That night I had someone contacting me, and the next day (yesterday) they delivered about 2.5M of soil, straight off the trailer into the hole! Talk about convenience!
As it seems I was overly pessimistic, that’s mostly filled the hole… it remains to be seen how much it’ll pack down (I didn’t get a chance to ram it as we emptied the trailer out, so as not to keep them here all day, but I did hose around the outside of it to hopefully de-aerate it and accelerate the process), but it’s looking much better and the fall hazard outside our kitchen door is effectively eliminated now.
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