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Small Scale Engineering offers you the following services:

Engineering, fitting & turning on once-off and short run pieces
All types of welding including bespoke, metal furniture manufacture
Prototype manufacture
Home maintenance, restoration, repairs and renovations
General handyman

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Small Scale Engineering is also building a house out of shipping containers. Follow the project on our blog:

The Latest From the Container House Project

- How Much Stuff Do We Need?
  12th Feb 2020LifestyleHaving a large percentage of our possessions in storage has been very conducive to reflection on “stuff”. How much stuff do we need? With our living space much reduced while we build our container home, we had to be quite strict with ourselves in what we kept out to use, and what went into storage. It has been a good life lesson on learning to do with less. Marie Kondo might make it sound very easy. If it doesn’t spark joy, say goodbye. But it’s not always so simple. Our belongings surrounding us have a lot to do with making us feel at home, in our home. Many of our possessions are attached to us for sentimental reasons. It can be hard to remember that it’s the memories and not the item that is the important part. Preparing to Move Almost two years ago, just before our move to our new plot, our preparations for the move were not going quite according to plan. Does moving house ever go according to plan? As with any house move, we reached that day when we finally ran out of time. The last few items that we hadn’t quite sorted out yet were thrown into boxes and moved to storage. This resulted in items from dinner service sets being parted from their relatives and other items finding themselves lost in the chaos. We have many boxes filled with our possessions, and we don’t know in what box to find that book that we would really like to read. The Lesson The lesson, however, is that you can live without items you never thought you could do with out. Do you need an item so desperately that it’s worth digging through several very dusty boxes to find said thing? Yes, it annoys me greatly that my dinner service of eight-of-everything has been broken up. Seven plates and one mug are in our current cupboard and one plate and seven mugs are in a box somewhere else. When we wish to entertain, we have to somehow make do with the smaller serving dishes that we kept out, because the bigger ones we use for larger meals are in a box somewhere. And yet, it hasn’t killed us. As the months go on, and utensils slowly break from every day use, there’s a tough decision to make. Do you buy a new version, or wait until your boxes are out of storage? Because you know you have similar items packed away somewhere. Taking that Lesson Into the Future Despite the slight nuisance of not having our stuff around us, I’m glad I’ve had this opportunity. We have begun moving our possessions out of storage and are slowly moving the boxes to our new house. We can’t unpack them quite yet. However, having lived without many of our things for two years, I believe we’ll have a better idea of what is necessary to keep and what is not. What did we really miss while it was packed away? What did we forget all about? When everything is finally out of storage, we’ll find ourselves in the position of combining three households into one. There’ll definitely be a surplus of items that we really do not need. For Example… We’ve designed the house so that each of us has private space. Gwen and Louis’ section (The South “Wing”), will be ready in only a few weeks. Their space consists of their private bathroom, bedroom, small lounge area and a “coffee station”. Likewise, Cindy’s space (The North “Wing”) will be similarly set up, as will the space set aside for Kevin and myself (East). Other than a few basic kitchen utensils for the “coffee stations”, all our accumulated kitchen items will go to the kitchen in the communal area of the centre courtyard. Will we really need three cake mixers? Obviously not. It’s going to be tough to decide what to keep and what to re-home. As our boxes slowly move out of storage, I’m mentally preparing myself to remember the lessons I have learned while living on a building site. How much stuff do we need? We can definitely live with less....
- DIY Aquaponics; To Do or Not To Do
  5th Feb 2020Yard & GardenOne of Small Scale Engineering’s recent jobs for a client, was to remove a DIY aquaponics system out of the yard of a family that emigrated. Three bakkie loads later, we find ourselves with a pile of random bits of plumbing pipe, water pumps, old baths and river stone. We had a decision to make. Are we going to use these items to set up our own DIY Aquaponics system, or are we going to just get rid of it all? The system as it was originally, growing Calendula Sustainable Living One of the things we’ve always wanted to do, since moving out to the countryside, is grow our own food, one way or another. However, we didn’t think we’d have a good opportunity until further on in our project. But, now we have an opportunity to set up our own aquaponics system! There is very little that we would have to buy to set up this existing system for ourselves. Almost anything can be grown with aquaponics What is Aquaponics Aquaponics is an amazing symbiotic system, similar to hydroponics, for producing food. Fish waste is converted into nitrogen rich nutrients by bacteria. The nutrients in the water are used to fertilize the plants. The plants filter out the nutrients and clean the water for the fish. You can therefore breed edible fish and grow your fruit and vegetables all in the same system. This system uses less water than conventional farming methods and takes up less space. Aquaponics is a truly organic method of farming because you cannot use pesticides (as this would kill your fish). It has proven to be a very successful method of growing food. Interestingly, Chinese paddy fields can be considered “aquaponics” as fish are often cultivated along with the rice. Going to be interesting putting this jigsaw puzzle back together! A Steep Learning Curve The truth of the matter though, is that in order to set it up, we will have to learn quite a lot. None of us knows anything about fish. We believe it is a little bit tricky getting the balance right between the waste produced by the fish and the bacteria that converts this waste into something that the plants can use for nutrients. Also, there are a few different ways one can set up the system. When you have exactly zero experience, it’s hard to know the best route to take. Another problem is load-shedding. As long as our current electricity supply in South Africa is under pressure, we will also have to cater for those times when we have no power. If the water is not filtered through the plants often enough, the fish die. And by often enough, I mean that all the water has to go through the entire system twice an hour if the system is running at full capacity. Aquaponics disassembled DIY Aquaponics – To Do! After a two week debate, we decided we’re going to go ahead. As a result, we’ve had to do some thinking about landscaping because it’s not very easy to move a fish pond. We need it in the right place from the beginning. We have decided to make a bit of a water feature out of our aquaponics fish pond so it will serve a dual purpose (a garden feature and food production). Even more bits & pieces We’re expecting some highs and lows as we start learning, mostly by trial and error. We are quite excited about this new development, and are looking forward to sharing our experiences with you. Would you like to hear about our successes and failures? But what about you, our readers? Have you ever seen or tried out hydroponics or aquaponics yourselves? If you were to set up your own system, what would you be keen to try growing for yourselves?...

Small Scale Engineering offers you the following services:

How Much Stuff Do We Need?

DIY Aquaponics; To Do or Not To Do

How to Find Space in a Container Home