For years
Helen and I had discussed small houses, tiny houses, sustainable houses, eco
houses, etc. Finally after giving up on searching for a house a. we could
afford, b. one which fitted our requirements or had potential to fit our
requirements. A piece of land came up which had some potential.
The block
of land was a back section with the building platform cut in and retaining wall
in place, it faced east and north, it was close enough to Helen’s work, could
not be built out, it had potential if we were smart with our design.
It did not
take long to decide to buy.
That was
January 2017. Now it was time to work out what fitted and what we required …
After
twenty years on the tools as a builder, I had built on hillsides, seen a lot of
ideas, some that worked and some that hadn’t, seen the amount of waste that
occurs during the building process and seen how houses had just got bigger and
bigger.
Design Concepts
Our design
concept was easy to narrow down … the first three points were non negotiable …
- · It had to be off the grid powered
- · It had to be warm
- · It had to minimise waste
The next few points had some flexibility to them ...
- · Two bedrooms
- · One bathroom
- · Large garage
- · Easily maintained
- · Easy accessed for worn out and abused bodies after too much adventuring
- · It had to be small but not tiny
- · Good storage
- · No wasted space
The concepts of size and volume combined with how they feel
in terms of spaciousness is often hard to pick up from drawings, so we spent
time measuring rooms and discussing how they felt.
Finally, we came up with a sketch plan that we thought would
work, then it was a matter of what materials to use ... we researched
Structurally Insulated Panels (SIP’s), the marketing is all about extra
insulation and speed of building, while I had seen one in-person and liked the
concept, there seems to be a few minuses.
There are two types ... one is filled with polystyrene, the
second is filled with polyurathane (PUR) foam. Talking with a builder who had
used the polystyrene ones, commented that the site ends up covered with
polystyrene beads. Also at the time I was researching these ... they were all
imported from either North America or China ... that's a lot of travel miles for
a product. I found a company in Central Otago who was making their own PUR
panels, but the more we looked into using SIP’s the more expensive it became,
due to them requiring to be a Specified Engineer Design (SED), as they fell
outside NZS3604. While they came with plywood or strandboard on either side,
you still needed to line both sides, often requiring to create some sort of
cavity on the internal side to run the electrics and plumbing in. These were
costs which we could not afford so it was back to the drawing board. In the end we choose traditional stick
framing.
Our Architectural Designer, Jade, bless her paitence,
reworked her drawings for us.
While this was all going on, I worked out what power we had
used during the last three years, and chased up people to quote for a solar
system design and build. As this was a non negotiable, the figure was taken out
of our total build price and what the balance was left was what we had to build
the house with.
Solar
Power and Hot Water
The solar power system is required to supply 5 to 7 kWh per
day, it has a 600Ah battery bank which gives about 3 to 4 days power storage,
this is in turn backed up with a 6kW petrol generator.
The seperate Solar Hot Water system, is a 250 litre hot
water cylinder fed by a 20 solar tube roof mounted system. This is backed up
with an instant gas hot water heater.
The hot water cylinder does have the ability to be heated
electrically and the house has been pre-wired for this.
What do we have in the house which requires power or
heating?
Electrically, most modern appliances with the exception of a
microwave, toaster and kettle. The oven and hobbs are gas. The house is heated
with a Masport Cromwell Ultra Low Emission Burner (ULEB) log burner, no wet
back. All the lights are LED.
Since January we have added a toaster and, kettle back into
the equation and this has bumped our daily power usage up so ever slightly.
This will help reduce the amount of gas we would use, while it may only be for
eight months of the year it is still a reduction.
Has it taken much to adjust to solar power and a limited
supply?
Not really, it was just a matter of changing some lazy
habits ... turning lights off when you leave a room, turning appliances off
when you have finished using them.
Plan to use the dish washer and or washing machine on sunny
days and during the day, when power is being created, learn to use the slow
cooker for meals and baking on sunny days ... the gas oven on grey days. We try
to minimise the gas used.
How has that worked over winter (June/July/August)?
During our first winter the power use has average 4.5 kWh
per day, no use of the generator. The hotwater 41 days on gas and 50 days on
solar, with 91 days of log burner use.
Over the last 11 months we average 4.99 kWh power useage per
day.
Back
to the design ... Waste Minimisation
Waste minimisation ... house builds in New Zealand create
large amounts of waste, somewhere between 12 and 18 m3 on an average sized
home.
This is partly because most designs are unique, lots of
corners, multi faceted pitched roofs, complex shapes. Not only does waste cost
money, it also costs extra in time, resulting in a higher price per square
metre.
While our design is not just a box, it is still simple,
trying to minimise the number of corners, the roof is single pitch, our
kitchen, bathroom and laundry all back onto each other minimising the length
the pipe work has to run and the volume of hot water wasted.
Discussion were had with each Trade about minimising their
waste, asking them to take time to think about what they were doing and how
that would effect the “philosphy” of the build, all were considerate.
