Jump to 2021 September and Josh put up solar panels! This photo shows the first bottom row of six panels which are 350W each, which - for those of you who don't know - is a very high ability to generate electricity per panel. Older solar panels will often be around 120W, so more than twice as powerful which means you need less panels on your roof for the same amount of electricity creation. The plan is for another row of 6 panels above this.

Then in November Josh's brother came for a visit and brought along some supports he'd made for attaching under the house. 10mm steel plates were welded to the house posts, then bolted to lengths of bar which attached to another piece on the other side with a turnbuckle in the middle for tightening. Unfortunately the weather was against us with constant rain and only a short window of time to do it in, but the boys managed to work out how to get it done just in time. These supports made a difference in the structural integrity of the house with immediate results. Thanks Ben!

 November 2020

     Then our water tank got delivered! Here it is on the back of the truck which was towing a trailer with more tanks. The company was in Brisbane so must have left pretty early in the morning to get our place by about 9am. They were called Select Tanks and were very easy to deal with in every way. The long vehicle wasn't able to go up our driveway, so he pulled over to the side of the road and dropped off the trailer, and then just drove the truck up our driveway.

     Josh says for the unloading of the tank, they laid down soft mats, rolled the tank down a ramp off the back of the truck, rolled it over to the tank stand and stood it up as it wasn't heavy. We had our friend come round to give a hand too. I was at work at the time, so by the time I got home it was already sitting happily on top of the tank stand that we had made. It's very shiny! We decided to get a stainless steel tank as we required either a metal or concrete tank for bushfire resistance. Most people around here just get plastic tanks are they are cheaper, but most of them melted in the bushfires we had 3 years ago and I saw a lot of people getting new plastic tanks to replace them, which seemed quite short-sighted. Also plastic carries risks of contaminating your drinking water with unhealthy chemicals.

    Concrete tanks are hard to find around here, and have a reputation for cracks. Regular metal tanks will rust out in not too many years and they have an inner lining of plastic anyway - not good for bushfires! So for only a slight increase in cost (I believe it was $4,400 including delivery), we decided on stainless steel which has the advantages of

- pure clean drinking water

-won't rust

-bushfire resistance

The corrugated sides of the tank match very nicely with the corrugations of the exterior of the house.

Attached to the tank is a 65mm storz fitting, which is a requirement for bushfire regulations. This means that a Rural Fire Service truck can easily attach their hose to our tank if they need to use our water to protect our place from bushfire. There is also a regular tap for easier access to the water.

     So that the empty tank didn't blow away we ordered a truck of water to be delivered. The tank is 22,000 litres so we ordered 10,000 litres. This was at the height of water shortages so there was quite a wait for people getting the water from the Casino council, but lots of companies to choose from.

Here's a pic of the inside of the tank after the water delivery!

 2020 March

     Here's Josh sanding down the filler in the gaps between the yellow-tongue flooring. As you can see there is a cord coming off this sanding tool which means that we would have had to run the generator to have electricity to run it.

Below you can see another one of the internal wall frames going up, all the pieces numbered and assembled according to the printed plans. This wall separates bedroom 1 from bedroom 2. You can see the Ryobi battery drill in this pic which  means that we didn't need to run the generator when screwing this wall together. Also in this pic is the rubber mallet, another important tool for persuading the pieces to go together when they are being a bit stubborn!

One of the interesting design details is the way the bottom of the door frame is part of the installed wall, and then you have to cut it out, otherwise you would trip over it. As you can see in the below pic, the piece has just been cut out but carefully so as not to cut the floor.

And there's another wall done.

Hmmm I have just realised that I have done this a bit out of order! But seem to have missed these so putting them up now anyway lol!

 March 2020

We continued with the internal framework of the house, using the steel pieces which were pre-cut, pre-drilled and numbered so easy enough to place in the right order according to the plans, and screw together. The bedrooms have built-in wardrobes with their own steel framing.

And the sides...

Then we stood the frames up and screwed them in place, may have required some banging with a rubber mallets and a few select words to get them to sit right!

Other exciting things that happened this month was that I got a part-time job, and that COVID hit. Not that COVID restrictions actually affected us much as we live like hermits by choice as much as we can anyway.

April 2020 - Our little house looking lush in the rainy season. You can see the plywood on the left of the house and on the verandah, ready for the next step.

Which was the laying of a thin (7mm) plywood floor over the top of the yellow-tongue floor, with a blue underfloor layer which you can see in the back far right. We had help from family with this, so thanks so much to Ben for all your hard work! Again!

The photo below shows some of the tricky cuts of the plywood floor to fit around some of the steel framing.

Here is Josh using a tape measure to ensure he is screwing down into the right places, missing the screws from the previous layer of yellow-tongue.

Then I had a go at levelling some of the joins between the sheets of plywood, as there was the occasional height gap of a few mm. I tried using the Ryobi battery-powered planer but it didn't work too well as it just chipped pieces off the top layer of the plywood. More effective was the Ryobi battery-powered sander, so I managed to make it flat enough to remove any trip hazards.

Then we were busy during the cooler months of the years collecting wood to keep warm in our wood stove in the shed, so nothing much happened until

October 2020 - we had the delivery of our stainless steel water tank arranged, and made a tank stand ready for it. First we made a perfect circle the right size marked out with rocks (never a shortage of rocks on this property!)

Then inside the rock circle we added a layer of metal mesh lined with shadecloth...

Designed to be strong enough yet thin enough to hold the gravel in place, with the benefit of being able to drain rainwater.

And had a delivery of gravel poured into it - here's Josh guiding the truck sluice around the circle to get a more even spread.

In the end it was more gravel than we needed (which is good) so we shovelled off the excess and have it ready to use for other projects.

The frustrating thing with gravel is that it is about $50 worth in itself but then you have to pay a few hundred dollars for delivery - definitely can't fit it into the back of a hatchback! All worth it in the end.

 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.