There aren’t words for how stressful trying to get a house build started in the middle of a pandemic has been! Yet despite all the drama our house has begun. Our builders, Swenrick, after a few hiccups, have begun and have quickly gotten as far as the subfloor.
If you’ve read some earlier posts you know Swenrick are building our house to lock up only. There’s quite a few reasons for this. Ideally we would have loved to, and always dreamed of, a strawbale build. Unfortunately for the reasons following, for us, it’s not a practical possibility. Second choice would have been a RAL. Sadly though the founder and proprietor of RAL Homes passed away and the business ceased operation.
So we’ve compromised and are having a relatively conventional design that we are modifying to incorporate principles from Passivhaus design and a good dollop of automated passive climate control systems. This is the Woolamai design.
Ours will eventually look a little different to this example and because we had down spec the design a little (thanks covid-19! – bit hard to sell your existing house if no one can see it) there will be no clerestory windows above the bedrooms. There will also be full length pergolas across the north face of the house. We will go through all the design stuff and principles we’ve built in, in subsequent posts.
In the meantime why get the house structure built for you?
a. Like most people I guess, without oodles of cash, we had to redraw on our mortgage on our current house to build all of this, so working full time to pay a mortgage and doing an owner build is obviously impossible. We need the basic structure up quickly. That way we can get it to occupancy certificate stage ourselves much quicker than we could for an entire build and less time without income.
b. Health is also a factor. When you’re in your twenties injuries are far from your mind. When you are later in life, as we are, injuries seem to be a fact of life and you can’t build a house if you are not fully physically capable. This way we leave the heavier work to professionals.
c. It was substantially cheaper than any other option, despite having it professionally built.
Stay healthy everyone and we’ll update you as the house progresses.