Build Your Own House

Hi there,

We have commenced construction on our Straw Bale house in a South East bayside suburb of Melbourne.
Its a simple 7 x 14m, two bedroom loft style house with single garage/workshop incorporated. Our plan is to do a detached extension (same size but specced up) in the future. It is a flexible enough building design to extend another 2 bedrooms into the garage/workshop if I dont ever want to build again though.

Our Block is 1050sqm so quite big by Suburban standards these days. I spent early part of last year demolishing by hand the previous (dump!) house on the block.

We have started a Blog-it will be mostly just pictures with brief descriptions of our progress.

Since Christmas I have built a permanent office which will be used for my landscape/maintenance business in the future and probably a bedroom if we run out of money while building.

Office is clad in salvaged corrogated sheets and some timber salvaged from the old house, as is the woodpile and sheds.

The woodpile is full of two days worth of cut-up old house.

All these structures served the purpose of getting my confidence up with some different building process's.

Our slab was poured at the end of March. I installed the in-slab hydronic heating myself the day before the pour- if I had another day I might have done it differently zone wise. Hindsight...

Also, if you are having an exposed slab edge as a visual barrier be sure the concreters know that this means a smooth edge- the plastic should NOT be pulled up over the formwork. And make sure they pour the edgebeam/foundation and slab in one. better protection. I used Termimesh for all of the slab penetrations, but not yet sure how I am going to address the slab edge side of things in an economical way.

Rather than a polished slab we have gone for a troweled finish-as close to smooth as possible. It is our intention to stain the slab then seal it, minimising any floor coverings.

We are halfway through framing at this point. Trying for lock-up by Christmas, though that seems a stretch...

If anyone wishes to gain more building experience with Straw Bale you would be more than welcome!

Here is a link to the Blog: http://strawbalebonbeach.blogspot.com/
Or email us sleaves@gmail.com
Matt & Aideen

Well done it is looking pretty funky thus far, I love you little work studio, reminds me of my own . I look forward to following your progress.

Steve