Greetings from Daisy Hill QLD!

sbryzak · Jan 25, 2010 4:24 pm

Hi there! I'm a long time lurker on these forums, however I've just made a serious start on my own renovation project so I thought I would introduce myself. I'm currently working on an owner builder house extension and renovation in Daisy Hill, South East QLD on my approximately 25 year old house. Being a software engineer by trade, I've done the sensible thing and created a web site to blog about my progress - if you'd like to you can check out photos and stuff at http://www.renovatorsblog.com/blog/shane ::wink::

I've got an eye for quality so I'm going to be trying to do the best job I can, and a lot of the renovation work I'll be completing myself (besides the obvious electrical/plumbing and other stuff that needs to be done by professional tradies). I've probably bitten off more than I can chew with the size of this project however I love a challenge and I really love the change of doing manual labour as opposed to sitting at a desk all day.

My biggest goal is to try and complete my renovations with a minimal budget and try to get the biggest bang for buck for what I spend. To that end, I'm going to be carefully researching every little aspect of my project each step of the way. I've read a lot about the huge costs involved with renovating however I'm sure that it can be done much cheaper if you're willing to put in the personal effort.

Anyway, nice to meet everyone and thanks for reading!

candice.novak · May 02, 2010 6:55 pm

Hey
I am watching and reading with great interest! We wont be as hands on as you with our reno project, BUT loving all the info so far!!
Cheers
Candi

sbryzak · May 07, 2010 12:58 pm

Thanks Candi! I had a bit of a quiet period where I didn't post much, but I'm back into it full steam ahead now. I must apologise for the speed of the site, it's running on Google App Engine and they have a known issue that makes it slow (I won't bore you with the technical details) but the good news is they know about it and will be fixing it hopefully in the next few months.

Great to know that someone else (besides my mum) is reading it

sbryzak · Jul 02, 2010 11:13 pm

Woohoo I have a slab!

http://www.renovatorsblog.com/blog/shane/I_have_a_slab

Pebbles · Jul 05, 2010 12:06 am

Hi there and WOW!!!!!!!!!!!! Just had a quick look through your blog ... didn't have time to read it all though but love all the detail in it! We're about to do concreting around our home so I did read that part ... tomorrow I'm going to have to tell hubby about the concrete retarder and vibrator :lol:

Looks like a H U G E job ... looking forward to watching the progress and I can't wait to see the end result! ::smile::

sbryzak · Sep 19, 2010 12:44 pm

Woohoo, I have another slab! This time I did the concreting myself

For anyone interested in the nitty gritty, here's my blog entry: http://www.renovatorsblog.com/blog/shane/Garage_slab_poured.

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aza0 · Feb 20, 2011 1:30 pm

Just finished reading your blog ( a quick read anyway ). I have a couple of questions for you if you don't mind???

What made you go with 150mm deep blocks? I thought these would be to thin for load-bearing walls especially if your chasing your services in.

What are you doing for the external and internal linings/finish?

What is your total wall height?

How are you running your services?

What made you do concrete over your windows instead of a hebel lintel?

I think that will do for now.

Thanks!

sbryzak · Feb 21, 2011 9:09 am

Wow a lot of questions! I'll try to answer as best I can.

I used 150mm wide blocks as they were what the engineers specified (also it's what CSR recommend for internal load-bearing walls). Originally I had 200mm blocks on the house plan, however that makes for an extremely thick wall (200mm block + 40mm cavity + 110mm outer brick = 350mm). With the 150mm blocks it's still 300mm, but at least I have reclaimed some of the space back.

External lining will be rendered brick. I'm going to first cover the Hebel blockwork (in the cavity) with wall-wrap as they're not water-tight. Internal walls will be various types of Gyprock (i.e. Soundchek for the media room linings) directly adhered to the blockwork.

Total wall height will be around the standard 2440mm.

For the services, water will be run through the ceiling, and then down the wall (through a routed channel). Electricity and network (I'm using C-Bus, and also cabling the whole house with Cat6) in a similar way. I actually have a small, dedicated server room planned for my office (you can't see it too well in the photos) so a lot of cabling will be coming into it through the ceiling and down into a full height rack.

I decided to go with concrete for a few reasons. First of all, Hebel lintels are insanely expensive. Secondly, the lintel height required for the span above my 2400mm window was 400mm. This was a problem because the window tops were at 2100mm, leaving only 300mm (to the top of the 2400mm wall) so a Hebel lintel wouldn't actually fit. Also, I have a bond-beam running around the continuous perimeter of the extension, which couldn't be tied in with a Hebel lintel. Thirdly, it's a lot stronger - I used galvanised steel lintels in combination with reinforcing for the concrete and a really strong concrete blend. It was probably way overkill but I'd rather err on that side than the alternative

Hope this info was helpful!

aza0 · Feb 21, 2011 7:26 pm

[quote="sbryzak"]Wow a lot of questions! I'll try to answer as best I can.

Perfect explanation! I must have read through your thread to quickly I didn't realise that you were doing another layer of brick around the exterior. I am doing 9ft maybe 10ft ceilings and was looking at 200mm blocks as a single exterior wall but was told that it wouldn't work. I am also wiring up the whole house in cat6 add that to the other services meant there would be a lot of chasing down the walls.

Thanks again