The enclosed dog exercise area in Evan’s Bay ( opposite Cogs park) is really popular with owners of small to medium dogs and is apparently the only one in the entire Wellington area. In fact it’s so popular that I found dog owners travelling from as far away as Lower Hutt, Karori and Tawa to come here to let their dog off the leash. Apparently, the great advantage is the peace of mind from knowing that your dog can’t run off or get hurt, and neither do you have to worry about it annoying anyone who doesn’t like dogs.
And really, its just a smallish fenced area with a couple of gates and a few seats. It seems such an inexpensive way of meeting what is obviously a huge need that I cant help but think that we must need several more of them. And if we had more of them that would be less traffic, especially in the weekends, which quite frankly the Eastern suburbs doesn’t need.
Thumbs up to the Wellington Charitable Vet Fund and the Hataitai Resident’s Association, who along with the Council funded the project. The Hataitai residents association installed the two seats which were donated in memory of long term Hataitai resident Marion Henderson ( For more about Marian’s many achievements see the Hataitai Community Website)
Oh… and just for the record, several people said the seats were nice but there could be a few more of them , also a few more shrubs or small trees.
The ASB Sports Centre, located in Kemp Street, Kilbirnie, is pretty impressive and a great asset for the community.
Not only do they have the equivalent of 12 basketball courts, changing rooms, and a café on the ground floor, they provide offices upstairs for variety of organizations: Parafed Wellington has its offices there and uses the facilities for its basketball players, High Performance New Zealand has a training centre there, Pacific Radiology and Wellington Sports Medicine are both located there (probably quite convenient at times!), and there are small rooms for individual sports. There are even conference rooms which can be booked out for the amazingly cheap price of between $20-$40 per hour. Oh and the café can of course cater for conferences.
According to a local resident in Kemp Street, during the school holidays when holiday programs were on the place was overloaded with kids, and they could have done with twice the space. The day I went was fairly quiet until around 1pm when a couple of bus loads of kids arrived. But once on the courts, they were into it!
Small actions can make quite a difference to how dry your home is:
- put lids on pots, especially if cooking for a long time, simmer rather than boil hard
- use the kitchen extractor fan if you have one, or else open a nearby window -just a crack is usually sufficient. Make sure the draft from the window doesn’t cause other issues, such as the flame on a gas cook-top going out, or things getting blown towards the cook-top.
- Dry clothes outside if you can – a full load of washing can hold up to 5 litres of water. If you can’t use the clothes line, sometimes the garage or a covered porch works well.
- If you have a drier, make sure it is vented to the outside. If nothing else, you can buy a flexible length of hose to hang out the laundry window while the drier is going.
- If you do need to dry clothes inside, leave a few windows open just a small amount in different parts of the house (security stays may help with safety concerns). This encourages a steady cross-draft which will help your home stay dry and avoid that musty smell
- Unflued gas heaters (the cabinet sort with the gas bottle) cause a LOT of moisture in your home. If you are using one of these heaters, consider whether you can swap to an oil column heater or have a heat pump, a wood burner or flued gas fire installed. If this is simply not possible, you will need to ventilate your house well. Have one or two windows open just a crack while using the heater, and ventilate the house during the day.
Although it seems a paradox, ventilating your house actually means it is easier to heat. The drop in temperature from having a little bit of cold air is more than compensated by the drying effect. Drier air is easier to heat, and in addition your furniture, curtains and surfaces won’t get as much mildew and mould.
If you don’t believe me, try it. You will need to experiment for yourself as every house is different. Comments and feedback welcomed.
PS. If you have a persistent problem with condensation, especially in the spring months, you may have damp ground under your house (this can be the case even if it doesn’t feel particularly damp to the touch)-see my post on polythene moisture barriers for a really good fix for this.
Next up on this topic will be a post on DVS and HRV systems- when to consider them.
I belong to a variety of organisations- many of them not-for-profit- and we are often looking for places to hold a meeting for an hour or so. There’s no way we can afford to pay for conference rooms, and while cafes might be good for a casual catch-up, they obviously don’t want people there for much longer than it takes to have a drink and a bite to eat.
It occurred to me that there could be a role for our community libraries here- not just for groups such as ours, but for consultants meeting clients or small businesses that have training sessions or other business needs .
Libraries at present are closed to the public until 10am- but whats to stop the rooms being booked out for a small fee between say 8am and 10am?
Most libraries have wi-fi now and with a bit of investment could be set up to enable power point presentations. It might mean staggering the hours library staff work- and providing a bit more investment, but hey that’s possible.
