Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 81Dec 08, 2023 11:53 am Hebel power panel is a cladding product like foam, brick/masonry units are far superior and very different product Many home owners I meet do not experience the thermal performance which if often raved about Builders like it because it’s one contract (supply, instal and render). Over the years hebel played with it, decreased thermal mass (weight) to get into market place. Anything built within the past 10years will have significant number of vertical cracking at panel joints Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 82Dec 08, 2023 12:06 pm ![]() Hebel power panel is a cladding product like foam, brick/masonry units are far superior and very different product Many home owners I meet do not experience the thermal performance which if often raved about Builders like it because it’s one contract (supply, instal and render). Over the years hebel played with it, decreased thermal mass (weight) to get into market place. Anything built within the past 10years will have significant number of vertical cracking at panel joints Pedro I wish you could come by today ( we are in the middle of a heatwave) and see how cool the hebel homes are. They are honestly noticably cool on hot days. In relation to cracking, we haven't experienced any cracking and I would hazard a guess that the homes that have cracked haven't had the proper control joints installed. Unfortunately there are some cowboy crews out there who aren't trained properly. We have to give a 6 year warranty so if we had any bad experiences with cracking we certainly would not be using it. But that is just our experience. Yes it easy as a supply and install contract, but really with bricks we only need to add one more trade ( render) so it's not that much different. Anyway, have a great weekend Simeon Architectural Homes & Duplexes - specialising in custom designing homes to your budget Get a Free Onsite Consultation Today or send a PM for information, questions or advice. Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 84Dec 08, 2023 5:20 pm ![]() Hebel power panel is a cladding product like foam, brick/masonry units are far superior and very different product Many home owners I meet do not experience the thermal performance which if often raved about Builders like it because it’s one contract (supply, instal and render). Over the years hebel played with it, decreased thermal mass (weight) to get into market place. Anything built within the past 10years will have significant number of vertical cracking at panel joints I wouldn't call it foam, it is autoclaved concrete - special form of a lightweight concretes, which is used in building industry since early 90-ies and has probably hundreds of thousands of houses built with it in Europe, APAC, China, etc. (however, mostly it is used in the form of blocks to construct load-bearing walls in similar way you build using bricks, but way faster). It a generally superior product to masonry when it gets to thermal insulation, fire protection etc., however, the material itself is relatively fragile, easy to chip and requires special fasteners if you really want to attach anything to it. Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 85Dec 12, 2023 9:17 am Hi All Just a quick photo to prove we got the roof on before XMAS ![]() I hope everyone stays safe over the break and you all come back refreshed next year Cheers Simeon Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Architectural Homes & Duplexes - specialising in custom designing homes to your budget Get a Free Onsite Consultation Today or send a PM for information, questions or advice. Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 86Jan 03, 2024 8:44 pm Hi, curious to know roughly what are they charging in Sydney for concreting per sq m, say for a path, sponge finish. Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 87Jan 08, 2024 9:35 am Hi @Ashington Homes / Simeon, I have been reading this thread, very enlightening about the challenges in FZ build and feeling bad that I didnt found this earlier. I have reached out to you guys via submit a request for consultation. Could you please help to respond back to me. I am available on my mobile and looking for building 3 new homes in Leura, Bluemountains 2780. I have been told that I can reapply for Bushfire analysis again after construction is started so at least 2 out of 3 homes can be in Non FZ zone which are in FZ currently when it is plain land. Kindly revert and I am almost about to start the build, in process of getting landscaping approval and CC, together I am expecting a month away. Regards Kishan Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 88Jan 11, 2024 10:10 am ![]() Hi @Ashington Homes / Simeon, I have been reading this thread, very enlightening about the challenges in FZ build and feeling bad that I didnt found this earlier. I have reached out to you guys via submit a request for consultation. Could you please help to respond back to me. I am available on my mobile and looking for building 3 new homes in Leura, Bluemountains 2780. I have been told that I can reapply for Bushfire analysis again after construction is started so at least 2 out of 3 homes can be in Non FZ zone which are in FZ currently when it is plain land. Kindly revert and I am almost about to start the build, in process of getting landscaping approval and CC, together I am expecting a month away. Regards Kishan Hi Kishan I have sent you an email today, Just back from overseas. Firstly, flame zone builds aren't anything to be stressed about. Just a bit more work and a bit more cost, but once you have an idea of the basics and trades who have experience they are pretty simple. A big part of keeping costs down is material selections and not overdoing it on the windows Unfortunately Leura is a bit too far away for us to build, but I would be more than happy to help you out in any other way. Maybe we can set up a time to talk? Cheers Simeon Architectural Homes & Duplexes - specialising in custom designing homes to your budget Get a Free Onsite Consultation Today or send a PM for information, questions or advice. Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 89Feb 12, 2024 9:34 am Hi Simeon. Gosh this thread is so helpful! We are thinking about making an offer on a home that is BAL-FZ with a DA already approved for the extension. As its an auction, I'm really nervous about how much this plans would cost to actually build. I'm not convinced the architects would give me a realistic estimate given the need for FZ material. Would you be able to give me a ballpark for this drawing - just the upper deck and lower ground rumpus room? We're in Newcastle if you'd be interested in quoting! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 90Feb 13, 2024 2:41 am ![]() Hi Simeon. Gosh this thread is so helpful! We are thinking about making an offer on a home that is BAL-FZ with a DA already approved for the extension. As its an auction, I'm really nervous about how much this plans would cost to actually build. I'm not convinced the architects would give me a realistic estimate given the need for FZ material. Would you be able to give me a ballpark for this drawing - just the upper deck and lower ground rumpus room? We're in Newcastle if you'd be interested in quoting! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Thanks for reading my thread and I am glad you are finding it helpful. Unless there is some specific requirement in the DA, my understanding is that once you start a renovation like this within a flame zone the whole home needs to be brought up to the FZ standard which can be very tricky. I could be wrong, but I have spoken to a number of experts when we looked at doing renovations for clients and the cost of bringing an old home up to code exceeded that of a new build. FZ builds can be extremely technical if you aren't using the correct materials. When I say correct I am speaking of products that have been tested and certified rather than trying to use materials which haven't and you need a performance based solution on. A good example of this is brick veneer which doesn't comply. Some councils will include a condition in your DA which requires an independent engineer to certify the structural adequacy during a fire. Not all engineers are prepared to do this. We choose Hebel for our FZ builds as it comes with a certificate. Happy to explain this further offline if you would like. If you want a ballpark number to decide if you should but or not I would allow $4000/sqm at the low end for the entire dwelling and $5,000/sqm at the upper end, but you will find out it is easier to knock down the existing dwelling and start over. All the best Simeon Architectural Homes & Duplexes - specialising in custom designing homes to your budget Get a Free Onsite Consultation Today or send a PM for information, questions or advice. Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 91Feb 14, 2024 4:38 am Hi Everyone, We are around a month into the new construction year and work has ramped up. January was frustrating. I found that this year a lot of tradies took extended breaks so we lost the end of December and most of January ( so if your job has been going slow that is probably why). Anyhow, in the time we have been back we have accomplished a fair bit including: 1. Solar install 2. Electrical and plumbing rough ins 3. Rendered the top half of the house. Next week we are doing aircon rough ins and finishing the render, aiming to start gyprock in 2 weeks. Still aiming for a late May finish ( getting a tad tight due to Christmas slow down so might be June) but we are pushing hard. As a side note, my 5 year old son started kindy last week with the client's 5 year old daughter and they have become an item, playing together and holding hands at lunch. Yesterday my son came home and was over the moon that this girl had announced at school that he was her boyfriend. He is now deeply in love and he wants his girlfriend to move back in across the road. So I have a lot invested in this one! I have a few people to respond too, but if anyone wants to visit site to see how we do our FZ builds or builds in general, hit me up and I would be happy to make some time. Cheers Simeon Architectural Homes & Duplexes - specialising in custom designing homes to your budget Get a Free Onsite Consultation Today or send a PM for information, questions or advice. Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 92Feb 27, 2024 4:22 am Hi Everyone This post should titled "Why I hate lower roofs". All of us in Sydney know how we have been absolutely smashed with the weather this summer. If it's not over 35 degrees it has been absolutely pouring making building an absolute challenge. In NSW our setback rules require us to have articulation in side walls so the neighbours get a nicer view. In Ku-ring-gai council they enforce this like medieval religious zealots, this results in large sections of lower roofs. This makes construction a lot harder as you can't get the structure water tight until all upper outside works have been completed as scaffolding is in the way. On this particular build, whilst the upper roof has been on since before Christmas and upstairs is super dry, we have a massive section downstairs which is open to the elements and literally every time it rains we end of with 30-40mm of water ponding through half the home ( see attached plan). So between the client, myself, my teenagers and labourers