Window Airtightness and Flashing

As we get closer to the house being rendered, finally, we have been looking more closely at any gaps remaining between our windows, doors and frame. Airtightness is a key to maximising the passive solar gain from our north facing windows and the thermal capacity of our hempcrete walls. So sealing the gaps around the doors and the windows needs careful attention.

The first step is to fill the gap. A very cost effective solution is to use closed cell foam backing rod. Normally used to fill gaps before caulking, I used a rod that was 3-4mm bigger than the gap and pushed it in with a spatula.

Install Foam Gap Filler Backing Rod with a Scraper

The next step is to tape over the gap. The tape acts as both weatherproofing or flashing as well as adding to the airtightness. I used ProClima Extora tape. It has a polypropylene fleece cover that the render can adhere to and the adhesive side sticks well to both wood and masonry so it attaches well to the hempcrete. In fact, when I've had to peel it back, it pulls hemp chips out of the wall. One concern is where the tape covers some small soft patches. We will see whether the render can be pushed under the tape in these spots to back it up.

Extora Flashing Tape installed around Brewery Window

Taping the windows where the timber reveals extend out of the wall was quite easy. The doors (and some other windows) are inset and will have a rendered reveal. The tape was harder to install, especially above the doors. Fingers crossed it will work out.

Extora Flashing Tape installed around Brewery Door

Steel flashings or drip caps will be installed over the windows that have full depth timber reveals. Unfortunately, I didn't make provision for fixing these to the wall so hopefully they will glue to the wall. Normally the steel flashing would extend 100mm above the window, but, rendering over that could be a challenge. So I decided to reduce it to between 30-50mm. It will be embedded under the render layer, so it should provide a suitable barrier. As with all the steelwork, we'll be using bitumen paint to protect it from the alkali environment.

Interior colours and renovation ponderings

It has been a long drawn out process deciding on the colour of the window timbers. Why has it taken so long? Well, I think the fact that the windows are such a huge investment you want to get it right, you also don't want to be repainting the windows in a few years. My lovely friend Bec helped me with this. It feels like the right balance of earthy, modern, clean and just a little bit daggy. 

To be honest I thought I had already posted this one as the colours have been decided for a while. The kitchen has arrived and we are now hoping to get a plasterer in to do our ceilings.  

We have had to look at a different door style where we were planning to have a bifold door. Apparently it is impossible to get a completely sealed bifold door in this country, go figure. We are hopeful that we can get a triple slider which unfortunately reduces the opening to our garden and outdoor eating area, a compromise we have to take because we want to complete the renovation this century!

I was hoping that by now I would be writing of the joys of living in our environmental home.

OK, OK I am peeved and starting to lose faith. It has been a long, hard slog with the 'I told you so....Kevin McLeod window scenario'. Didn't think it could happen to us, not when we were armed with the knowledge that windows are always the problem, always the delay ...blah blah blah.

The end of the windows saga may turn around soon....it's only been 6 months late after all.

top left; livos (kunos) range- tobacco one coat, clear one coat.
top middle; black - 2 coats livos (kaldet) range, sample of the interior
awning in the kitchen, lime plaster sample, green lino for the
kitchen floor and bamboo cabinetry

Kitchen Cabinet Delivery

While we are still waiting for our doors I am pleased to announce that we ordered our kitchen bits and bobs from Windsor Kitchens and it was ready within a couple of weeks, I have been really impressed with Windsor. We ordered the kitchen as a flatpack that we install ourselves and it has been a good way to save on labour costs.  Our kitchen carcass is a combination of natural white Laminex and bamboo cupboard fronts from Leto Bamboo.  We still need to order the island bench top and the stainless steel bench.

I am hoping my next post will be that our doors are in. Once that happens, we can really get cracking.

We set out pallets to lay the kitchen on so we can move them
around as we need to access different areas

The lovely bamboo finish, we still need to give them a fine sand and
then coat them in Intergrain (as recommended by Leto) If we use a
wax or oil they said it can yellow

Natural White Laminex with timber trims. These shelves will
go under the timber topped island bench.

The bamboo shelves were supposed to have a timber trim to match
the bamboo, however Peter from Windsor wasn't happy with the
look so he made trim out of the bamboo, I'm really pleased with
how it looks.

This is part of our green shelving that my lovely friend Bec
suggested, it is called the Lilliford shelf.

Decent amount of cabinetry, I can't imagine how it is all going to fit?!

