A Heated Debate

So we thought we had a plan.

It was our intention to install hydronic heating panels in the new house. Jamie does not like underfloor heating, so the panels are the next most efficient option. It is expensive, but lasts well and gives a gentle, radiant heat. When we discussed this with the designers, they calculated that there would be only about twenty days each year when we would need to provide some supplementary heating. The huge expense of a hydronic system would simply not be justified.

Initially, they suggested a simple gas heater, but this was met with a big N O from me. I loathe gas heating because it always seems so blowy and stifling. The next option was to have an electric panel heater that worked in a similar way to an hydronic panel. We have this heating now and we are happy with the performance. We will be producing an excess of electricity so it would be a sustainable option.

And then the designer suggested a wood fire...

I don't like wood fires because they burn timber and release the CO2 into the atmosphere. They are dirty and messy with the need to clean out the firebox and the chimney. My mother-in-law has a fireplace and she is always struggling to drag in loads of logs to feed the fire. We discussed the pros and cons; the idea that we could coppice sugar gum trees and be self sufficient in timber, the on-balance inputs of other fossil fuels with growing wood as a renewable resource, and the high efficiency of the modern fire boxes. I was unconvinced, and I thought Jamie was too, until they mentioned the "O" word ... OVEN!

Now those of you who know Jamie will be not be surprised to hear that his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. He loves cooking and baking, but his pride and joy is his bread-making. He grew his own sour dough mother from organic rye flour and has maintained it for many years. He cooks all of our bread and it is one of the things that makes him most happy. He just loves messing about with flour and yeast. We will be installing a 900mm Smeg oven, similar to the one we currently own, in the new house. He has plans to build a French style outdoor bread oven. Unfortunately, the idea of gaining an extra wood fired oven in the house was too good to be true. To paraphrase what Roy and HG might say, "Too many ovens are barely enough!"

The designers showed us the model they were suggesting with a small firebox and an oven underneath. It is produced by Nectre and is described as being in the style of a bygone era. Just what I love, NOT! It is not only a fire, but a rustic, cottage-style design at that!

NOT my style at all!!!!!

Jamie and I like things clean, clear and sleek. We like light blonde or limed timber, glass, metal and leather. We like things to be calm, not decorated with too many objects. We do not like cottage, home spun things that collect dust and make us feel cluttered. We are not fans of soft furnishings.

The designers said that it was something to think about, but looking at Jamie, I knew I had already lost the battle. He is such a wonderful person; who am I to deny him something he really, really wants? It has actually turned out to be an expensive option because one has to factor in the stove, chimney, tiling behind and a bluestone slab for it to stand on.

It is the one feature that I hate about the house, but I am going to let it go. I will have to make peace with the thing and learn how to use it. I do not want to spoil Jamie's pleasure in using it and I am sure that I will benefit from the many delights that emerge from it.

But be warned ... there had better not be any distressed timber dressers or macrame doilies in sight!

Grand Tour Anyone?

Would anyone care to take a tour of our house?

Now that the frame is substantially finished, we are able to visualise how our rooms will look for the first time. We are happy to report that the scale of the rooms is just as we had planned.

We will start at the eastern end of the house. This is where our bedroom, walk in wardrobe and ensuite bathroom are located. As you can see, there are two large windows on either side of the room. This will make it light and airy.

Inside the outer wall is the walk in wardrobe. This will provide another buffer to the outside in addition to the heavily insulated wall. As you can see, there
is a window at the enclosed end to allow the air to circulate. I hate closed wardrobes because the clothing can get that stale smell. This is where our clothing, towels and spare bedding will be stored.

We intend to line the outer wall with Elfa baskets, hanging rails and shelves. This area will be four metres long and three metres high. This is beyond luxurious for us. We are used to sharing one cupboard in which I have some Elfa baskets and seventy centimetres of hanging space. I have to pack up my out-of-season clothing and store it in a vacuum bag in the attic space. If we have a cold snap in summer, it is just a matter of hard luck and toughen up!



This is how the wardrobe will look from the main room. We are not having a door on the wardrobe but items will not be visible from the bedroom. This creates a small niche where we will place a small inlaid occasional table made by my great-grandfather and an antique French statuette which was brought by my family when they came to Australia. I really like these objects, although they are not really my usual taste. This will be a nice location for them and will draw the eye along the length of the house.

