Golem needs to find a new home

Due to lack of interest in the flat… as of early next month the NZlarps gear will need to find a new home

please speek up with ideas or offers thanks

I assume that will include the shed the gear is usually all stored in. What’s the dimensions of the shed?

3x4 metres or something - bigger than we expected at least…

This was brought up last time, but given the impermanence of anyone’s situation, perhaps he should consider an alternative - paid storage? Such things could be written of as an expense of sorts I’m sure, reducing the impact it would have on our fund-gathering for events.

http://www.crownselfstorage.co.nz

http://www.kiwiselfstorage.co.nz/

http://www.accessezy.co.nz/index.htm

These were the first three I found, and while only one of them actually lists prices ($3,360/year for a 3x6m unit - which I believe is bigger than the current shed), all of them mention special rates for long term storage - and the last one in particular mentions upgrading to bigger units, or offering additional space at the same rate if they can’t.

There were some sound reasons for not going this way, mostly financial I believe, but as an NPO there must be some way we can claim back the cost of this, and if so we get some fairly good pros - 24 hour security (usually on-site), insurance options as needed (how are we covered now, out of interest?), the fact it’s not at one person’s house so it can be accessed when they’re not available, easy access on top of that, and obviously a good amount of long-term reliability - 'cause let’s face it, sometimes sh*t just happens and you have to move house.
Another upshot, perhaps significant to the golem (and in the future, other such costumes…) is that these places usually have awesome pest control - so our gear would be better protected from the likes of rats/mice/goblin infestation.

As for the shed - we can simply sell it. Someone would take it off our hands, and while we won’t get all our money back it would certainly take whatever sting there might be out of the first years rent on a storage unit…

Can we confirm that Nikki is happy for the shed to be removed?

The thread this was all originally discussed on in here: Outage/Restore

From what I can make out, Nikki was happy for the ownership of the shed (which was not cheap) to stay with NZLARPS. If we remove it, we’ll need to be careful of what state her property is left in, perhaps smoothing out the concrete pad.

However, Scotty pointed out that these sheds are not easy to remove and re-assemble. I gather it’s concreted into the ground, and taking it apart and putting it together usually results in a less-perfect shed than you started with. My suggestion back then was that it could be plonked whole on the back of a truck (without dissembling it), however as it’s closed in behind Nikki’s house that’s probably not possible without a crane.

If there’s someone willing to take the shed on their property, and we can move it, it would certainly be much cheaper than renting storage space.

Dave - I don’t think it’s possible for the society to somehow write expenses off. We don’t pay income tax, for one thing. The nearest thing is a grant, but that seems unlikely for hired storage. Unless there’s a storage place that does cheap deals for non-profit societies (perhaps hiring storage space from a friendly Scott hall or something?), I don’t think our status is of much benefit.

In this instance, the shed could likely be removed without much fuss - no concrete was used so the base would lift easily enough, it’s just a case of reverse engineering and disassembling the thing. IMHO, those of us that assembled it the first time could probably reassemble it better if it was relocated. Failing light and dickey instructions left a few parts less than perfect, which Gaffy has had to keep a firm eye on.

I’m not sure of the exact arrangement, but from what i gather Nikki herself doesn’t live there any more and if i read Gaffy’s post correctly it looks like the current occupants are moving as well. Whether this means Nikki will move back in or rent it out (or has the property been sold?) probably needs to be clarified. I was under the impression the shed was placed there because of the permanence of the location and access to - now this seems a bit up in the air so we need a plan and in fairly short order. I dare say any new tenants that aren’t part of the LARP community would object to an unusable shed that a bunch of strangers need full access to.

I’m going to look further into the expenses thing - our status grants us a certain amount of tax break, which admittedly we aren’t chewing all of right now, but I’m quite sure there’s more to it than that. Either way, the shed has proved to be far less permanent than anticipated in that earlier discussion, so fully investigating paid storage as an option can’t hurt, even if it turns out as non-viable as you expect.

Just to clarify, I am not selling the property, Kim and Matt are moving out on December the 6th, and despite some active searching on my part I can not get two more tennants who to move into an already occupied flat.

I raised the possibility at the last committee meeting that should I not be able to find tennants, I may be left with no choice but to ask Gaffy to pay the full rent value of the flat, or move out, so I can rent the whole property out.

As badly as I feel about this, I can not afford to pay a mortgage on a single income with no tennant income.

Therefore I had to give Gaffy notice, and am asking him to move out of the property by Dec 6th. The NZlarps gear as a result needs to be out by that date as well.

