Strawbale House

Kin on the Aussie Bloggers Forum was so kind to organise a Secret Santa for forum participants.

Yesterday my secret Santa present arrived and it is an absolute hoot. The bits I received were pretty cool (see image on the right), but the message, which I share with you below, made me laugh and chuckle all the way to the end.

“Buying for a man, who is in on “office” swap, is HARD! So I asked my husband “What do all men want in their office?” He told me …

1. Something topless. (check √)
2. Something to keep track of all those numbers offered to him at the christmas party. (little black book - check √)
3. Something to keep his tip protected. (whatever that means???!) (liquid paper - check √)
4. The opportunity for something ’sticky’ (notes - check √)
5. Something to label home made movies with, so they are not distributed around the office. (DVD marker - check √)
6. A supply of plastics, scented + glow in the dark. ( check √ - I hope small is ok?
7. Office Bullsh!t … (will reindeer sh!t do?) - √ check

Merry Christmas!

I hope you are not easily offended, if so … I apologogise now :(, if not, enjoy

Not so secret Santa
(I am a string red vegetable - can you guess?)”

Well, now I have to work out what a “string red vegetable is”. Can you guys help me please and leave me a comment with your guess who my secret santa is.

Just a very quick update. I managed to get a lot of recycled hardwood floor joists and some recycled hardwood tongue and groove hardwood flooring.

We are currently planning to use the hardwood flooring in the master bedroom, Study, Sewing Room, and Media Room.

The hardwood floor joists will be used for the deck.

We’ve also had the first feedback from the engineer which has prompted us to make some further small changes to the position of some doors. I’ll show you all the new floor plan once it has been updated.

Last weekend Rosalba and I attended a Strawbale Building Workshop in Yandina. This workshop was part sponsored by our Architect WD Architects. Other supporters included Rockcote, Wildlife Warriors, and the Sunshine Coast Regional Council.

Our tutors where Lance Kairl, and Chris and Colin Newton.

Lance is South Australia’s most experienced straw bale builder with 11 years of experience building strawbale homes.

Chris’ experience is in all sorts of earthen clay and lime renders to finish of a strawbale home. Chris’ husband Colin is a structural engineer.

The workshop was held over a long weekend from Saturday to Monday and was packed full with information and great hands on experience.

During the workshop we built a load bearing strawbale wall of a tea house for the Yandina Community Permaculture Gardens.

We had quite a bit of fun stacking the bales on the first day and found out pretty quick that it is a bit harder than stacking Lego blocks as you can see in the picture in the right. We ended up disassembling and re-building this corner 2 times until we were happy with the result.

The main lesson to be learned on this corner was that you should not try and cut corners by trying to kick and shove bales into a tight spot if the bale is to big. You should actually make the bale smaller by the appropriate amount.

On the second day we made cob out of “waste” straw and clay. We used this cob to patch any gaps or holes in the strawbale walls before we applied any of the render.

When making cob it is important not to make the mixture to wet and heavy as otherwise the cob just falls of the wall instead of sticking to the wall. Also, for larger patches, cob should be applied in thinner layers and let dry a bit before applying further layers.

On the third and last day we applied the first coat of render onto the strawbale wall. The render on a strawbale wall is normally applied in three coats with a finished thickness of between 35mm to 50mm.

Unfortunately three days was not long enough to finish the wall and apply the second and third coat of render as each coat needs to dry and cure for a few days before applying the next coat.

The result of our three day workshop can be seen in the picture on the right.

Both Rosalba and I have had a really good time during this workshop. The tutors were very knowledgeable and open and all participants in the workshop were a pleasure to work with. Rosalba and I have made some great connections during the workshop and we are both keen and eager to get some more experience.

For people in the south-east corner of QLD, Chris and Colin Newton intend to have a workshop at the beginning of January 2009 to finish their own home built with straw bales. So if you are interested in the process of building a strawbale home contact Chris to confirm dates and availability.

A side benefit for us of attending this workshop is that we have met many people that are interested in building homes as a community and many are willing to help each other out building each others strawbale structures.

Rosalba and I have been rather lucky as we have found about 87 m² of used slate tiles.

Last weekend I went to pick them up with our 1 tonne ute and a trailer.

I have to say that I seriously underestimated the weight of the slate tiles and I had to take it slowly up the Blackall range (at times I only managed second gear).

I even managed to ‘break’ the trailer just before unloading by driving over a sharp stone in the driveway and flattening one tyre.

The 87 m² of slate didn’t even all fit in the ute and trailer. I reckon I managed about 70-75% of the slate in the first trip. I’ll be picking up the rest of the slate tiles this Friday and luckily will be able to fit them in the ute only and won’t need the trailer.

We’ll use the slate tiles on the floor in the kitchen, dining, lounge, and the bathrooms.

Has anyone used slate tiles in the bathroom before and is there anything that you need to be mindful of?

During the weekend before last, Rosalba and I attended a course put on by the Rainbow Power Company titled “Living with Solar”

The course covered pretty much anything to do with solar power generation, from solar panels and cable sizing to battery care.

The course was presented in an easy going two days and aimed at giving anyone a good understanding on solar power generation and it’s impacts on your life style.

One of the most interesting things I picked up from the course is that you can still use a bread maker but you just need to be careful when you use it. As a bread maker uses quite a lot of electricity you should only use it when you have excess energy being generated by your solar panels and your battery bank is already full.

