Water Tank and Bath Tub

Our 5,000L water tank from Tankworks arrived in early December and Len and Ben the plumbers filled it with a bit of water and temporarily hooked it up to one of the down pipes. Eventually it will catch water from all three of the roofs. When we ordered the water tank 4 weeks prior we had anticipated that the internal rendering would be finished and the external wall near the tank might also have been done. As it turns out this was not to be. At least we left enough space between the tank and the wall to access it easily.

Water tank in Windspray to match windows

View of tank from around the corner

While the plumbers were out doing the tank they also installed the bath tub. After all my effort making the bath hob and getting it the right height for the Moroccan tiles, the bath fitted in perfectly. I can now fill in the missing tile that was left off to allow access to the bath waste. We chose a Franke steel bath as our current plastic bath has scratched and I got it for a good price on E-bay. With the shower nearby when you are really dirty you can do the Japanese thing and rinse off the dirt on the shower and use the bath for soaking.

Perfect for soaking after a day of building

Window set at right height for viewing from bath

Lovely curved bath spout

A Spate of Problems

We had been off site for some time when we returned it was clear that something had gone wrong on the most recently rendered walls. The walls were very patchy and had much larger cracks than any of the hairline cracks we had before. The walls were also not as smooth and in parts almost looked pitted. Having put so much work into every aspect of the house I cannot leave those walls as they are, even if it means putting another coat of render on them myself. The only cause I can think of is that the render had too much water in it. As the weather has got warmer the render has been getting more and more water in it and it may have come to a tipping point where this has caused a significant difference in how it has dried and the finished result. We will have to go back and do an area using a less wet mix and see if the finish goes back to that of the earlier walls that were done. The flow on effect is that the rendering of the internal walls will not be finished before Christmas, so the floor will not be able to be completed and we will not be able to live inside. I am disappointed by this, but would much rather a well finished house than some patchy cracked walls just for the sake of a bit of time. 

Patchy render finish

Big cracks and pitted texture to render

Our neighbours are building a large shed and needed to run stormwater from there to the front of their block. They suggested that we connect the overflow from our water tank through their block to the street rather than having to do a pit in the backyard for the stormwater as, due to the slope of the land and that we are a battle axe block, we cannot run our stormwater to the street through our block. I advised our plumber of this and because we did not need to get a pit in the backyard any more I arranged for the excavators to come in and level the block. Our neighbours were advised by Council that they could not just allow the stormwater to go through their block without an easement. This was not an option so now we need to do pit in the backyard again and I have now got my sequencing all wrong by getting the excavators in to do the levels before the plumber put in the stormwater pit. We will also have to try and keep the tank half full so we don’t end up with an overly soggy patch in the backyard every time we get a downpour. 

The first rangehood we bought was larger than the size described in the brochure, so we had to return it, frustratingly the appliance store would only give us an exchange voucher and not a refund. Limited to what was on offer at the appliance store we bought another rangehood. It fitted the cupboard but was slightly higher than the previous one. Cutting out the hemp with a cold chisel to make room for the exhaust for the rangehood was easy until I found that I hit a stud and a noggin. The noggin had been put in so that I was able to hang the kitchen cupboards from the frame. 

I am making the the ducting for the exhaust from the rangehood from 150mm plumbing pipe since I need a 90 degree elbow and otherwise it is a very short run straight out the wall. The pipe just hit the bottom part of the noggin and once side of the stud. Not wanting to reduce the strength of the stud too much I decided to angle the ducting so that I just had to take off the corner of the stud. This was not as easy as it first seemed.

To add to my woes or perhaps because my thinking had been clouded by my woes, in trying to put in the exhaust for the rangehood I drilled through an electrical cable. An electrical cable that ran straight through a stud, with the cable cut halfway through the stud. The cable was for the power point for the rangehood and thankfully the power point circuit was turned off. In my defence the cable looked like it went through lower than it did, but I should have been more careful and consulted the photographs of the frame and wiring like I did when choosing how and where to attach the kitchen cupboards. I went through the now usual method of problem solving: tears, anger, then solution.  I moved the power point. I chipped out a bit more wall until the cut cable was long enough to attach to a power point. I then chased in the longer part of the cable so that it too came out at the same place. A beautiful solution, except that the power point is now on the opposite side of the rangehood to the power cord, but it will all be inside a cupboard so no one will see this. 

