Bathrooms and laundry

It has been 3 months tomorrow now since the framing was erected and we are now probably a month away from moving in. This week Mark laid the floor tiles into the landry, toilet, bathroom and ensuite and June will have completed painting the walls through the whole house with three topcoats by Xmas Eve.

The laundry is ready for the plumber to connect the waste.

It has been a busy week

This week we have had the drainlayers installing all the sewage and stormwater pipes.





 

We have spent the weekend tiling and preparing the laundry and bathrooms ready for the plumbers this coming week. The fireplace is also ready to be installed







  

Simon has been a great help today. Painting in the morning and laundry bench installer this afternoon.

Still painting

Painting has continued this week.
Mark has now completed all the ceilings
and the whole house has had a coat of sealer.
Andy again gave of his time on Saturday and
has completed the ceiling in the garage for us.
Thank you Andy.

The great white out

Painting is now well under way, only one coat to go on the ceilings, and almost all of the walls and now have a sealer coat on them. 90L of paint so far.

All the paint we are using is low odor and has low volatile organic content (VOC). It contains no added heavy metals (e.g. Pb, Hg, Cr) and no formaldehyde. They are benzene free and TDI content is less than 0.1% making them environmentally friendly.


Meanwhile the rabbits are grazing on the grass just outside the master bedroom.

Kitchen

The kitchen units were installed today and you can see Mark familiarising himself with the kitchen sink

The painting begins

The plastering was finished on Tuesday so we are now able to begin painting. With Mark being in Wellington Wednesday and Thursday and June being on Jury service we weren't able to get as much done as we would have liked during the week, but this weekend is going to be extremely busy. The kitchen is being installed on Tuesday so we would like to have the family/dining/kitchen area undercoated. Last weekend Mark took 3 trailer loads of rubbish to the tip (approx one tonne), so the site is looking a lot tidier.

This photo shows the framing above the doorway into the living area. This will have louvres that can be adjusted to allow either hot air escape up through the skylight in summer or closed to keep the warm air in the living rooms in winter. At this stage we haven't decided if the louvres will be timber or glass.

The car can now be parked in the garage !!!!!!!!

View from the lounge through to the dining room

The sewerage system went in today.

The main concrete tank is in the fore ground with the scoria covered sand filter behind. The 460m of driplines are on the bush covered hillside behind.

Now the plumber can do the final piping from the house.

Google Maps have been updated!

The google maps aerial photography have just been updated courtesy of Waikato District Council. Google is amazing.

Our guess is the photos date from around May this year. I have attached a selection of screen shots. The site works have been completed and the back lawn is just coming through. The tractor can be seen near the container.

Its all happening.....

But there is not a lot of changes to see.

The kitchen is under construction, the flooring has been ordered, the plasterer is well under way and the garage door has been installed.
The house should be lockable by the weekend.
The painter (me) is still filling nail holes and sanding.

Getting ready to install the Sewage Treatment System

Hugh and Mark laid 465 metres of driplines on steep bush clad hillside north of the stream to be connected to the Reflection Sewage Treatment System that will be installed in the next couple of weeks. Gregory created steps up the banks to give access to the driplines so they can be regularly inspected. If you look carefully to the left of the steps you can see the rising main that connects to the driplines.

The following is a link to the Web site for the treatment system and some of the features that were important to us in regards to protecting our beautiful surroundings

• Uses up to 85% less power than other systems on the market
• produces high quality renovated outflow that exceeds New Zealand Council guidelines and can be used for irrigation
• operates passively with least noise and smell, using the same biological processes that occur naturally in the soil
• produces fewer impurities or contaminants, and therefore protects the environment

http://www.septic.co.nz/Residential/ISF/How-It-Works/default.aspx

Exterior completed

The exterior cladding and painting have now been finished and all the plastic protecting the windows removed .


The scaffolding will be taken away tomorrow. We have been very impressed with Texmark They have gone out of there way to make sure everything is as we wanted and have left the site extremely tidy which is not easy considering they are working with polystyrene. Thank you Brent.

On the home front

We have been filling nail holes and sanding the skirtings, window and door frames, we are roughly half way.

The builders are almost done just a few mouldings to go, and then all the door hardware.

The plasterer starts this week.

More tree pictures

Spot the difference.

No not the house, the pine tree is missing.
Unbelieveably our neighbour cut down our pine tree with out our consent!

This huge 40 year old pine tree is now lying across our top track having crashed down the bank leaving a huge track of damaged native bush.

Adobe walls and Internal Doors

 

The final plaster coat has been added to 3/4 of the house today. We have chosen an Adobe finish to try and achieve a slightly rustic look. There are three coats of acrylic paint yet to go over the plaster.

