Solar System

2023 February 

    Installing a solar system is pretty complicated, so Josh did a lot of research to make sure that everything was safe and legal. First we needed somewhere under the house to put the connectors that come out of the batteries, and turn the power into something useable. Here is the metal box which has been attached under the house, ready for installing the inverter and other associated paraphernalia. This box is actually a gun safe from Bunnings, as it was a reasonably priced and suitable sized metal box which was readily available. Hanging down in front of it you can see the wiring that the electrician put in during the electricity rough-in. It was placed here ready for connecting to the solar system in June 2022. This would sit and wait for a while before more action happened to it.

     Josh continued putting up the plywood walls and the kitchen looked pretty good. I was working on filling the gaps on the walls as Josh was working on putting up more walls.

     We discovered some of the trickier parts of this material. It didn't like to lay perfectly flat and some sheets stuck out from the sheet next to it by quite a few millimetres.

It was time to try and find a good wood filler. I wanted something that was able to be sanded and painted, but was also had a bit of flexibility in it so that it wouldn't crack when the wood moved. This was one of the products I tried. Also I was hoping that it would be easy to apply into tricky places. This product was very light, as it seemed to have been whipped with lots of air like a mousse. I didn't like it enough to buy it again, especially at nearly $15 for a pretty small amount.

Another product we tried was Spakfilla. It was $12 for a much larger amount. They say on the pack that if it gets a bit hard you can just add a bit of water to get it soft again, which really doesn't seem like something that you want to be having in your walls.

Every screw hole needed to be filled, and they looked like this before filling. They had to be cleaned up of all the splinters around them before filling, so I used a stanley knife or a sander to get them neat and tidy. Also the ones that weren't quite deep enough had to be screwed in a bit further, so I pulled out the drill for that.

And they looked like this after filling. You can see in this shot that I have been sanding the joins between sheets to try and make them flat. This was difficult as the plywood has such thin layers that when sanded, it revealed the layer below it. I had already learned this when sanding the plywood laid down for the floors. Also the plywood would flex when the sander was pressed on it, and then bulge back out when the sander was removed, so it was impossible to get flat joins. Ah well.

This wall alone would have taken a few hours to fill all the holes and the gaps. Easy enough until I had to be crawling around on the floor for the bottom ones, and then up and down the step ladder to reach the top ones, and trying to remember to take everything that I needed with me each time I went up, including knife and drill if needed. For application I tried the spakfilla tool which is a plastic rectangle, and also a flexible knife. Each had its own advantages and disadvantages.

 Then I sanded off the filler to try and make the wall lovely and smooth. I wasn't happy with this product which refused to sand down to a thin layer, instead just removing itself from the area completely and revealing the screw once it was sanded down a little bit. I think it was the Nordsjo expensive mousse one.

Time to try yet another product. This polyfilla was about $17 from Bunnings, but the pack in this picture is an old one I found somewhere.

This wall corner looked a bit of a mess after I tried to fill it in nice and smooth.

Here's an example of a tricky corner join I was filling. It was difficult to fill such narrow gaps and took ages for each section.

I went back and tried again the method of mixing sawdust with wood glue as a filler. It was not very good as it had a lot of shrinkage and then dried very hard and was extremely difficult to sand.

Here is yet another product I tried in the elusive search for a good wood filler.

Here is a pic of me from July 2023 with the sander, continuing to work on the walls a bit more each day.

Yet another product being tested. I mustn't have liked it because I didn't buy it again.

Wait there's more. No I didn't like this one either.

I had added some more safety equipment for the heavy duty sanding, I didn't want to breathing in the plywood or the filler.

My favourite wood filling product by far was the Polyfilla Large Cracks, I even went back and bought a few more of these they were so good. So by my count I tried 8 different fillers before deciding on a good one.

Next time we will be putting up the first ceiling, in May 2023.

 2022 October - Screwing up the Internal Plywood Walls

          Wham bam screw the plywood to the frame, easy peasy! Well, no, unfortunately not. The plywood is 1200mm wide and 2400mm long. The framing widths are - well I measured 10 different widths and then I stopped measuring. Suffice to say that the framing is very random and not designed for easy installation of internal wall panels. So we had to decide whether it was more trouble to cut every single piece of plywood to size to fit the framing, or to install extra framing in the right spot for each sheet to remain whole.

          We had some spare metal ceiling battens so Josh had a go at cutting them to size, screwing them to the framing and and then attaching the plywood. The below image is the back side of the wall.

          This wasn't really ideal as there was too much flex in the plywood joins. There was some further experimentation with wooden battens but nothing was really working. We really didn't know how much support the plywood would need, and could only learn from testing various ideas. 

        There is almost no information online about using plywood as a wall material. Everyone assumes that all buildings are a) timber framing and b) gyprock sheeting. We didn't want gyprock or cement board as it just gets holes in it too easily. I think it's a stupid building material and I don't know why it is so popular. Maybe it is to keep the handymen in a job as they are constantly fixing it when it breaks. Also we didn't want the hassle of doing all the plastering over the top. Such a waste of time, money and energy when you can just screw up a plywood sheet and then paint it. You need special tools to install gyp, and it costs more money in the long run. 

        Eventually the decision was made to cut every single piece of plywood to size to fit the wall framing. The plywood just had too much bend in it and needed a lot of support. This meant that there was a lot of skinny bits of plywood offcuts. Some of these would be wide enough to be used somewhere else but not all of them. This might mean that the calculations of how much plywood was needed will be off. Oh well.

