Hazelnut

Walking round the house with fresh eyes this week I'm despairing that we can bring things with us. We have solid timber furniture which should be OK I guess as its processed wood which will simply be inspected for live woodworm and other infestations but I also have things like a deer antler topped thumb crook for hill walking, a plaited strand of my old horses mane that I kept when she died, some shells from beaches we've walked over the last 30yrs and enough stray cat and pony hair to last a lifetime.

There's no way on the planet I could remove all cat hair from all of our possessions, I can clean them all up but I don't think I can remove every single cat hair from every single item. We only have two cats now but they moult twice a year.

How does bringing your car work? Even if we pressure wash and clean as much as we can it still has to be driven onto the container and will pick up grit and dirt on the wheels from doing that. Do you pay for professional cleaning in the UK then hire a car to drive round while trying to keep your own car clean for the container?

If I bring a pony I'm not leaving the saddle and other equipment behind as I'd never be able to afford to replace it, but it's leather items that are regularly near an animal. Does every single horse hair and speck of dust have to be removed?

Do I just accept that I'm going to end up having to pay to have the whole container fumigated and every single thig inspected at rather frightening amounts of money? I'm going to need three months not working and a system of cleaning everything then paying to store it in an immaculate warehouse at this rate!

MrsFychan

can only answer on the car, we had our professionally cleaned inside and out a few days before the container came and he popped back to do an outside clean minutes before it was loaded. we took photo's of him cleaning in and out, left the documentation/invoice/receipt and photo's by the gear stick.
we also had to make sure that there was hardly any petrol in the tank and I think they unplugged the battery.

we had a conch shell from St Lucia that we had to leave behind.

MrF has just said he was told that if the item is commercial, so like wooden furniture it should be fine anything that you have picked up maybe will be a problem

Hazelnut

Thanks for the reassurance. I have PSS booked to come and look round later this month as they were the only ones who seemed to have a clue about moving a smallholding to the other side of the planet. Pickfords were hopeless and just told us they couldn't help. I think we'll be OK with the timber furniture we've made from our own trees as we've stripped and frnwxh polished all the timber but the three curing and drying shelves made from a gale felled silver birch are going to need some processing. We dither between the hassle if trying to bring things and the costs involved in replacing when we come to self build over there. we have lots of nice stuff because we've made it ourselves, we'd never be able to afford to buy it.

Is it worth emailing the relevant government people? We can treat the timber and disinfect horse equipment and leave all the containers and photos of it being done with the items.

MrsFychan

sorry to say but its all comes down to who you get on the day of inspection and what sort of mood they are in (bit tongue in cheek).
Our stuff wasn't inspected until it had left the dockside and was delivered to our rental so if there were any problems they would of brought it into the country anyway. The inspector came round in which seemed to be his lunch time, PSS had put aside the items the MAF had ticked so he just went to those, asked me a few questions about some of the stuff then signed a piece of paper and left. We had a tent that had only been used once, which I told him, and he just waved it pass, on us opening it it had grass seeds and dead spiders in it - yuk.

But I have heard of people being inspected on the dockside, having a dead spider found in their car, perhaps picked up on the journey, and been slapped with a huge bill for cleaning. Also people having some goods sent for destruction and having to foot the bill for that.
For the furniture you have made I have no idea, speak to PSS and possibly some other removal firms on the phone and if still in doubt call MAF. Arriving in New Zealand | MPI - Ministry for Primary Industries. A New Zealand Government Department.

Pigdog

As Mrs F says, it depends who's working that day and their mood.
We bought over an oak chest and table, furniture made from railway sleepers, wooden walking sticks, motor bike (we cleaned the bike) and a shed load of tools which were certainly not clean. Also have a deer antler, however did sell a lot of antlers on EBay.

Like yourself, pet hair, we have two dogs, dog hair on everything.

Our container was not checked, think that was just luck of the drawer.
We did clean all our shoes in Jeyes liquid and wiped down what we could in the Jeyes.

Good luck.

moonie2011

Hi we bought bought walking boots, riding gear and my horses hair which has been made into jewellery. My hubby spent several days jet washing everything with a mixed solution of Keyes fluid and everything was totally fine. We also bought cat carriage boxes etc, all fine
Just leave it up to the shipping company to document what the need to. We used PSS and they were great. Good luck x

Hazelnut

That's reassuring to know. We have a pressure washer and can buy lots of Virkon E and Jeyes disinfectant. We've set aside a concrete floored area outside to wash everything in and the idea is to start cleaning things then put them into storage. It looks like we'll be going into small, temporary accommodation for a couple of months at least so it seemed to make sense to clean and then store. Fist task is to clear and clean the concrete floored area...

Wooden walking sticks and railway sleepers also feature in our move

PSS are coming out to us in mid-April so it's good to hear from someone else with horse gear that it can be quite straightforward.

I'm into the stage where I have the note above both of my work and home desks that says, 'Please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference'.

Baz036

Used PSS a few years back and they were excellent. Clean as best you can and then make everything smell of jeyes. Came from a farm and had a load of hunting/shooting gear and had no probs - may have just been lucky or may have been the jeyes...but we did make sure all the hunting gear was spotless.

Hazelnut

Update to this. We had PSS round yesterday and we need two containers so idea is to put all household goods in one which should go straight through and another with all the small smallholding stuff in.

Everything has to be steam cleaned, all tools, car, tractor, roller etc. I've looked it up and most of the equipment we have would cost 50% to 75% more to replace in NZ than we'd get if we sold second hand here. With those figures in mind we're calculating worst case scenario for inspection and fumigation and, if it's still cheaper, we'll ship as much as we can.

One thing the PSS Man did say was to have no rust showing. We need to steam clean the roller, grass cutter and tractor then repaint them all with rust stop primer and hammerite before smothering copiously in Jeyes. This is going to need military precision to sort out! I'm going to contact NZ MAFF (primary industry) as PSS said its good to send them pictures and converse before we move anything. Apparently you're less likely to be inspected or need to have stuff fumigated if you've worked with them in advance.

Pick fords are coming next week. I was interested in what they had to say after reading that NZ inspection charges are often included in the price.

It's likely that we will rent for a few months at least when we come over. If we have a container full of a tractor etc are there systems in place for us to store the container securely somewhere until we can either rent or buy a lifestyle plot or property.... which won't bein Auckland

MrsFychan

what I would say about bringing you own equipment over is check out if you can get them repaired cheaply or at all over here. It may be that it would in the long run cheaper to buy here when needed as you may have to pay for secure storage as well before you find somewhere to use them and that would bring the cost up.

Hazelnut

Great minds think alike I've spent the morning looking. It seems Kubota spares are easy to buy over there which is good but we're now calculating the cost of cleaning and repainting everything along with how much it would cost to ship it all, and potentially store; also calculating the second hand sale cost within the UK. Once we have all that we can work out whether it will be more economical to ship or sell.

Most of the equipment is basic, mechanical stuff so easy to repair and find spares for, I'm looking on TradeMe and just discovered farmtrader.co.nz which is helping a lot with prices and how common our stuff is out there. One comparison is that we'd get roughly $2700 for our tractor in the UK and it would cost roughly $5000 to buy again in NZ. The pony trailer would also cost double to buy second hand over there what we'd get for it here.

This is far easier to do when younger without a lifetime of accumulated, expensive equipment!