A course with Brian

We're really getting serious now, we even have a set of real plans you could build something from (hopefully a house).

The strawbale building course we attended 19-22 march with Brian Hodge of Anvill strawbale consultants proved to be a really valuable  experience. An eclectic crew of about 22 folks at very different stages of the process attended in and around Heathcote in Victoria. Most were locals with us the only ones from WA.

Brian took us thru many of the major facets of the building process, covering; the basics of the wall building themselves including the ins and outs of the bales themselves, the stump, sub floor and flooring process, timber framing the walls and fire proofing the sub floor, basic rendering mix and application, plus heaps of valuable tricks of the building trade and strawbale building that I certainly haven't read in any of the standard strawbale books.. All really valuable from our point of view, particularly as we took delivery from Brian of the plans he has created for us so we could reference back directly to them.

From the self-belief perspective it was awesome to meet some other folks with similar enthusiasm for straw bale building. There was a different range of skills at the course from qualified tradies to novices like us, great to see that the ideas around this type of building are appealing to a wide range of folks outside of just the alternative building crowd. Certainly made us feel we are on the right track and also that it was within our capabilities and also we can end up with a standard that we'll be happy with long term.

The plans from Brian are setup for owner builders basically they work in an overlay manner with page 1detailing the stump and subfloor, page 2 the floor joists and bearers, and so on right up to the roof setup. At each stage all the different timber is specified, fixings and set up of joinery is detailed in a separate document of cross sections. Enough detail is shown without overwhelming you with complexities which is a great move for us.

Still some final details to be nailed down though as we've now decided to have a verandah on the North, West and South sides of the house with a meter of roof then a pergola on all side. We think this will offer a nice flexible arrangement considering we're not really sure about the temperature enabled by solar passive design inside ths house. If we need more shade/coolness in summer we think a grape vine along the northern side pergola will work a treat, if not we can leave it off and it will still look fine.

On other fronts the shed is progressing with another trip down for Ali and  I to finalise the site works, the quote for concrete floor of the shed has arrived, pricey but necessary.