How to spend less of your weekend maintaining a rural property

March 7, 2025

A rural block is a great place to live right up until the maintenance list starts running your weekends. You go out to fix one section of fence, you notice the tank is low, you find the pump filter is blocked, and by the time you come back inside it is dark and you have not done the thing you actually went out for. That is most people I talk to, and it is not a discipline problem. It is that nearly all of it is reactive, so every job arrives at the worst possible moment and every one of them is urgent by the time you see it.

Reactive maintenance is the expensive kind

When something breaks you are paying for it twice. Once for the part, and once for the trip to go and get the part, which out here is rarely a short trip. The jobs that get in front of a breakage cost a fraction of the ones that respond to it, and the difference is mostly about having the thing on the shelf in your shed before you need it.

Buy the good one once

Cheap materials look like a saving on the day and they are the reason you are back out there in 18 months doing the same job again. That is most obvious with fencing and with anything carrying water, because both of those fail slowly and quietly and then fail completely on a weekend. If you are choosing between two things and one will handle the conditions out here, buy that one. Your time is the expensive part, not the fitting.

Take the jobs that repeat and make them stop repeating

Put gutter guard over the runs that feed your rainwater tank, because most tank contamination arrives as leaf litter off the roof and cleaning the tank is a far bigger job than keeping the leaves out of it.
Run poly pipe and proper fittings rather than patching the same split with tape every summer.
Go to a fencing type that does not need painting or re-nailing, so the fence line stops being an annual job.

Keep a spare of the things that stop you working

Running out of gas halfway through cooking, or finding a fence down when the stock is already through it, means dropping everything you had planned. A spare gas bottle costs you nothing to keep full, and a bit of spare fencing wire, a few fittings and a second gas bottle in the shed will save you more weekends than any system will.

If keeping track of the bottles is the part that catches you out, the Gas Companion works out roughly where you are up to so you are not guessing, and Cassie will answer most gas questions without you having to ring anybody.

The drive is part of the cost

The thing that quietly eats a rural weekend is not the work, it is the round trips. An hour each way to find out they do not have it is a whole morning gone, and the fuel on top of that. So it is worth knowing what is actually stocked near you before you get in the car, and it is worth asking us to put something aside rather than driving in on the chance.

We also deliver, which for the heavy things is the whole answer. Local delivery runs Tuesday and Thursday, $5 around Strathalbyn and $10 for the whole regional run, on goods bought from us. The regional run covers McHarg Creek, Wistow, Clayton, Wellington, Hartley, Woodchester, Tooperang, Langhorne Creek, Old Bull Creek Road and Bull Creek Road. It is $10 because everything heading the same way goes on the same trip, so the cost gets spread across everybody on the run instead of landing on one person.

The gas runs work the same way. Strathalbyn is Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons, and the southern run goes Thursday mornings out through Langhorne Creek, Belvedere, Clayton, Milang, Finniss and Tooperang. Ashbourne, Macclesfield, Woodchester, Callington and Wistow get fitted around those runs on demand.

Get on top of it rather than trying to finish it

You are never going to get to the bottom of the list on a rural block and that is fine, because the goal is to stop it dictating what you do on a Saturday. A property where the predictable things have been dealt with in advance still needs work, it just stops ambushing you, and that is the difference between a place you own and a place that owns you.

Shop related products

Gutter Guard Protector, 1 metre length. Sold by the metre, so you can do just the runs that feed the tank.
LPG 45kg. The size most properties out here run on.
POPE 12mm Brass Tap Adaptor, 20BSP. Brass rather than plastic, for the fitting that lives outside in the sun.
POPE Hold Down Stake, 10 pack. For pinning poly pipe and dripline so it stays where you put it.

Did you know we also stock a lot for rural blocks in store that is not listed online, including Colorbond gutter, downpipe and mitres, low density poly pipe in 13mm, 19mm and 25mm on 25 metre rolls, star picket fittings, Soudal silicone and gutter scoops. Give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what is on the shelf.

What is online sits in plumbing and hardware.

The two that cause the most trouble out here

Gas and fencing. There is more on how the gas side works on the LPG and industrial gas supply page. And if a fence line is on your list, Splinter will price a Colorbond fence off your measurements before you ring anybody, so you know what you are in for.

More on running a rural block

Got a time saving trick that works on your place? Put it on our Facebook page, I will almost certainly steal it.

Cheers,
Candeece

Candeece

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Hardware

The everyday bits that hold a place together. Gate hooks and barrel bolts, pad bolts, door hinges, cup head bolts and nuts, and the odd thing you only need once every few years. Galvanised gear is what you want outside. Zinc plated is for indoor work and anywhere that stays dry.

If you are not sure which hinge or bolt suits your gate, bring the old one in to the Strathalbyn shop and we will match it at the counter.

Also worth a look: Fasteners and Fixings and Building Materials.