The window installation has begun....finally! .......UPDATE

I can't believe that this post was from 17 November, 2015. It is now 18 January, 2016 and we are still waiting for the doors to be installed. To say we are frustrated is an understatement....not happy Jan! It hasn't been as frustrating as it could have been as Grant has taken up a contract for a couple of months, however....our critical path includes the windows and doors to be installed..GRRRR.

There will be plenty more photos added to this blog entry. I just couldn't help posting briefly tonight. It has been a ridiculously long wait...as I watch Kevin McLeod on the telly at this very moment it haunts me..it's always the windows that hold up the project and indeed it has been.

It is all happening now and hopefully the windows will be installed over the next few days. As you can tell from the images, we have the outside windows a black japan colour and the inside a dark chocolate colour stain.

The frame goes in first, then the glass goes in.

James and Antonio having a quick break before I got the whip out!

Honour Board - so many helpers

My sister Sarah and partner Matt came to Grant's rescue a couple of weeks ago to help with the second last gable end!! I wasn't much use except in feeding the crew! I am looking forward to writing more in the next entry!

Over the Queen's birthday long weekend Liz, Rich and family came all the way from the Peninsula darling to get us moving with the ceiling! (that will be another post). My brother Paul came down from the hills to also lend a hand. What a weekend of work. Sometimes things go according to plan, other times they don't. This time everything went swimmingly, my kids looked after their kids so all kids were happy. Rich obviously worked very hard as he was tucked up in bed by 9.30 on Sunday night...sorry about working you so hard Rich! As I am typing this Grant and Alan are out the back working. Alan (Grant's dad) is a serial offender (helper), so much so that he had to go overseas for 6 weeks to have a break!

Liz and Rich came over for the Queen's Birthday long weekend. Many years ago on this weekend,
 Liz and I would have been excitedly going to the snow together! 

Rich was on mixing duty, as you can see it is not a clean job!

Liz spent most of the time in the rafters

Over the school holidays our friend Susan came over to help us do some hemping, I know she helped out from the kindness of her heart, although I suspect there may have been a little bit of pressure coming from us! Simone (Grant's sister) and her daughter Jazz dropped in to say hello and were promptly put to work. I sometimes wonder why we haven't had many visitors! Alan (Grant's dad) has helped an enormous amount recently, unfortunately he ended up in hospital with a bout of Pneumonia - he assures us it wasn't due to us working him too hard! 

Grant had some time during the school holidays and steadily slogged away. We really feel as though we are getting there (wherever there may be).  Ok, what I mean by that is the walls are nearly to the top! We haven't started the ceiling, however we are now starting to work on hemping the gables. Details of that will be in another blog entry.

Susan working towards the eastern gable end

Simone hauling up the hemp to me (bit scary up there)

Jazz helping me hemp up high

Alan, Grant's dad has helped out many, many times and even though this photo is somewhat
grainy it is not indicative of the quality of his work!

Mum (Margaret) was pleased to be helping out on Saturday 21 March,
2015, therefore making the honour board!  Mum filled the conduit with hemp
while I used the conduit to fill the holes in the walls left from the formwork.

I haven't written anything for a while as we have been really busy with hempcreting during the day and various Christmas things on at night. Grant and Sam have been the consistent workers, working many hours every day, often until dusk. The hempcreting itself is relatively quick, the greatest time seems to be spent setting up the formwork. As time goes on I presume that will also quicken.

Sam (you might recognise the T Shirt Katharina)

My brother Paul came to help, loaded up with extra
gloves and masks for us to use.

Sam, Toffee, Oliver and Fynn

Matilda helping out

Barb, our architect (will need to get Barb around again
 so I can include a better photo). Thanks Barb.

Oliver and Sam creating some formwork using OSB

Alex and Grant

Oscar

Lisa and Mick are repeat offenders, they were over to give us a hand on the 30 Dec 2014

Dee Dee helping out on New Years Day

Not that you can tell but this is Grant's Uncle Ian
who was there sloggingaway on New Years Day

Sustainable House Day 2015, Sunday 13th September and my brother's home

Although we are not ready for our house to be open for Sustainable House Day in 2015, I encourage all to get out and visit some of the properties out there. It's a great way to get some tips and tricks if you are planning to build, wanting to improve the efficiency of your property or make cost-effective improvements in your rental home. A bit of research now can save you money later.

I really hope our place will be open for next year. The reason being, if it is not, I may well just cry!

