Rustic Retreat 2015

House Notes – Rustic Retreat

Come and visit our 7.1 star strawbale home. The house faces true north. True north is slightly different to magnetic north and varies depending on where you are – maps will indicate the difference. True north gives the most access to sunshine for warming the house in winter. The height and depth of the eaves are designed to shade the sun out in summer (NB: the summer sun is higher). We have large windows in both the north and the south sides to allow for cross ventilation in summer.

Other features include:

INSULATION:
• WALLS: Straw bale with approx. 50mm of lime render to both sides – equivalent to approximately R – 9.0 NB: An equivalent house of timber / brick construction might be around R 1.5 – R2.
• FLOORS: Are insulated underneath with R 1.75 glass fibre batts and R2.0 silver foil bubble wrap.
• ROOF / CEILING: The roof is a living roof with insulation in the ceiling and on top – approx. R 6.0. This rating does not include the temperature tempering of the plants themselves (once planted out) as the plants will reduce the heat hitting the roof.
• There is only a very small temperature variation internally, all year round

THERMAL MASS:
• We have not used a slab because of the high embodied energy in concrete, however, we still have concrete under the stumps for engineering purposes (literally to hold the house up!) but we have minimised the amount required / used.
• Our render on the inside (50mm) will act as thermal mass.

MATERIALS USED:
• We have used all plantation grown timbers where needed for framing and have also sourced old bridge beams and old posts in the round for structural needs – these big old timbers are mostly left exposed and have a beautiful aesthetic.
• All of the windows and doors are recycled / salvaged/locally handmade with recycled timber – mostly from regional Victoria – around the area we live. Some have double glazing and some were fitted with safety glass to meet Australian standards – most of the windows are leadlight and have a lovely handcrafted feel to them. We love old / second hand things as they have had a life and developed character – or dare I say ‘soul’.
• The straw was sourced from a local farm.
• The first render was a clay / sand mix. The sand was locally sourced and the clay is from Stanley – 5klms away.
• Subsequent render layers were sand /clay / lime mix.
• The plywood for the roof deck was purchased at auction in Melbourne.
• Our floor coverings are a combination of terracotta tiles (these were made in Bangladesh so do actually have some ‘tile miles’ on them – but we loved them) pure wool carpet and timber & ply both with hand painted finishes.
• All the furniture in our home we already had, we designed spaces in the house especially for particular pieces of furniture that we love

LANDSCAPING:
• We have 13 acres of which approx. half is good arable land.
• A couple of hectares will be planted out with oaks and hazelnut trees which have been inoculated with truffle fungus – we hope to make an income from this to help fund our retirements.
• We plan to grow as much of our own food as possible, preserving it in a variety of ways e.g. fowlers vacola, jams and pastes, chutneys and pickles.
• We have already planted a large orchard which includes virtually all fruits, nuts and berries that grow in our region.
• We have also established a large kitchen garden for our vegetables and regularly plant out a variety of herbs in and around the veggie garden and the court yard.
• There are a heck of a lot of fat healthy looking wild rabbits running about our block and eating our seedlings and ring barking some of our young trees. We could learn to better manage the rabbits and one idea is to trap and then eat them, if we can bring ourselves to kill them?

OTHER NOTES:
• In future plans the house will have a sunroom to the north and east which will act as airlocks for the entrance door that we will use. The formal front entrance has an air lock also. These airlocks will reduce temperature changes.
• We have located the bathroom/laundry/kitchen together to reduce the loss of temperature in pipes containing hot water. This will also reduce plumbing costs and eliminate unnecessary wastage of plumbing materials.
• We also prefer for the bathroom to be sunny, light and not damp, and hence it is located to the north. A lot of house plans put these areas to the south arguing that they are not used a lot, but we have planned our house for the future, when we will have no children at home, and so all of our living areas will face north.
• The hot water is solar (evacuated tubes) with combustion stove backup – firewood grown for purpose and collected on block.
• Our combustion stove is a double oven version (quite rare) that we purchased on eBay and picked up near Swanpool. We then had it refurbished in Seymour
• We generate and store our own electricity from solar panels and we would like in the future to combine this with a wind turbine – we have no grid connection.
• All black (toilet) and grey (all other household water) wastewater is processed via a worm farm (AA Worm farms). This cleans and filters the water which then drains out to our orchard and can also provide us with compost.
• We would also like to divert grey water to specific garden areas, but this is a plan for the future.

The other terrific part about our new home is that we are building it with our own hands and the hands of those friends and family who have and continue to help us. There has been a lot of human energy expended on this project, cleaning out stump holes, building frames, stuffing walls with straw and throwing mud against walls. There been lots of laughter and even a few tears – we already have a relationship of long standing with our new home as we have been planning and building it for over three years, and we still have lots to do!

We are building our home to provide comfortable, healthy and life affirming living spaces, which suit us – not with any view to resale.

NOTE:  Andrew Court is a new subdivision so is not yet on Google Maps.  The road comes off Fighting Gully Road and Andrew Court is clearly sign posted.