This is the view through our bedroom to the south. It is looking a bit untidy at the moment with all the excavations for the pipe work. This will be the view we wake up to each morning. We are pleased that our windows will be so large, whilst maintaining the thermal integrity of the building. The bedroom will be minimally furnished with our bed and bedside tables. It will be a tranquil place to relax.

 This is the view to the north. The sun will stream in on winter mornings to wake us up. It is looking a bit dry and mashed up by the trucks, but we intend to strew this area with indigenous wildflower and grass seeds. They are tough and can survive without being coddled with our precious water.

Next in line will be our ensuite bathroom. It is quite small but perfectly suited to our needs. It will be a wetroom with an open shower at the end. There will be no shower recess or structures that require lots of cleaning. The shower will be roof mounted in the centre of the space. The toilet and basin will be located along the wall towards the door. This room will not have a north facing window, but a south facing one with an openable skylight. This will allow hot air to vent out when a cool change comes from the south. The second photograph shows the ceiling line. The two bathrooms and the laundry will be the only rooms where the central spine will seen from the inside.

The laundry and larder will back onto the ensuite bathroom to concentrate the flow of water and drainage. This area is quite complex and compact and it may be hard to visualise this just from the frame. The laundry will act as an airlock to keep the outdoor temperature from penetrating the building on cool or hot days. The roof spine will be visible and a skylight will vent hot air. This is where we will also have our drying rack which can retract into the skylight shaft. It will be made locally by Usethings.

The larder is the section at the end and it will be heavily insulated. It will be for storage of our wine, our home preserved foods and vegetables such as potatoes and onions that keep well in a dark, cool place. We have preserved food for many years, often learning techniques from our friends' parents. We make passata (Italian tomato sauce), tomato pieces, concentrated tomato paste and condiment sauce. We grow and pickle our own olives and also bottle peaches, pears, apricots, cherries. We are hoping that our orchard will eventually provide all the fruit for preserving. We make jams; usually strawberry, raspberry, plum, apricot and mulberry. We get the mulberries from Jamie's mum's huge, old tree each year. We are limited now by space, but this larder will allow us to extend our production. Jamie has hinted that he would like get a pig to make salami.


The next three photographs show the open plan kitchen, dining and living area.

This shows the galley kitchen; a very generous space five metres long. The stove will be located on the exterior wall. There will also be the overhead cupboards where will will store our ingredients. The kitchen fitout will be very similar to our current kitchen, but nearly twice as big. The frame at the left is to house the refrigerator and will form a feature that will provide a sense of division in the space.

This shows the view of the kitchen and dining area from outside the kitchen window. It was April when this photograph was taken and you can see the way the sun has begun to travel further into the house as autumn has progressed. By mid winter, it will heat the entire slab as the angle of the sun changes.

This is the living room taken from the dining area. It will be a really spacious room with sliding doors to both the north and the south. The flooring, apart from the wet areas, will be timber with a light coating of lime wash to stop it yellowing in the sun. The boards will give the sense of perspective through the house.

Next is the study. There will be a built in desk and bookshelves on the right wall. At the moment we have a very small study/second bedroom, so it will be a generous and flexible space in which to work. I will also be able to sew in this space and leave my machine and overlocker out when working on a garment. At the moment, the dining table is cluttered with my sewing and it is an imposition on our living space. There will be a 1.8 metre sliding door, so there will be the impression of being open to the living area. We will be able to close it if we have extra guests staying so they can have some privacy.

There will be a second bathroom between the study and the guest bedroom which will be almost identitical to the first, except configured in the opposite way. You can see that it got a bit wet in there because of the recent, welcome rains.

This is the guest bedroom which is similar in scale to the main bedroom except without the walk in wardrobe. Living out of Melbourne, we will be able to provide comfortable accommodation for friends who want a weekend in the bush. Let us know when you are coming!

You can also see the "shed" space which is attached to the main building. It will not be accessible from the house, but will be entered through the carport. It will be well insulated from the main house. The shed and carport will give us extra capacity to collect rain water from the roof. Whilst it is not large, it will give space for Jamie to potter on projects and to have a proper work bench. You know how it goes - men and their sheds!

