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

The walls are now complete and the ceilings have begun....

We finished our walls on the last day of May, so over the June long weekend we began to place the MgO boards to the ceiling. The mix used for insulation uses the lime, hemp and water. There is no sand and all that needs to be done is to place it on the MgO boards and rake it smooth to about 150mm deep. What is lovely about this is that is quicker than we thought...now that's a first! We will have a perfect seal between the ceiling insulation and the walls, oh the joy!  We haven't used any struts to hold up the ceiling and wet insulation as other hempers have done, so far so good.  When it has dried out it will be much lighter than it is now. Interestingly there has been a lot of condensation on the ceiling, even to the point that it drips along the board. I was going to show this condensation with a photo, unfortunately for the sake of the blog it has dried out, fortunately for us it has dried out.

The plaster lift isn't tall enough for our ceilings                       The first MgO boards are up!!

so we had to raise it by placing it on the black

formwork

Using hempcrete as insulation.

We use conduit for the electrical wires to protect them from the lime

Hemp insulation above the kitchen

Slightly confusing image of me, looking glamorous
in my thermals and limey top

Some of the equipment for the insulation works, protective gloves, silicone broom and light rake

Liz up in the ceiling placing the hemp insulation. We have made
great use of the pulley system, a must have for any hemp renovation

The ceiling in the kitchen is almost complete, we just need to
 complete inside the pantry.

We are probably a quarter of the way along the living room space,
it is really exciting how it is coming along.