Build Your Own House

Over the last few years i have browsed the web looking for info on owner building in australia
and have come to the conclusion that owner building has either stagnated
or those that are owner building are too busy and not inclined to contribute to the forums dealing with owner building issues

through the 80's and 90's it seemed to be a more buoyant time for owner builders

does anyone agree with my observations ?
if you do agree , what do you feel is the reasons behind the decline
have i been browsing the wrong forums ? any suggestions on where to look

I would like to also thank murray johnson for the work he puts in on this forum
murray has been the moderator since i became a member...often a thankless task
your input to the various topics puts the rest of us to shame
so murray thanks ...your passion for OB and homebuilding is a monument to us all

shane

Hi Shane, I am fairly new to this forum stuff and noticed it seems a bit quiet so get most my OB fix from the OB Magazine and web sites on interesting buildings. My partner and I live in a mud walled house (Cob) and have built a few Mudbrick sheds so have learnt a bit over the years but love all the artistic stuff you see on the web. Just saw Gaudi,s buildings on TV and it looked like Sunray Kellys stuff in the USA. I am disappointed that a lot of people live in sheds without using their imagination on the internal fitout to make them into fantastic houses. The internal partitions are usually just stud frame with plaster board. Not much creativity in that, or soundproofing. If I was building again I would buy a nice looking shed (nice colour, house strength wind loading, top quality windows and plenty of wall and roof insulation) I would then go to town on the internal fitout. I would have nice Mudbrick, Cob or Stone walls but never straight, all curved. Some of the stuff we have seen on the web or in books is just gorgeous. One picture that motivates me is of a small round mudbrick house with a mud, tree trunk look, pillar in the middle that not only holds the roof up but has a fire-place on one side and a set of stairs going up to a sleeping loft in the middle. Hope even these ramblings motivates sombody. Bye from Gremlin.

thanks for your comments gremlin

as you suggest you are new to this forum stuff ..
as a forum user in a very active sailing forum which is a passion
i can assure you there is a fantastic opportunity for users to learn much from this wider community

harking back to the hey days of owner building
i imagine the opportunity to share ideas and friendship would have ensured lively activity on a forum like this
the inspiring buildings you describe i hope are not a thing of the past

my experience is of a shed dweller with a family of 5
we sought a high degree of independence and accepted responsibility of our actions
we are now in a position after 26 years to be able to build our dream home

our only hope is that we remain healthy long enough to enjoy it

"Hope even these ramblings motivates sombody. Bye from Gremlin."
keep posting and see what happens
regards
shane

ps how did you go locating a backhoe ?
we purchased a small excavator and reckon its so useful around the farm
i wish i had it 26 years ago

I started the aus.sport.sailing newsgroup waaaay back in the 90's and it never really reached critical mass although a small crew kept trying to breath life into it for a decade or so. Doesn't mean that sailing isn't popular in Australia...

Just did a quick check and we are averaging about 25 posts per month here, which isn't so shabby. And it is almost 100% on topic, which is almost unheard of. Requests for information almost always get a good response. And, of course, just because something was posted over a year ago doesn't mean it isn't worth reading now.



I think the heyday of OB was almost certainly the late 70's. But even then the vast majority of OB houses were rural.

The plain truth is that OB houses cost more that bog standard project homes, and usually they cost more than professionally custom built one-off designs. And not all project homes are ugly or cheaply built. There are four reasons that I can think of to owner-build:

1. You want something really unusual (mostly this means exotic building materials or very difficult/isolated site) that will frighten off any licenced builder

2. You are fit and healthy and have really useful trade skills (e.g. carpenter, bricklayer, ...)

3. You are prepared to invest a lot of sweat equity in the building and you value your time at a very low rate. As in less than a pizza delivery guy. Although if you really throw yourself into it and you get the building up quickly there are some tax benefits since the time you invest in your property becomes untaxed capital instead of taxed income

4. You really want to There is something about living in a house that you built yourself that gives you an independence of mind which is priceless. See also sailing a boat that your built yourself, wearing clothes that you made yourself from raw ingredients, eating food that you cooked yourself from your own garden... Building a house is a massive task however and has destroyed many families.

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Bruce
Draftie

Hi Shane again, re our Backhoe, we bought it 19 years ago from an add in the paper for $11000 and to compliment it we also bought a small 3 ton tip truck for $1000. I had worked on a small construction site and noticed how useful the 4 in 1 buckets were so made sure we bought one with that type of bucket. And for the benefit of other readers to this post who may be thinking of buying a bobcat, we have found that the backhoe can do far more things than a little bobcat can do even though they are great little machines. Talking of buying things, the best value for money for owner builders that I can think of is books. If you are going to spend say $100000 on a house, a couple of hundred dollars on 'how to' books that will help with the building and maybe save you making a building mistake, is definitly good value. Sorry for more ramblings but what I write is born from experience and may be helpful to someone. Bye for now from Gremlin.

