Finally, plans for our strawbale house

Finally after what seems like an age we've got our house plans done and ready for submission to the local council.

These plans have developed from measurements we took of our current house and a bit of day dreaming about the kind of house we wanted to live, mixed in with a healthy dose of realism about what we thought we could actually build!

In the end we've come up with a 279 square meter house with 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom , 2 composting loos and a generous living space. Bigger than some, but definitely smaller than many houses on the market, we're sure we'll enjoy living there for many years and hopefully never need any extensions.

Some of the extra features we've included are a mud room/laundry in the south eastern corner of the house - to deal with the mucky dogs, a large kitchen area with a big pantry as we expect to be doing a lot of preserving food and need somewhere to store it all. These certainly add to the overall floor space.

Click to enlarge the images below.

Plan view

Isometric View 1 - Shows how the house will fit into the hill.

Isometric 2 - A bit lower down, shows the verandah height at the north west corner (which should prove a good challenge!)

Sourdough baking

While Ali has been growing a bun in the mummy oven, I've been learning about the rewarding world of traditional sourdough baking. I did try this out during summer with very little success, but had more luck when Ali finally worked out what I was doing wrong (being too gentle with the starter mix instead of vigorous mixing) and since then every weekend has seen steadily improving loaves. Read more...

Google maps view of our block

As a wise man once said people love pictures, so click this post's title for a link to a google maps pic of the block and its location with some explanatory notes.

More pics to come in the Gallery including hopefully the plans at some stage once we own them and have a clearance to post them.

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.

A bun in the oven and Fire ratings

This last month has seen quite a few changes around our Nannup dream and in another exciting direction.

We're now finally able to let everyone know that Ali is pregnant with the little grub due in August. Obviously this has changed things considerably in a wonderful way and we are both feeling hugely happy and lucky as we've been wishing for this for some time.

We are now delaying the move down to Nannup until well after the birth, most likely around the end of 2011, as I think anyone would agree it is not optimal to be attempting an owner build while living in a shed while having a baby. On the other hand we're stoked we'll be able to raise a kid in the country on our own place.

This is not to say that things are not progressing otherwise with Nannup council informing us of the need to have a fire rating of the property and planned house site completed before we can present our plans to council. Coincidentally this came at the same time as I had discovered some slightly disturbing info in Earth Garden magazine talking about the changes around building regulation in fire prone areas.

Basically AS3959-2009 Construction of Buildings in bushfire-prone areas is now being considered by Nannup council which meant we have had to undertake a fire risk assessment for our plans and where our buildings will be positioned.  The assessment allocates a Bushfire Attack Level to the home and shed site along a scale  from BAL-Low, BAL 12.5, 19, 29, 40, thru to the maximum BAL-FZ. The numbers relate to the expected heat flux of kilowatts per meter (kW/m2)BA-12.5 expected.  BAL-FZ  is the highest rating at FZ=Flame Zone. The assessment takes into account the slope , surrounding vegetation type and proximity. 

This freaked us out initially as an article in Earth Garden mentioned that the Building Control Commission in Victoria advised that there may be problems getting approval for a strawbale construction at ratings of BAL-19 and above and even some big restrictions at the lower ratings. Strawbale buildings have been tested under older standards but not the newer AS3959.

John Evans from South West Fire Services  met us at the block and in a matter of minutes allayed many of our fears about the site and the house position and thankfully with some adjustment we were able to have both the shed and the house rated at a BAL of 12.5.

We also had Ben Worthington from Worthy contracting come and discuss the earth moving requirements for what we want to do. With his advice and the fire assessment we've decided to move sites somewhat on the property nothing drastic but it is meaning another trip down this weekend to do a final measure up and tape out the house shed and water tank shapes to finalize the site plan.

Next up we are of to Victoria for our long awaited Strawbale building course with Brian Hodge, hopefully to iron out any final problems with our plans and get the all important skills with both of us  are really looking forward to getting to grips with the actual techniques we'll be using.

Progress, progress...

A busy month with no posting,  so time to catch up.

We've had three visits down to our block over the past weeks with a few interesting developments.

