Monday, January 11, 2010

A little set back

Mel & I were a bit bummed today. We found out that all the wood that we tracked down we cannot use in our build. Because it was oregon timber and we are in a termite area it is not a good timber to use. It's not all bad because we can re-sell it but there was alot of work put into collecting and processing this timber but we would rather sell it rather than have our house eaten buy termites. We have to roll with the punches though and we can't do much appart from go with what the plans say.
Still not word from council, hopefully not to much longer though.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Whats Happening In The New Year

Well........Our plans are still in at council. We have hit a little snag on the idea of a Straw Bale house in a bush fire prone area. We had to send a CSIRO report, which was to us by Bohdan Dorniak (http://www.bdcoarchitechs.com.au/), who conducted the survey. If it was not for him and his report we would not have got this far with council. Everything now rests in the hands of the RFS, so we have our fingers crossed. The thing is, in comparison to other types of houses (Fibro, Timber or Brick Veneer), Straw Bale should be the best choice in this type of area because a Straw Bale wall is so tightly compressed and sits behind 40mm - 50mm of render that there is no air to fuel the fire, unlike the Fibro, Timber or Brick Veneer which have pockets of air between that & the plaster inside. My opinion is Straw Bale should be the councils 'house of choice' in a Bush Fire Prone Area for this reason.



Everything happening with the Development Application has not stopped us picking up bargains to build the house though, we just picked up some great slate tiles today. We wanted a natural stone on top of the concrete slab to help with the thermal mass of the building.



We also picked up 10 (160x 160) American hard wood posts from my work which was used as pallets for some heavy machinery. Work was going to burn them until I saved them for the bargain price of $1. We really would like to use them for decking or roof posts, we will see how they fit in to the build. We will hopefully have an answer from Council toward the end of the month and will keep everyone posted.