Week 7 - More Frames

Week Seven 29 Oct - 2 Nov

Day 28.  The ant matting has been fixed and the last of the floor joists are now in place.  Its slow going at this stage.  My site manager says the company who make the steel frames are the best ones he has used but he is less than impressed with their work ethic.  

 

Day 29.  Some sad excitement in the street today.  My son and I did a "drive by" this morning on the way to his school.   When we got down to the end of the street there were a mass of cops who advised we had to reverse out as one of the houses down there was a crime scene.  There were way too many police for a simple theft so we thought perhaps it was arson or drugs or something. 

When I went back that afternoon to see if any work had been done on our place - not much but about 2m across the width of the suspended floor had been laid - one of the workmen said it had been a suicide, a young bloke who had hung himself from the scaffolding.  Very sad for all concerned, a tragic waste of life and an awful thing for the poor workers on that site to find when they got to work.  The workmen were telling me that all the guys working the sites in the area were shocked.  They did not know specifically who he was but there was some speculation he might have been from one of the work teams.

Day 30.  More frames delivered today.  They have also put up the scaffolding around the top of the existing frame so hopefully that will speed the framers up.

 

The issue from yesterday seems to have created a whole heap of workplace safety concerns too.  Until yesterday our place was the only one with a fence around it but now every other house has a safety fence too.

I did some more planning on the front garden so I can arrange to get the walls built, this is what we have come up with based on the design concept shown on last week's blog.  The yard area to be dealt with is 14m long and 3.5m wide.  The areas out the front will be made into 4 key zones.  The zone outside Bed 3 is a sitting area and will have a raised wooden (or mock wood) platform that will hide the binds underneath.  The zone outside the bathroom is a privacy zone.  We will build out a raised L shaped garden bed from the feature post and place a feature privacy panel across the side of it that faces the road then make like a little fernery in the garden bed to give the bathroom a nice outlook.  The area outside the Family and Bed 4 is a feature entry area marked by decked flooring, feature gardens and a couple of large fancy pots.  The last area leads around to the side of the house and the front door and will be like the picture shown in the previous blog with raised garden beds and the miniature clumping bamboo.  The area outside the porch will be decked and we might put a small water feature in that area.  We want to use natural looking materials such as stone and wood etc although that said I am happy to substitute for more durable options such as wood look.  This company does what I want but I need to find someone local.

Day 31.  Today we have a floor with lines drawn on it, its amazing to walk out onto the floor.  We are going to have a fantastic view out of the loungeroom window and our bedroom window and it can't be built out.  Its a bit hard to tell what the view off the patio will be like yet as the neighbour's house will be two story.

Front (from far to near Bed 3, Bth, Family & Bed 4)

Entry side of house

Day 32.  They did a heap of work today.  All the upper wall frames are up today though it appears they have made two mistakes which I have emailed to the builder - although knowing my very switched on site supervisor he probably already knows - one was obvious, the plumbing pipes don't line up with the frame for the kids toilet and the frame for the outerwall to the ensuite and WIR have been swapped with each other.  There also seems to be a glitch in one of the frames downstairs in the laundry area.  The window space should have been placed centrally in the frame but has been put closer to one side than the other.  This is not a big issue but will mean I will need to redesign one of the cupboards downstairs.

Other than that frame looks great, its a good feeling being able to walk through the house and being able to see where all the rooms are and how big they are.  I love the space through the kitchen, dining and loungeroom and out onto the deck/patio.

View from Pantry across kitchen, means & lounge.

Week 6 - Frames

Week Six 22 - 26 Oct

Day 23.  No frames yet although the under-flooring for the floating floor has been delivered - its bright orange!  Definitely not an option for the "raw floor" look.   My builder had asked for them to be delivered last week and they were supposed to arrive today. 

  

Day 24.  The frames have been delivered and the guys were there marking the bottom slab out this morning.   The young guy said they expect to have the bottom section finished by the afternoon and when I went back later in the day it had been done.  Its still hard to get an idea of the size of rooms while they are still open to the air, but it is nice to be able to walk inside a room and be able to visualise how it will be when finished.

