The 20/20 House Part 41
The Gruen Eco Design blog about how to convert your dream from an energy efficient home into a reality.
20/20 Passive House Site Tour
It has been another busy month. It’s already the end of April, and I had promised Laurel, our office manager, an update to go into our newsletter
A busy month it has been indeed. But at least my family and I managed to get away for the school holidays.
So, what have we been up to?
All the tiling has been completed.
The timber flooring is in.
We’ve done our final selections and markups for the cabinetry shop drawings. The joinery will start to go in next week.
The solar panels will also be installed next week. We are going for a 6.66kW system with 18 panels.
We also had a site tour with APHA (Australian Passive House Association) this week. We had a great crowd of around 60 people. Apparently, many were unable to get a ticket. Rest assured, we will do more tours in the coming months.
The light fittings are about to go in as well. As I had previously explained, to save some money, we are providing some of the fixtures and fittings ourselves. Which is a great way to reduce the build cost. But also comes with some responsibilities and duties. There is a lot of running around involved. Buying the items and getting them to the site.
And not all builders are happy for you to take items out of their contract. Due to warranty and scheduling issues. This means if you are to supply items, you must make sure they are on site when required. Or you are responsible for any delays.
Most of our light fittings come from Ikea and Beacon Lighting. And of course, we went to Ikea a while ago, to buy all our light fittings. But sadly, a few were out of stock. However, our lighting deadline was today. So, I had to fit in a late-night Ikea trip yesterday, to buy the missing 4 light fittings. And while at Ikea, I also bought all the light bulbs.
How great are these new LEDs? They are sitting between 0.8 and 2 watt per light bulb! Isn’t that amazing!
While at Ikea I also got our black sinks for the laundry and the kitchen.
The saga with our easement continues. Not only did Yarra Valley Water refuse our proposal. The pipes are in the way of our outdoor entertainment area. Our plan had been to have a nice decking out of our dining room. With a pergola over. We learned early on that we could not have any footings in the easement area. Meaning we settled on paving. However, due to the slope of the land, we would need to excavate, to create a flat area, suitable for an outdoor table. But the actual pipe is so close to the surface, that we cannot even excavate there. After a lot of toing and froing. We had to adjust our ideas.
We will now have a small area there for our fire pit. And will extend our small decking at the back of the living room further. From 2 to 4 metres. This requires more excavation and will reduce our lawn area, but so be it.
Thanks to Nadia from Platylobium Landscape Design who helped us come up with a great compromise.
Hand over date is set for mid-June. We are almost there.
Can’t wait to show you our joinery once it is in.
Stay tuned.