Hi Bruce & Gremlin
Glad to hear you share the remarkable pursuit ....... i sail a Boomerang 20 mainly on port phillip bay in victoria
my lifelong journey in yachting has taught me many things .....engineering being one
i have been able to apply some of this to my land based activities such as building
not being academically trained and without a trade or qualification...navigation techniques have also enabled me to understand some trig
and slightly off topic but weather observation has been important in my farming experience

I have been a member of this forum for quite a while , and regularly check for new posts.
but usually surprised at how few new posts have occurred.
that average of 25 posts per month surprises me
this is not a criticism it just made me wonder why
does the medium not lend itself to its discussion ?
surely the ability to link , post pics , spreadsheet etc would enhance any online communication in this virtual community.
eg rammed earth discussion http://www.abc.net.au/rural/telegraph/c ... 138139.htm
and this is my basic design so far ... still to optimize for material and engineering
basically on slab , rammed earth perimeter and timber stud internal walls carrying a light zinc roof



Over many years as well as accumulating skills i have invested in the necessary plant and equipment (including books and small tipper ) to be used in the building projects i am about to undertake
they have cost quite a lot of hard earned cash but allow a facility for not only my building but for my children's as well
i have never felt comfortable with the affordability of housing in my area ... and now feel that home ownership is out of reach of so many young people
i think that perhaps ...before too long we may see a return to owner building as a result of un affordability of housing faced by so many now

i have a few thoughts on why the cost has spiraled so out of control...perhaps some are not politically correct so i will save them for another time
i just feel that shelter is something everyone needs , it does not need to be flash but at least functional , affordable and does not negatively impact on either neighbors or the environment
to this end a forum like this is so very useful and fun to boot

ps gremilin
if you dont apologize for your ramblings i wont for mine ...so ramble on and enjoy

Hi Shane, where is north on your plans?

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Bruce
Draftie

bruce
north is toward the top of the image
I am yet to optimize the window and eave relationship
here are the elevations

Sure, I was just going to mention that putting a veranda on the north is less than ideal because it eliminates direct sun in winter. You will be hard pressed to pass the energy assessment. If you really need to have a veranda on the north (for views or other site reasons) then maybe don't go the full width of the house, so that some of the northern windows get winter sun.

It is obviously a work in progress and I am not sure what all the rooms are for, but there seems to be quite a lot of area allocated to hallways. Not sure what the landlocked room in the middle is for.

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Bruce
Draftie

It is obviously a work in progress

Shane, I agree that there is very little going on with owner builders on the web. I post updates here on my OB project (s) and have for a few years now, there are a handful of kind folks that offer some feedback and encouragement but compared to the number of views there is very little interest (feedback), which makes me wonder why I bother at times. At the end of the day, people have little short attention spans and the pace of the average OB project is too slow for most, they want it all wrapped up in a 30-minute show. I think Bruce defined the motivation to OB very well; I fit each of his points. OBing is not for everyone, as Bruce pointed out it can be a stressful pastime and can impact on families. I am very lucky to have a wife that shares the desire for difference, the ambition to see it through and the ability to make it happen against the odds, it is a real trip.

Steve

Hi steve
Love your work.....always remember bega as a picturesque place and your photos reinforce that memory
cloud in the valleys and building above in the sun .....magic

Must admit looked at your project but never posted feedback
I have not been a lurker on this sight ......but more visited out of a casual interest.
To be honest sometimes I feel all the beauacracy , red tape and regulation overwhelm me and i forget about building

Indeed yours is a real trip... i can imagine when you and your wife sit back and take in the views from your original and unique home it will all be worth the effort

keep us up to date on your project... i appreciate the effort

Don't be put off by " all the beauacracy , red tape and regulation" as they are the easy bit of the process. Dealing with council is not that difficult, you just need to understand how to play the game, I have found our local council to be very helpful and my building inspector a pleasure to deal with. I find the hardest bit is dealing with suppliers and contractors like engineers, hardware providers etc. If like me you wish to build (rather than manage the building) then learning how to do stuff takes a huge chunk of your time. I thought I was pretty good at building having done numerous large/major renovations prior to begining OBing, I was wrong. The process of learning how to build (well) is the hardest thing I find, there are a few good books about but nothing much on the net (as you pointed out). If your house is none 'standard' design then the project becomes even more difficult as even less information is out there. I see building as a series of problems to be overcome, OBing has taught me patience and persistence. I have recently started employing a labourer to help me and have found I do a lot better and make better progress when I have help, another leasson, I can't do every thing and sometimes it is better ( and cheaper) to get help. When you build your place allow money for paid labour.