This is the view along the length of the house. I did not want hallways as they can be dead space, so they have been kept to the absolute minimum. Each room will flow into the next. That being said, this small section of hallway will form the second air lock. Our front door will open into it. In extreme heat, the guest bedroom, bathroom and living room doors can be shut to prevent transfer of air from the outside. This is not an airtight approach, but is important in maintaining the internal temperature and avoiding the need to heat and cool the house.

This view shows the carport and the shed. The additional mass of the shed 

and carport will provide extra protection from the hot afternoon sun in summer. 

The final image shows the house from the north western corner of the house.

Movin' on up

Over the past three weeks, the builders have been working on the frame of the house. Our frame is of a treated timber which is more sustainable than a metal frame because we are using a renewable, plantation timber. 

The frame has allowed us to visualise the dimensions of our rooms for the first time. It was such a thrill to be able to walk around the rooms and look at the view from each of the windows. After my initial concerns that it would be too big, then too small, I was as happy as Goldilocks to discover that everything was just right!

It will be a huge contrast to our current house, almost twice the size. However, we are only gaining a study and a second bathroom in terms of the number of rooms. Each room will be comfortably sized and allow us to walk around easily. This will a relief to Jamie who sometimes kicks in his sleep. Maybe he is dreaming of being a football star? He has stubbed his toes painfully on the edge of the storage chest more times than I can count. Actually, I can't talk. After playing netball for many years, I sometimes dream I am jumping to defend a ball. I have hit the bedroom wall a few times and landed on the ground, broken glasses of water and cracked my bedside lamp. Hmmm. I just read that back and may delete it. I am not sure we should share our nocturnal antics with everyone on the web. Suffice to say, a larger bedroom will be good for everyone's long term safety!

When we move, we are confident that we will need very little additional furniture; just a bed for the guest room and a second couch for the living room. It will be nice to have space for everyone to sit comfortably. At the moment, visitors get the couch and we have to sit on dining chairs. I am really looking forward to being able to organise our possessions so that they are neatly out of the way whilst being easily accessible. No more traipsing up the attic ladder every time we need our preserving stuff or picnic ware.

Anyway, enough of all that. The following pictures show the frame going up over three weeks.

Frame Week One: The eastern side of the house.

Frame Week One: View from below.

Frame Week One: View from above.

Frame Week One: The carport end.

Frame Week Two: The trench leading to the
 house will carry all our potential services.
They are underground as they can be a
hazard in bushfires.

Frame Week Two: You can begin to see the roof spine.

Frame Week Three: View from the north eastern end.

Frame Week Three: View from the north western end.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

After a seemingly endless period of planning and building permissions, design process and choosing builders, our project finally began at the end of January 2013. Now February is usually very hot, but this year, we broke the record for extreme temperatures over consecutive days. The heat continued well into March. Our builders from Vic Restorations in Castlemaine had to slave away in these harsh conditions to begin our house.

Initially there was nothing to see but lots of measurements and posts on the edges of the site, then came the site cut. Chewton is an old gold rush area, so we had our fingers crossed that there were no hidden reefs to dig through. This might have added time and cost. Our other concern was that there would be an old mine shaft. It is rare, but sometimes they can be hidden, partially filled with branches and leaves, the soil accumulates over the years and everything seems solid. Had there been one, we would have had to get it excavated and filled with concrete. Of course, there was always the chance that a massive gold nugget would be unearthed, but unfortunately it was not to be ... to our knowledge.

Our luck held and the site cut was completed with only one tough rock section. At first I thought I had made a mistake with my planning. The site was huge and seemed far too big for our modest house.

This shows the site cut from the northwest. As you can see,
it is much drier than the earlier images taken in winter.

This shows the proximity of the new house to our road.
It will allow us to keep the majority of the land unchanged.


One week later and we were able to see the preparation of the footings and the concrete slab. It feels like we will have a good grip on the ground. The slab will be a key way of providing thermal mass in winter. When I saw this, I thought it seemed quite small and I could not visualise how the rooms would fit in the space.

The larger square section is the carport and will also hold our
gas bottles, and our solar inverter.

It was 38C when the slab was poured. It had to be irrigated with water
on the top to slow down the drying process and prevent cracks.

One week later and we were able to walk onto our house.  It has dried well and is strong and free from cracks. Just as well, we were jumping with joy!