Happy New Year

We took a chill out down at the river






Goals for this year a simple
1) Rock the new house out
2) Get fitter
3) Ride motorcycles more

1 week down

One week down, many more to go, but slowly we are settling in and making the place feel like home.

I've only had to kill 1 huntsman spider so far which i'm glad about however it was rather large.

I'm really liking having a fire, a big thanks to our wonderful Doula & husband who dropped off some wood a few days back.
To say this has been our hardest move to date would be an understatement, i've made at least a dozen trips sometimes with the bus packed, sometimes with a trailer and ute, sometimes with a larger trailer and ute. I really need a ute.

I continue to amaze myself at what I'm able to lift, be it the fridge or our enourmous lounge, the majority has been done solo by yours truly. (mamma bare helped too).

All the heavy lifting has actually helped me get in the right frame of mind to up the ante health wise.

So tonight I also completed the "River Walk" a couple of kilometres of winding trail along the river complete with suspension bridges and wild life surprises (tonight it was a friendly wombat).

I'm loving the fresh air, the quiteness and the clean water, this has also helped cut down on coke.

I'll ty and get some pics of the views and stuff over the next few days.

Until next time....

More House Ideas - Eco Tech

One of the many ideas I am toying with for heating our house

Here's Hoping

I went and viewed 5 properties in the near vicinity of where our land is today. This was partly to get us closer so we can get the wheels in motion regarding the building of our new house and mainly because our current rental sucks. Its also because our weekend life centres around the community we are building in. Like Saturday swimming for example. Who would have thought that moving into a new house 11 months ago would present with so many problems.

Our dramas started in the first 2 days, both towell racks and one toilet roll holder literally fell off the walls. This was due to poor mounting, the plaster was repaired but none have been re-hung. A year without towel racks was a pain.

We then had issues with both side fences falling over, well they never actually fell over to flat but developed severe leans to them, several months of persisting with the agents and arguments between the builder and the fencer finally had them rectified.

Next up is the natives, man there are a lot of hoons in load cars, yes I know that makes me a hypocrite as I used to be a hoon in a loud car but i'm older and wiser now (I have a loud motorcycle)

The next isse which is also ongoing is the paint. The house was sprayed (as opposed to painted with brush and roller) meaning all the walls have a very chalky surface that is impossible to wipe clean, let alone keep clean when you have 6 sets of little hands. We have done our best to maintain it but when you clean off a hand print and the paint comes with you it gives you a good idea of the quality.

Next up is drainage, its quite clear the house was designed to have an outdoor area but as a cheap measure the whole area has had this gravel mixed with clay layed everywhere. The problem is that the two storm water drains were just piped amongst this clay/gravel. The first time we had decent rain the storm water covers floated away and the 2 storm drains filled with mud blocking them. I actually had to use a shovel to stop the garage from flooding.

The next issue is the grass, this land was obviously paddocks before the estate was built meaning there are existing plant systems. The back and front yards were simply covered with wood chips with no means of keeping already existing weeds at bay, you cant mow it, you cant whipper snip it either so despite several sessions of back breaking grass removal I still haven't been able to remove them all. They will be getting dosed with poison this weekend.

The one problem we expected has been the fact that when we moved in there was only one other house built beside ours, since then the house across the road was built and now the uphill side and 2 more across the road have commenced construction. This has meant builders and mud and building material strewn everywhere, agaain we sort of expected this so its sort of a moan rather than a problem.

It has been a great house though, I really like the floor plan (sans kitchen) I love that our youngest daughter was born there in water. Its house 2 cars, 3 motorcycles and a bus and been a source of many memories.

But will I miss it??
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NO!!!

So heres hoping my application for this new place gets accepted, stay tuned.

More House Stuff

So Mamma bare and I have been doing a lot of soul searching with house designs, what to do, keep renting, live on site this design versus that etc etc.


We pretty much agree that we want a bespoke design that is both environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing, we also want to be able to complete as much of the house ourselves as possible some designs allow for more or less of this. One such style that I touched on in my last post but wanted to talk more about is straw bale.


Strawbale houses aren't just made out of straw, if they were the wolf would blow them down. The secret to the effectiveness of strawbale is in the simplicty of construction. The bales do not hold any load and as such really ar only fill in the walls, once assembled they are rendered on inside and out with one of many options including lime, adobe, cement etc. The end result is a wall that is about a foot thick, meaning the house will maintain temperature.

In thi shot you can see the frame is already erected, a moisture barrier is then prepared for the first course of bails (the gravel bit).

From here its realy just a matter of stacking your courses of bails, then preparing them (with a mesh barrier) before render.


There are many options for render, this lightr colour is lime rendered

Different option for colour

Yo can see this desgin allows for all water cought from the roof to route to one tank at each end.

Render can either be sprayed on, trowled on or even hand rendered like this shot

One of the great things about having thic walls is doors and windows can be sunk into the structure.

The sunk in windows and doors carry to the interiors which have such a warm and "hand made" look about them, I like this the best with straw bale construction, not the windows also allow for the construction of window seats.

Windows can be made into any shape, I particularly like the reclaimed timber window sils.

The sky is the limit design wise, this homestead style post and beam is a good example, very simple.

Mmmm Thick walls

Again, windows can be made in any shape

Exposed beams and cathedral ceilings really set of the interior

A little out there, but still what you can do wth render is really only limited by your own creativity

Until next time........

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.........

Land Ho!!!

Ok so this blog will feature 6 or so regular update types aside from any other random dribble I see fit to regurgitate
1) Children
2) Motorcycles
3) Cooking
4) Opinion
5) House Building
6) These are a few of my favourite things

With that I thought I should roll on with number 5 -House building

October 2009 saw us finally get our old 3 bedroom home of some 8 or so years "renovated" to a point where we could sell it. I use the term renovate very lightly, Mumma Bare caught the renovators bug quite badly, this meant she directed while I worked, some things came naturally and easily (I'm pretty happy with my painting skills) others were more of a struggle.

Renovating on its own is hard, throw the (then) 5 children we had into the mix and you had many an evening where I'd be painting a wall while my then 3 year old son C would be down the other end drawing on it. Frustrating to say the least.

We finally got the house ready to go on the market and thankfully it sold within 3 weeks, I dont know how much longer we could have kept it sparkling clean anyway. I have a lot of fond memories of that house but we never really felt at home there.

We intended to buy another established home but after seeing what was on the market in the areas we liked, this was soon realised to be impossible. We knew we wanted a tree change, somewhere with enough room for the children to run around, somewhere close to the parts of Victoria we love but still within suitable commute to my work.

We had been looking at 1/3 and 1/2 acre lots for weeks seeing nothing that grabbed us. Then a day spent with friends whose property adjoins anovergrow forrest see below:

We knew we wanted bigger, plans were changed, budgets reassed and the decision made to spend a little more to get more land, rent for 12-18 months and then build our dream home.

We settled on a nice spot, just over an acre, half cleared half bush surrounded apple orchards, vineyards and looking across to the yarra ranges.

The View frm the front of our block

Looking up our road towards the national park
Looking down toward the main road

Looking down the block

We haven't done much with the land over the past few months other than clear it and keep the grass down, we have 2 large dead trees to cut down then we can get the bushfire assessment done and start deciding on what design we want and can have. More on those later

Until next time.....