Perhaps they could offer other services eg a librarian who is also a JP and can witness documents, printing facilities at cost for small colour-print runs and so on.
The library buildings themselves are a valuable community resource- so lets think about whether we can maximise the benefit from them!
I had the pleasure of meeting with some of the staff and volunteers two weeks ago and popped along today to the garage sale held from 10 am to 3pm.
They are doing a lot with the resources they have and they’d like to do more! For a start they are aiming to have a community event every two months. The next one will be something to celebrate women’s lives and contribution.
Wellington Sewing Services, in Kilbirnie Plaza (off Bay Road), is a great shop that probably deserves to be better known. Not only do proprietors Lynnette and Glen stock the largest range of sewing machines in Wellington, in many cases they can still service and repair older sewing machines.
I took my 1959 Husqvana machine in and a few days later it came back with two new belts and a replacement pattern cam. It sews perfectly again and hopefully is good for another 50 years. Personally, I am grateful to have a service that means I don’t have to throw my much used and faithful old machine away.
As well as machines, they sell quilting fabrics, knitting wool and a full range of haberdashery. They have noticed a resurgence in the numbers of people taking up handcrafts, especially fabric arts and quilting.
(Disclaimer: Sarah features interesting businesses that seem to provide a great service. She receives no financial benefit whatsoever. Mention in this blog is not an endorsement as such – people are advised to do their own research into how well the business suits their particular needs).
The Bay Road shopping centre has been in upheaval for months now, and it was good to see today that the footpaths are almost complete, cars are parked in the new 60 minute carparking, and buskers and shoppers are back.
I’ve attended a couple of the Kilbirnie Business Network meetings, and have heard from retailers that it has been a stressful time with turnover much reduced… and I’m sure the Council haven’t found it easy either. I’m not sure what the issues were… apparently locating and upgrading underground services (including installing broadband) was more problematic than expected- and getting street levels right difficult. Hopefully lessons have been learned.
Once its finished, mid August, it is planned to have several events to celebrate the new look and promote the shopping centre. All I can say is- is watch this space!
The shakes of the last few days, following on from the storms a few weeks ago are a timely reminder that households need to be prepared with emergency supplies.
Also, its good to have a plan in place should disaster strike during working hours. If you are responsible for children, or other vulnerable family members or neighbours, do you have a back-up plan in case you are stranded somewhere else? Are there other trusted people who can collect your children? And have you let your childcare, kindy, school or whatever know who they are?
Also where do you keep your emergency supplies? Is it likely to be somewhere you can still get to if everything starts tumbling down?
Our kit is kept in our small shed for this reason. I’ve got a fair amount of water, which I try to remember to change on family birthdays- works for us as they are spread throughout the year. We have a first aid kit, (including spare medications) small torch, wind-up radio, candles, matches, toilet paper, bucket and lots of plastic bags (I understand these things were fairly important immediately following the Christchurch earthquake!), Janola, and a small amount of canned food (could probably do with more).
Apparently following the Christchurch earthquake, water and having cash were two of the most pressing issues.
One of our local body platforms is to provide assistance (possibly financial, certainly advice) to help homeowners put in rainwater storage tanks. We see this as helping with emergency preparedness, droughts and even alleviating pressure on the storm water system in heavy rain events. It won’t totally replace the need to have some bottled emergency water but it should be a useful back-up.
Here”s a picture of my emergency cupboard..
Any comments?
Obviously showering or taking a bath creates steam and moisture in the bathroom (showering more so than a bath). You can reduce the moisture that stays in your home by:
opening the window (having a security stay attached means you can leave the window open with less worry)
having an extractor fan fitted (a good idea is to have a timer on the switch so that the fan turns itself off a set time after you leave the bathroom- this can be done for a small fee by an electrician)
leaving the bathroom door shut until all the steam is gone- this reduces the moisture that tracks into other parts of the house.
However, another simple option as illustrated above is to squeezee down the walls of the shower following the last shower of the morning. It is surprising how much water is taken off the sides of the walls and straight down the drain this way- immediately the bathroom is much drier.
The squeezee can be purchased for a few dollars from any hardware store, and the process takes less than a minute or two. We first saw this done when we stayed in the home of some american friends- they were surprised that it was a novelty for us- just common practice there apparently.
Oh, and another advantage is that your tiles and grouting will stay in much better condition too. And if you have a glass shower door, keeping it wiped down stops the glass getting those annoying white streaks.
In 2011, Lonely Planet has named Wellington as the 4th top city in the world to visit and refers to it as “the coolest little capital in the world”. The following is a funky fast-paced video of Wellington for you to enjoy…
Sarah Free 