I have noproblem with the shed being rmeoved or sold as long as my property is left undamaged and tidy. Originally when we put the shed in, I was under the understanding that if the shed was on my property for 1 year then NZLARPS would have made its money back, as storage costs $2000 plus a year.

I would have preferred it didnt come to this, but like I said, as badly as I feel, I am not made out of money.

The most affordable storage we found last time we looked was $2100 a year. Even with our current, steady financial status, it’s a lot of money.

Thanks Nikki. Don’t feel bad, you did something great for the community and it’s not your fault that circumstances don’t allow for it to continue, despite your best efforts.

The gear needs to be moved by Dec 6th. Finding somewhere new to put it has to be the priority. It could either move to someone’s house, or to hired storage. It doesn’t have to be in the shed. It needs to be accessible. The new location doesn’t have to be permanent. If nobody can volunteer storage space for it now, it could be moved to rented storage until cheaper space can be found.

The shed doesn’t absolutely have to be removed from Nikki’s yard. I’m sure Nikki’s new tenents won’t mind an empty shed. But Nikki’s happy for the shed to be removed from her property, and it would be better to remove it before the tenents move in than after.

Ah, gear. So useful, but so bulky.

It is more than we can justify - To be honest if we were going to start spending that much on storage alone it might be time to look at a piece of land we can buy and get a grant for to stick both our storage shed on and run for events. After all a free venue means more income from events so we could put that cash towards a loan to buy said land.

A large section of the gear is being packed up for Wolfgang this weekend. Perhaps we don’t unpack it at the end of the weekend and find somewhere secure to park the trailer until we can sort this out - saves us the double work of unpacking it after Wolfgang only to pack it all up again a week later.

Also, I’m not keen to split the gear up so it would be great if we could lodge it all in one place in its permanent home.

Nikki, thanks for so generously allowing us to use your back yard for so long. The society now has a shed it can move to a new location, plus practice in putting it up :slight_smile:

The shed is 4.5m x 2.25m.

We have two challenges:

1. What to do with the gear ?

In the short term, some of the gear could be stored in the trailer. The trailer lives at my Mum’s place (Massey), and covenant to the deal where generously lets us store the trailer there is the agreement that it won’t be used to store gear. She doesn’t want a bunch of strangers turning up and fussing over the trailer.

However, I’m sure she won’t mind if the trailer has gear in it while we figure out a solution.

So, let us first identify what the gear needs are, (relevant to our known game calendar) and identify the boxes that need to be easily accessible. GMs, please indicate your gear games, dates and specific gear needs.

Since most daygames only require a few boxes, I would suggest that GMs could assist this process by storing the gear they need for their games until we have a permanent solution. This would enable the trailer more chance of storing the remaining gear (ie. the gear that we don’t need to get our hands on over, say, the next couple of months).

Let’s use St Wolfgang’s as an opportunity to bootstrap this process. I suggest that we split out the gear at the end of St Wolfgang’s into Required For Games, and OK to Store In The Trailer. As it happens, I will have an empty people mover at St Wolfgangs so I can take all of the Required For Games gear back with me and arrange to drop it off to the GMs homes. Ange can take the trailer to Gaffys, fill it up to the gunwales with gear from the shed and them drop it off to my place (Morningside). I’ll come to Gaffy’s too, and pick up any other Required For Games gear from the shed. When my station wagon gets back from down the line, I will take the trailer out to my mum’s.

With luck, we will not have a huge amount of gear left in the shed. We will need volunteers to take that stuff, but not immediately on Sunday.

Then, in the medium term, we can identify a permanent solution for our gear storage.

1. What to do with the shed?

Dave is right, we didn’t use any concrete, and only laid it on some treated fenceposts.

Pulling down the shed is a major piece of work. It WILL be faster than putting it up, but we will also need LOTS of help because the various pieces will need to be heavily documented so we can put if back together again (we need to know exactly where each piece goes so we can line up the rivet holes again).

This means a working bee on the 5th or 6th, with as many helpers as we can get. Plus, we need somewhere to store the shed gear, including the shed, floor and bearer posts.

We’ll need a team to pull down and document, and a team to take out to the hire trailer and transport to it’s storage location.

Thoughts ?

It’s possible Tigger and I can store the (disassembled) shed. I will have to talk to him about this. If the working bee is on the sixth, I can be there, but likely can only be on Team Documenting.

