Technical matters

With parts of Victoria and NSW currently in flames and parts of Queensland under water it can only be summer time in Australia. The fire season sadly always finds people poorly prepared to face the significant dangers created by  a … Continue reading →

Rain water is like idle teenagers! Rainwater is like a teenager, if you let it stand around it will find a way to get into trouble. The answer is to keep it busy and the best way to keep it … Continue reading →

I had a plumber who used to say A Man who has never made a mistake has never made anything. I like this sort of home spun wisdom, in those few simple words there is so much to learn. You … Continue reading →

I am a big fan of Architectural folly, those needless ornamentations and decorations that make buildings truly memorable.  The English have a great tradition of adding false turrets to make buildings look more imposing and Italianate architecture, like Como House … Continue reading →

We are documenting each day on the construction of an architectural home. This is the work from weeks 12 and 13 Aluminium windows are being fitted into the timber frame before bricklaying is done. The commercial aluminium frames are  are … Continue reading →

The Victorian government is looking at scrapping it’s 6 Star energy rating system. The Age  is reporting that the  removal of the 6-star standard in Victoria is part of a bid to cut government red tape by 25 per cent by … Continue reading →

This is what we were working on during the tenth and eleventh weeks of our construction of an architectural home. Following completion of the roof frame our plumber measured all of his box gutters and roof sheets. The roofing will take … Continue reading →

A builder in the US recently calculated he could  create 220,000 jobs simply by buying materials Made in America. The former economist was not mucking about, (the) “Made in America House” is constructed entirely from U.S.-made products, from duct tape … Continue reading →

Learning all  those millimetre and centimetre parts of a  system like metric, looks daunting at the outset but we have all learned that it is really  child’s play.  Getting your head around the numbers is just a question of experience, … Continue reading →

#170dayHouse day91 waterproofing continues, order placed for fixing material , wall tiles delivery arranged.

Why listening to your parents is  the worst thing to do  if you want an apprenticeship! I recently received an application and a CV from young man who wanted to become a carpenter’s apprentice. I really liked the way his … Continue reading →

Dad, my car won’t start! With four children in their first few years of driving I get to hear this about every three months.  Flat batteries caused by age or stupidity, are mostly the problem. My response is nearly automatic, … Continue reading →

This plaster delivery is a perfect example of the subcontract system. These young blokes are going to set the world on fire through hard work and long hours. They get paid by the amount they get done not just by the … Continue reading →

All of the people who work on building sites need a vehicle to carry their tools and equipment.  Can you guess what work this fella does? He clearly doesn’t need much equipment. Similarly he doesn’t need a ladder or any … Continue reading →

People wander onto my sites with the strangest requests. A woman walked in recently looking for a piece of timber to put under the wheel of her fridge. She explained the floor was out of level and she needed a board … Continue reading →

You may have heard the expression 80-20 Rule bandied about before but never stopped to think about how it may relate to you or your life. I know I hadn’t, up until…today! The 80-20 rule, or Pareto principle, basically means … Continue reading →

  The Victorian Government has released its permanent bushfire regulations nearly three years after the black Saturday bushfres that ravaged significant parts of Victoria and took 173 lives. The regulations which replace earlier ones from 2010 call for a minimum … Continue reading →

  Have you seen these symbols around and wondered what they were all about?They are called QR codes and they can be pretty funky. The QR code is basically a way to represent information just like the ubiqitous bar code … Continue reading →

These are the activities from our third week of construction. Our subfloor was inspected but not passed. The engineering plans showed part of the subfloor running in a different direction to the one I used. This is an administrative issue … Continue reading →

Walking under a ladder is meant to be bad luck. Given that some knucklehead is working on top of that ladder it is  also pushing the bounds of common sense. The bad luck idea is said to have started in … Continue reading →

Recently in our post Send Lawyers guns and Money, we called out Guardian Building Products USA  for being heavy handed and unprofessional. We claimed they had no interest in furthering best practice,after they threatened legal action against a blog, not … Continue reading →

It is a fact that if you stuff insulation into tight spaces it will not perform as designed. The ability of the batt to keep pockets of air captive is greatly reduced. Down goes the R rating, up go your … Continue reading →

Those darlings of workplace productivity The ACTU have made the following pronouncement all asbestos should be removed from the built environment by 2030. For those of us who had our education paid for by the government, built environment means every … Continue reading →

The forensic investigation into The World Trade Center’s multiple collapses has made some interesting findings even a combination of high-speed collisions by two airliners and fires across multiple floors would not have destroyed the Twin Towers The investigation by U.S. … Continue reading →

If like me you think LED lights are expensive and belong in caravans and torches, think again World’s First 60 Watt Equivalent LED Bulb for Under $15

There isn’t a guy called Bunnings, but there is a Jack Bowen. This old-time timber man has his head around the carbon sequestration business, which I touched on before; There are no published estimates of carbon stored in the 15 million … Continue reading →

Thomas Crapper, the man who popularised the  flush toilet and lent his name to the slang term for toilet, would be turning in his grave at the state of US toilets and their notorious Poo lap of honour. One of … Continue reading →

The new six star energy requirements are out.  A six star home should use about 75% of the energy of the same design with a 5 star rating. Under the new rules, homes  should be naturally more comfortable for longer periods in … Continue reading →

Carbon has become the worlds whipping boy. With all the recent coverage of carbon taxes and carbon credits you could be forgiven for thinking carbon  is a dangerous pollutant. We are wrong to associate carbon with smoking factory chimneys  or … Continue reading →