Thanks for your kind words about my project, I look forward to seeing yours progress.

Steve

Hi Shane again, tis Gremlin back with more ramblings. By the way, if you can build your house as well as you can put pictures on the forum you will have a great house. How do you do that???? I wish I was computor literate!
I have come to the conclusion that perhaps I am on a different wavelength than the normal OB as I love the more hippie type houses. (alternate building sounds better) Houses that cost little, are made from all types of stuff, often second hand, or earth and rocks. However, I am interested in more practical houses too!, and would love to know a bit more about them. For instance, do you plan to do your own RE walls or is it more practical to get a contractor in. And how accurate do you have to be. Are the doors and windows hard to put in after the walls are up. Could someone with only bush carpenter skills (like me) be accurate enough to do it???? The few RE walls I have seen have had beautiful strata lines in them and look magnificent.
I have been told that our house, with its thick Cob outer walls, if built today, would not pass councils computor because of the energy ratings. Even though our place performs well in all seasons we have been told that to pass nowdays we would need the outer walls to be made of an insulating material and for the internal walls to be made of a solid thermal mass type stuff. This does make sense as I know the thermal mass insde our place works a treat.. Will this rule apply where you live?? I have heard of reverse brick veneer which could be somthing to do with this also. Does anyone know more about this??? Has anyone actally built like this yet. I know of Strawbale houses (thats the outside insulating walls taken care of) but do any have any nice solid soundproof thermal mass walls on the inside or are they mostly stud walls on the inside?? Bye for now Gremlin.

Thanks Shane,
It's a good question about the "health" of owner building. If it's in decline it is obviously not due to a lack of demand, but is due to the efforts of big builders and organisations like the Victorian Building Commission which set out to crush owner building some years ago.
In Victoria they made it more difficult to register as an owner builder, then they made it compulsory to insure your home to any prospective purchaser for 6.5 years... which is ridiculous.
First you had to get a detailed inspection done for any prospective purchaser... which I haven't got a problem with. I think all builders and vendors should have to do that. At present with secondhand houses it's "buyer beware" and individual prospective purchasers have to pay to get their own inspections done.

Then they make you take out insurance... which only covers anything NOT mentioned in the detailed building report at the time of sale! ie. The insurance doesn't cover ANYTHING really. I'd be very surprised if there had EVER been a single payout under this forced owner builder insurance. It's a massive insurance industry and government (GST etc) ripoff. But it goes on unquestioned.

It's the same with general building insurance. You can't claim unless the builder is dead or has fled the country. Anything else you have to chase the builder to fix... and I've heard LOTS of horror stories from people left homeless and broke as a result.
Queensland has a government-run scheme which takes about one percent of the cost of each house as compulsory insurance, and deals with and fixes claims centrally... which is a sensible scheme. But in Victoria and elsewhere the insurance ripoff continues (see article below from December 2010).

All owner-built homes have always had to have building permits and inspections and approvals at every stage, and occupancy certificates... just like "professional" builders... so consumers have always been protected. And because most if not all owner builders are building their own homes... I would argue that they often do a better, more conscientious job, than the "pro's".

There was no evidence of a problem with owner building, and from all accounts consumer complaints were virtually non-existent... which you can't say about the mainstream building industry.
But they cracked down on it anyway... because it was becoming too popular... and big builders felt they were missing out on some $$$$ action.

In fact most owner builders, like us, employ professional builders and building industry tradesmen to do just about every stage of their project... so the money we put into the economy is huge.

When I built my muddie 12 years ago the average house price in Melbourne was $190,000. Now it's $600,000!
So everyone's screaming blue murder about "housing affordability... yet no-one's doing anything about it.
The cost of building hasn't increased much over that time. My Dad's a builder, and he knows guys in the industry still getting paid $30 an hour... who were getting that much 30 years ago!

Young builders have to put their own family home up as collateral to get "building insurance" so they can start working in the industry. If they stuff up they lose their family home. The "insurance" company risks nothing. It's outrageous.

The cost of land has gone up... but mainly in the city. It's obscene in a country as big as this that there's a "shortage" of housing land. It's completely manufactured to make sure everyone has a $500,000 mortgage and that these days both husbands and wives basically work for the banks and government till about Friday lunchtime every week.