In the end we sorted out the likes of cardboard, plastic and
polystyrene to be recycled, leaving 7.25 m3 of mixed waste to go to the rubbish
station. Could we do better ... definitely! It would only take some minor
tweaks to get that down more.
How warm is the house?
The concrete slab is a Firth Rib Raft with insulated edges
R2.3 (minimum required R1.3). To prevent
heat leakage, the walls are 145mm thick and have R4 (minimum required R2) insulation,
and the ceiling has R5 (minimum required R3.3) insulation.
The windows are double glazed R0.26. These are not thermally broken, the reason
being it was going to cost an additional $4000 to lift the window R-value from
R 0.26 to R0.3?. That gain was so
minimal, it was better to make the external framing 145 mm deep rather than 90
mm and up grade the insulation from R2.6 to R4.0 for the same price.
The logburner easily heats the whole house to 22 degrees and
without curtains over winter it has dropped to 16 degrees in the morning. Which
we find is comfortable.
During low winter sun, the early morning sun reaches in and
to the back wall of the kitchen warming the house up very quickly!
So we achieved our three non-negotiables with surprising ease
and we love that fact.
What
other features have we included?
The house is 100m2 and the garage is 38m2. The average size home in 1900 was 131 m2 in 2010 it was 205 m2, oh and families have got smaller!
It is two bedroom, one bathroom, all the
doorways are 910 mm wide allowing easy access for a wheelchair, there are ramps
to the front door and off the deck or through the internal access garage, only
the back door currently has steps.
With having single pitched roofs, four degrees over the
house and ten degrees over the garage, we maintained the same with the ceilings
internally, this gives us a nice spacious feeling to what would be consider
smallish rooms, it has also allowed us on the eastern and northern aspects to
have windows and doors 2.3 metres high, adding to that spacious feeling.
We have created some natural air conditioning, the back of
the house (office and bathroom) are in the shade for most of the day which mean
the air is cooler there, the windows in theses rooms open mid way up the wall,
while at the front of the house the windows open at the top, with having a
sloping ceiling the hot air rises to the front of the house and exits, this
pulls cooler air in from the rear of the house. Sounded good in theory and
actually works.
We also have ceiling fans which are DC motors, they only
draw 40 watts to operate, these help circulate the air in winter and summer.
In the garage that has allowed us to have a 1.1 metre wide,
shelf six metres long above head height for storage, and a retractable dry
rack.
Trying to not have wasted floor area in a house is not easy.
Hallways are often one area that only
have one use ... we tried to make sure we could make use of every area, our
hall is only 1.8 m long.
Maintenance
The house is easily and cheaply maintained, the roof and
west and south elevations are colourcoated long run corrugated iron, these only
need to be washed down regularly. The east and north elevation are macrocarpa
weatherboard, which are easily and safely accessed from a small mobile scaffold
for restaining.
The soffits are painted and also easily accessed by a small
mobile scaffold.
Around the back where the stormwater and sewer pipes are
laid, we have put a floating deck, this can be lifted in sections for access to
the pipes, rather than a concrete path, which is more intensive to remove and
replace if there is an issue with the pipes.
Materials
The choice of products is not easy and like the design is
always full of compromises. We tried to use local products firstly from Tasman
... like the Macrocarpa weatherboards, and Tasmanian Oak decking, which was
grown and milled here, to New Zealand grown and manufactured products, to
products that were fully or partially recycled in their content.
We use the Macrocarpa with a band sawn face, on the weatherboards
and also for the skirting and architraves, this has a reel texture about it and
helps create the feel in the house.
The weatherboards are not perfect and have lots of
character, this contrasts with most modern materials which I find just a bit
too perfect.
Our kitchen bench top is plywood, initially it was only to
be temporary, but it has grown on us …
Internally, the walls are painted, all finishes were low VOC
and waterbased.
The carpet is New Zealand wool and we have some ceramic
tiling in front of some doors, the tiles help to create a heat sink to store
heat which releases as the temperature drops.
Our entrances, kitchen and bathroom floor we have a used a
floating solid bamboo product. Bamboo grows at one inch a day more like a weed
but is hard wearing and sustainable.
The
house build
This went relatively smoothly without any major hick ups and
the only real delay was with the windows due to the company over committing
their production resources, the costs of this does add up, as we left the site
for a fortnight ... extra rent for two weeks, extra mortgage repayments, extra
hire time on the scaffolding, extra project management time in rescheduling
other suppliers and trades. The smaller the build the bigger the impact
percentage wise.
Subtrades on the whole were good, they stuck to their quotes
and time frames, advised us of any variations.
The exception being the
Electrician who in the end lacked business and communication skills and
understanding of Building Laws.
