Sunday, July 25, 2010

Macrocarpa board walk



A recent wee project we constructed using 200mmx50 dressed macrocarpa . It makes a bold ntrance to this contempary home , It was later to have a lime chip spread upto the edge of the board walk


Friday, July 23, 2010

American Barn Style home







Hi well this one we did from the very beginning designed and drawn by my self .




The aim of this project was to design a quality home using as non toxic building materials as possible while keeping the costs down as much as possible .




We were able to do this by designing the house in such a way as to avoid using the more toxic timber treatments, ie by keeping the roof pitches steeper than ten degrees ment we we didnt have to use h3.1 cca treatment , reasonable eve widths and bevel back weather boards allowed us to use h1.2 external framing and untreated internal frames. The weather boards are untreated larch which is very durable.




For insulation we used natural wool batts through out which rate as high as convention glass wool.




I'd like to also point out that the lower treated timbers are actually cheaper , so its worth thinking about your designs so as to be able to use the lower treated timbers which will meen a more weather tight healthier home ..




We used Macrocarpa extensively throughout the interior for solid t&g floors, stairs , ceiling sarking in bedrooms and all the trim.




Plumbing it costs alot , so i made sure that the bath room ,kitchen and hotwater cylinder were all relatively close together to save on pipe and fittings and time, also it means no delay for the hot water to arrive. We also put in a wet back fire and a solar water heater .




More tilt panel pics
















Custom Concrete Tilt panel house ,Hawea Flat

Unlike most concrete tilt panel homes which have the panels pre made in a factory and then delivered to site .This home had all its panels made on site by us , using the future garage slab to form them on, this gave us much more flexibility with details and finishes to achieve the clients vision.
 This home has a mix of timber frame walls clad with cedar weatherboards and concrete rough cast panels , interior was a mix of standard gib , ply and smooth finish concrete walls which give it a slight industrial feel with predominatly timber floors which soften the upto 4.5meter high concrete panels in the living area.
For this job we used the nivana system which is a insulated  concrete panel 140mm concrete 50mm polystyrene 50mm concrete exterior.




 Tilt panels make an ideal low maintenance home with a stable indoor temperature due to the large mass of the walls  being able to store the heat produced internally from a wood burner etc and also through passive heating from the low angled winter sun .The walls will slowely release the heat as the room cool s providing a stable temperature ie no more coming home to a cold home.They also work to cool the house in the summer by absorbing the heat built up in the room again keeping a stable indoor temp.