Evaporative cooling installed

Fortunately the rain and hail held off today, and the crew arrived at 8am to start work installing our evaporative cooling system.

There were 4 blokes on the job, and managed to get everything installed by midday. This is the Braemar 550 with 7 vents. The one thing about the Braemar is that the unit is simply a huge box - some other designs have a sloping lower edge so they sit a little closer to the roof. This makes them appear visually smaller - but has the side effect of being a tiny bit noisier too. Anyway, the shape of the box wasn't really a factor in choosing this unit, since we're not going to spend much time staring at it from the street. At least it's a matching colour (Slate Grey) to our roof tiles!

Still got a pile of old ruined fence sitting in the front - the fence guy injured his back and hasn't been back on our job for a week so far.

The end result - the boss was good enough to spend a bit of time discussing vent placement and where things should go for the best result, so I was happy for him to advise us. The main thing was that we want as much flow as possible down through the stairwell, and it's not necessary to have the main vent directly over the stairwell void. This is because this big evaporative unit pushes a huge amount of airflow into the house, so the main thing for whole-of-house cooling will be keeping the upstairs windows only a little bit open, all the upstairs doors open, and the downstairs windows wide open to get maximum air exchange.


So now we can bring on Melbourne's heatwaves without fear! The smaller bedrooms have a 12" duct, the master has a 14" and the ensuite a 10". The leisure area upstairs has a 16", and the stairwell void, a massive 18" duct. Getting some window blinds is the next priority. I rang the bloke today about the flooring from the last post - he said he'd call me back, never did. Anyone who's been following the blog knows how shitty I get about bad customer service...

T&T

Day 58: First floor wall framing 98% complete

A nice sight on our site tonight (ooo, alliteration!); a first floor! And even better, the chippies chained a ladder to the staircase void, so we could get up to the first floor!



Pretty much all the wall framing is done to the first floor. Wonky photo due to me not holding iphone steadily enough. Play "Where's Tina" and you might spot her in the middle of the first floor. Also, most of the wood that was gathering in front of the house has been used, stacked at the rear, or in the rubbish bin - site looking much clearer & cleaner now! Also, the chippies have cut out the flooring for the flush tile base to the ensuite shower.


View of Bed 4 from bathroom. The door between these two rooms is waaaay off! Basically one of the appealing features of our house design is that two of the minor bedrooms have access to the upstairs bathroom, kind of like a shared ensuite. But the way the wall frame is right now, the door is exactly where the vanity will go. Should be an easy fix - pull down about 3 studs, and reposition door frame adjacent to shower.

Note to self; other minor things to bring up with the chippies/SS to fix by frame completion:

• several noggins hanging loose
• internal access, front door and HT room door frames still too low
• bathroom access door frame in bed 4 in totally the wrong spot, needs to be moved to correct position
• beam under bed 4 missing
• beam/sideboard to sitting room side wall missing

anonymous/paul: I think you might have interpreted our laundry redesign wrong - we actually blocked off the laundry so you don't get any access from the kitchen, as we specifically didn't want to walk through the kitchen everytime we wanted to go in the laundry!

Here's a quick photochop comparison of how things look;

basically we wanted something like the standard lindrum design (pic 1), as the standard nolan 41 has laundry access from the kitchen (pic 3). We redesigned it to pic 4, and also enclosed the powder room. Advantages are - not having to go through the kitchen to the laundry, quicker access to laundry from upstairs bedrooms (right near the bottom of the stairs), plus a massive Walk In Linen cupboard, plus the fridge recess to the kitchen becomes larger, plus there's a "linen" cupboard now at the bottom of the stairs, opposite the internal access door, where Tina can store her 38,000 pairs of shoes.

I'm not entirely sure what benefits the combined pantry/laundry would give you (pic 2?). Somehow, I would think 52 squares should be enough space for most families without having to combine rooms! My main concern is dirty (or clean) laundry in the same room as food? Possible damp clothes with the cereal? Bringing clothes in & out all the time through the kitchen? My personal vote would be to keep the standard lindrum pantry/laundry layout which is pretty well thought out already, but maybe change the linen cupboard so the door to access it opens from the laundry itself, not from the passageway outside. Anyway that's just my opinion, we just don't like laundry access from the kitchen but it may suit your needs that way! :)

Readers, please feel free to ask questions as Paul did to see if we can help, and post comments/feedback on these issues as it's good to hear what other people think, not just our/my opinions on things!

T&T

Day 57: First floor wall framing commenced

Some more work done onsite today - commencement of framing the first floor.


View from front of house. Some wall framing done for the upstairs leisure room visible from here, with two medium sized vertical windows to be facing the front.

There's still a bit of unfinished work - flooring to master bed is not complete, missing a couple of trusses between the floors, and the ensuite shower base hasn't been sunken down for flush tiling yet. All those little items are probably waiting on a delivery of trusses & yellowtongue, as there's no room for any more materials right now! And a few doors still haven't had the taller frames corrected - again, not a difficult fix, just need to make sure it's fixed before bricking starts!


View from rear of the house - looking up to Bed 4, and some framing for the future bathroom. It looks like there's a huge bow in the frame, but I think I moved my iphone while taking the photo! I'll have to start packing a stepladder in the car to have a crawl up to the first floor! Apparently we've also had a change od construction CSC (according to mymetricon); that would make it the third construction CSC in 3 months. A little continuity would be nice!

Anyway, things are running nicely on target to have the first floor wall framing complete by this weekend. Let's hope the weather stays nice like the last few days!

Ian & Evie: We'll probably get an inspection done at preplaster (lockup stage) and final inspection. Haven't chosen a company yet, but are trying to narrow the list down a little right now! We'd probably need to book the preplaster inspection around middle of March if things run to schedule. Does anyone have suggestions for inspectors in Melbourne? They must be reliable & thorough!

R&T: yep, nice house, nasty bricks unfortunately. It makes the house look already 10 years old! And Tina found another Metricon home for sale in our area that's open for inspection this weekend, will post details in the next day or two!

JT: Sounds like you're about a month ahead of us - got any pics of the build so far?

T&T