Final Approval

The final inspection on the house took place in late January and the Final Occupation Certificate came through in February. The Council inspector had no issue with the hemp walls or their finish. The final only outstanding issues following the inspection were providing a certificate in relation to the waterproofing and the confirmation that the drainage was carried out in accordance with the relevant standards. The certificates for these were easily provided and final approval came through.

The Occupation Certificate

On the same day as the final inspection, the measure up for the shower screen took place and a month later Alpine Glass came back and installed the semi frameless shower screen in the wave mosaic shower.

Shower with screen

Mosaic during construction

Although the house took longer to build than expected, it always seems to do so when you are owner building, I am pleased to have finished in the reasonable time frame of 2 1/2 years, considering that we were building on weekends 3 hours away from where we were living.

There are still a few minor things to finish, such as installing a piece of door trim I lost, putting the draft stopper on under the front door, a second coat of paint on the downpipes and installing the lawn edging, but these will get done slowly.

Meanwhile I get to keep building. I have made the fit out for the wardrobes from the recycled packing crate timber that had been sitting in the backyard for 2 1/2 years. I bought this timber for the formwork, from e-bay I got a semi trailer load of timber for $130 (including transport). The OSB was used for the formwork and the pine was stacked for later use.

Pine waiting to be reused

Thinner boards stacked

The timber had greyed and discoloured from being in the backyard. But a planer and a belt sander and a lot of time, brought it back to blond. The fit out is simple, but cost nothing but time and a box of batten screws, and it reused what would otherwise have been a waste product.

Wardrobe fit out

Third wardrobe fit out

The house was finished inside but with the front yard, which operates more like a back yard, covered in boards it still looked like a building site. Over Easter we prepared the yard for the turf by removing all the boards, removing the remaining weeds, levelling the yard and adding a layer of turf underlay (a mix of sand and composted chicken poo). The boards and plastic had been put down of the area we wanted to turf to kill the weeds.

The yard covered in boards

The week after Easter Sir Walter soft buffalo the turf arrived from Turfco in 1.5m long slabs. We installed a watering system under the lawn, linked up to the water tank, the lay out the lawn

Beautiful new lawn

In the instructions I have read turf needs to be rolled to flatten it to the ground and get rid of air gaps. I did not have a roller so improvised with some large pieces of hardwood attached to my feet. It was awkward, but walking back and forward I achieved the same result as if the lawn had been rolled. Rain over the previous week and a half had meant that the yard was waterlogged, stepping in certain places you would sink into the mud, but the hardwood rolling shoes got rid of these dips and flattened the lawn nicely. 

Lawn flattening shoes

Some finishing touches have been adding pictures to the wall. The pictures are Tenugi fabric and posters we got from our trip to Japan. I made the picture frames from Tassie Oak to match the door and window timber.

Gallery in the main room

Totoro and Koi pictures

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

Nelligen Hemp Studio

The ANZAC day public holiday meant there was an extra day to build, so what else do you do when you are half way through building a house, we went and helped a friend build her studio. Nicole is building a hemp walled studio at Nelligen on the NSW South Coast. Approved by Council it is the first hemp build in the Eurobodalla Council area.

Nicole helped us out with building our hemp walls, so we wanted to repay the favour and I was keen to see how the studio was going. Her studio is being built in a beautiful location in a hill in Nelligen, with swamp and river views to the east and mountain views to the west.

View of the swamp

View out western window to the mountains

Nicole's build is different to ours in many ways and it shows that hemp walls can adapt to different styles. Nicole is building on a half suspended concrete slab, with a beautiful stone wall on the lower side. Her hemp walls are 300mm thick, to provide extra insulation in the cooler climate. To achieve deep window reveals on the inside she offset her frame toward the outside. The frame uses 90 x 35mm studs set at 450mm centres combined with large section recycled wharf timbers around the glass on the north side and as exposed beams supporting the first floor.

North and East side of the studio

Recycled wharf timbers

Nicole put up large sections of form work on the outside, avoiding the need to regularly move the form work up in the steeper sides of the studio. 600mm sections of form work were put up on the inside.

Form work on the steeper Western side

The use of 300mm thick walls was both easier and more difficult. It was definitely easier to place and tamp the hemp as there was no difficulty getting your arms and tampers around noggins and window sills. Nicole requested that her framing company put the noggins all in the same line, unlike my offset noggins. Noggins all in one row was definitely easier so that rises of hemp could be finished at the same point.

