Potential House Designs

So there hasn't been too much movement on the new house front, which sucks as every month we spend renting is another month away from our dream.



We do have a list of designs we like, the first is a style thats Classic Federation/Early Victorian. They look like 1900's farmhouses - Mamma bare really likes these.

The next on the list is strawbale (one of my favourites) I really like what you can do with a strawbale yourself (pretty much all of it)

We are also really liking timbercrete, this pic is a simple post and beam design with loft.

But My favourite of them all is the Ral http://www.ralhomes.com.au/

These are basically a modular design where the wall and roof are one, constructed in 8 segments, the result are these 'tunnel' style houses.

The tunnels comprise of 2,3 & 4 way intersects with open ends that are then glass filled.

The foundations can be slab but we really like stumps with a suspended floor, this allows for ample outdoor decking and entertaining.

As well as storage underneath for rainwater tanks. The Ral's roof design allows for all water to be caught and the guttering system is under the roof meaning leaves are not an issue.

Inside the dimensions are 3063mm in the centre & 6126 across the base (more than enough room for our giant children).

None of the internal walls are load bearing meaning you can do your floorplan any way you like it. We want our kitchen/meals to flow out onto the deck.

In A time where water is scarce and the cost of everything is going up, we really want a sustainable house that can be self sufficient with water storage, energy efficient (so its easy and cheaper to heat and cool) and hiopefully have solar power s we can feed back into the grid. At the end of the day I'd hope to just have a phone bill, nothing more.

Some of these designs are easier to do more work yourself when you are living on site, we are currentlyexploring this but ultimately may just get the majority of the external shell done to lockup and finish the interior ourselves after we move in.

The next steps for us are to get a couple of dead trees on our land removed (ringbarked by the previous owner) and then a bush fire assement done.

After that we are planning on a trip to Ararat to check out the RAL display there and hopefully we can decide on a design and really start making things happen.

Stay tuned.........