we have been trying to wet vac the water as often as possible to try and minimise degradation of the timber. Sometimes we spend two hours vacuuming over 400 litres of water out and then it rains again the next day! So its been a bit like ground hog day. In some sections we are seeing some blackening of the timber, and I am really conscious of getting this sorted before sheeting. The hold up has been waiting on the installation of the upper fire shutters which I have been told will be this week. Then we can get the scaffolding dropped and lower roofs on. I have told the clients that we might need to slow the build down to let everything dry properly, possibly either treat the affected timber and or replace the worst sections, but it has been hard to determine the extent of damage until we dry everything out properly. I think my own house frames were worse over the summer of 2018/19 when the drought broke and I treated them and replaced the worst parts and 4 years on we are still golden. So it's all fixable. In other news we have dropped 2 weeks behind my slightly ambitious program. We should have been gyprocking last week but instead we will start upstairs late next week. The rain has been the main factor. With 30-40mm of water on the floor it has been hard to expect the boys to complete rough ins and obviously external render and paint was put on hold. Those are all completed now, but I need the walls to remain un-sheeted sheeting until the fire shutters are in and tested in case there is anything wrong with the wiring. We will try and make up some time down the track. Apologies for no photos. With the scaffolding up the pictures dont look very good. Till next time Simeon Lower roof circledLike ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Architectural Homes & Duplexes - specialising in custom designing homes to your budget Get a Free Onsite Consultation Today or send a PM for information, questions or advice. Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 93Feb 27, 2024 12:17 pm Hey Simeon, Sorry to hear about your troubles with the raining. Have you considered some temporary roof cover solutions? There are some like http://bigbensafety.com, which can be attached to the scaffolding and provide full protection against elements, but also others like https://stormseal.com/ (Australian, BTW) which can protect some parts of the roof. Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 94Feb 27, 2024 2:27 pm ![]() Hey Simeon, Sorry to hear about your troubles with the raining. Have you considered some temporary roof cover solutions? There are some like http://bigbensafety.com, which can be attached to the scaffolding and provide full protection against elements, but also others like https://stormseal.com/ (Australian, BTW) which can protect some parts of the roof. Thanks Alex No we hadn't in recent times. The issue has always been the scaffolding which protrudes through the lower rafters and how can you possibly fit something around the scaffold legs. That storm seal looks interesting. I wonder how much it costs? Might call and find out Architectural Homes & Duplexes - specialising in custom designing homes to your budget Get a Free Onsite Consultation Today or send a PM for information, questions or advice. Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 95Mar 07, 2024 10:01 am Hi All, Time for an update. Since my last post the weather has been good to us and we have been steaming ahead. We are really proud of the progress, and our clients are over the moon. We have managed to finish all rough ins ( Aircon, plumbing and electrical), upper bushfire shutters are installed, we dropped half the scaffold yesterday and today have started the lower roofs. We also passed the framing inspection. Yay. Next Monday the insulation will go in and then we will commence gyprock which typically takes a week and a half. I have attached some photos ( sorry for the quality, I am out of town and I asked my wife to get me a facade shot but she took it at the gate so it's not great). Stairs will be installed in a couple of weeks and then it's full steam ahead on the interiors. On track for late May to early June for handover. In terms of the bushfire shutters, I have attached some photos so you can see how they look. They work with a UPS battery back up so what happens if a fire comes and the mains power is cut then they close automatically. They also have remotes so the owners can close them manually if they want some extra security. In terms of cost, the shutters were a tad over $80,000. Shutters are funny, as whenever we are dealing with new clients most people hate the idea, however if you choose your colours correctly and we get a powder coat colour to match then they sort of blend in. On this particular job the client absolutely hated the idea and did everything in his power to avoid getting them. Unfortunately the cost of fire rated windows was so insanely high that the budget just didn't allow for that as an option. Now they are installed he thinks they look good. There have been a few client generated variations in terms of joinery, french oak timber flooring and we upgraded the downstairs air conditioning to a multi head system ( seperate ducted system upstairs). The main reason for this is that we have a massive structural beam that runs through the living room and we would have had to drop the ceiling by 300mm for ducting where as with a multi head system the pipework is only 100mm. And even though we have 3800mm high ceilings dropping 300mm would have ruined the feeling of the home. So once we get these lower roofs in, we can drop the remainder of the scaffold and start on the external works. One of the reasons that we build so fast is that we try and run multiple work