House sold and the Shed Marathon

Wow, time has flashed by in a blur since Christmas. We are now on the verge of the final move to Nannup with the White Gum Valley house settling on the 19^th March, we finally got an offer after three months on the market. Quite  a stressful time doing home opens with infant Alfie. I think a fair amount of stress came from Ali and I not feeling too optimistic about the world financial system problems and what this might mean for house values and the Aussie economy. We’ve long felt that there is a major meltdown coming which is one of the major motivations to do the tree change and get a measure of self-reliance.

We had planned to build the shed during the xmas break but as it turned out the concrete pad was not cured sufficiently as it was poured on the 22nd December. Instead Ross (my dad) and I planned on getting most of it done during a four day break around Australia Day, 26 -29 January. Little did we know that this would be the hottest weekend of the year with each day getting up to the early 40c mark. Standing on a concrete pad surrounded by white sand definitely pushed up the local temp for us, not to mention the reflection from steel frames. The extreme heat meant Dad and I could only work for around 10-15 minutes on the pad before being driven back to the shade for a drink. By the end of each day our brains felt scrambled to the extent we couldn't add up simple figures. Progress was very slow with only a single bay, two attached frames, being completed after the four days.

The shed build begins 26 January 2012.

We kept plugging though and returned the next couple of weekends to progress things further, this time with some milder weather and the help of many willing hands things went a lot easier.

Ali, Linc and Alfie and the Shed frame as of 18 Feb 2012

Until as you can see below we are now half way through  the roofing. A great learning experience, a confidence booster for the house build and hopefully a place we can call a comfortable home!
Thanks everyone who helped Ross, Jeannette and Elise, Katie, Charlie, Hallie, Guy and Minty.

The shed  with  half the roof done as of 27 Feb.

Ahhh holidays, time to catch up!

Its been a big few months!

Firstly the best bit, Alfie is now 5 months old and has just seen his first Christmas which has been fantastic. Busy times.

Following closely though is major movement on the Nannup front.

Plans for house all approved by Council
So as of  November our plans for a strawbale house to be built in the Shire of Nannup are all approved. Plan details and pics are below in my last post. This proved to be a relatively easy step in the  end with the only query being the weather resistance of the render we will be using.  We quickly sorted this out with some of the details we learned back in March from Brian Hodge at Anvil. Our lime/earthen render has been used one many buildings including some in harsher climates than South West WA with no problems.

A new caravan
Unfortunately at the same time we got approval for the house a change in Council rules occurred which has stopped residential use of sheds. A fair amount of effin' and blindin' then ensued as we were told that only a caravan or similar would be approved for us to live in - a caravan which we would just be parking next to our lovely dry and warm shed, seemingly a total nonsense. Anyway there is apparently some hope this rule will be changed again but in the meantime we've been really lucky to pick up a van for $1000 with a new fridge and A/C. Its very heartening to see how things can work out well even when it seems constant blockades are put up to reaching your goal.

Shed Pad is now done
With some amazing work from Danny Miller at Do Your Block Earthmoving & Construction, we've now completed the site works and concrete pad for our shed.

Looking east from the retaining wall.

Alison and Elise surveying the pad

Looking west down onto the freshly soaked pad

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.