 

Cut power cord

Duct hole and moved power point

The upset and disappointment of all these disasters was washed away by the hot water of a long shower; the first in the house where the hot water came out of a tap and not a kettle. While we had been off site the plumbers came around and installed the regulator for the gas bottles. We hooked up a barbecue LPG bottle temporarily while we waited for delivery of the full size bottles. The power points for the house are not yet functional so we put an extension cord from the meter box to the instantaneous gas hot water unit and with gas and power connected finally had that true sign of an advanced civilisation – hot water on tap. The Methven Satinjet water saving shower head gave such a luxurious evenly spread flow of water it served to confirm the severe shortcomings of the water saving shower heads we have put up with for the last 10 years. 

Land Levelled

We had undertaken the big task of completely clearing the site ready for the excavators. The clearing included picking up all the big and little bits of timber lying around, removing the duckboards we had installed around the house to allow us to work out of the mud as well as moving a large pile of timber left over from the frame and roof that had been in the place where the truck had left it over a year ago. The left over bags of hemp, that looked like a blue elephant in the front yard, also had to be moved to a location that did not have to be excavated. The only such spot we could find was beside the driveway and so began the task of unstacking the piled bags moving the pallets they were on and lifting, the lighter bags, and dragging, the heavier bags, to their new site then recovering them all with tarps and plastic. Finally a brush cutter was hired to cut all the grass that had grown up around the site, particularly around the wood pile where the grass had been left to grow for over a year and had completely covered some previously neatly sorted and stacked piled of rubbish.  Having been building for 1 ½ years we finally took our first load of rubbish to the tip. Our sorting, recycling and reusing of what we could had saved a lot waste. 

Front of the house for the first time without building materials stacked in front of it

My original excavator Brummy, whose machines were now too big to fit around the house put me onto Stephen, the man with the little diggers, from Jervis Bay Underground. The day before we got to site Stephen the excavator had been in and put in a drain along the back of the house, where the land sloped toward the house. A further pit and drain were put in outside the back bedroom where we had previously got “Lake Culburra” when it rained. 

Drain installed and ground levelled

The land had been cut and filled for the slab with no extra material to be brought on site and the waffle pod slab was formed on top of this levelled area. We now had 5 tonnes of crusher dust brought in to help level and shape the land. Soil was kept away from where we are going to put the decks as we sought to keep as big a gap between the soil and land as possible to allow for air flow.

The diggers got to work and by the end of the day the land was levelled and sloped where needed and looked like a blank canvas ready to start creating a garden, but first we need to get the rendering finished and the decks built.

Front pavilion ready for decks to be built

Back pavilion, with ground sloping down toward front of block

West side of block

Ground levelled and pavers installed ready for gas bottles

Meanwhile inside the house we started hanging the overhead cupboards in the kitchen, the floor units will have to wait until we get the floor refinished.  Disaster struck when we found that the range hood that was supposed to fit on the cupboard was too deep and would not fit in the cupboard. Later investigation showed that the size stated in the brochure for the product was different from the actual size. This brought a halt to the cupboard installation.

Half the overhead kitchen cupboards installed

On another front, a milestone was reached, after several months of work the first half of the shower mosaic has been completed. My mosaic technique has improved, so I hope the second half will not take as long.  

First half of "The Great Wave" mosaic

Lights, Water, Action

The house moved closer to completion with the excitement of two trades, the plumber and electrician, being on sit on the same day.

The bushfires and advice to get out of the Blue Mountains had meant that I had two extra days on site to build. This time was used making the laundry bench out of half a table I had bought from the “rejects” section of IKEA. Into this was placed a sink, bought while on sale, that we had intended for the kitchen, but was no longer needed so found a new place in the laundry. Rails were unscrewed from the half table and reused as supports for the laundry bench.