All of the Internal doors have now been fitted. The doors into the lounge are 2.4m high. We have chosen higher doors so that the hot air in summer will flow from the lounge and up through the skylight in the centre of the house without any obstructions. The doors to the left of the lounge are for storage cupboard and a utility cupboard where all the underfloor heating and solar panel controls will be situated.

Disguising the Chilly Bin

The North and South walls now have a plaster and mesh coating over the polystyrene.

The house  is cement coloured instead of bright white and now blends into the surroundings. All the interior doors have arrived and the builders are probably going to start installing them tomorrow. Both the showers trays have been fitted into the bathrooms ready for the plumber to connect.

The painting begins

Today I took advantage of the scaffolding to paint the soffits. Thankfully this is the only exterior painting we are responsible for.

And now for something completely different

This evening we attended the opening of a art exhibition at the Ngaruawahia Arts Centre. All of the artworks are by local ladies and inspired by the up coming pink ribon day. June exhibited two pieces.

 

All wrapped up

I just love working in the rain, today I finished fitting the polystyrene around the base of the house. I needed to get it done so the insulclad guys could get on and finish all the preparation work.


The builders are making great progress with the gibbing, all the ceilings done and probably half the walls.

Silence

All the poly on the exterior now and batts on the inside, combined with double glazing makes for a very quiet house.

Gibbing has started with the ceilings in bedrooms 3 and 4 done already.

Roof window is all framed out ready for gib and batts.

We have a Chilly Bin

The South and West facing walls now have 50mm thick polystyrene sheets attached. These sheets give the walls an insulation rating of  R2.55 once they have been rendered and  R2.6 wall batts installed. The go ahead for lining the inside walls was approved today. The insulation will be installed tomorrow.

Water proofing the foundations.

Boring I know, but it had to be done.

The polythene around the foundations was full of creases and damaged in places which will have created problems when fixing the polystyrene insulation. The solution was to cut the damaged polythene back and paint the concrete with Mulseal, a black gloop which dries to a rubbery membrane.

Luckily for me Andy and Gregory did this job, leaving me free to finish a lot of other smaller jobs, like putting up roof ladders for the Insulclad installers and tidying up some more of the wiring.

Last thing today I went around every wall taking more than 60 photos. I'm sure they will be invaluable if we ever need to work out where things are in the walls.

Electrical wiring almost done

Luke and I have just spent the last 2 1/2 days installing all the electrical and data cables, we are almost there.
This needs to be done by Monday when the Batts will be installed, and the installation of the wall linings will begin. Not much to see though, the picture shows the all the cables hanging where the switch board willl go.

You can also see the materials for the external cladding; a stack of 50mm polystyrene panels and the piles of bags of plaster.

The first few 50mm polystyrene pannels for the Insulclad exterior cladding have been installed. I am going to install 70mm polystyrene on the concrete around the base to further insulate the floor slab to reduce the heat loss from the edges of the floor.  Although polystyrene is not a "green" product it does improve the insulation rating of the walls and therefore the energy efficiency of the house. The polystyrene can be recycled at the end of the buildings life, so we are reliant on people a long way in the future doing the right thing.

One month so far

We are now one month into the build.
Today the roofers were flashing the roof window and fitting guttering.
Inside the plumbers were finishing up the pipe work.
Some pictures from the inside this time.
First; looking up at the roof window; this will provide light and more importantly ventilation. The controls have a clever function that will automativally close it when it rains.
The hot water cylinder can be seen; this $2000 beast has ports for the solar panels, wetback and hydronic underfloor heating.








Second; looking from the front door across the dining, kitchen and family areas,

and third looking from the kitchen out the family room stacker

The windows

The windows were installed today. These are all double glazed. We decided to use stacker doors in the living areas because they have a very narrow frames giving the least obstruction to the view. I constructed a platform in the ceiling for the hot water cylinder to allow the plumbers to complete their pipe work.

Another weeks progress

Just back from a rain free week in Surfers Paradise, what a difference 35 deg yesterday, 7.5 deg and rain today.

Called in to check out progress on the way home from the airport.
The progress never fails to impress inspite of the weather.

We now have a roof, and the building all wrapped up it is starting to look like a real house.

Solar heating pipes installed

The weather is still against us.

Yesterday Luke and I installed all the electrical flush boxes all ready for the cables.

Today between the showers I installed pipes in the roof.
These pipes will be just under the roofing iron and will transfer heat from the roof to the floor slab. If successful I will install more pipes later.

We are off to Austrailia for a week, weather permitting we should have a roof by the time we get back.