Browse Forums Owner Builder Forum Re: Owner Builder at Drake NSW 21Jul 02, 2014 4:06 pm No further news yet as we are STILL waiting on the plans from the kit home, then I can send them over to the council and then they can tell me whether we need a DA or CDC for our building application. In the meantime, I would like to ask if people think that it is ok that we are planning to build the shell - steel raised footings, steel frame, steel cladding and particle-board flooring - and THEN worry about the plumbing? We are planning on getting a small flat-pack kitchen from Bunnings or Ikea, and simple bathroom fittings for the shower, laundry tub and basin cabinet (and the toilet is dry compost so not involved directly), so I figure that once we get to lock-up stage THEN we can worry about exact fittings and exact placement and all the pipes. We are planning on getting an instanteous gas hot water system so I guess that should be installed at the same time, the hard part is finding a plumber that does gas as well as water! All the greywater will be going to a simple septic system with an absorption trench. Would it be a problem to wait that long? Is there some kind of prep work that we should be doing for the plumbing before lock-up stage? We have a tank already on site which is up the hill (it catches the water from our big shed) so we should be able to gravity feed that down to the house, it will be a pain digging a trench all that way but I am sure we will be happy about it in the long run. We will also be installing a steel tank which will catch the water from the roof of the house, and this will be our dedicated bush-fire fighting watertank. I guess once this tank is full then we can pump water up to the other tank if it is getting a bit low, or use some of it for watering the garden? Re: Owner Builder at Drake NSW 22Jul 04, 2014 3:28 pm I have just come up with another question - when we dig the holes for the footings with an auger, do we have to scrape off the site first, or can we just dig around the grass etc.? If we do have to scrape off the site, what would be the best way to do that (bulldozer, backhoe, by hand?) and how deep would we want to go into the soil? I am hoping for minimum disturbance but noticed other people's sites seemed to be all dirt, but is this only if you are levelling the site, which we are not? Re: Owner Builder at Drake NSW 23Jul 04, 2014 3:38 pm If you are not levelling the site, I would not scrape it. I would spray roundup to kill the weeds then after 3 weeks would cover the building site with quarry rubble. This will provide a clean trafficable area to work and make it easier to move equipment around. I would then drill the holes for the piers & fill them with concrete. On my own build I extended the quarry rubble 10 to 20 meters out from the house footprint on all sites. This allows drive through access for truck deliveries adjacent to the house and a clean area to store materials and to work from. You or your tradies won't be tracking mud inside your house. Re: Owner Builder at Drake NSW 24Jul 04, 2014 7:14 pm Any organic material eg topsoil should be removed from the building footprint area. Depending on how thick your topsoil is it can compact quite a bit as it dries out and breaks down. Stewie Re: Owner Builder at Drake NSW 25Apr 28, 2016 3:05 pm Finally an update - we are slowly building our house, just up to the stage where we are putting the floor joists on. We didn't end up doing any prep work to the site before getting the footings holes dug, and it wasn't a problem. We have various native plants growing around the house site and they are lovely and prevent too much muddiness and erosion - but they will eventually mostly die when the house is built and the light is cut off. The site was dirt for a while after we had over an acre cleared in March last year, after we had a line surveyor come out and mark where the two telstra phone lines went through our property. By chance, one went right through the MIDDLE of our house site! So we had to move the house site a few metres closer to the road. We waited for the new driveway to settle, and then in April we had the holes for our footings dug, and had a spot for the watertank dug at the same time. Then it rained constantly and kept filling up the footings holes, until finally in August it was dry enough for a concrete truck to come and fill in the holes. October saw the start of dynabolting the piers to the concrete, and after 6 months of life getting in the way, that was finally completed earlier this month. All up less than a month of days of actual work has been done on site since the start, which is very frustrating. The good news is that we have been earning money on the days that we weren't working on the house! I have been making comprehensive posts on the blog http://keffufal.blogspot.com.au/ which has photos if you are interested. Next step is to screw the floor joists onto the brackets, lay the underfloor insulation, and put down the yellowtongue. Wish us luck! If so what were the "special circumstances" under which it was granted? "Note: If the development consent is for 'dual occupancy' an owner-builder permit can only be… 0 14337 Being an owner builder is no walk in the park. It’s a challenging endeavour that requires dedication and hard… 0 12013 |