Laundry bench, sink and tiling

In the laundry I tried my hand at tiling, a 100mm border of white tiles on one side and under and 200mm above the laundry sink and bench, using 300 x 200mm tiles, on the other. My tiling skills were learnt from various You Tube clips. I called up my tiled and used the same adhesive he had “Gripflex.” My skills with the notched trowel were rudimentary and I found it difficult to evenly spread the adhesive in the confined space under the laundry bench. Grouting the following day was a much easier task, I had had some experience with this from doing mosaics and the rubber grout spreader I had bought from the hardware store made the task much easier. On the third day white silicon went in along the joints between the walls and the walls and floor.

I had been disappointed to find that my beautifully tiled bathroom has cracked grout along the wall joints, my YouTube tiling research having suggested that silicon be used in these locations to avoid cracking if there was movement between the walls. A phone call to the tiler and the suggestion that I scratch out the grout and fill the joint with silicon led me to undertake this job. Despite the Aldi brand caulking gun I had bought coming with little plastic curved shapes to do corners I resorted to using my fingers to smooth out the silicon, they seemed to work much better.  

Cracked grout in the join between walls

More cracks in the grout

So when Len and Ben the plumbers arrived on site, although the tiles in the laundry had not yet been grouted, enough work had been done for them to put in the laundry sink and tap. In no time we had running water. The excitement to be found in watching a tap run can only be understood by those who have lived without this luxury.

But our enjoyment of the mod cons did not end there. The tiled bathroom had a flush toilet installed, the bathroom vanity unit and tap and most importantly the shower were all installed an operational. This brought us one step closer to the long awaited dream of hot water on tap. The absence of a suitable place to put the LPG gas bottles prevented us from having hot water. This was to be quickly remedied as the excavators were booked for the following week and the second hand 600 x 600 concrete pavers were just waiting to be used as a base for the gas bottles.

Bathroom vanity, shower and exhaust fan all working

Flushing toilet

Having done most of the work on site ourselves over the previous few months, with the exception of the rendering, it was bizarre to have two trades on site at the same time. Paul the electrician had come down to fix a problem with the solar electricity panels. It turns out the problem was some incorrectly manufactured fuses that had shorted out. These were replaced with a more reliable model.

While on site Paul got to work installing lights and switches. The bedrooms and kitchen/living room now all have working lights, as does the laundry and front bathroom, which also has a working exhaust fan. This was another significant step into the modern world. No more working a night by head torch or floodlight. When it is the first time you do it, a simple task such as turning on a light switch becomes a much more conscious and significant task.

Ceiling light in the bedroom

Laundry light

So excited I took a photo of a light switch

The internal and external wall lights could not be completed until the rendering is done. We will also have to wait for another day for the power points, but for now I am satisfied with the simple joys of water coming out of a tap and light at the flick of a switch. 

Rendering continued with the main kitchen/living room being completed and the final bedroom being started.

North wall in the main room with pendant lights awaiting their shades

South wall in the main room

First wall in the third bedroom freshly rendered

How to Hemp Lime Render

With well over half of the internal walls rendered, John our renderer has mastered the application of the Australian Hemp Masonry Company hemp lime render. We have put together a little video on the rendering process.

The first room to be completely rendered was the bathroom. In the bathroom the render produced a very nice finish that ended flush with the tiles, each being about 10mm thick. The main kitchen living area was the second room to be completed. Two of the bedrooms are not far off completion with only the second coat on the Magnesium Oxide board to go. Even the third bedroom now has one wall rendered. All the hemp walls have been rendered in a single 10mm coat. The MgO board walls have been rendered in two approximately 5mm coats.

Last wall in the main room freshly rendered

Main room rendered

First wall started in the last room to be rendered

Bathroom Tiled

Moving on to the next phase of our build we started fitting out the bathrooms. Inspired by the opportunity to make the bathrooms really interesting I chose to do a mosaic for the tiling in the shower of the small bathroom. As the design of the house has been influenced by traditional Japanese architecture and I have always loved Japanese woodblock prints I chose to do Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa as a mosaic in the shower. About two months ago I started. The first sections involved blocks of the same colour and progressed quickly.

A good start to the "Great Wave" mosaic

However, as I got into the intricate part of the design progress slowed. I think I must be crazy to take on such a time consuming project when I am already so busy trying to finish the build, but the potential to create something really interesting and unusual inspires me to continue.