Thanks to
Jade Architecture - Design
Chris Barnett Construction – Ribraft floor
Warren Burgess – Carpenter and good bugger
Allen Plumbing – Plumbing, Gas Fitting and Drain laying
Solar Peak – Solar Hot Water
Go Scaffold
MBE Electrical – Solar Power System
Mitre 10
Contour – Roof and Wall cladding, windows and garage door
Totally Timber – Macrocarpa and Tasmanian Oak
ET Engineering – Structural Steel Posts
Duke and Cooke – Valuers
Tasman Consulting Engineers
TSB - banking
Also to
Rick and Trudi for feeding us at least once a week, Luke for
his technical support, Jacqui G for her cakes and all our friends and families
for supporting us.
The house has exceeded our expectations, it was great to
take four months off to build this home and to put a number of different
concepts to the test.
Finally to my best friend and fellow adventure buddy, Helen,
for getting on the tools learning new skills, trusting me with so much, putting
up with me being so tired and grumpy, working full time at the hospital then
spending her days off working on the house. THANK YOU for your love and support.
Oh yeah ... it came in about $5k (2%) over budget, but we do
have a couple of items that were not in the orignal budget ... a small garden
shed and wood shed and approximately 47 m2 of hardwood decking. With the final
build cost being just over $1800 per square metre.
Helen’s
report on Brett and Helen’s home.
I’ve spent years Nursing patients in differing environments,
people of all shapes and sizes, from all sorts of backgrounds. And overtime I’ve become acutely aware of the
environment in which we live impacts on us all.
If we can look after our physical environment, we can be healthier
individuals – loosely put as we know there are so many variables to the state
of our health in the end.
So my focus of late has been to try to look after our
physical environment better, and this is a focus I was keen to have for our
home. We had been looking to purchase
our own home for a while. The radius was
large, out to Tasman and Wakefield, and to Cable Bay. Old and new homes, and building sites. There was alot chewed on, we did put an offer
on a piece of land out at Wakefield, but I realised being able to push bike to
work was important to me, and when we realised the sellers still had developers
fees to pay which were being passed on, it was an easy out. 
We came to a point where we stopped looking, stopped
visiting open homes. Then one day an
email came through on homes and pieces of land for sale, and there was a piece
of land that just seemed to get the taste buds going. And the rest is history – it was an easy
decision, with the building platform already cut with a retaining wall in place,
and did I mention the view, oh its terrible, not!
A back section we soon purchased, and the nights awake
began, mulling over the build concept. A
small home is all I wanted, I couldn’t see the need for a large home, at the
end of the day its the mortgage we’re working for, the maintenance and the
power to heat. I wanted as small a
mortgage as possible, extra insulation to keep us warm when we’re older. I also was keen for an off the grid home,
powered by the free resource of the sun, and in keeping with taking care of our
environment, I was keen on low amount of waste made during the build.
With plenty of visits to the site, and time spent literally
inside our design, we eventually came up with a plan to present to our Design
Architect. I can’t quite remember the
rest of the process, somehow we came up with a design which got approval from
Council, and on Brett’s birthday, end of October, the first pieces of earth
were moved as the build finally got underway.
While Nelson experienced a drought over summer, we hammered
away, feeling slightly better about not getting any mountain biking done over
summer, the tracks were closed anyway.
I had never been exposed to building a house before. In hindsight maybe some months of gym
workouts to prepared myself to use a nail gun would have been, ah,
beneficial! And also to have researched
the process of steps a house undergoes to take shape. Not having been in the position of learning
like that for a long time was pretty bloody hard, especially with the rate that
Brett works.
Poor buggar, all those
questions!
After 5 months of slog we finally moved into our home. It was fully enclosed, but still needed alot
of work done. Now 5 months on there is
all but a handful of small jobs needed completing.
I was really pleased with the small amount of waste produced
from our build. But have some
reservations about using natural gas for our oven, and back up for hot
water. Being pretty conscious about the
impacts we have on our environment, and burning gas I struggle with, this was
for me an oversight in the planning of the build. Without trying to justify, by living we are
compromising our earth, I’ll just keep peddling to work. How would I do it differently to natural gas
if there was a next time – I’m really not sure, maybe more solar panels to
create more electricity, but then there is an end life to everything including
solar panels.
The position of our land has a north and eastern view, out
to Boulder Bank, north of Nelson, and east to Fringed hill and the mountain
bike tracks calling our names.
Immediately below us is a regenerating gully, and the bird life coming
from it is special. We watch birds
entwined in their intimate mating dance, those out hunting, and those catching
insects on the wing. I’ve been busy
planting native plants kindly donated from friends, which will one day feed
more native birds. And I’m in the middle
of creating some raised vege gardens.
Our home has exceeded our expectations. The view changes with the weather and the
light from the time of day. Our fire
keeps us and the cats warm at night. And
the space we have created just feels right, and well thought out.
The help and support we have had throughout the build has
been appreciated, thanks Trudi and Rick for feeding us, and telling Brett to
have the odd day off! And to Jacqui G
for the cakes, yum! It was a hard slog,
but nothing comes with sitting around.
And thanks to Brett for the love and support to keep going. 
