@nofam is the house finished yet?

Jase2985:

 

@nofam is the house finished yet?

 

Ha ha, no - just starting - footings being poured this week.  Spec hasn't changed much since I posted here, we just ran out of time last year due to 'robust debates' with the council - full steam ahead now though!

Thats good :) keen to hear how it goes, we have just got an architect doing our plans at present.

Keen to know as much as i can or you are willing to share

Jase2985:

 

Thats good :) keen to hear how it goes, we have just got an architect doing our plans at present.

 

 

 

Keen to know as much as i can or you are willing to share

 

Very willing to share everything - in fact, I'll be blogging about it and the products we've chosen, lessons learned etc.  Flick me a DM if you have any specific questions for now though, happy to help!! 

Keen to read the blog :)

Jase2985:

 

Keen to read the blog :)

 

Blog updated (still not much here yet)

https://homelessguy.nz/

That is a huge wedding present for your sister to give you in designing the house for you. So much time and work involved.

mattwnz:

 

That is a huge wedding present for your sister to give you in designing the house for you. So much time and work involved.

 

Absolutely, especially as she lives in Perth and designs commercial buildings (primarily, private hospitals).  To be fair, she handed it over once the concepts were complete and we engaged a local architectural designer to do the working drawings and manage the consent process (that's a whole blog post right there!!).

nofam:

 

Jase2985:

 

@nofam is the house finished yet?

 

 

 

 

Ha ha, no - just starting - footings being poured this week.  Spec hasn't changed much since I posted here, we just ran out of time last year due to 'robust debates' with the council - full steam ahead now though!

 

Race ya! My footings just got poured a week or so ago...

Hey guys, thought it might be useful to someone to update this thread now we've been in the house coming-up 6 months, and have had the underfloor heating turned on for the last 6 weeks.

We ended up doing 70mm insulation under the slab, full slab-edge insulation (extruded poly, glued to the side of the slab and plastered over), R4.0 in the external walls, R6.0 in the ceilings, and all downlights are IC-F rated.  Powerbill for April was $160, with Day/Night rate utilization at 35:65.  The underfloor heating is set to come on if the slab temp drops below 22, and at 11pm, it boosts up to 24, and holds that until 7am.  So this morning when I got up at around 7am, it was 24 in the living area, and 0.9 outside.  The house seems to be holding it's heat well, even on days with little passive gain, and there only been a couple of days since the UFH was turned on that the living area has felt a little cool at night, which is solved by turning the 9kW Daikin floor-mount on for 10 minutes to so.

So overall I'm pretty happy with things - I think this month's bill will be closer to $200, but with a coffee machine and chest freezer running 24/7, plus the odd dryer session for sheets/towels etc that's pretty good.  For comparison, I went back and looked at power bills from our old house in 2016 - the bill for April was $180, which excluded hot water (we had on-demand Gas), and the house was only 95m2 (new one is 249m2)

Thanks for the update @nofam, i have some curious questions if you dont mind me asking

how are you heating the underfloor heating?
Who did you use for the undefloor insulation?
Did you go for 140mm framing?
How was the house heat wise in summer? did it overheat or did you need to use the heatpump to keep it cool?

Jase2985:

 

Thanks for the update @nofam, i have some curious questions if you dont mind me asking

 

how are you heating the underfloor heating?
Who did you use for the undefloor insulation?
Did you go for 140mm framing?
How was the house heat wise in summer? did it overheat or did you need to use the heatpump to keep it cool?

 

 

 

Hey Jase, yeah no worries:

• Underfloor system and domestic hot water supply (300L Peter Cocks mid-coil cylinder) are heating by a 11.4kW air-to-water heat pump.  Actual load is only around 8kW, so we have a spare loop of pipe to the outside of the master bedroom for heating a spa pool
• Insulation was installed by the builder - I specified it (Expol Thermaslab H).  Slab edge insulation (XPS) was supplied and fitted by the Sto applicator, as he pre-treats it to make plastering over it easier
• Yes, all exterior walls are 140mm to give us the space for R4.0 batts.  The framing is covered with RAB Board for bracing and waterproofing, and then AAC panels are screwed over this before being plastered with Sto rendering system
• House was hot, but it really was a cracker of a summer.  But the house has really good cross-flow ventilation, so it was pretty easy to cool in the evenings.  I only used the Daikin floor-mount once to cool the living area when I was working from home, and it was super quick to cool, and stayed nice and chill for the afternoon

thanks @nofam

would have been good if you could have kept your blog going :)

Jase2985:

 

thanks @nofam

 

would have been good if you could have kept your blog going :)

 

Yeah, I still plan on getting back to that, but life gets in the way of these things aye.  But always happy to help if people have any questions.