Bremer Bay – Concrete Pour

Posted on April 22, 2016 by ptandfrizz

The concrete floor:

Friday April 20 2016

Its time to pour the floor of “The Secret Men’s Business”

Plastic & red laid ready
First barrow
Nearing completion

It’s the only cement floor in the house, all the rest being upstairs with timber over warmboard or a subfloor with carpet or tiles over. This room is also to be heated and we made the mistake of not really thinking the process through because in hindsight we probably could have used warmboard S. It being thinner in structure it would have been glued to the cement slab and our tiles would be laid on top.

Meantime..   Floor is now down and done.

Secret Men’s Business….
…Taking shape…
We have a point!!
..”Done & Dusted”

We now have another defined point on the house.

I was thinking that this would be an in-screed hydronic installation, as shown on  TV. You lay the hydronic pegboard & pex with the reo and cover with concrete. The whole of the slab floor is heated. Simple. However with this system it seems, the pegboard, with the pex installed, is laid on top off the slab we have just poured, then is covered with a 50mm to 70mm tilers grout mix to finish. Then we can finally lay the tiles.This part of the build will be a long way off,. You can see how advanced the building is in this stylised video of how the system is put down.

Hydronic pegboard arrives
Close-up of the pex board
The pex
File photo

It seems like extra work with an extra operation of the tilers grout, when I think warmboard S would have been a far simpler solution. Cost wise, I have no idea.

One consolation with this method as against in slab:  with the insulation (it look like polystyrene) between the peg board for the pex and the original concrete floor,  the heating system is heating a smaller mass of concrete. ie: 50mm- 70mm v 100mm

We shall see.

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Bremer-Bay Timber Arrives

Posted on April 18, 2016 by ptandfrizz

Timber arrives onsite:

The timber order arrived onsite from Perth 550 kms away today. The truck and semi- trailer had a challenge negotiating our drive-way to the house site.

Unloading…
.. the timber..
..a one man operation

The one man unloading operation began. Unfortunately he has placed it too close to the steel structure and it will have to be shifted at some stage in the future. To be fair though, we do not have a lot of suitable room onsite.

Now Nino has something to work with, we may see some more action.

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Bremer Bay – Warmboard

Posted on April 8, 2016 by ptandfrizz

WARMBOARD ARRIVES

Our underfloor hydronic heating system Warmboard arrives on site. This product is being used to heat the first floor. 5- 23kW modulating heat pump is being used as the heat source to drive the system.

The background to the use of this product in our house is a story in itself. while we do not use heating or cooling a lot as in other parts of Australia or indeed the world, but we do want some heating at times during the year. Cooling is not such a big a deal. We have a swimming pool the size of an ocean not 400m away. Although my better half puts her toes in the water only about once every leap year at best, it is there.

I am not a great fan of reverse cycle, as the hot air expelled into the room is usually delivered from the ceiling (and hot air rises) so that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. And I don’t think it is a pleasant heat to be in for long periods. Alternatives for heating a timber floor on joists seemed to be fantasy, unless you used clip up systems or as was suggested to us at one stage by laying aluminium diffuser plates, see the photos below, on top of the joists, each one notched out to take the grove where the pex piping would run

Diffuser plate profile
Diffuser plate

We were told it would take about 3weeks to notch out the joists, fix the diffuser plates and lay the pex. A plumber @ $100/hr an apprentice @ $55/hr plus accommodation…. not going to work is it!!

Internet search

So began a search for an alternative. I came across Australian Sun Energy’s site and so began the journey. I emailed for more information and  a reply came back from Peter Taylor with information on the board. After a Continue reading →

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Bremer Bay – Construction Begins

Posted on February 22, 2016 by ptandfrizz

PRELIM:

The engineers specifications have been sent to a steel fabricator to design, fabricate and galvanise the steel needed for the structural skeleton.

Today it arrived onsite, and is being erected by the fabricators.

Unloading the steel
Not a small crane

ERECTING THE STEEL  

Erecting steel frame
Main deck outlined
Deck roof & box gutter
Box gutter

As the steel is put up by the contractors we can see the shape emerge

View from entry door
N/W corner
S/E end: Main bed
Box gutter

Apparently they have finished. Gone. I see that there are a few pieces left on the ground, where do they belong? Although structurally it may be sound there seems to be a lot of steel missing. I assumed it was meant to provide a skeleton of the build that we were to frame inside with timber to define the shape. I guess thats why I’m not a builder, I wonder what Nino’s take on that will be.

resized 2000presized 2000pMagpie nest - 136 of 254

The company still need to return and parge the columns to the cement footings we dug  once the timber framing has been put up to hold them square and level.

 

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Bremer Bay – Site Prepared

Posted on January 20, 2016 by ptandfrizz

HOUSE SITE PREPARATION – TIME TO GET SERIOUS

The steel fabricators were given the engineers plans to manufacture and galvanise the steel frame, and so the wait began……. In the meantime we started the cut and fill for the bottom room.