The smaller 45mm gap between the form work and studs was not a problem and plastic pipe spacers were cut to fit and she attached the form work with bugle-head batten screws. On the inside however, the larger gap between the studs and the form work meant that Nicole could not get bugle batten screws long enough to cover this distance and had to attach blocks of wood to her studs to be able to use the bugle batten screws to attach the form work. To complicate matters further the frame for her window openings were not the same distance from the form work as the frame and required different spacers.

Spacers with extra blocks of wood

Different sized spacers with window frame in background

Nicole used fibro as permanent shuttering around her window openings. If I build again I would do this, but would use something breathable like magnesium oxide board. I chose not to use this method, although it was recommended, as I wanted to curve the edge of my window openings. Nicole found a better way to do this by stopping the permanent shuttering a little bit short  of the edge, still allowing the edge of the window openings to be curved.

Permanent shuttering around window

Unfortunately Nicole has had to use sheet bracing, due to the high wind rating of the site and the second storey. Concerned about how the hemp will key into this she has attached some axe shaped blocks of wood to the sheets to give the hemp something to key into.

Sheet bracing

Nicole used Alcor as her damp proof course and I think this was a better choice than the embossed polyethylene I used. The Alcor keeps its shape when bent and was easier to turn down and hold in place.

Alcor flashing neatly turned down

Nicole is mostly using hemp that has come from the Ashford and and is a finer chop than the hemp sourced from Ecofibre in the Hunter Valley. The more finely chopped hemp seems to mix easier and tamp down more evenly. The pieces in the Ashford hemp were also more consistent in size. Given the choice I would use the more finely chopped Ashford hemp. Nicole also had her hemp in pre measured bags which made mixing much quicker. Nicole used the same Australian Hemp masonry Company binder we did. One bag of hemp was used with one bag of binder. This was a real advantage in her build since the thicker walls used up the hemp mix much quicker and the person mixing had a hard time keeping up with those filling and tamping. Nicole borrowed our pan mixer and this works well for a small crew of workers but with the thicker walls and easier placement of the hemp a large crew of workers would need a bigger mixer to work efficiently.

Finer chop of hemp

Hemp and binder mix

Pre measured bags of hemp

The sand Nicole used was a brownish yellow, rather than the grey Shoalhaven river sand we used. This meant that her walls were a warmer sandy colour when wet, but they look like they will still be a grayish white when dry, albeit with a brownish yellow tinge.

Hemp wall a few days old

Placing hemp walls

Nicole made a chook house with hemp over 12 months ago. It has been left unrendered since this time. The wall is only showing a very small amount of weathering on the bottom of the wall. This is very good as although the wall does not face the prevailing weather it only has small eaves.

Hemp walled chook house

Small amount of weathering on exposed hemp wall

I am looking forward to helping Nicole again and seeing how her studio progresses.

Western walls

Hemp walls in the afternoon sun

Hemp Walls Completed

                  Video slide show of the build from foundations to completion of hemp walls.

We have finished the hemp walls. It took 4 1/2 bags of binder, so we did it within the 5 bags. On Saturday Nicole came up and helped us finish the last section and fill all the spacer holes. We had filled some of the holes as we went but most of the higher holes were unfilled. It was a bigger job than we expected and would advise any prospective hemp builders to fill the spacer holes as they went.

Filling spacer holes

Filling the very last spacer hole

In the owner builder spirit of co-operation we lent our pan mixer to Nicole, who will shortly start building the hemp walls on her house. Nicole loaned us two bags of binder just incase we needed to make any repairs or changes to the walls.

Saying goodbye to "Bluey" or mixer as he goes on a working holiday

Once all the walls were done we spent Sunday clearing out the house so that the polished concrete floor could be finished. It was a big job clening out the house including taking all the spare bales of hemp off the floor. We had over 6 bales of hemp left. The bales are heavy and awkward to move. We used half or more of most bales so that they were easier to move and only had one full bale to move. We stored as much of the hemp as we could in the bathroom, as the floor will be tiled in the bathroom, and the remainder of the bales were stored on pallets outside, wrapped in plastic and a tarp to keep the bales dry.

Spare hemp in the bathroom

Hemp stored under the blue tarp looks like a small elephant

With all the boards and plastic taken off the floor and the rooms emptied out the house was transformed from a building site to look more like a home.

                                             Video walk through the inside of the house.

Inside the main pavilion

View of the back pavilion from out the kitchen window

Special thanks to all the wonderful people who helped build the hemp walls ;-
Tony, Martin, Nerida, Steve, Nicole, Sara, Ally, Viv, Drew, Ingrid, Ann, Will, Beth, Ira and Alec.