2019 December

     Ok with all the wall cladding on we can finally put up the corner flashing. But first, I wanted to add something to fill those fiddly gaps created with the ups and down of corrugated iron sheeting. I had a go at expanding foam.

But I didn't love it. It's highly toxic when you apply it, it degrades over time to a toxic powder, it's toxic in case of fire, and mice and insects could just chew through it. It's expensive and messy to use. Time to try another technique.

We tried putting some of the insulation under the corner flashing to see if it would fill the gaps.... no not really.

We tried some aluminium insect mesh... hmmm getting closer...

Final plan - screw the flashing on with some mesh sticking out, then cut the mesh in a wavy pattern so that the curves can be pushed into the gaps. Pretty easy and a good result as far as keeping out bushfire embers. Of course easy still meant climbing up and down ladders for 8 corners... To hold it down and seal more gaps we could add a line of (black) silicone but to date this has seemed unnecessary.

Yay! All the corner cladding screwed on!

Another job was to put rivets in the ends of the corrugated iron sheets to create a bit more of a seal. There is a tiny gap where it sticks up before I put the rivets in... (below)

And very little difference (below) after I put the rivets in. This tiny result did not give me much enthusiasm to continue with the rest of the sheet joins around the house, it seemed pretty pointless.

Meanwhile we hadn't had any rain since the bushfire in September 2019, so September - November - December - January was just dry black dirt dust hot, no shade from the tree leaves and 20 percent humidity all day and night every day and night, 40 degree days non stop, every drop of water precious.

2020 February - rains! So quickly the world turned green again.

Another job to do was to finish the internal wall framing. First we found the right pieces and gave them a clean after they had been sitting in the weather for a few years...

Then assemble them according to the plans and screw together. These are the walls which separate the bathroom from the house.

That looks like a room!

My adventures with the different types of silicone and gap sealers continued, as I filled in the gaps where the verandah roof met the house wall. There was a lot of black bushfire embers and dust which had come in through these holes during and after the September fires, so it was important to seal it. A bit of a slow and fiddly job but I worked out some helpful techniques and silicone is easy to work with.

     So my last post was in Feb 2019, must be time for an update...

    Busy with life in other forms, next thing we know it's September 2019 and a giant bushfire attacks. We worked hard helping the community and then worked hard preparing our property by removing all the dry leaves and small twigs around the house and around the shed and caravan. We defended our caravan when the fire front hit at 5am and then it was all over. Yes that's the house you can see in the left of the above image. Quite frankly we thought we'd lost the whole thing, said goodbye and walked away.

    Well, it turns out that when you build to bushfire standards then your house is fine in a bushfire. I highly recommend building with steel!

                      2019 October we screwed up the top row of cladding on the north wall.

                                    November saw the rest of the top row of cladding go up.

     Then the top row of cladding for the south wall. This was a bit trickier as it is much higher.

Josh used his metal-working skills to make special water protective devices to put above the windows.

And the final piece of cladding for the top of the south wall. Note the burned bush in the background.

Meanwhile I experimented with every type of filler for the gaps between the yellow-tongue floors, finally ended up making my own out of sieved sawdust and bondcrete. It sets hard, doesn't shrink too much, matches the floor colour and not too difficult to apply once you get the right tools and technique.