Argyle WA - Rocky Hill OB

Hi All,

My wife and I are about to begin an owner build in the south west of WA. Argyle is 7kms outside of Donnybrook. We purchased the land 13 months ago. It is a 2.5 acre block. It starts at 110 metres above sea level on the northern boundary where the road and driveway enter the property and slopes down to the back boundary to about 90 metres above sea level on the souther boundary over a distance of a bit over 200 metres. Behind our block on the southern boundary the land falls away about 50 metres in height over a distance of about 40 metres, so a bit more than a 1:1 slope. Giving us views to the south through the trees to the orchards below which run along the Preston River. The hill at the back of the property is all public open space and the Munda Biddi bike trail runs along at the base of it, which is the mountain bike track that runs from Serpentine in the Perth hills down to Albany.

The building envelope is all cleared now and ready to make a start. The house we are building is a basic design, 20 metres long and 10 metres wide. from the back left hand corner to the front right hand corner the fall in ground level is about 1.5 metres. The ground is very rocky and I am not looking forward to the 66 footings I have to dig for the stumps. I will dig as many as I can with the mini excavator from work and then have to get in a bigger machine with rock breaker for the ones I can't get with the small machine. I was originaly going to use a proprietary steel flooring system from either One Steel or Stramit, but I have worked out that they charge you roughly double for the steel for the privledge of having them design it for you, and then whack their engineering fees on top, which I have already paid for when the engineer gave me a design. The only down side is that I will have to dig 26 more holes, as my engineer has over engineered the flooring system. I think he got nervous when the soil testing came back to say that all 3 of the holes had been abandoned after 300mm due to rock, but it is better to have it over engineered than under. I will save about $5000 by making my own flooring system, but it will mean I have to spend about a week cutting steel and welding. I will have all of the structural posts hot dip galvanised which will cost about $1000 and the extra concrete for the 26 holes works out to about $1000 so I will be $3000 in front by then end, but will have a much stronger system which is properly gavanised.

I had to take out one last tree. It was a big old Marri tree that I was originally going to leave, but I was torn as if it came down, it would fall on the house, and once I started building there would be no where to fell it, so I decided to take it out now. I got the professional in for this one, it was a bit large for my inexperinced tree lopping skills (and I don't have a chainsaw big enough).



On the up side I got 3 really nice large logs out of it which are getting taken off to be milled up into floorboards next Friday. I was told to expect in this rocky country for the tree to have a really large conduit up the middle, and to not expect great wood. In the scheme of things this tree had bugger all crap up the middle and I am really happy with it. Should get some great boards out of it.





I will put up the house plans tomorrow after I have scanned them in and give you a run down on the ideas behind the design.

Cheers

Scott

Hi Scott, everything is looking great and looks like it's going to be a fun journey for you guys how long do you guys plan to be finished in? Would love to see house plan

I grew up in donnybrook (out of town near goodwood road) and recently spent 6 months in collie (don't hold that against me!) Love it down there, our dream is eventually to do similar to you and build a dream home down south! There are a couple of other south WA members on here too.
Look forward to watching your progress;)

Hi Zarli,

This is going to be a slow build for the first couple of years. I have a rental property that I need to sell, but since the market is so dire I am just going to sit on it for another couple of years. So everything we do will be paid for as we save. I have enough to put the steel flooring system in and buy the timber for the wall frames, but there is no point putting the wall frames up until I can get them covered up in the space of a summer. I don't like pine which has been soaked and then dried again, as it is too brittle for my liking. So I will just build the floor this year and hopefully next year have enough to pay for the roof structure and tin. Hopefully by then the market will have bounced or I will just bite the bullet and borrow money.

It will also be slow as I will essentially be doing most of it with just me and my wife. I am an electrician so I have that side covered and have renovated 3 older homes, but this will be our first new home.

About the only thing I would struggle with would be building the roof structure on my own, but luckily my best mate is a roof chippy and I rewired his house so he will help me with roof. Got to love the barter system. I also have an uncle who is a bricky, another uncle who is a glazier and a father in-law who is a carpenter, so I should be right for technical support. In fact I have to keep calming them all down, they are all excited to help and keep wanting to come out and get us started, so it's nice to have some support behind us. The other great thing is my wife is a get in and help type, she loves doing building stuff and will be excellent help doing all the fiddly tasks like brackets on the framing and cutting steel etc for me.

