Excavation and water tank installed

Been a tad sidetracked and forgot to update the blog (can't you see, I'm not much of a blogger!).

Last week we had the excavations finished, the water tank installed and back filled, and trenches dug on both sides of the block from the road to the house, one to take the trickle feed water up to the house, and the other to bring the power and phone up.

The bottom half of the tank is now in place, now to join the two halves together.

In order to prevent erosion, I've put up some shadecloth mesh  up, and added some turf sections to keep the topsoil in place. Whilst there's still a lot to go, I've still got to get in the worm farm treatment plant installed yet, which means more digging, I won't be buying too much turf just yet. In the meantime I've thrown down some grass seeds from the local produce shop and been watering them and the turf to try and keep all the soil on our block, and not down on the road.

Our dear friends at Tel$tra have bounced us all over the place, as the Jimboomba Woods estate was to be all NBN connected, Stages 1A and 1B weren't part of that plan, so when pre-provisioning was to take place, the private contractor turned up, only read part of the plan that said not to connect copper up in the estate, and drove away taking our 'ticket of work' away from us, with the claim that it has to go through the NBN side of Tel$tra. Whilst I'd kill to get NBN connected up, that just ain't going to happen for at least a couple of years. Anyway, I've got that ticket of work back, and hopefully they'll come back to pre-provision the copper.... unfortunately in the meantime the 100+M trench remains open to catch the rain and silt build up in it till they're ready to do what they should have done back on the 22nd January !

I'm going to run up a 32mm communications conduit with rope inside of it, so when the times comes for the NBN to finally arrive, they won't need to re-dig the trench all over again, as they'll be able to pull the fibre through without any real effort.

Excavation and clearing has started

Was out at the block most of yesterday watching the earthmoving contractor clearing the block and starting on the the house pad.

It is now feeling like something is finally happening at last.

Forgot to take appropriate protection and got myself very sunburnt. Didn't realise until late in the day that even though seeking shade whenever I could, I was getting awfully red.

Anyway, here's a couple of photo's

This is looking up towards the house pad area, just behind the first row of trees.

You might notice the strip of lawn close to the fence was maintained by the neighbours, which I thought was a good idea for them, as it better defines their property, and keeps the weeds down from being close to their property. I would do the same if I had a vacant block next door, as the extra bit that you mow isn't that much extra anyway, and it makes your own block look better.

Looking at the rough location of the house pad from the east side, and you can just see the neighbours house and shed. As you can see it is a fairly steep slope,

Clearing has started, and there goes some scrappy wattle trees.

This shot was taken from a similar location to the earlier one, but now the pad is being levelled off you can see the neighbours much easier, but now you can see the mountains/hills in the north west in the distance. We were a bit concerned when the council knocked back our earlier plan of building just outside of the BLE, as it dropped us down nearly 2 metres lower than desired, but I can sure live with this.
As the house is slightly angled on the block to face due north, this view will be easy to take. :)

house plans

Thought it might be nice to show you the plans of our new house build.

A reasonable sized home theatre room, marked as media room to reduce questions asked by council, and a decent sized garage, so I can utilise it as a workshop and still have room to park the car whilst having space to weld or otherwise.

Garage door will be a panel lift door with insulation, currently looking at the Gliderol Insul-Glide, that will match the roof colour, which will be Colourbond Surfmist, as that'll help keep the house cooler in the hotter months, particulary as the house is going to be facing solar north to maximise solar PV production.

Land settled and plans done

Well we sold the old house after 28 years that was on 20 acres, and now we have made the big step to downsize to a 1 acre (and a bit, 4661sqm) block of dirt over at Jimboomba.

It's 36m wide by about 130m long block that rises up from the road by about 20 metres.

Certainly a big change for us, in particular Mum at the age of 83, and to top it off we're going to 'Owner Build' it.

Got all the plans done by the architect ANG Building and Design over at Rochedale, and put in to council for approval, with a MCU to allow us to build 4 metres over the Building Envelope (BLE), and back with the batters beyond that, as it is a sloping block. Initial phone calls with the council enviromental department ( there is a vegetation management order on the estate) was very positive with them stating the replacement of trees would be required. However after lodging the MCU, it was knocked back by that same dept, stating that they were concerned that we'd cut everything down off the block.

Plan B was to move the house 4 metres forward on the block, which meant losing nearly 2m of elevation (which was important to be able to see clearly over the top of the neighbours roof to the distant mountains), and have the batters outside of the BLE, which the council then approved without any problems at all.

Edit: Plan B had no requirement to replace any trees/vegetation at all ! However we will replanting suitable trees and shrubs after the house gets built.

Have had engineers do plans for the slab after providing them with soil test information.

The front (north) and left (east) side of the house

Right now we've contacted many contractors to do things from site preparation/excavating, to concretors for slab, chippies for frame and trusses, and plumbers.

Not too happy with many of the contacts that I've made that have either not bothered to respond with quotes, or simply quote without really taking the time to look at the plans !