Personally I believe that this course is very worth while for anyone interested in generating electricity from the sun, be that a grid connect system or an autonomous remote area power system (RAPS).

Wanting to go fully solar not only for our hot water needs but also for our electricity needs we have purchased the book “Solar Success” by Collyn Rivers recently. The subtitle of the book “Getting It Right Every Time - The Complete Guide To Home & Property Systems” really got us interested.

I have just recently finished reading this book and have to say that it was a quite easy to read considering the topic and the book covers many aspects.

I really like how the book looks at the whole solar power system from a more holistic point than just from a technical point of view.

In the first part of the book Collyn discusses all sorts of energy consuming appliances that we have in our households nowadays with a view of highlighting where it makes sense to improve the efficiency of the appliance before installing the solar power system.

The second part covers the basics of any solar power system while also listing other alternative power sources and their feasibility.

Part three covers the design and scaling of a power system, highlighting the need for an energy audit to be able to work out how big your system needs to be.

Part four covers the basics of installing a solar power system. Interesting in this part I found the section about what you are allowed to do yourself and what you need to get a licensed electrician to do.

Part five covers the actual installation of a power system with lots of tips on how to make your system more effective and secure.

Part six describes some typical examples based on actual installations. This part of the book gives you a rough feel of the likely costs to set-up a solar power system. As this book has only been released in June this year the pricing is still quite applicable.

Part seven in the book talks about financing a solar power system and the various rebate schemes available in Australia.

In the last part Collyn then describes the solar power system he has got on his property. Collyn also describes living with solar power and that the biggest challenge for Collyn is dealing with visitors that are not used to conserving energy and that one visitor can basically double their daily power consumption easily.

All in all I heartily recommend this book to anyone that is interested in getting their own solar power installation. The book is not just easy to read but I can see it also becoming a little bit of a reference book for myself. It contains some simple formulas to work out electrical properties of various parts of a solar power system.

Project Better Place is planning on bringing electric cars and a charging network to Australia by  2012.

In a deal unveiled in Melbourne, international company Better Place plans to team up with AGL Energy and Macquarie Capital Group to set up a network of “charging spots” and “battery exchange stations” to power electric vehicles in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Shai Agassi, chief executive officer of Better Place, said he hoped Australia would prove that electric cars can work anywhere and that the technology to support electric cars is available now.

Better Place plans to set-up a network of charging spots, to top up batteries, that would be located in places where cars park, including home garages, shopping centres and office car parks.

Additionally, on the outskirts of city centres and on freeways, “battery switching stations” would be built for trips longer than 161 kilometres.

Mr Agassi said Better Place wants to to build the infrastructure first, while the company was dealing with car manufacturers to produce the battery-run cars.

“You can’t sell cell phones before you have the towers,” he said.

Thanks to Jess at Sustainable Suburbia for blogging this and linking to the article in The Age news paper.

John,  one of our friends, has given us some free door handles for our new home.  John is a locksmith and has told us that these handles would have most likely been thrown out.

These handles have come of some doors where the builders installed the wrong type of handles on the internal doors on a large new building. The business where John works was employed to remove this handles from the doors and install the correct handles.

Believe it or not, as this handles already had been installed once, they couldn’t be sold as new and were just sitting in a corner in a box taking up space and were about to be thrown out, when John offered us these.

Of course we were only to happy to receive all the handles for our doors for free and we certainly don’t mind that they have been installed once before. In fact they do look brand new and have hardly been used ever.

Later on we also found some handles for our front doors on eBay. They were very reasonably priced at $68 inclusive postage, so we are quite happy about those as well.

So now we already have all internal doors, the main entrance doors, all the door handles we need and some of the windows.

On the planning side of things we are now waiting on some engineers drawings before we can submit the plans to the local council for building approval. It’s quite exciting and Rosalba can’t wait to actually start doing stuff on building our new home.

Some of you may remeber the post I have written in August about a different way to finance a solar power system by basically giving the power company the right to place their own solar panels onto your roof and you then buy the electricity generated by these solar panels at a slightly higher cost.

This way you are able to generate a large part of your electricity need from the sun without needing to pay for a large upfront cost.

In August I also talked about how such deals seemed not to be available in Australia.

I am happy to report that a similiar deal has now become available in Australia from at least one company named Earth Utility.

Earth Utility is putting a slightly different spin on this type of deal though. As Earth Uility is not an electricity supplier you don’t pay more for your electricity and you get the same benefits on your electricity bill you would get if you own the solar power system outright.

Of course the solar power system is not provided free of charge but at a modes $75 per quarter (source) your savings on your electricity bill are probably more than paying for the quarterly cost for the solar power system.  As a bonus you even own the system after 20 years of service.

If you have been wanting to get a solar power system on your roof but have not been able to to afford it until now, I encourage you to have a look at Earth Utility and see if their way of financing a solar power system would suit you.

Earth Uility also provides similar types of financing options for solar hot water systems.

Rosalba and I have started looking around for bits and pieces for our new home.  We have purchased the main entrance doors a while ago.

This week we were lucky enough to win an eBay auction for some nice french doors as shown below. We are planning to use these french doors as the doors to the little area outside our bedroom.

A couple of weeks back we have also won an auction for 12 louvre doors which we’ll be using for all the inside doors.

The following picture is of a couple of wooden inlay panels that we have managed to get at a very good price. We are not yet sure where we will be using these but when we saw them, we just had to have them.