I will throw up the plans tomorrow.

Hi folks,

Up first is a bit of a pic I made using the stitch option on our cheapo camera to do a bit of a panorama shot.


And here are the plans, albeit very blurry. Because they were PDF's I had to use a free online .pdf to .jpg converter to be able to upload them to photobucket. If anyone has a better way to attach the pics, let me know.






We have gone for a smaller than average house. Having always owned older homes this will still be the largest house we have ever owned. I would prefer to have fewer large rooms than lots of small ones, so to this end the kids bedrooms are 4 x 4 metres and we have gone for 2.7m ceilings right through out except for the raking are in the living which will be higher.

The stairs and such are just indicative, still not sure how we are going to work them, either stairs or a deck? The kitchen is another area we need to work out, i'm not real happy with the current design. I would like a really large square island bench if I can fit it in.

And we will have french doors coming off the master bedroom and will build a walled garden/fernery. We have two indoor cats and had a fernery for them in the last house which they loved. Should be able to get a spa in there as well .

Let us know what you think?

Hooray, we have finally made a start today.

I profiled out the block so we can begin digging the footings tomorrow.















It's funny how quickly things change. Two of the things I said in the first post has already changed. We saw the bank on Friday and it looks like they will lend us the money to build the house complete.

And I ended up finding a mobile miller who could mill the logs for us, be he can't get here till Monday the 5th of September. So I have just rolled them out of the way till he gets here.

Great news. It will be nice to have another H1 member building near us. Yes the rock is a bit of a killer but putting your place on stumps will at least mean once you've got them in you won't have the drama of a hill of rocks to cart away or move to use later for something. So does that mean full steam ahead now the bank has given approval for the full loan? Hopefully most of the worst of the wet is behind us for your building time now.

Hi Kexkez,

It will still take us a while, as I don't plan to use any subbies. The bank will lend us enough to buy all of the materials, but no labour.

The rocks are a killer, we already had about 10 tonnes of rock from clearing the building envelope, I borrowed a bobcat and just carted them up to the top of the block to get them out of the way, it took about 14 hours. I'm thinking I will end up using some of them to retain down the front of the house to cover over the inverted leach drains and have a nice level grassed area Once I get out of the ground it will be smooth sailing.

Wow, my thread title was entirely apt.

So last Sunday I started digging the footings. I didn't think my mini excavator would be able to dig them all, but I hoped I could get quite a few and then get a big excavator in for the rest.

After 8 hours this was all I had achieved.

http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge/20Holes-1000.jpg
http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge/31SmallRockPile-1000.jpg
http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge/12Boulder.jpg

So it was time to bite the bullet and get the proper machinery in.

http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge/36BigEx-1000.jpg
http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge/43BigEx-1000.jpg
http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge/45BigRockPile-1000.jpg
http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge/44BigRockPile-1000.jpg

The operator said some of the big boulders were registering between 4 and 5 tonnes. This throws a spanner in the works in a couple of ways. Due to the ground being 80% rock, I am going to have to buy in about 200m2 of sand, which was $4000 I hadn't budgeted on and now I need to get rid of the rocks.

The owner of the excavator may have someone who wants them to face a dam wall, so fingers crossed he just takes them.

I had about $15K contingency built in to the bank loan, so hopefully we don't have to many more curve balls.

While he was busy, I cut up all of the stumps for the house.

http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge/42Stumps-1000.jpg
I now need to weld the baseplate onto them and get them off to be Hot Dip Galvanised. Hopefully I have them back for the beginning of October. I have taken the month off so I can get stuck in (and look after the kids over the school holidays).

Hi All,

It continues on as time allows.

The mobile mill came out yesterday and cut up all of our Marri logs into floorboards.





We ended up with about 100m2 of floorboards, but I only expect about a 50% recovery rate, which should hopefully be enough to do our living and dining room.

Finished it look something like this (fingers crossed)



While that was happening, loads of sand were coming in. I have the first 5 in and compacted, 15 to go.


And on Sunday I got the 66 stumps welded up. The Galvanisers picked them up today, They should be back Friday.

lookin Good wating for next installment

Wow, LOVE your boards, LOVE that you used the tree on your land, so so cool!!
And your rocks are pretty impressive, as well, but not nearly as useful!

