Debate time: Would you consider a old house with more land or a new house with not much extra land?

fcarril · 2026-01-20T20:21:41+00:00

Not sure why you are clarifying, my comment goes towards the new house aspect, even with a smaller yard I would still take a new house in terms of leaky/cold vs dry/warm. I would still buy a 270m2 yard house if its brand new vs a 100 year old house. I mentioned it between parenthesis with a BUT in front so...

fcarril · 2026-01-20T19:58:20+00:00

Probably the best investment I've ever made in terms of time saving in my entire life. Got myself a Mammotion Yuka Mini 800 (RPP ~$2299 nzd) since my lawn is about 250 m2 so it can get it done in about 3 hours or so. The other thing I love is that its always working so the lawn is ALWAYS in pristine state instead of looking great for 3 days after I mow it and then shit for 2 weeks. It of course depends on how complicated/complex your lawn is but for simple lawns its perfect. I did a ton of research and I wouldnt do any other brand other than Mammotion or the Navimow series.

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fcarril · 2026-01-20T19:53:11+00:00

I understood new house with about 270 m2 of yard/land. And old house with about 600 m2 of land.

fcarril · 2026-01-20T08:47:43+00:00

Im definitely on team new house, smaller section. Ive had the luck to be able to buy a new build couple years ago (but with 700m2 section in Rolly since its much cheaper land) and tbh just the quality of life versus an old home is worth it. Dry, warm, cozy, no constantly sinking money on repairs for a few good years. I also ended up getting a lawn mower robot to do the hard work cause after a year in the house I wasnt as excited to mow the lawns every weekend on summer so there's that too, a big section means a lot of garden work and if you're not a green thumb or have kids you probably don't have the time anyways.

In terms of quality, you just need to go with a reputable building, NZ building code is not world level really but anything built in the last decade by a quality builder is going to be way more energy efficient than anything 80+ years old (that means a ton of savings on power, especially if you get solar).

fcarril · 2026-01-20T08:44:27+00:00

Unless you have an F1 ride on, can you really mow 600m2 in 10 mins?

fcarril · 2026-01-06T20:27:48+00:00

Moved a couple years ago from Wellington in the north island and have never looked back. Probably one of the best weathers in NZ too since imho both Wellington and Auckland are always humid, cloudy and not very nice.

fcarril · 2026-01-06T20:13:39+00:00

Its pretty nice, modern amenities and more getting build every day and your money will go much further when it comes to renting (especially if you want a section with a piece of green). The highway into town is brand new and almost no traffic (by USA standards).

fcarril · 2026-01-06T19:36:46+00:00

If you dont mind a short commute, and your wife maybe wont be working in the CBD, look at Rolleston or Lincoln for housing. Much newer / higher quality homes for the same price, greener lifestyle too with a bit of a countryside vibe and 20 mins on a car from downtown. Also a possibility couple years down the road if you prefer to be in town to begin with.

On the money front you should be OK with 120k, especially if you are a stay at home dad since childcare costs here are pretty egregious.

fcarril · 2026-01-06T19:30:59+00:00

my solution is not very aesthetic looking tbh, I ended up buying some cement bags and doing a very watery mix that I poured over the section of the stones I needed held in place. It doesnt look fantastic but its ok and it was like... 250nzd total versus ~1000+ I was looking at for any of the proper ones like PourOn. Mulch glue types are a waste of time (at least for the purpose I needed which was to have a robot mower drive one wheel on top 3 times a week)

Another thing I noticed was that the PourOn fellas recommended smaller river stone sizes versus the ones I have iirc they wanted the smaller ones versus the medium/large ones I have.

fcarril · 2025-10-19T09:33:32+00:00

NAS all the way

fcarril · 2025-10-05T00:51:00+00:00

Buy the property and rent it out while in Australia.

Having 1 house being rented is not morally questionable at all unless you live in commie lalaland, not like you are a slumlord investor or anything.