Slower progress on the detailed section

By luck I found that Johnson tiles produce 100 x 100 mm wall tiles in a wide range of colours and found colours that almost perfectly matched those in the Hokusai print. Our next dilemma was what colour to choose for the floor tiles, we considered blue or white and even looked as greys. None of the greys looked any good and we discovered that there are very few blue floor tiles currently on the market, this made our decision much easier - it had to be white.

With such a striking tiling in one bathroom the issue was what to do in the other bathroom. My idea of doing another mosaic was abandoned when I realised how long the first one will take to do, but we did not want the other bathroom to be dull in comparison to the mosaic. Ben suggested Moroccan tiles. I have always been a fan of the intricate geometric designs of Moroccan tiles. A search of the Internet led us to Kasbah Imports, who as the name suggests import items of Moroccan decor. We chose to use the Moroccan tiles for a waist high border and also on the front of the bath. The rest of the bathroom was to be white. We have concerns about keeping the white tiles clean, but the white tiles make the small south facing bathrooms much brighter.

Not confident that I could get the floor levels right I got a local contractor, Peter Dempsey in to do the floor and wall tiling, (with the exception of the mosaic). Before the tiling could be done I needed a bath hob. I approached this task with some was with some trepidation as I had not done anything like this before. I had to get the height of the hob just right to fit two whole Moroccan tiles on the front. Conveniently Peter Dempsey came around to confirm the tile layout just as I was about to start the job, he gave the right spacing for the various gaps I had to leave and from there I just had to make sure everything fitted, perfectly.

I probably over-engineered the bath hob, creating in effect two self supporting timber surrounds - one to support the bath and the other to lay the MgO board on which would then be covered in tiles. The timber to be covered in tiles had to be a precise distance from the lip of the bath, so that the bath appeared to sit on the finished tiles. To get this distance right I sat the timber surround supporting the bath on the upturned bath, used spacers to add the required gap then attached the outer timber while resting on the spacers, as a result the gap was just the right distance.

Checking that bath sat level on the hob

Bath hob with separate supports for inner and outer timbers

The shower recess was against an external hemp wall on one side so I lined the shower recess and area where the wall would be tiled with MgO board. I did not used the MgO board on the small section of tiling above the bath as the window reveal was 10mm out from the wall and the 9mm MgO board plus the tiles would have made the tiles sit proud of the window reveal. The tilers did not express any difficulty waterproofing and tiling the hemp wall.

MgO board in shower recess and where wall to be tiled

Bath resting in finished hob

 The tilers did the waterproofing, Council inspected, then they did the tiling while I was off sight. So it was delightful to arrive back on site to a beautifully tiled bathroom, complete with grout gaps matched up and to my delight I had made the bath hob just the right height.

Shower recess tiled

Moroccan tiles on front of bath

Detail of Moroccan border tiles

Tile left off bath hob to allow plumber to cut access to attach bath waste

Progress also continues with the pouring of the slab for the water tank. We used left over reo mesh from the slab for the house and just overlapped and wired the pieces together. We had also kept the bar chairs left from the pouring of the house slab and these were used for the water tank slab. We also had some oxide left over from the colour tests we did for the house. Even though the slab was only for a water tank I decided to colour it with the unused oxide as I wanted to try out the dry shake method of colouring the concrete. I mixed up 1 part oxide to 10 parts off white cement then sand was added to this mix at the rate of 1 part oxide/cement to 2 parts sand. When I made up the mix of cement and oxide it did not look very coloured so I added a little more oxide, but when I added the sand it looked very coloured, so did not need the extra bit of oxide. The sand I used was courser than I would have liked and some small rocks in the sand dragged in the concrete when I wood floated it.

We were originally going to mix up the concrete on a mixer ourselves but when we costed out how much it would be for 1/2 a cubic meter the hardware store advised me I would be better off getting a mini trick from Eziway. Even though I had only ordered 1/2 a cubic meter it arrived in a big truck as that was all they had left, since we only booked it the day before. The concrete was barrowed in, levelled, screeded off and steel floated. Then, after the bleed water had evaporated, half the oxide mix was sprinkled on, steel floated, the other half of the oxide mix sprinkled on and steel floated. When the concrete was a little drier it was finished with a wood float to give it a rough texture.

Formwork in place

Sandstone coloured slab