September | 2010 | The Stone Crew Blog

Archive for September, 2010

Earthquake Clippings

by julian on September 11, 2010 in Misc Stuff with Comments Off

Check out the chart below. So far we’ve been in 388 earthquakes! Man! It would be an understatement to say we’ve been shaken, not stirred!

If you look below, We live where the white arrow is. That’s how close we are to the fault line. Crazy stuff!

The new pump shed nearly complete!

by julian on September 11, 2010 in Misc Stuff, Renovations with Comments Off

A bit of painting to do and we’ll sort a garden around it, but the pump shed is almost done, and most importantly – we have water!

17mm treated ply bolted to the old steel tank tower frame. Was a bugger cutting ply to skewed trapezoid shapes! Should be nice and solid. Just the edge strips and door left to do.

Here’s the new pump and filter. The white cylinder is a 20 micron particulate filter I added to remove most of the sediment. The Aquifer is still a little dirty and if the sediment gets to the house it ruins the ceramics and fittings.

The new system is high pressure (we had low) but when connected, a number of joints leaked (below ground too…). They couldn’t handle the load 😉 So there’s been a good number of small leaks we’ve needed to fix.

The end result though is that we now have a 13,650 litre storage tank and high pressure house supply with awesome tap and shower pressure!

A few loose ends to tidy but should be all finished by next week!

Thanks to the ChCh earthquake, we now have a new water tank!

by julian on September 8, 2010 in Misc Stuff, Renovations with Comments Off

If you look below the tank is no longer in the middle. It shifted 6 inches in the quake and we were concerned it would fall through the office roof and squash the staff. EQC were great and approved a replacement.

So I worked magic and got the contractors sorted and now the old tank is down and new one in – all in a day! new pump goes in tomorrow!

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You can see below how close the old tank/stand was to the office. The new tank is great though, 13,650 litres actually! (chose the smaller one).

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New view out the kitchen. I guess we need to plant some trees! Glad to have a safe water supply now though and stoked that EQC and Westpac came to the party quickly. Much appreciated!

A shaky weekend! The great 7.1 quake of 2010 ;-)

by julian on September 5, 2010 in Family, Misc Stuff with Comments Off

Now that was a crazy weekend! An earthquake centered 5-10 km away that hit 7.1 on the Richter scale! It trashed a fair deal of Christchurch infrastructure and messed up most people houses, either superficially or structurally.

This is our account as written by Sarah…

As mentioned above, we live pretty close to the epicenter. We’re on a rural 5 acre block in a wooden house. We are all fine. Pretty scary experience. Jackson has been fine throughout. He calls earthquakes "earth cracks" – which is probably quite accurate when you see the state of some of the suburbs effected. As we were so close to the epicentre of the main quake it was loud and violent. I was woken first by a loud rumble and then the shaking started. I grabbed Julian and said "Julian, earthquake!" we both leapt out of bed and stood in doorway for a sec and then I ran for Jackson. Our hearts were racing – Julian said he was waiting for a heart attack. Jackson was still asleep but I picked him up out of bed and ran for the doorway. He was half asleep and said "mummy, that’s really loud rain". Jackson and I stayed in the doorway huddled under a blanket for about an hour. Julian was running back and forward checking things and calling friends to make sure they were ok.

At one point, Julian was out on the lawn calling a friend Kate (was home alone) to check in on her and saw the whole house shake!

I cant remember hearing things fall but when we got a torch -all the books had fallen out off shelves through the house. Our bedroom draws had fallen flat on the floor (smashing the tv that was on top). The fridge had moved, and all the pantry was all over the floor. The office was a mess with computers and screens all over the place. The huge concrete water tank on the tower also shifted a bit.

Power went out immediately it’s only just been turned back on (after nearly 2 days). The big quake lasted about 40 secs – but strong aftershocks came thick and fast for the following few hours and they have continued until today, although the intensity has weaken and they are much less frequent. At the moment we can’t actually tell what is an aftershock and what is movement from the gusts of wind. Oh! Forgot to mention – we now have 130kph gale force winds hitting us too… 🙁

Yesterday was spent making sure friends and neighbours were safe. Because we had limited access to the outside world (short bursts on transistor radio)we didn’t have any idea of the extent of damage had occurred in Christchurch city until last night when we watched the 6pm news down at the local petrol station. It was a small TV powered by a 12v car battery and an inverter (it was a real community affair). The community spirit down here has been amazing. Everyone is mucking in and helping out. We had to do emergency dashes to service stations for essentials, ie: water, food etc.

Last night was pretty rough with no power and pretty violent aftershocks. The adrenaline had worn off and all that was left was fear. Every time there was an aftershock we would wonder if it was going to continue. None were more than a few secs but some really shook the place. There were about 20 last night.

We went to check up on friends in Rangiora today. Kaiapoi is a disaster zone. It was shocking to see and it actually made us realize how powerful the quake was and how fortunate we were to come our relatively undamaged. Our heart goes out to the residents that have lost their homes. Christchurch central is also a real mess. It’s very sad. Earthquakes last seconds but the cleanup will take months.

However, we both are totally impressed with how the city has pulled together. John Key, Bob Parker and the emergency teams are doing a fantastic job of supplying resources, acting fast to repair core services and reassuring people they’ll help pay for the damage. It’s a great city!

So we’re ok. Julian’s taking a few days off to check everything over and then we just need the aftershocks to settle. Then back to normal 🙂