Solar power -
Its looking more and more likely we will be going completely off-grid and setting up with enough solar power for our needs. This has come about because of the ridiculous costs we have been hearing to get connected to the grid. Apparently  to connect to the mains power which is not more than 150 meters from our house site will cost 40 - 50 k! Potentially 40k alone to just get the power onto our property and then possibly up to 10k more to connect to the house. All for the pleasure of paying what will be ever increasing power bills.
In comparison we've had Bruce from Solar West (based just up the road from us in Nannup) come out for a long and interesting chat about a solar setup for around $35000. So valuable to have someone like Bruce up the road, who works with Solar power all over Western Australia including in the extreme conditions of the north west. Current plan is we will install the panels on our shed which will give us all the power we need for both the house and also have all the batteries and other vitals of the system stored away from the house.

Permaculture Plan -
Our local permaculture guru Jeff Nugent has completed our desktop plan for the block with a  final walk thru and discussion on the 20th November. Initially we'll be focusing on the northern facing slopes near the house site where we'll be installing a number of swales (contour banks) to slow the water down as it runs down hill and building up green barriers to fire.

Strata Group -
Also on the 20th we met with the majority of the strata group at the yearly strata meeting and bbq. A lovely bunch of folks with a mix of permanent and weekender folks, with many looking to move in permanently which will be great to have more permanent neighbours in the fullness of time.

House Plans -
Heaps of work has been undertaken on the house front. Ali has been corresponding with Brian Hodge from Anvill and also Plans for People working on finalising the house plans. At present we've designed a 279 square metre 3 bedroom house, we'll post the plans as soon as we own them!

All settled!

Thankfully all went well Friday with the settlement and we are now the proud owners of  16 acres of semi cleared chemical free land. This is of course the first really big step in our plans and we are both so stoked to have so easily found a spot that suits us well in such a beautiful part of the world.

A massive weekend for Ali and I and our boys (the dogs). We traveled down on Friday with a quick stop past Mum and Dads on the way thru for a cuppa, timing our arrival perfectly about an hour after the settlement had gone thru at midday, super keen! A warm afternoon was then spent getting a further feel for the place.

Camping is the order of the day for a while and after some Veuve Clicquot celebratory champagnes and campfire cooked stew our first night was interesting, getting an idea of the different winds throughout the night and experienced a few weird lights playing over the tent which looked just like someone approaching with a torch, a bit disquieting. We finally worked out they were car lights from the highway over a kilometre away (we think anyway, may well have been the blair witch).

Visitors all day saturday, first Ali's sister Katie and the kids Hallie, Guy and Minty who had a great time traipsing around the block looking thru the different plants, trying a mulberry or two and bit of stick sword fighting for good measure.

Our prospective plumber then arrived to discuss the installation of the Biolytix wastewater system. A great positive guy who's going thru a similar process on a larger scale 100 acre property.

And finally our friend Becs (with bounding Bruce the labrador) arrived for a cooked meal and a few too many wines in town.

A rainy Sunday brought the planned visit of Jeff Nugent from SARI . Jeff is a permaculture guru who will be helping us with a design for the site. Jeff is a hugely interesting character with many insights about the history of the block and its remnant garden design which was apparently done when the original surrounding farm was divided up to be a permaculture village.

Jeff also had some interesting advice onhouse sites and the relateive fire safety aspects of stump foundations or a concrete slab. Fire safety may well be the deciding factor to go with a slab.

After a morning walking the block discussing the myriad plants and treees, and getting soaked by supposedly the first good rains of the year, my sister Miranda and her partner Darren, and kids Jack Dimity and Bill showed up by surprise, so we postponed the rest of the consultation with Jeff until our next visit.

Darren had some really valuable insights into how we could get power from the boundaries of the block to the main house site, and the relative costs. He is a linesman for Western Power and he and Miranda have a property just outside Bunbury so have recently been through the whole process themselves. Depending on the final tally up (may be as high as tens of thousands!) when we get some quotes from local electricians we may even go the wholly solar route. This does feel like a bit of a high wire act though, with another steep learning curve around batteries and very strict minimisation of our power needs.

Its interesting how the learning progresses; we think we are completely set on one strategy or design but the perspective of those in the know change things almost every time. I guess this is showing all plans are fluid until we talk with someone with current experience and a neutral (non-profit) mind set.

Our big weekend  ended as we hit the road with tons to think of on our way back to Perth Sunday afternoon. Thanks everybody who made the trek down to us, its very heartening to hear others as positive about the block as we are.