June 28, 2009

Ildica's getting creative again

Ildica's just started making a range of greeting cards from a wide variety of "ingredients"; she's been looking forward to getting back to using her considerable creative talents for a while now.  More background and some examples here: reborn.ildica.com

Posted by conor at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)

June 24, 2009

Upgraded website software for www.ildica.com

I've upgraded the software that publishes this website (and the others: www.huntsbury-preschool.org.nz, etc) to Movable Type 4.261. Mostly straight-forward, although I notice the odd apostrophe and quote mark that's been butchered during the upgrade...

Posted by conor at 3:48 PM | Comments (0)

June 19, 2009

Another Christchurch log house

We had a productive chat with a local builder last night who has previously built a log home (logs provided by Natural Log Homes in Geraldine) on Mt Pleasant here in Christchurch.  It’s an impressive looking building on an impressive site.  It’s a bit larger than our intended house, and our design is (we think) simpler in quite a number of areas; i.e. our design doesn’t have multiple dormers, raking eaves or extensive internal log walls, and it does intend to have fully gibbed ceilings and long-run steel roofing, etc.  This other house is currently up for sale and there are some photos on the Harcourts website here (full listing here).

Posted by conor at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)

June 3, 2009

Mt. Sunday on a Monday (& other Lake Clearwater adventures)

Yet another stunning Queen's Birthday long weekend in the high country, staying in a small bach (no electricity with long drop, etc) at Lake Clearwater. -5 degrees overnight, single figure temperatures during the day, but the sun and cloudless blue skies on 2 out of the 3 days more than countered it.  Mt. Sunday was the location for Edoras in the “Lord Of The Rings” movies, and proved to be a very enjoyable walk for everybody with the excitement of an unexpected river crossing or two to be made on the way to the summit (for some reason the kids refused to take their turn at carrying others across the river!), and stunning views up towards Mt D’Archaic and other peaks in the headwaters of the Rangitata River.

Posted by conor at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2009

Lights… Camera… Action!

Here are a couple of animations I’ve rendered from the current plans. We've removed the dormer window/roof from the east side since it didn't fit within the recession plane on that side.

Simply click on the triangular Play button for each movie; it may take a few seconds to start depending on your Internet connection speed.

Linking is okay, but the Google Earth model, renderings & animations are not for reproduction without my permission.

Posted by conor at 9:45 AM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2009

I found some firelighters for the logburner

Posted by conor at 1:51 PM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2009

Bach at night

The Sketchup/Kerkythea combination's going to be really useful trying to decide on interior lighting plans when we get to that point. The thing about log houses is that it's almost essential to consider all your wiring upfront. Here's a play I've had so far. The rendering also shows I've got a "leak" in my model log wall at one point; this shows as a glow through the logs under the eaves at the top right in the first photo.

Posted by conor at 3:16 PM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2009

More rendering!

The 3D terrain in Google Earth is slightly inaccurate (well, at sub-meter resolution anyway), hence the large visible foundation in my Google Earth model.  I’ve added some actual surveyed terrain for our section and rendered some new images; as you can see, it’s flatter than it appears in Google Earth, although we may need to flatten/excavate a small amount of ground for the NW corner.

  
 

Posted by conor at 2:11 PM | Comments (0)

Sun path

I've used Google Sketchup & Kerkythea to render the path of the sun across the north side of the house on the shortest day of the year. Given that there won't be curtains on the upper windows, it looks like it confirms our thinking that there will be plenty of sun entering the house in the winter to give us some passive solar heating, even when we're not there.


(Click on the image to see a larger version, ~5MB)

Posted by conor at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2009

Bach sun angles

I came across a piece of rendering software today called Kerkythea which allows me to very accurately view sun angles & shadows in my Sketchup model.  It renders my model much more vividly, although it only renders static views (i.e. you can’t fly around).  Here are a couple of views I rendered showing internal sun/shadows at 12 noon on the shortest day of the year.


Posted by conor at 10:53 PM | Comments (0)