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