Browse Forums Owner Builder Forum Re: Owner builder in Perth hills rammed earth 7Jan 21, 2013 1:38 pm HOUSE I started the clearing of the house site and was going ok but when I started going deeper I started coming accross some lovely granite boulders that the little bobcat could not cope with. I had to bring in the heavy artillery. Along came the 20Tonne excavator and was watching in awe as it removed a 2m x 2m x 1m Solid granite boulder and proceeded to balance on its tracks with the boulder half in the bucket slowly turning it round and round until it was on the front of our earth bund to retain the sand for footings under the house. There is a lot of rock from site holding the bund in place. another 360 cubic metres of clean recycled sand was delivered and we would put 200mm down then compact it then another 200mm and another compaction etc until we had minimum 600mm of sand down. At the face of our excavation we hit bedrock but it gave us the perfect foundation with 600mm of sand to build on, the level was perfect. so as long as there is no earthquake we should be ok. The slab design is insane! we have pretty reactive clay in the hills and have to design the slab accordingly (even with 600mm sand infill (most of the pad is 1000 to 1400 deep of sand). We wanted to minimise the amount of concrete slab on ground as it is expensive so only garage and main entry area downstairs is concrete (~100sqm) the back area of the house is on steel posts and bearers with jarrah joists and recycled jarrah floors. the footings are minimum 400mm x 400mm all round except for rammed earth wall footing which is 600 x 600! there are piles on the front as well they are 600mm round with reinforcement. They are spaced 2m apart with 5 along the front (1.8m deep) and 2 along the sides (~1.4 deep), there are also a number of other slab thickenings through the slab. All up there was about 36 cubic metres of concrete for a 100 sqm slab! standard slab in sand suburbs would use ~ 10 to 15 cubic metres. reinforcement was immense also to hold it all together with z bars, starter bars and F82 reo mesh. the starter bars were then fed into block work wall which was concrete filled and starter bars connected to wall reo at 200mm centres which were then tied to the second storey slab reo mesh F81. it is a bit of a concrete bunker base but it is good for fire protection and has thermal mass and stays very cool in summer. The exterior will be clad in stone (granite from site) Photos to come Re: Owner builder in Perth hills rammed earth 8Feb 21, 2013 5:54 pm FINANCE: Sorry forgot to mention finance!!!! where do I start. Westpac is pretty much the only bank who will still touch an owner builder now. they will only lend you 60% of the total value of the house and land together. you have to come up with the initial 40% and they won't give you a cent till you have exhausted every thing you have and even then it will depend on a valuation by a supposed third party valuer. so for our place home ($360,000) and land ($275,000) total of $635,000. they would only loan $381,000 (we already had a loan of 125,000 so they would only offer us $256,000 to build the $360,000 house to lock up. I would recommend having at least 50% of the total value of the house and land in cash before attempting to owner build. To start with you have to get an estimate of cost of the total build by a qualified estimator or quantity surveyor. make sure it includes all costs to completion (if thats the agreement). We were told by the bank originally to get the house to lock up and then we have an asset that we can use to draw more for completion but at the end of the loan they told us that the money lent was for completion and not lock up. Yet they approved the estimate which only had the costs to lock up. so we had to complete the house for the cost of getting the house to lock-up, which is quite a difficult task indeed. Also our house was not a standard double brick and tile house, so the valuer had trouble assessing completion costs because he was using standard valuing % guestimates instead of going through the estimate provided and ticking off all the done items and adding up all the remaining items. so we got to our 40% but the valuer was claiming that we had only done 25% and that we would need to spend another $60,000 before we could receive a cent of bank finances......... when you have spent every cent you have on the house, where do you expect me to find a spare $60K, we were stuck in a bad place at this stage with a 40% built house and no funds to continue or pay the mortgage. I asked to speak to the valuer as I had not seen him once in my whole time building the house (i think he actually drove to the bottom of the driveway 120m away and did his assessment from there, as all his estimates of completion were way off compared to the actual value of estimation that had been done and we were using to track our costs. We