Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Canberra custom KDR 118Aug 23, 2018 9:53 am wow, your posts are incredibly informative and useful! Your attention to detail and research behind every aspect of your build is impressive, I only wish we stumbled on your thread a year earlier! We are five months into a custom build and whilst we thought we were organised and we’ll researched we have nothing compared to you. Unfortunately we had no experience in the building game and planned and researched for about two years before signing a contract. However you don’t know what you don’t know and so whilst most things are coming together there are some frustrations, and some areas we feel the builders are taking us for a bit of a ride. I was particularly interested in your energy efficient features, Canberra gets so cold and we were keen to avoid the freeze as much as we could! In the house we knocked down olive oil would freeze in the kitchen!! Wish I picked your brain earlier! Congratulations on the final product! Re: Canberra custom KDR 119Sep 03, 2018 11:55 am Thanks! We did put a lot of effort into planning and research - but yes, there's always the "unknown unknowns", and we've had a few of those. Now that we've built one house we'll be much better prepared for the next! (Just kidding, not going to be going anywhere for a while). There really is a lot of stuff that comes up - the trouble is a lot of it is second-nature to those who do it all the time, so even if you ask them they won't necessarily think of it as something to mention. Accepting early on that it'll never be perfect certainly helps a lot, and ironically means that you'll probably end up closer to perfect than otherwise (stressed and worried people don't tend to make the best decisions, especially under time pressure). "Good enough" is definitely good enough - our house, for example, isn't a Passivhaus, doesn't incorporate a range of new systems and technologies, doesn't use SIPS or ICF or any other 'non-standard' construction style that might have been 'better' - but it's still significantly better than most houses out there, and is close enough to 'perfect' that doing anything 'better' will involve a lot of extra cost for only a little marginal more benefit. Eight stars means very comfortable living with minimal utility expenses (and is good enough for potential future energy independence via PV solar and battery storage). Re: Canberra custom KDR 120Sep 03, 2018 11:55 am A quick update on how the winter's gone: we're definitely not getting our money's worth out of the upstairs aircon! (although it'll be used a lot more in summer). We've got our fist permanent window coverings in - roman blinds on the downstairs living room windows. The reverse-cycle heating has never been changed from the minimum settings, even on the coldest nights, and the upstairs aircon has only been run a handful of times for (at most) a couple of hours in the evenings (generally on the coldest days where it's been overcast, reducing the passive solar gain) - even then it's just been to take the edge off the slight chill, rather than *having* to run it just to be bearable.
We've had some hot water issues and had to have the tempering valve replaced (under warranty) - hopefully all solved now, although I'm starting to suspect that there might be a crossover issue with the laundry mixer tap - we'll keep an eye on things and see what happens. Our new steam combi oven unfortunately had an issue (the steam part didn't work properly) and had to be taken away to be repaired - it couldn't be repaired and had to be replaced, but we're waiting on the replacement to arrive from overseas. All covered by warranty, and a big shoutout to the customer service from Winning Appliances (including chasing up the manufacturer and the repairer on our behalf when needed) - but we've had an oven-shaped hole in our kitchen for several weeks now (our microwave is an oven-micro combi so we do still have a functional, if smaller, oven to carry us through). We've also started the final landscaping planning, and planted our first tree a few weeks ago (a red oak sapling, which as it grows will become the centrepiece of the northern yard). It's been a dry winter, so it hasn't usually been an issue, but when it rains the bare front yard quickly becomes very muddy (clay mud too, the worst kind). Hi Im having trouble getting anyone to provide useful advice on going for an insulated slab North facing extension. I had Lighthouse group do the energy assessment last… 0 2443 The biggest challenge will be if you take out a loan and then run out of money - you'll have an incomplete security and lenders do not like this so you can get stuck.… 2 20084 Hi, I am looking into doing a KDR in Melbourne and am contemplating using Kialla Homes. I am looking for feedback on them from others who have built with them. 0 14237 |