Locked!

Yesterday was a big day at the house. We decided we needed to put some sound batts in some of the internal walls, and that the place needed a clean before the plaster was delivered, so in we went.

Lockup carpentry for the house was underway when we arrived - that means that doors were hung and fixed, extra noggings were installed and studs shaved or packed as required in preparation for plaster.



The sound batts we bought were Bradford Soundscreen. We bought the R2.0 (75mm thick) bags - each bag has 6 batts and covers 3.5 square metres. Unfortunately, we bought the 450 mm wide batts instead of the 600mm wide, which creates extra work for us.

The picture below shows the first wall completed. We changed to fishing line after struggling with the yellow nylon for this wall.

Back to the house later today to try and get more insulation in!

Electricals

Today saw the arrival of the sparkies to do the electrical rough in, and at the same time the security folks arrived to install the wiring for the intercom and security system we are installing.



The top level of the house has now been wrapped, and looks totally different. The rest of the doors were also delivered.




Tomorrow we plan of doing a bit of a site clean up - the rubbish cage in the front yard was pushed over by the scaffolding people, and the whole thing needs to be cleaned up. We will also be tidying up some of the remaining home network odds and ends, putting in a few extra noggings in for support of wall mounted items, and install some sound batts in the wall for noise reduction.

Upper Windows

Yesterday the upper windows went in. Not much more to say about them, so here are some pictures:





Home Network

There's been a lot of interest in the post yesterday regarding our home network. As promised, below are the diagrams showing where the points are in each of the rooms.

These points all go back into a space which is currently under utilised, next to the wardrobe in one of the rear bedrooms. The idea is that after we move in, I will put an access door in from inside the wardrobe and the control box will live in this space. We chose it because of it's proximity to the potential home theatre room below, and because it was quite large.

An upper level location is also important - if we want to drop extra cables in later, we can access it from the roof space.

Ground Floor
First Floor

What the hell are these wires?

Yesterday was a big day on the site. After the Easter break it was time for everyone to get back into the most important job in Geelong - building our home.

Yesterday was also a little different for us, as we spent the day working on the site to install some wiring. More info on that later.

The scaffolding in now up, in readiness for the the brickies to start their assault on the upper level. The plumbers were also on site yesterday doing all the internal work. Now that the scaffolding is up, getting into the place becomes more of a challenge!




Home wiring for sound, data and video

One of the things that we decided to do was to try and "future-proof" the home as much as possible. When building a new home, you would like to have all sort of things available in the house to cater for the future - for example, the ability to be able to watch TV in any room, the ability to be able to watch Foxtel in every room, a home computer network, phones where you need them and so on.

With one of us being a "nerd" (that's Bernadette's technical term for someone who works in the IT industry), it was decided by said "nerd" that we needed to have some cool wiring.

The idea was simple - we wanted to have the ability to have everything in every room!

Normally to achieve what we want, you would run a coax for TV to every room, some Category 5 data cable to every room, and a phone line to every room. This can be done with a solution such as the Clipsal Starserve or the Hills Home Hub, and these were investigated - in fact we nearly went with the Hills solution.

A friend of ours (Adrian) is in the antenna business, and also does some home wiring work as part of his service - usually because people want to see TV in every room. Adrian mentioned that he recently installed a different system, and suggested that I check it out.

Our Home Network

The selected home network is a little different - only one type of cable is run to any point which is capable of being used for either phone, data, video or audio. The down side is that the cable you need to run is more expensive than the standard cable.

It works like this - say you have a bedroom with a couple of outlets. Using the system you can plug a tv into one outlet and a phone into the other. If your needs change, you can unplug the tv, and use the same outlet for a data port to get access to the internet. This is done by using adapter cables and changing a couple of jumper cables in the control box.

The diagram below gives you a basic idea.