Day 25.  Not much done today, they put up the two supports that go under the patio (alfresco).   There is one support post still to be put in but it is a really good visual cue to seeing how big that area will be.

Day 26 - 27.  More progress today.  Most of the steel joists have been put in for the top floor.  We can really start seeing it as a house now.  My site manager is not too happy though, he says the framing guys are not working fast enough and they also did some of the installation by moving some of the ant mat which now has to be fixed up.  Hopefully it won't put things behind and by the end of next week we will be able to walk through the top floor.

Garden Ideas.  We have done a bit of planning and playing with ideas for some of the outside areas.  We are going to continue the retaining wall from the side of the house up around the front and then most likely use something like stacked stone on it to make that side of the house look better and to tie it in with the wall we will have to build out the front.   Given the driveway is fairly steep we are also looking at making an alcove into which the bins can be put up the top end of the driveway so we don't have to drag them up the driveway.  The image to the left is a rough (very rough) composite of the sort of idea we are looking at.  Above where the bins are would be a raised wooden platform / seat and we may go so far as to have a hidden lift lid on it for easy access to the bins. 

The front yard style we are looking at is as per the right side image above with a mix of platforms, garden beds and formed paths.  We think this will suite a narrow front yard particularly given ours will be defined by a front wall to make it level with the front of the house.  Mind you we will not be going with the bright orange feature wall!  

Along the side of the house leading up to the front door I would like something like this one, using some miniature clumping bamboos and clever lighting.  I think we could tie it in nicely with the front yard style.

Week 5 - Termite Proofing

Week Four 15 - 19 Oct

Day 18 - 20.  Another quiet week this week.  The only thing that happened around the house was the installation of the ant sheeting, quite a different technique from what my first house (in 1988) had which was a chemical barrier.

Day 21 &22.  The frames were supposed to be delivered on Thursday but my builder said the steel company have delayed delivery till Monday. 

Tip - Research the termite risks in your area and consider what treatment you need based on the local regulations and the risk you are wiling to take.

My Notes on Termites.  The issue of termite proofing is quite an interesting one.  In our current house the lower floor is all brick and the upper floor is hardwood.  The house was built in the 70s when they were still using quite ferocious termite proofing under pads such as heptachlor.  When not exposed to air it can remain in the soil effective for up to 50 years.  They no longer use these sorts of chemicals as exposure for people is cumulative but they are very effective.  That aside despite the strong chemical barriers used in the older buildings we still had a run in with termites in our current house which has made us very cautious about how we manage our risk prevention.

Around our current house all the appropriate precautions had been taken, there were no garden beds next to the house, there were concrete paths around the house, the paths had been drilled and retreated, both ourselves and those who lived here before us had records of regular checks and treatments done on the house.  Despite this about three years after we moved in we got termites.  Downstairs the previous owners had fitted pine frames - off the floor and surrounded by painted brickwork - that supported plasterboard to make the walls look "pretty" and hide the exposed brickwork.  We noticed a bit of damp in one of the corners where the slab is partly underground and thought it was just rising damp, but when we dug a bit into the plasterboard we found termites.  After getting a professional in we discovered they had come up beside the slab, between the plasterboard and brickwork and then into the pine frames.  Fortunately for us the pine frames were not structural and we caught them early.  To reduce future risk we ripped out all the downstairs plasterboard and pine, wet proofed, rendered and painted downstairs.  However it did teach us just how determined these little critters could be.

In addition to our own experiences we also had experiences of friends who had had termites in their houses and had suffered major structural damage necessitating thousands of dollars in repairs, particularly in one instance where they had got into support timbers and the roof.

Given we are in the "Very High" risk zone as shown on this map, we did some research on risks vs building requirements. There is some very good information for QLD and other states on the Termite .com website.