It looks like Melbourne is going to put on a fine day tomorrow. My brother, Paul is opening his house up tomorrow for Sustainable House Day. If you are planning on going to SHD I believe you need to register, by doing so you will given the individual addresses and give people an idea of how many people to expect. 

One of the difficulties of living in Mt Macedon is the Winter, it is cold and long. Paul imported the internals of a masonry heater from Canada (that is a story in itself) and it has made an enormous difference to the comfort level of his family home. 

His first winter when they bought their home was very warm until they got their first electricity bill. Then they froze! Since that time they have been retrofitting the house little by little, chipping away at it's inefficiencies. If you are interested in a Masonry heater in particular, I encourage you to visit and see and feel one in action. Grant and I are going tomorrow to help Paul and family out with the day.

We made it into the local rag (twice)

The article at the bottom is the 'hard' version of the Melbourne Leader it was dated 17 August and the Leader corrected a few errors, so thanks for that. Here is the link to it.

Last week a local journalist for the Melbourne Leader (local paper) contacted Grant and I about doing an article on our house. Here is a link to the article and below is a screen shot. I tend not to wear lippy or necklaces while working with lime but sometimes you have to glam up a tad for the sake of publicity and promotion of this amazing product. Just for the record I go by my birth name -Shelley Hosking, why, because it is the name I received at birth.

Ceilings complete with MgO Boards and hemp insulation

The ceiling in the living area, kitchen and even the link are now complete. They all have the MgO board and hempcrete insulation. You will see the lines on the boards, that is just the process of the hemp insulation drying out. The boards will need to be finished by a plasterer before they are lime wash painted.  It has been a relatively trauma-free experience. I should say trauma-free for me as I have not done a great deal of this part of the build, unless you include me being 'supportive'. I went to my friend's birthday party the other week and had a hoot. Everyone asked how the renovation was going, made me worry what I would have to talk about when all is complete! Might have to do something equally crazy.

We are in the process of finding a renderer, hopefully, that will be sorted out soon.

Informal Open House

Last Sunday we had a gaggle of people come over to chat to Grant and I about our building experience thus far. Nic contacted me via Twitter and we ended up with half a dozen or so wanting to know more about what we are doing. Nic was pleased to be able to get his hands on the finished product and I mean literally, probably a good thing as we are hoping to be able to get the place rendered soon. We have had many visitors over the build time from all over Australia. It's quite exciting that from our small build (Grant wouldn't agree about the small bit) we have garnered so much interest in hempcrete. I hope it is a sign of things to come and the industry continues to grow.

Nic, Martin, Adriaan, Grant, David and Paul

Ceiling insulation - doubling up

When you have spent so much time building walls that have amazing insulating capabilities, when you have the slab super insulated and the the windows either double or triple glazed it seems crazy to skimp on ceiling insulation. With that in mind we have decided to double up on our insulation. We have the hempcrete insulation that will keep us warm and toasty in winter and we have decided to add Wavecore Silverbatts under the sarking to reflect the heat away in summer. We are going to have a beautiful living space with a stable temperature.

Great idea I hear you say, and it will be, we just wished we had the product prior to starting the ceiling. Grant has been scrambling around the limited ceiling space attaching the batts. He has started using blue strapping (see below) to hold the batts in place - the plan is that the straps will make it easier to install.

These batts come flat and you make them up on site

The blue strapping for the silver batts, the black formwork is placed
up there for Grant to lie down on the job! - or possibly work

Alan keeping an eye on what Grant is doing

One kilometre of tape- should be enough!

Hempcrete and the box guttering

The first bit of hempcreting we did was underneath the box gutter. It had to be done prior to the plumber coming and fitting the gutter. Grant used hessian under the hemp and OSB to hold it securely as it dried. The OSB was then removed so it could be replaced with MgO boards. The plan was that the hessian would hold the hempcrete in place long enough to set up the boards.  Unfortunately when we tried to place the boards it bowed out and the boards were unable to be secured flat. We realised that our first couple of mixes were too dry and the mix hadn't set. Grant ended up having to remove the hemp and then use some wool insulation (the only part of the renovation that doesn't use hemp-don't tell anybody).
It was disappointing, however you sometimes have to be pragmatic and just get on with it. Once the plan was adjusted and we used the alternative insulation it didn't take long to complete the box gutter.

You can see the hessian, above that is the hempcrete insulation

The hessian and hempcrete was removed

The completed box gutter