Below is the bedroom wall with 4 sheets across. There is still a gap across the top that needs filling too.

Next was the living room wall.

Then November rolled around and it was time to start breaking out the insulation. Below you can see the wall behind the insulation is done up until the ceiling battens, And this means that there is insulation installed in the cavity behind the plywood. This sounds easy enough but required a lot of setting everything up to be covered in sheets before starting work to try and reduce the amount of itchy insulation getting on everything. Also in this pic you can see the wall on the right is now finished all the way up to the ceiling. I don't have any pics of the insulation up before the plywood was screwed on because I was avoiding the whole area while Josh was working to try and keep those itchy fibres from getting on me, so you'll just have to imagine it.

Below is the second bedroom, with both the walls on the left and the back having insulation placed inside them.

And below is the two walls on the outside of the bathroom.

Then December rolled around, and the living room walls continued.

In the background of this photo below taken in January of 2023 (of a special visit from an old friend) you can see the kitchen wall done on the left and the living room wall finished to the right.

Next update will be documenting 2023 February, when the solar installation is upgraded.

 Delivery of plywood and insulation

        Ok let's time travel back to 2022... In September we finally had our delivery of insulation and plywood for internal wall cladding.

    We wanted to get insulation that was
*not itchy

*not expensive

*available locally

*made from environmentally friendly materials eg. recycled

*Not toxic to humans

        After extensive research of all the available options, the best decision was definitely Earthwool, as it was available from Bunnings, a good price and made from 80% recycled glass. Also apparently it doesn't make you itchy. But there was a problem - it was impossible to buy. For one thing, Covid had destroyed supply chains. Also, something about a fire at the Earthwool factory in Asia meant that we could not even special order it from Bunnings. There was none available in Australia apparently. And none coming in the foreseeable future. 

          The Bunnings at Lismore said they get their stock from Queensland so they suggested we try the Bunnings at Grafton who get their stock from Sydney, but still there was none available. And geez it's hard to get someone from Bunnings to answer the phone, it just rings out most of the time. And you can't just pop into the store when it's an hour and half drive to Lismore EACH WAY and 2 1/2 hours to Grafton EACH WAY. That's lot of petrol money and an entire day wasted! So we had to work out another product.

        After contacting all the local suppliers the only option was Pink Batts. Definitely not ideal because they are super-itchy, though they are still made from 80% of recycled glass and bio-soluble. This means that any inhaled fibres will dissolve in your lungs and hopefully won't cause bad things to happen to your body.

        For the walls we got R2.0, which is a number which measures the insulating value. We couldn't go higher than this as that is the maximum which fits in our wall width of 7cm. This R value meant that we met the official government requirements for the insulating quality of our house. 18 bags for $60 each was $1000. For the ceilings we got R3.5, which is 17.5cm thick. There is plenty of room in the ceiling so no need to worry about it being too thick. 8 bags for $67 each was about $500.

        As for the plywood, we ordered 7mm for the walls of most of the house. CD Non structural Warrior at just under $50 each for 75 sheets was about $3,500. Each sheet was 2400 x 1200mm. For the bathroom we got Marine ply at 9mm thick, 11 sheets for $114 was about $1,200. They called it DesignerPly Hardwood, whatever that means. Each sheet was 2440 x 1200mm according to the order form, but I think the marine ply was actually a little wider than that.

        So we ordered all of the 2 types of insulation and 2 types of plywood from the one local place as it was simpler, and also as they offered delivery. You can't get delivery from Bunnings without paying hundreds of dollars. This stuff was definitely not fitting in the back of my hatchback! We actually had to wait over 5 weeks after ordering, as the local hardware and timber store were themselves waiting for a delivery from their supplier before they had enough of the right stock for our order. The delivery fee was $66 which is fair considering it was about a 2 hour drive round trip for them, and a while for loading and unloading of the heavy items.

        Finally delivery day rolled around and we asked our wonderful friend to come over and help lift off these sheets. The smaller sheets were about 13kg each, and the larger sheets were nearly 20kg each, which I think is pretty heavy but Josh doesn't think so apparently. I would have loved to be able to help carry them but had to recognise my physical limits so I didn't damage my body. The delivery driver was an old guy who couldn't help carry anything either which was unfortunate. Me and the driver had a chat while the boys were unloading, and oh boy, I could tell he was a Barnaby Joyce voter. That's what they are all like in Tenterfield! He had a young guy as an offsider who was lovely and worked very hard unloading, poor thing had to stop for a drink partway through as it had turned into a bit of a hot day and he was bright red in the face. So I appreciated very much all the work he was doing for us.

        Above is the pile of 7mm plywood, and below is the separate pile of marine ply.

         Then we had a bit of problem when the truck tried to leave, as the driver didn't listen to us when we told him not to back too far down towards the house as it was quite slippery and wet. So of course the truck's tyres were just spinning in the mud. Luckily our wonderful friend had his 4wd ute and was able to give the truck a bit of a pull to get it out. Between the lot of them it turned out that Josh had to be in charge and tell them all where to drive - even though he didn't even have his driver's licence at this point!

     Anyway it was a good day in all, and great to finally have the materials we needed to continue on with finishing the internals of our house. Here's the total of the costs, not including the screws which will be needed to attach to plywood to the walls.

$1000

$500

$3,500

$1,200

equals $6,200

Considering I earn $500 a week that's over 3 months wages!