The Big Winter Chill

So it's been getting a little cool in Melbourne. temperatures around 12 during the day and half that at night. The heater has been getting a bit of a workout, and all seems to be good!



Some observations on planning heating in your new house;

• We upgraded to a dual zone heater with a better gas efficiency rating. We can heat the whole house, or just downstairs. For a while we were just heating downstairs, but then our master bedroom is an absolute fridge, so we're back to heating the whole house instead of using zones. Might be more useful in a single storey house to have zoned heatin.
• In the rooms which aren't used much, we've closed off the heating vents and shut the doors if these rooms have one. We also added a big sliding door between the open plan living area and the front of the house, which keeps that area nice and warm! If you're planning your house design, think of adding cavity doors in places. Open plan areas look great in display homes, but in a real-life home, you will want to close off areas for noise, heating/cooling etc. Cavity doors almost disappear into the walls when not used, but are effective in closing off areas when needed.
  
• We set the temperature around 19-20, sometimes 21 for a while if it's really cold.
• The last gas bill was about $100 I think, not too bad! Our energy rating turned out to be just over 5 star. We have put roller blinds over most of the windows, if we used heavy drapes or curtains, I think that would keep the heat in better.
  
• Might have been nice to add a heating outlet in our large ensuite, though we're planning to put in a 3-in-1 like an IXL or equivalent once we choose what light fittings to be put in (still haven't got around to that!)

On that note, does anyone have any recommendations for lighting shops in Melbourne? Apart from Beacon there doesn't seem to be much else. Maybe head back to my favourite shop, eBay :)

T&T

Day 140: Plastering, Day 2! Plus a bonus... walkthrough video!

After receiving the report from Alex last night, decided to give Monique a call in the morning. She hadn't received the report, so I emailed it to her and Julie, our construction CSC, as well as a request for the bracing diagram - which to Metricon's credit, we received a few hours later.

Anyway, we're pretty happy at how Monique says she'll handle the issues raised; some of the plaster has been left off where changes need to be done, and where the toilet plumbing cuts through a truss, the carpenters will cut out plaster and repair, get a few photos taken then replaster. Sounds good to us!

So here's a few photos from Day 2 of plastering - pretty much all complete (except cornices), and the joins in the plaster and screwholes have mostly been plastered over.

Many people have reported their houses feel bigger after plastering; we're not in agreement with that! The open plan area (kitchen, living and dining) definitely feels bigger after plastering - it brings out the 2.7m ceilings well, and we're looknig forward to spending many lazy evenings here! But the minor bedrooms do feel a little smaller after plaster, but then again it was getting late in the afternoon with not much light, so we'll see how it feels in broad daylight.

Home theatre room, south facing window looking out the the backyard on the left, then another window facing west, but shaded by the outdoor room on the right. These are double glazed awning windows (which are standard in the rumpus room only), so hopefully with the home theatre cranked up, there won't be too much sound leakage to annoy the neighbours! There's also sound insulation (acoustitherm) to all walls in the home theatre room. We were thinking of doing double glazed to all windows, but think we'll put them few extra thousands towards the mortgage first.

Upstairs. On the left is Bed 4, then a linen cupboard. Then an open doorway in the centre, with the toilet just to the right of it. Then another open doorway to Bed 3, and Bed 2 around the right corner.

Apparently, our beautiful (and expensive!) upgraded stairs might be in as soon as next week - and the kitchen is soon on the way! Hopefully the issues raised at inspection will be corrected prior to much other work is done too. So far Monique's been great at scheduling tradies, and we're hoping she's good at getting them back in to correct things too!

Now the countdown is really on towards finishing... took us months to get to a site start with all issues with easements and powerlines, but it's almost like the end is in sight!

And finally - because we've managed to hit the magic mark of 50 followers (if you want updates on our blogs and you're not a "follower", click on the follow button on the right column to get updates!)... I recorded a little video on Tina's ipod nano of a walkthrough, until the nano ran out of space. Enjoy!




T&T

Day 78: Wrapping commenced, beams delivered, frame inspection booked

Got a call from our SS this mornin, and we've organised a frame inspection for next Tuesday. It'll just be us and not a formal building inspector - we're working on choosing a building inspector for the lockup stage. Our roof is meant to be complete by Friday (first and ground floor roof tiling) and hopefully doors in by Tuesday as well.

After a huge amount of traffic, got to the site to see our house has now changed colour, and is wearing a raincoat!


Yup, we've been wrapped! The wrap covers the ground floor all around, and from what we can tell has been done well except for an area near the meter box which is hanging loose - you can see it in the front right corner of this photo, on the side wall just flapping around a bit. It's stapled to the frame, joins sealed with tape, and sealed to window frames with tape as well. Internal surface is a reflective foil. When bricking is complete, we'll have a brick layer, a small air gap, then this weather wrap, then internal insulation (walls are R2.0 insulated) then plaster. Much better insulation than our old weather board, which had weatherboard, then plaster, and that was it! We're hoping that with our 5.5 star house, it'll reduce/minimise our need for artificial heating/cooling in winter/summer.