What a great idea for the boards, well done

As for those rocks - Better you than me. That does not look like fun!

Good luck with the build will be a great project to follow, look forward to your next installment

Cheers for the comments guys.

I will post some more pics on the weekend. Most of the sand is in now and the last should hopefully be in on Thursday. The stumps are back from the galvanisers. Not too much productivity last weekend, it took me 2 full days to cart the floorboards into my shed in town and stack them properly to dry, I thought it would take about half a day.

Hi All,

A bit more progress. All of the stumps are back from the galvanisers and the "C" channels for the rest of the steel flooring have arrived. Unfortunately they deliver them on a semi, so they can't get down our driveway. We had to cart them down in loads of 10.





The rest of the sand was in on Saturday and is finish levelled and compacted.........but best of all, the rocks are gone!





Have other commitments on Saturday, but I will start rebuilding the profiles that were damaged on Sunday and setting out to begin digging the footings.

Hi All,

It's been a while between posts. I have had password problems and haven't been able to log in, but have sorted it now. I have had 3 weeks annual leave over the start of October, so I have managed to get quite a bit done.

http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge%20-%202%20Flooring%20System/5Holes-1000.jpg

http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge%20-%202%20Flooring%20System/13Holes-1000.jpg

http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge%20-%202%20Flooring%20System/15Holes-1000.jpg

http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge%20-%202%20Flooring%20System/7Holes-1000.jpg

http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge%20-%202%20Flooring%20System/27Stumps-1000.jpg

Just so I could get my spacings right for all of the posts, I mixed the concrete for the first 20 posts by hand. 56 Mixes later I was glad to get the concrete truck in for the last 46.

http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge%20-%202%20Flooring%20System/17Conc-1000.jpg

http://i1187.photobucket.com/albums/z400/Chargerwa/Myrtle%20Ridge%20-%202%20Flooring%20System/22Stumps-1000-1.jpg



5 year old project manager doing some quality inspections.













I will kick on with the flooring over the next few week ends. I have to sit down with my roof carpenter mate over the next week and work out what timber I need to order so I can get it all on site with all of the timber for the wall frames in time for my 3 week Christmas break. My uncle who is a glazier is going to get the windows quoted for me and I will get them in time for Christmas too.

The goal is to get the vapour permeable sarking on the wall frames and the tin on the roof in time for next winter.

Hi All,

Things have been progressing slowly, but I have managed to complete one of the big things that was playing on my mind a bit. We have a large steel frame at the front of the house which supports the raking ceiling in the living area. I tried to get someone to make it, but the two companies I asked to quote didn't bother getting back to me so I bit the bullet and ordered the steel, borrowed my uncles 9inch grinder and roped a mate who is a boiler maker into helping me weld it up.





And then the big moment came, I was contemplating doing something crazy with a rope through the trees and a chain block to lift it into position, but the weight of it made me re-think that little plan and I called in a crane.





and here we have the finished product. To my delight it all worked out level, plumb and with the correct spacings.

Great work with your steel especially doing it all yourself. Very impressed

I have found working with steel to be a real pain. Great when it all bolts together like Lego but not so much fun when it doesn't

Yeah, I am very glad I am doing timber wall frames. I was planning steel but when I wired the OB over the road's steel framed home I realised how much I hated it.

With the big frame I originally drew it all up and went trigonometry mad on it, but in the end I actually marked it out on the floor and layed it all out. I reckon it's lucky I did or it would have been wrong.

Hi All,

Have made a start on the wall frames. I was quite surpised how quick they are going together. If I hadn't slept in this morning we would have most likely finished of the master suite end of the house. I had two chippy mates come around yesterday morning to point me in the right direction and knock up and stand a couple of frames to get us started and in the afternoon and today my wife and I managed to get a heap of frames done and a few stood. We ended up with a good system with my wife cutting and me nailing and measuring.



What will be our walk through robe.


And the main view out of our bedroom.



Having seen how quickly we can get them together, my goal is to have the frames up for my 3 week christmas break so I can kick on with the roof.

Hi All,

Making good progress with the frames. Only 7 to go, which we could knock out in a good day so I will definatley have them all up by christmas. Then there is probably another 3 days bolting down all the bottom plates, screwing on the triple grips and screwing on the bracing and screw fixing all of the door and window heads.