streams at the same time which can cause some issues with the banks progress payments schedules. An example of this is lock up stage. So typically a builder will complete all external work and not even rough in and then claim the lock up payment before starting on the internals. I modelled this method on this job as we were having a minor issue with the wording of the progress payment schedule and it pushed the program out to October ( 4 months later than we are aiming). On this job the bank had insisted on an " external linings stage" followed by a "lock up stage". The problem was that external linings was never defined and the bank didn't even had a definition for it. But after some negotiation we managed to get paid once the roof, walls and windows were in. What we do is get the upper roofs on, then rough in and gyprock upstairs, and even start tiling wet areas, then drop scaffolding do lower roofs and finish downstairs. So by the time of lockup, internal linings should be finished and first coat of paint should be finished, then we have 4 weeks to get joinery, and typically we can finish a home including driveways and landscaping in around 5 weeks. In that 4 week period whilst waiting for joinery we can tile bathrooms and floors, get the pool almost finished and all external render and paint. In other bushfire news and back to the fire shutter issue, the client is adamant that he doesn't want a shutter on the front door. The issue is that you simply can not find FZ rated front doors. I found one company in Perth who say they make them but they never return calls or emails. This is a weird one which we are currently waiting on a bushfire consultant to advise us, as the code says a door with a rating of -/30/- is compliant. Now the main manufacturers such as Hume have a BAL 40 rated door which they say has been tested to -/30/- but we would hate to install that, get to OC and have the certifier reject us. So let's see what advice we get. As a back up we have installed the wiring for the shutter just in case. Sorry about the length of this post, had a lot on my mind. Till next time Simeon Facade is coming togetherWe still have the louvres to go upstairs which will add a lot of characterLike ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Another fire shutter photoLike ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Architectural Homes & Duplexes - specialising in custom designing homes to your budget Get a Free Onsite Consultation Today or send a PM for information, questions or advice. Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 96Mar 08, 2024 1:31 pm Hi All, Running on the theme that every day is a school day, I just wanted to follow up yesterday's post with some pictures explaining how we are dropping the ceiling due to the airconditioning pipework. I also have posted a picture showing the multi head air conditioning unit in the living room and how we created the bulkhead for it. I hope this explains what I was talking about yesterday Cheers Simeon Multi Head unit with a bulkheadLike ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Furring chanels being used to drop the ceilingYou can see the pipe work for the airconditioning which had to sit below the structural beam which is why we could not use a ducted systemLike ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Architectural Homes & Duplexes - specialising in custom designing homes to your budget Get a Free Onsite Consultation Today or send a PM for information, questions or advice. Re: Building a flame zone house in West Pymble on a steep si 97Apr 02, 2024 3:56 pm Hi All It has been a few weeks since my last update. The build has been progressing well. No major issues to report. The scaffolding was dropped today, gyprock will be completed in a few days, we have already completed the first coat of paint upstairs and should have downstairs painted next week. The stairs go in next Monday and then we can start waterproofing and tiling. At this point we are in the final stage of the build so it is a matter of co-ordinating all of the finishing trades. I would expect that by the end of this month we will have all bathrooms tiled, internal carpentry well underway, first 2 coats of paint on, front louvres installed which will give the home a totally different look and floor screed done. Then next month we can get joinery in, finish the pool and outside render, and start on all the electrical and plumbing fit offs. The only thing that may delay the build is joinery. Our normal company quoted $99,000 which was approx $40,000 over budget. We have a quote from a new company that has been recommended and they are much closer to the budget but they have a 6 week lead time as opposed to a 2 week lead time. So that is a decision we need to make with the client in the next day or two. Joinery is a critical path hold point in the program as we can't do any of the fit off work without it. Anyway, that's construction. Overall, the clients are still over the moon with happiness which is the main thing. Here are a couple of photos from today: Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Architectural Homes & Duplexes - specialising in custom designing homes to your budget Get a Free Onsite Consultation Today or send a PM for information, questions or advice. Yes it had a house on it. But Melbourne water only wanted something the original size of the existing house. We managed to fit a 45sq house on. 10 33683 First time building 2 storey home, is under construction (in Framing stage) in NSW. I have 3 toilets and need bidet spray in… 0 16880 Hi I live in a 100yr old semi and my neighbour added an additional floor last yr and our architect has advised that we can knock down our semi and build a free-standing… 0 37758 |