I got out my broom from yesterday and started sweeping out the ground floor - the amount of mud, wood shavings and general dirt was incredible! I think we'll spend our weekend just cleaning up the house, since I doubt any of the tradies are going to pick up a broom - and we don't want plaster going up locking in all the dirt/mud inside the frame! Also went around retaping the protective plastic over all the windows - right, I know it's a bit anal but wouldn't it be better for everyone concerned if our brand new windows stay brand new (and unscratched!) until handover?

Also had a delivery of some steel beams/lintels; these should support brickwork over openings like windows/doors. I think the longest one is for the garage front/rear doors, then the smaller ones to go over windows. We got rid of all standard infill for brick infills; just think it looks a bit better even though few people would ever notice it!

Other things done on site today: the water lead-in pipe has been buried (and someone removed our front tap as well?!).

Crossed fingers - hoping for no more rain until roof is complete (and ideally wrapping complete as well!)

T&T

Building Permit Approved - 4 days in council, is that a record??

So things are really starting to happen now!

We received our "final" construction drawings last week, but had to correct a few things:
- ensuite had shower rail and rainfall head together, instead of at opposite ends of the double shower
- powder room door swung wrong way
- Light switch placed behind door
- some electrical items at wrong height
- added note that benchtop runs all the way to window splashback

and after 7 goes at getting it right, we finally signed off on the correct drawings yesterday!

We also received word that our building permit was approved - it only took 4 days! It helps we already did the legwork to get the building over easement approvals months ago, and that alone took 3 weeks for a rubber stamp! Our CSC says they use a private company to submit the approvals, and providing the siting and design is done in line with Rescode (which our house complies with) there is usually less than a week to approve the build.

We also received our plans in the mail yesterday with the energy assessment, and apparently we've got a 5.5 star energy rated house, which is nice to know! Didn't really design the house with energy rating in mind (even added a couple of windows on the west side, which is meant to be a no-no).

We're still waiting on our tile appointment results, about $2000 worth of feature tile upgrades. We were lucky enough to be able to use the original Metricon/Beaumont tile selection range instead of the reduced range brought in around August. We upgraded to a nice mosaic tile around the powder room mirror, the same mosaic in the ensuite shower niche, and also an aluminium stripe around the fully tiled ensuite. Will have to upload photos, but Tina has the tiles at her parent's place.

On other things related to the redevelopment:
- power pit being installed today - they say! We paid for this September 23 and was meant to be done within a month, but some delays here for whatever reason.
- Temporary fence for the demolition is being installed Friday. The annoying thing is that virtually all fencing companies will quote for a 6 month minimum, and they all want about $350 - all we need the fence for is 2 weeks or so!
- Demolition booked for week after Cup day - I hope they can start earlier, as we've got the fence up early, but it's all up to their schedule. Need to have a completion date before we can get a re-establishment survey completed.

And hopefully we'll be in the clear with a week to spare before penalty delay payments kick in!

Maybe the next time we post, it'll be with demolition pictures!

Initial contact from Metricon - let's get things underway!

Got back from Mt Hotham on the weekend to find a pile of letters - junk mail, bills, and one from Metricon dated July 9. This letter just stated that the deposit had been received, paperwork is underway, and a CSC would contact us "soon" to organise some appointments! Of course, "CSC" = Customer Service Consultant, so let's just hope that the first two words actually mean something! What we need to do is figure out who we liase with to make any further changes to our house... in particular...

Over the last week in Hotham, surrounded by plenty of snow, I did read up a little about water, and how rates/bills etc would pile up as all the water companies increase their charges by up to 60% over the next 2 years! Monopoly, Duopoly, Multi-opoly?

All new homes have to be at least 5 star energy efficient (how this is rated I have no idea) but from what I know, the new house has to have either solar hot water or a water tank. Most project home builders choose to incorporate solar hot water, and M is no exception. They do offer to install a water tank as an upgrade, but even our sales consultant reckons you should do it after handover for a better price. However, I do want to find out how much it will be to "pre-plumb" the house for a water tank - so we can easily add in a water tank later, and importantly have the water usable inside the house, and not just for the garden (eg for toilet flushing). This would require some sort of plumbing from the roof to the tank, and then from the tank to the toilets... and a pump of some kind? Yep, I need to do some more research here - or can any readers please add a comment?

We're also wanting to re-arrange the laundry door as described by a reader of the blog (thanks again!) and also arrange the powder room so that the sink and toilet are in the one small room, rather than having the sink on the outside. I'm on my laptop so I don't have the drawing I did of this variation, but will add it to the next update. Also realising right now how uncomfortable a laptop keyboard is compared to my big ergonomic keyboard on the server!

Anyway, we'll probably arrange another tour of Studio M, mainly to pick up all the samples and try to pin down colour choices, and also drop by Beaumont again in Oakleigh sometime. And of course, the spectre of unknown site costs is still keeping me awake at night, so the sooner we get some firm answers on this, the better!