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!