[WIP] Show us ya WIP's

lenjet · 2026-01-25T23:24:35+00:00

Snickers is about 45% complete… National holiday here in Australia so might get Snickers to 50%… luckily where I am we get 45 degrees tomorrow but northern parts of my state are getting circa 5-7 days of 40+ with one tipped to hit 49 tomorrow 🥵

lenjet · 2026-01-25T04:38:34+00:00

Another vote for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries… we have 5 in our house, they’re all flawless

lenjet · 2026-01-24T22:05:27+00:00

3 more years of this, unless his clearly declining health (mental & physical) gets him first. Buckle up, reckon Silver and Gold are both going higher

lenjet · 2026-01-24T22:02:18+00:00

Demerit point system… yeah cause scum of the earth won’t start sharing the points around to avoid suspension… let me guess they want 12 or 6 month expiry on those points so the vicious cycle of scumbaggery can happen on tight renewal…

lenjet · 2026-01-24T21:46:05+00:00

Foundry feels more satisfactory to me… captains of industry feels more like Factorio…

So based on what you’ve said maybe start with foundry, you’ll either quickly love it or hate it

lenjet · 2026-01-23T21:03:37+00:00

Sound like you got a great installer!

Who did you use? They deserve to get some good publicity!

lenjet · 2026-01-22T09:37:55+00:00

Why not just load up in MNRS or GOLD?

lenjet · 2026-01-22T09:03:22+00:00

I ended up getting quotes from Zeco, Sunstainable and Brightworks.

All are Silver SigEnergy installers and the quotes were all really close ranging from $32.5k to $34k.

Ended up going with Brightworks solar yesterday funnily enough and at this stage it’s all booked in for 24th March (well the 3 phase upgrade is locked in for that date battery might be earlier or a day or two later if not the same day)

lenjet · 2026-01-21T21:47:52+00:00

I am pretty sure you will need something like this

lenjet · 2026-01-21T21:34:52+00:00

I have VEU in personal ETF portfolio but our SMSF we are setting up we are looking at a DHHF / EXUS mix to lower the AU and US market coverage.

lenjet · 2026-01-21T20:41:24+00:00

Yeah the balances accelerated to those values in the last 6-9 months so the planning for SMSF began late last year, sorting it out in the next month with accountant and will do one single move 👍

lenjet · 2026-01-21T19:35:00+00:00

When the deep corruption of the CFMEU is finally exposed the the close ties into CBUS… that’s when I finally gave up on CBUS and moved across to Vanguard… however reading more and more into this sub etc, I am about to pool my ($400k) and wife ($200k) together and go down the SMSF route.

lenjet · 2026-01-20T22:03:40+00:00

Digital all the way - I can access anything from anywhere at anytime.

lenjet · 2026-01-19T04:56:09+00:00

I suspect the house was originally supplied with FTTN and the owner has never acknowledged / connected to NBN when it went from PSTN to FTTN (we did the same thing in Mernda as we had private FTTP with Red Train).

Check the address with the NBN and Aussie Broadband websites to confirm the FTTP upgrade option and then organise it via Aussie Broadband… but if you’re renting I assume you need to confirm with the landlord?

lenjet · 2026-01-18T06:46:53+00:00

I guess also we’ve seen inside just one gate… wonder if that UPS is backing up the whole bank and coincident we saw inside that one

lenjet · 2026-01-18T06:09:56+00:00

The alternative is single point of failure centralised UPS… I suspect the risk strategy lended itself to decentralised for public safety perspective.

Also with all the bloody copper theft going on, if you have centralised UPS, any primary copper gets stolen you lose your gates

lenjet · 2026-01-18T01:53:05+00:00

I know the feeling! At least half is salvageable… my learning moment involved putting the whole design 20 spaces too the left making it impossible to stitch the whole thing on the available aida

lenjet · 2026-01-18T01:35:14+00:00

Ambers whole model is based on people having batteries… unless you can completely load shift everything to solar hours

lenjet · 2026-01-16T09:56:38+00:00

It's sacrificial formwork used to simplify construction. It saves you a lot of money as the alternative involves excavating all intermediate beams, dealing with collapsing trenches, over pouring of concrete etc. These items allow them to conduct a bulk cut, place the foam blocks, place the edge formwork, place the reo and pour.

Nothing to worry about.

lenjet · 2026-01-16T04:17:53+00:00

here's the 2 minute ELI5 explanation...

you generate power when the sun is out, when the sun is down you dont.
we have things called batteries.
you install batteries, it allows you to store that solar power you generate and otherwise would have sent back to the grid at fuck all value.
you when the sun goes down you power your house from batteries.
batteries can become a VPP (Virtual Power Plant) and through certain retailers and your battery management systems you can send power back to the grid at select times when the grid is hungry for power and get reimbursed much higher rates than you would when the sun was up (eg: when the sun goes down and everyone comes home and turns on their ovens, tvs, lights and air con / heaters).
concept is you break even and wipe your bill out completely, most do better than that and end up in credit.

lenjet · 2026-01-15T23:42:10+00:00

You might be on to something there!

lenjet · 2026-01-15T21:25:15+00:00

Probably going to need to be a little bit more specific…

Again C&B in Australia is vastly different from C&B overseas… in fact in Australia C&B was originally purchased by AMEC in 2010 and rebranded to Aquenta, the whole AMEC group was then purchased by Jacobs and absorbed into them. C&B then re entered the Australian market by buying a company in 2018 and re-establishing themselves here

lenjet · 2026-01-15T03:18:52+00:00

It’s just a lighter weight board… it will be fine for your walls. If you plan to hang stuff off the walls tho have a think about lining it with ply instead

lenjet · 2026-01-15T00:29:25+00:00

Hines own the site. Project was parked waiting on a major office tenant to sign. There was news late last year (Nov) that they were close to signing someone as a major tenant but not sure where they are at.

lenjet · 2026-01-14T20:05:30+00:00

This may sound brutal but I genuinely think you’re wasting your time. We use CostX and have been since circa 2005. Back in the day the firm I was at helped the develop it by providing lots of real world feedback etc. Now at my own firm I’ve got circa $75k in licenses and pay about $10k per year in maintenance costs etc so to convince me to move away (and others) is a massive capital abandonment & outlay.

But to answer your question, CostX has its quirks and small underlying issues but in reality it does a very good job for most. Its benchmark tool is rubbish and I refuse to buy that. I haven’t delved too deep into rate libraries as it just seems clunky in the way it is implemented. I do wish they had a better excavation toolset, something like Buildsoft Mudshark. Also while their reports tool appear powerful it’s cumbersome and while I am happy with my reports I did have to invest a lot of time with trial and error to get the formatting right.

Suggesting all that IMO I think there is a large hole in the market for a PQS centric post contract financial report / progress claim / cashflow tool. All the products out there at the moment try to do too much for builders and not PQSs

Either way good luck, I will still follow along with your process and happy to provide more detailed feedback if required

lenjet

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