So, yesterday we wired the house with the network cable, and also put some speaker wire into various places in the home. The required cable comes on a 300 metre drum, and is pretty darn expensive - however the 300 metres did all the outlets I needed, plus a few more that I put in to use up the cable. The cable is rated for data speeds in excess of what is currently available on normal data cable - it's 4 pair shielded and is essentially about the best you can get.

I will draw up a diagram of all the outlets and put it up here if anyone is interested.

The speaker cable was run for the home theatre, al fresco area, and family room - some of it may not be used initially, but if it's in the walls it's easy to hook it up later.

Time for pictures:


The above picture shows all the cables from rooms in the house coming back into a central point where the box will be housed. Also visible is the TV antenna cable, and the phone cable which will feed into the box. Foxtel and other devices with AV outputs can be modulated (turned into TV channels) and sent anywhere in the house - along with infra-red remote control!



The picture above shows some speaker wire in the roof of the al fresco area - the idea here is that we may run some outdoor speakers to this area, so having the cable in the roof makes it a whole lot easier later.

Sorry for the long post - we thought it may be of interest, and I'm happy to answer questions about the home networking product.

Thanks

Special thanks to Adrian at Austech Antennas for his help with the wiring and for installing our brand new antenna.

Special thanks also to Ed for making the trip from Melbourne to help out with the wiring, and coming up with a couple of brilliant ideas. Much appreciated.

Ducts - big and small

Went for a walk to the house today while the tradies were there. Lotus of things have happened in the past few days.

The Brickies have taken advantage of the change of weather to make some progress and have almost completed the lower level.

The scaffolding has been taken down (which is ironic really, as there were people working on the roof when we were there).

The ducted vacuum for the lower level has been installed. Today the ducts for the cooling and heating were being installed.

More Bricks

The past few days have seen some extreme temperatures down our way, so it's not surprising that the brickwork has slowed down.

More pictures to show the current state:




The only minor problem so far is that the chippies didn't see that the drawers in the pantry (which live under the stairs) needed to be framed in. Should be fixed soon!

Roofed!

Lots of activity after the long weekend. We noticed over the weekend that windows and doors for the lower level were put in so the brickies could do their thing.

Today we have a roof and the beginning of a garage. As usual, click on the photo to see a larger version.






Some steel has also been delivered today. At a guess I'd say we are looking at some lintels for the brickwork, and uprights for the retaining wall.

Tiles Delivered

Roofing tiles were delivered last Friday. We expect to see some bricks and tiles go up after the long weekend.

Bricks on site

Some bricks were delivered to the site today - probably enough for the brick around the ground level and garage. Looks as though the brickies may have opened a few packs and moved them to where they are needed.

Out brick choice is a Boral "Cleveland".

Looking at the photo, it's hard to believe that we had persistent rain this morning. It will be interesting to see if any mud gets mixed tomorrow!

Wrapped - partly!

Spoke to the Site Supervisor yesterday who told me that they are waiting on roof tiles, and that the brickie may start the ground floor this Friday (that's tomorrow...)

Problem is, there are no tiles or bricks on site, so I went there not expecting to see much change.

I can honestly say that our house is "green". See for yourself:

Frame / Plumbing / Gutters.

Well, after being away for a few days, we thought we had better go around and see how things were progressing.

We fully expected to see the roof trusses on, but were surprised by some of the other things which have been happening. Check the photos!

Street View

Scaffolding Up - waiting on tiles.


Rear View - Building site has been cleaned up.

Upstairs Access

Plumbing is in - ensuite here

Main bathroom plumbing

Alfresco is now obvious

Gutters and Fascias. Did we choose those colours? Seems like a long time ago.

Windows delivered.

It seems that all the plumbing has been put in, an if you enlarge the photos you can see the green coloured pipes to the dunnies (huh, what's that? Ok darling) ummm "Toilets", which come from the tank.

The gas pipes are in, including the oversized pipe to the alfresco (that's for 'ron).

Everything is all set for the roofers, and I'd say we are now waiting on roofing tiles to be delivered.