finally got him to the house and I went through the list one by one and ticked off costs versus remaining items. I finally managed to convince him that we had spent 40% and finally the finances opened up and we were able to continue. In all it was a stress that wasn't required. I can understand their stance that a lot of owner builders go over their budget but why do they require an estimate of the building costs if they aren't going to use it to assess the costs to completion of the building, so that funds can be freed up. the other painfull things are you need to actually install and pay for everything before you can claim it, which means if you have $30,000 worth of windows sitting there they will not release that $30,000 until it is fully installed in the house. this is the case even after you have spent the required 40%. our problem was that we had pretty much 40% of the value available to build so when it came to getting the first payment from the bank we had no cash to buy the start of the 60% items, the bank made us take out a $20,000 side personal loan (at 12% interest) to finance buys so that it could then be paid by the loan account?? this seemed unfair to me. we are in our house now and it has been an effort on all fronts. but I think it has been worth it. viewtopic.php?f=38&t=62345&p=968325#p968325 as much as we thank our bank for finally getting there we will be switching banks very shortly for better interest rates and just not having to deal with them anymore. sorry the post is so long, sometimes its nice to have a vent, hope this helps as there are a number of things to be aware of Re: Owner builder in Perth hills rammed earth 10Feb 24, 2013 1:48 pm Is it cheaper or more expensive to use recycled materials? I love the idea of rammed earth, my aunty built a house in Glen Forrest with it. Her house is amazing. There are actual tree trunk pillars. It's like a castle. GOODLIFE - Bravo - BUTLER http://getmistyfied.blogspot.com.au Display 20/02/2012 PPA 01/04/12 Prestart: 25/07/12 Settlement: 31/07/2012 Contracts:August Slab 19/11/12 BRICKS 10/11/12 Roof 16/01/13 Re: Owner builder in Perth hills rammed earth 11Mar 01, 2013 3:46 pm turtleschell Is it cheaper or more expensive to use recycled materials? I love the idea of rammed earth, my aunty built a house in Glen Forrest with it. Her house is amazing. There are actual tree trunk pillars. It's like a castle. There are some aspects where its cheaper, and some where it can be more expensive or equivelent, as an example, I got a truckload of Jarrah for our deck from a furniture manufacturer down south, it was between 25 and 35mm thick and between 75 and 110mm wide (assorted lengths as well), I got it for $10sqm but then had to thickness every board, at least we got a constant thickness of 27mm which is fatter than the standard 20mm jarrah, but the extra work for me and at times my carpenter who also arrassed the edges was a lot more time consuming and costly than first imagined and is probably equivelent in price to laying the new boards from decking companies (as the carpenter can just pick it up and lay it. But you get the satisfaction of knowing that jarrah trees from the southwest weren't uneccessarily brought down so that I could enjoy them on my deck. some things you do come across are by far cheaper, you just have to keep an eye out for what you need, you rarely get a bargain when you actually really need an item. I was lucky with the front door, it was a very slightly hail damaged western red cedar pivot door, insurance job, got it for $20!!!! these things cost $3000-4000 installed, so big saving there. also used an old bowling alley for our kitchen benchtops. these were $200 each but required 3 days labour to sand, sand and sand some more, then install the jarrah edging and polyeurathane the top so in the end cost probably $1000 (cheaper than stone and makes a nice feature) I picked up 2 garage doors for around $100 each with motors and remotes and installed them myself (learnt on youtube:) this was a considerable saving. if you have time yourself to do some of the work then second hand can be very cost effective, if you rely on a carpenter or trade to do all the work it could sometimes cost more. It depends on what you are recycling and how much work is required to get them to the standard required for your build. some items you can't actually buy new anymore either. I used 90 x 90mm jarrah poles from recycling yards, quokka and gumtree as no one makes and sells them anymore. Jarrah is getting rarer and more expensive! hope this helps Hi VK, Think it's worth investing time in an Owner Builder course to equip you with basic knowledge on Australian Building Industry and its regulations. Also, I suggest… 11 24918 Hi all. Anyone know when the $11,000 limit was set in legislation for renovations in QLD? Ive been renovating for 5 years now and this was the limit back then. As we know,… 0 4808 |