Time to start on house site
The cut begins
The work progresses
…but not as bad as it looks….
The cut

Cut & Fill finished.

Ready for a retaining wall
A bit more cut than anticipated

This room underneath the northern end of our house was decided upon in the latter stages of the design process, after consideration was given to the slope the house was built on and the height off the ground at that point. Surely with a little bit of  cut and fill we could utilise that space and squeeze another room underneath for some “Secret Men’s Business” as Nino our builder decided to describe it. As the cut and fill progressed it looked like a rather large excavation, but in the end it was not as big as it first appeared.

Time to retain it:

A brick retaining wall was built for the back wall of the downstairs “Secret Men’s Business Room

Retaining wall footings
Retaining wall bricks/ Secret mens Business
Our first wall
Waterproofing done

And a curved block wall to retain the side by the garage.

Block Retaining wall
Cut is now retained
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Bremer Bay – Site Cleared

Posted on December 10, 2015 by ptandfrizz

LAND CLEARED OF BUSH 

Time to start clearing
Vegetation going ..
Cleared Site
Site prep in progress
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Bremer Bay – Building our Garage

Posted on November 1, 2015 by ptandfrizz

WORK BEGINS ON THE GARAGE

Our garage was built first, which gave us a glimpse of the rain head Peter Downes had designed to alleviate any flooding of the boxed gutters. Brilliant.

Power is coming
To junction box in Garage
Garage setout
Slab to be poured
All done
Garage taking shape….

As the garage neared completion we could see how the roofline would look, although it was a straight line along the barge and not curved as the house would be.

Its not elliptical!!
…Rain Head
Love this…

We now have an office and  an onsite lockup.

Electricity is also onsite now, so we are ready.

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LOCATION

Bremer Bay, is the location of this new home construction. Bremer Bay is a coastal town situated on the south coast of Western Australia in the Great Southern region between Albany and Esperance, at the mouth of the Bremer River. Bremer Bay is 515 kilometres southeast of the state capital, Perth, and 180 kilometres east of Albany. The town has a population of about 240. Electricity is generated by a wind-diesel hybrid system.

image

Short beach W.A.

BACKGROUND

If you allow me a little indulgence, I will try to give a short background on the history of our project and the evolution of it to the present day.

We bought the block at auction in 2011 because of the orientation (E/NE), the view and close access to a pretty little beach called “Short Beach”. Also, the size of about 8 ha (20 acres) would give us a bit of privacy and room to move.

 

View: Short Beach & Glassy Island
Back door peg
N/E Point profile
N/E Point. Trees may have to go
Time to start clearing

EARLY DAYS – SITE PREPARATION

Vegetation going ..
…gone
Cleared Site
Site prep in progress

THE DESIGNER /ARCHITECT

Next step, to find a designer to bring to life our vision. From an internet search, enter Peter Downes  Peter Downes’ Website.  I liked his philosophy to design: “Never Live In A Boring House Again”. Peter flew  across the country from Sydney NSW and stayed with us for a while to get a feel for the site and Bremer Bay. The brief simply, was for him to  design a 4 bedroom house to capture the view from as many rooms as was possible.

We were lucky in that there was no boundary hindrances and so the house could be as imaginative as he liked. We were happy with his concept, which incorporated the E/NE aspect and so was solar passive, and with  high windows on the E/NE side, together with the  windows facing E/SE on the back of the house (where the sea breeze comes from) we will have a wonderful crossflow ventilation…..  with amazing views!!

Peter went back to Sydney, and working  with us he completed the design.

THE HOUSE PLANS

Early design
The idea begins to evolve
Winter sunlight penetration
North Elevation
Bottom room added
Final N elevation

As building height restrictions applied, and the house would sit on a naturally high hill, it was decided to go with the gull-wing roof and box gutter to lower the profile. And because there was now no roof space to house any ducting for a reverse cycle air con system, a new search began for an alternative.

FINDING A PROJECT MANAGER

The micro-planning remained fluid because we had no idea how it would be built, how we would heat it and how we would be incorporating the windows into this semi-elliptical design. The shape also posed many questions (to us anyway) on how easy it would be to meld our cabinetry  with the walls.

Glass problems/solutions were handed to Brad Deere whose company Mandurah Glass were going to work their magic.

We needed a builder that was able to be on site and project manage from start to finish. He would need to be able to problem solve, (as we assumed there would be many along the way)  to discuss and talk things out  with us , be patient with us and the build, be passionate about his craft and not just want to build another square brick and tile house and move on. He also needed to put up with me being on site.

Enter Nino Amato, from Katanning, who seemed to fit all the above criteria. 

 

Posted on October 1, 2015 by ptandfrizz | Leave a comment