We identified that in QLD the standard treatment requirements for Australian houses is H3 for the exterior support walls in modern houses, noting softwood pine is the usual building material now.    Interior frames can be a lower grade H2.  Noting this is the Australian Standard and what I could not confirm is if the standard, partcularly for the interior wall frames was compulsory or not.  There are a number of houses being built around us where some or all of the wood frames on the interior walls are yellow not with the obvious green tint of the exterior wall frames.  I am not sure if that means a different treating product has been used or if the interior wall frames are untreated.

The treated timbers tend to be guaranteed for around 25 years - but we actually plan to live in the house for longer than 25 years so am not keen on taking that sort of risk with the structural integrity of our house particularly when we are old and have also read several stories of people who indicated they had termites in their new houses inside this timeframe.  Insurance also apparently does not usually cover termite damage.

I found the following information useful:

Timber Net. Timbers treated against termite attack must attain appropriate levels of treatment to suit the application involved. Further details are in AS1604 but a selection guide is shown below:

Application	Treatment Level
Interior, above the ground	H2 or H2F*
Exterior, above the ground	H3
Exterior in ground contact	H4 or H5**

NOTES:

* H2F is only resistant to termites below the Tropic of Capricorn.

** Use H5 where ground water is present.

The treatments for the timber is primarily through the use of CCA (a form of arsenic) although there are other treatments.  For those who want information about issues related to toxicity vs safety of this product the CSIRO site has some good information.  We were both quite comfortable with the use of CCA it was more the risk to timber itself that worried us, particularly if termites got into the supporting timbers or roof.

The research indicates that the chances of termites getting into steel framed houses is actually no less however the key difference is that they don't eat steel, so the damage they do tends to be to cosmetic fittings that can be replaced a lot more cheaply than structural supports.  If the infestation is significant and long lasting some damage to the steel can occur but this is rare.

Anyway so the final conclusion for us was that a steel frame and appropriate termite prevention treatments would be the best option.   Termite barriers have been placed around all the pipes and the mat laid in the area between the slab and the frame.  When we move in and before we start doing our landscaping we will put in a barrier of termidor around the outside of the house with permanent accesses for retreatment.

Week 4 - We Have A Slab!!!

Week Four 8 - 12 Oct

This week was a lot more exciting culminating in the end of the first stage of building.


Day 13 - 15 The guy got rid of most of the dirt except some that they were able to use on the neighbours block.  The neighbours cut is due to start by the end of the week.  

Nothing much happened on our block in the first part of this week.

Day 16  It rained!  

 

Day 17  I went out to the block early on the way to work and the big job had already started.  The wet barrier, reinforcing and foam waffles had already been laid on both the upper and lower areas.  The concrete pump track was there and the guys had already started pouring the lower pad.   When I went back after work we had two complete slabs.  Its very exciting and much easier now to work out where everything is.  I took the kids around and showed them where their rooms would be etc.  Although the rooms in the house are big without the walls up its still hard to appreciate the size of the rooms.  Although I do know that the top slab of our house is about the same size of my entire first house!!

Week 3 - More Pipes, Waterproofing & Power

Week Three 1 - 5 Oct

The plan for this week was the remaining of the pipes and the waterproofing.

Day 8 - 12  During the first three days of this week the last of the pipes were installed so now we have our very own pipe farm.  Although I know many of the pipes are for the down pipes it can still be a little confusing working out where they are in relation to the house walls.

Day 13 - 14  The wet / dry barrier has been put in behind the retaining wall and the wall has been filled back  in.  They have also dug two very deep holes in the upper slab which I think may be to help secure the slab firmly to the ground.  We also now have an electrical box.

The estate is still plodding along, it looks like our neighbours on lot 25 are starting earlier than I was originally told by their builder.  I have not had any luck getting rid of the dirt yet, most of the companies I rang can only take smallish loads.  Fortunately I ended up contacting the guy who is doing  the dig next door and he said he can take it no problems and we negotiated a good price. 

Tip - Make sure you include an allowance for either additional fill or the removal of excess fill.