I had a Swiss woman on my Melbourne bike tour this week who's a radio journalist and takes a one hour train ride to work every day. I asked her how far that was? She said 200km on the other side of the Swiss alps! In Melbourne you'd be lucky to get from the city to my house in Heidelberg in an hour. That's 10km!

If a little country like Switzerland with 7.8 million people can build trains like that... why can't we with 22 million?
If you ran a single fast train to Geelong, or Ballarat or Bendigo or Echuca you would open up so much land that everyone could afford a cheap house. Surely that would be worthwhile. You could build the cost of the train into the land sales and still provide cheap housing.

But don't hold your breath.
Cheers,
Murray

PS Owner builders should get in on this class action... because, as I've mentioned above... we've been forced to pay for worthless insurance ripoffs for a decade too. It's millions of dollars.

Let's watch this one. Owner builders should march on Parliament and show a bit of solidarity with other parts of the industry that are getting organised to fight. OBs tend to be individualistic, and pretty low-rent, and low-conflict... but this is a chance to make our voices heard by just tagging along.
We owe it to others like us, who otherwise might not get a chance to enjoy the owner builder experience in future... and to exercise their basic human right to house their families affordably.

I've been writing about this issue for nearly a decade. See http://www.byohouse.com.au/dodgy.htm
Maybe something's finally going to be done.

I'll attach an article from http://www.builderscollective.org.au/ on the dodgy insurance issue:

Government and insurers face class action over dodgy warranty scheme

EXCLUSIVE: HUNDREDS of small family owned Australian builders are facing extinction because of Builders Warranty Insurance, according to a survey of over 1000 builders by PropertyReview.com.au conducted over the past month.

Builders in both Victoria and NSW are facing the increasing dilemma of not being able to get warranty insurance because thousands don’t meet new exacting insurance companies criteria. Insurance companies take none of the risk on warranty insurance and in fact are ‘illegally’ making builders sign indemnities where they personally face the total risk of the worthless insurance.

Leading lawyers tell PropertyReview.com.au that the home warranty insurance in NSW and Victoria is potentially illegal. According to section 12 of the Insurance Act 1973 a reinsurer must be licensed under the Act otherwise they commit an offence. No builder in Australia is a registered insurance company despite facing 100% of the risk of home warranty insurance.

One leading barrister who did not want to be named told PropertyReview.com.au: “It’s a rort. Governments know it’s at best worthless and at worst illegal, but they do nothing. They seem willing to watch hundreds of small family businesses go out of business.”

She indicated that a class action if successful could be one of the largest payouts in Australian history.

“The losses by builders who have been forced by State governments to sign up as illegal insurers over almost a decade is immense.”

PropertyReview.com.au has exclusively learned that a class action is now brewing against insurance companies, the Victorian and NSW governments with hundreds of builders having signed up for the class action in the past three weeks. Senior barristers and a leading class action law firm have been working on the case secretly for the past six months.

It is expected an application and statement of claim will be filed in the Federal Court early in the New Year with respondents being the NSW and Victorian governments as well as a number of insurance companies. Already more than 250 builders have signed up to the action, many donating thousands of dollars to the cause. Many more are expected to sign before the action is filed.

The majority of the builders are in Victoria and New South Wales where the regime of worthless home warranty insurance rules.

Both consumer advocates and building representatives say that home warranty insurance ruled over by successive Labor governments have forced builders to the wall.

“The only people making money out of the home warranty insurance scheme described by Choice as ‘junk insurance’ are insurance companies, their brokers, and state governments,” one former senior HIA member told PropertyReview.com.au. He did not want to be named due to potential reprisals from insurance companies.

A builder has to die, disappear or become insolvent for a consumer to collect on home warranty insurance.

The NSW Labor government has refused to budge on their worthless home warranty insurance scheme despite the years of complaints from both builders and consumers. The NSW Opposition has pledged to rid NSW of warranty insurance in line with either the Queensland or Tasmanian schemes.

The potential class action poses a real dilemma for the newly elected Baillieu Victorian government, which in its years of Opposition, declared it would rid Victoria of home warranty insurance.

Premier Ted Baillieu, his deputy Peter Ryan have both stated publicly in the past that they would do away with warranty insurance.

However, early representations to senior Victorian government minister Matthew Guy have fallen on deaf ears. Mr. Guy or his advisors have not returned any calls on the matter.

Rumours are rife insurance companies assisted in the funding of the Victorian Coalition at the recent State election to shore up their campaign to ensure the lucrative warranties continue to flood the insurance companies coffers.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of Victorian builders and their families intend marching on Parliament early in 2011.

Nelson Yap, Editor.

PropertyReview.com.au