Does anyone have the dimensions of the trailer? I’ll need to talk this over with Brent before I can offer anything specific.

I’d say the trailer is about 3.5m long x 1.8m wide x 2.4m hight, and about 5.3m long when the back door is down.

That would need to be a big grant, and I recall that grants for land (and vehicles) are hard to come by.

Without a grant, $2000/year would only get us a property costing about $20,000 (at 8.5% interest).

Just had a scan around Trademe, doesn’t look like $20,000 would get anything except individual car parks. :wink:

Mike, from my understanding of the upcoming larps calendar, we’re actually in the clear. After Wolfgang, Adam is running a Star Wars game on the 12th of December but other than that, the only larps that are running between now and end of January are affiliates that don’t use gear. Which mercifully gives us about two months to sort out a solution.

Starwars:
Brown robes, Black Robes, White Robes. An array of weapons (Gaffy you know the kind).

Thats me sorted :slight_smile: And we have space for those boxes and the weapons in our garrage - but as we use it for cars we don’t have much more space at the moment :frowning:

There’s a huge difference between $3,000/year for a 3x6m shed with 24-hour on-site security and full easy access and $3,000/month in mortgage repayments for a bit of land somewhere out of the city that no-one can get to quickly/easily or even keep an eye on. But you are right in that even that amount might be a bit pricey, though I still wonder if we can’t get a grant to cover it somewhere, even just in part.

Nikki I echo everyone’s sentiments here - please don’t feel bad about this. Circumstances change, and we have to change with them. It was amazing of you to offer the space you had, especially when the shed turned out to be a LOT bigger than expected :smiley: so thank you for your generosity. I hope my comments didn’t sound like I was trying to take a dig or anything. That would suck :confused:

As for pulling down the shed, well, not to belittle the effort we put in last time, but we did put it up wrong. The fact there’s a metre of door railing sticking out one end is testament to that (The door was supposed to go on the long side, as we discovered after completion >.<). That said, if we don’t still have the original plans then as Mike says - if we make detailed plans on how it comes apart, it can be put back together easily enough. Given the way it goes together, it could probably be put back up in a combination of ways, and any extra drilled holes in the end result filled with a little Selley’s.

But, the big important question of “where” still remains, so I offer the following; Wherever the gear ends up, it needs to be easily and fully accessible. Nikki really put herself out there for us last time because the only access to the shed was through her house. I can’t imagine how inconvenient that must have been, so I can only say a humbled thanks once again. It also needs to be safe. If someone has the yard space then that’s ideal, but bear in mind what you’re signing on for - there will be people wanting to get to the shed, not only at events but probably every other weekend so gear can be checked, maintained, and added to. Storing the gear is pretty much akin to being a gear dude yourself. There’s also the matter of insurance. I’m not sure how this was worked with Nikki’s place.

With that in mind, anyone storing the gear will, like Nikki, be adored by all for years to come :smiley:

Now, I know I bleated about this once but I did just find something interesting

http://www.crownselfstorage.co.nz/self-storage-specials/

“First three months half price on any contract 3 months or longer” isn’t too bad. Even if it’s only a temporary solution, a 3x4m shed for 3 months at $330 is a good deal, and a reasonable price to pay for a bit of time to find something better. Christ, I’ll write it into the next years worth of Knightshade budgets if I have to. I know we’re reluctant to spend money but it IS an option. Again, even if only temporary.

[quote=“Xcerus”]Starwars:
Brown robes, Black Robes, White Robes. An array of weapons (Gaffy you know the kind).

Thats me sorted :slight_smile: And we have space for those boxes and the weapons in our garrage - but as we use it for cars we don’t have much more space at the moment :frowning:[/quote]
Great. I can bring those boxes to your place on Sunday, if that suits.

It seems likely that we will have a considerable amount of gear that can’t be stored in the trailer. This means that we will need to find volunteers to store the gear while we sort out or solution. Perhaps the best approach is to favour the loose gear for storage in the trailer, and save boxes for farming out to volunteers ? Boxes are easier to manage, and less likely to lose items during our distributed storage phase.

How true. Both gear dudes to date have lived on-site with the gear. A shed that is accessible from the road without having to bother the house occupants would be perfect. While it would be nice to be able to hold Gear Rationalisation days on-site, this is not mandatory since we would always move the gear we wanted to wash/maintain in the trailer.

Sorry, I can’t offer anything - our garage is full of racing car at the moment, so can’t even offer anything temporary. I am busy the 6th, but I think available on the 5th to help out.