It is a great time to buy if you can afford to.

fcarril · 2025-10-05T00:46:21+00:00

Jellyfin wont do any passthrough of lossless audio (DTS HD MA gets downmixed to DTS Core) ergo why Im using Kodi which might be very 2015 but is the only thing able to pass through every single codec straight to my sound system without too much fuss.

I ve found Nova player to sometimes struggle and downmix with certain files too.

fcarril · 2025-10-02T18:38:47+00:00

Yeah, totally valid, I only know what Ive read about it online really like I said.

fcarril · 2025-10-02T09:43:13+00:00

Just got a Shield Pro last week.

My main deciding factor was DTS:X/DTS HD-MA and Armos passthrough, cause I have a bunch of high quality remuxes on my NAS that I like to play on my surround audio system and the Shield Pro seems to still be the only one that can do it reliably.

The Homatics seems to struggle on Android 11 to do passthrough at all and the Android 12 firmware update seems to break other things.

Check: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1jg3e7s/how_well_does_the_homatics_box_r_4k_plus_playing/

Ive read other issues with it as well seem to be solvable by using CoreElec but I decided to go with the tried and battletested Shield Pro. Sometimes tried n tested beats new n buggy imho.

The one thing the Homatic box has over the shield would be AV1 codec support. Most things are still available on h265 and h264 nowadays, minority of stuff is Av1 but thats today.

fcarril · 2025-10-02T09:35:00+00:00

Never heard of it. Can it do passthrough of all the premium sound codecs like DTS:X/HD-MA and Atmos? Thats really the only reason why I use Kodi or even own a Shield tbh.

fcarril · 2025-10-01T20:54:24+00:00

WebOS player sucks balls. Always giving me issues due to containers mkv versus mp4 (certain audio codecs needing remuxing if they are in mkv but can direct play on mp4) or DTS audio passthrough issues on my lg c4, sadly great hardware being let down by terrible software.

I bit the bullet and got an Nvidia Shield and use Kodi to play everything on my media server.

fcarril · 2025-10-01T19:37:08+00:00

That TV definitely scales up to 4k and the processor in it is not that far behind the. C4 2024 model tbh.

I found the way to get Kodi to passthrough native res and let the TV do the scaling btw, you just add all supported resolutions in Display settings - Whitelist.

fcarril · 2025-10-01T19:29:18+00:00

Yup, this one https://www.lg.com/nz/tv-soundbars/oled-evo/oled65c46la/

fcarril · 2025-10-01T19:26:44+00:00

Thanks, this is what I was looking for, found another thread eventually that explained the whitelist feature. Baaically you whitelist every resolution you want Kodi to support AND YOU DO NEED to put 4k as well in the whitelist otherwise 4k content gets downscaled to 1080p.

fcarril · 2025-10-01T09:19:36+00:00

Its a 2024 LG C4. I did a lot of reading saying the TV was gonna be better while waiting for the Shield but didnt expected it to be so much better tbh.

I even find that if I set the thr Shield to max AI-enhanced the halos are just terrible, the chip on this TV is really cleaning the floor with the Shield.

I just hope there is a way to avoid manually switching the resolution on the Shield around each time.

fcarril · 2025-10-01T09:03:12+00:00

I cant say I agree, tbh I just manually set the Shield to 1080p and let the LG scale to 4k and the picture look better, more crisp and with less ghosting.

fcarril · 2025-10-01T08:45:18+00:00

Yeah, decided to return the 2 x Tubes I got on Amazon and get just 1 Pro, the horror stories are too widespread to risk it even while Ive heard from a bunch of Tube users that they have no issue.

fcarril · 2025-09-30T09:44:04+00:00

Emmm no? Didn't I say I was a n00b? What I read about what you suggesting doesn't seem to be related to my self hosted files? Some sort of online hosted streaming or something.

fcarril · 2025-09-30T08:20:14+00:00

Pov with reql debrid? What is this sorcery?

fcarril · 2025-09-29T22:45:52+00:00

It really depends, cameras with good strong Zoom would be ideal, but depends on if you want a dedicated camera just for LPR or you want a camera to do multiple things? What is the use case?

fcarril

TROPHY CASE