August 16, 2010
Fluffy goodness
With an amazing amount of help from a wide variety of friends (profuse thanks in no particular order to Grant, Dorje, Trevor, Marcus, Dave A, Bernadette, Shane, Leonie, Andrew, numerous kids) over the last couple of weekends, we pretty much have the bach fully insulated and partially gib-boarded. Ildica & I had pretty much 12 hours straight gibbing & insulating yesterday, followed by an hour of tidying up and getting the scissor-lift back out (with interior doorframes now in, there's one doorway the scissor-lift had to go through that only had 1cm clearance above and on the sides) and on to it's trailer before a slow & foggy 2 hour trip back home, getting to bed after midnight. Another milestone was spending our first couple of nights over the weekend in the bach, even if it was on camp-mattresses in a corner upstairs.
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Posted by conor at 12:21 PM
August 2, 2010
Gumboots in the lounge
We finally got the log burner sparked up, and it really makes the place start to feel like a home! 70km/h winds and rain outside proved to be good conditions for testing the waterproof-ness of the roof, with a couple of little leaks becoming apparent (on the bright side, this is the right time to find these things out, before we start installing insulation and drywall). The house feels absolutely rock-solid in those windy conditions, as it should. Most of the internal framing is now done. Most of the wool insulation is piled up in what will be the bunkroom, so the kids spent probably a couple of hours in there bouncing up and down like in a big foam pit at a kids activity centre!
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According to the Porters website, their anemometer broke after recording 220km/h winds today, so it would seem to have been relatively sheltered in the village!
Posted by conor at 1:47 PM
July 26, 2010
Spot the difference!
What a difference a year makes. This time last year we were working through ideas & plans with Craig Boslem, and I put together my Google Sketchup model and rendered it to produce some "artists impressions". It's great to see how the real thing compares now the scaffolding has come down. Still a fair bit of work to do inside, although the drain-layer, plumber, and log-burner installer should all be in residence this week.
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Posted by conor at 9:42 AM
July 13, 2010
Roof finished
The roof is finished, so it's the window manufacturer's turn to cock things up, by making our 2 large north-facing triangular windows a little on the small side. Like 500mm too small. So they're frantically getting a replacement pair made by their subcontractor and they should be going in tomorrow at the same time as the scaffolding is coming down.
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Posted by conor at 10:44 AM
July 5, 2010
Bach fly-throughs
I moved the previous movie renderings of my bach model to YouTube.
Posted by conor at 4:44 PM
June 28, 2010
Nearly got a roof
Can’t say we’re particularly impressed with Metalcraft Roofing, but we’ve nearly got a roof. Veranda is looking great, windows are starting to go in. The internal block wall is in and filled with concrete. We’re in discussions with a stair company, and we’re waiting for some nice fluffy wool insulation that we can start packing into the roof.
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Posted by conor at 9:46 PM
June 14, 2010
Half a roof
Well, we've got half a roof, and hopefully the other half will be done in a day or two. It's fairly consistently cold up there now, but the view from the upstairs bathroom and bedroom Velux roof windows is looking great now that we've got the upper level fully floored. Mark also mentioned that he had a kea hop into the ground floor area the other evening to check the place out while he was working aloft, so we might want to be careful we don’t leave anything small, shiny and/or chew-able lying around!
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Posted by conor at 9:58 AM
June 3, 2010
Roof ready to go on
- Electrical pre-wire done? Check.
- Solar panel tray and piping installed? Check.
- Roof structure finished and inspected? Check.
It was still –4C at 10am on Tuesday this week when Ildica took a scissor lift back up to complete the above tasks. Mark’s still plugging away, and doing a fine job with Jamie’s help.
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Posted by conor at 11:41 AM
May 24, 2010
Calm before the storm
There’s up to 300mm of heavy rain forecast for this week, which was the week we were hoping to start getting the roof on, and I’ve just read that there may be up to 1.2m of snow above 800m as well… Mark has been doing a great job so far, and most of the roof structure is now in place.
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Posted by conor at 4:30 PM
May 11, 2010
Slave gang
The slave gang hard at work, and just for a change, there's even a photo of me.
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Photos courtesy of Trevor Keohane.
Posted by conor at 2:20 PM
May 10, 2010
Another great weekend for being at Castle Hill
Trevor & Della kindly came up to give us a hand finishing off the first coat of stain on the log walls. Yet another beautiful autumn weekend. Fingers crossed for another 2 weeks of good weather until we get the roof on.
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Posted by conor at 12:38 PM
May 3, 2010
Bit of colour
We’ve got stuck straight into the manuka-coloured preservative oil, which at this stage looks quite light, but will be darker after the second coat. Also pictured is the view from the bunkroom.
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Posted by conor at 10:41 PM
April 30, 2010
Up she goes
Well, the weather forecast was fairly scary (incidentally, Queenstown is looking like flooding today), but it could have been a whole lot worse (we ended up with drizzle here and there, mild temperatures, and not too much wind). Graeme and the team from Natural Log Homes managed to get 50 tons of logs into position in 2 days flat, leaving only another half day of tweaking to be done. Absolutely amazing to witness! Mark is already getting rafters up, so it’s going to be a busy couple of months more keeping up with the speed of progress. Mark reckons the tuning fork post on the veranda would make a great gun-rest – there are certainly a lot of bunnies around up there at the minute.
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Posted by conor at 12:25 PM
April 13, 2010
Test timelapse
A test timelapse using our Canon A430 P&S, CHDK with an intervalometer script, Windows Movie Maker to stitch the frames together, and Youtube!
Posted by conor at 1:26 PM
March 17, 2010
Wizards with chainsaws
Great progress being made down in Geraldine.
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Images courtesy of Graeme Mould, Natural Log Homes.
Posted by conor at 9:46 AM
February 22, 2010
Digger-tastic!
A whole weekend of playing with diggers! First the Trimble Sandpit Open Day, and then a mini-hex up at Castle Hill. Big boys toys!
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Posted by conor at 3:28 PM
February 18, 2010
8 logs down
Great progress down at Natural Log Homes, with the house up to the 8th log. Still a fair way to go with 2 more log rounds to go on, plus a fair bit of detail to finish off including supporting logs, window cut-outs, flyways, etc.
 Lounge window from NW |
 From staircase towards kitchen |
 From hall entrance towards lounge |
 Bedrooms/bathroom/mudroom area |  Bunk/mud-room windows from SW |  Bedroom & hallway arch |
Posted by conor at 8:20 PM
January 12, 2010
More progress
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| One cooked slab | Two sets of little footprints | Three (and a bit) logs |
Posted by conor at 12:03 PM
December 7, 2009
Skivving off school
What could be more educational than watching concrete trucks in action? We dragged the kids out of school/kindy for the day and headed up to Castle Hill to be there at 8am when the first of the four truck loads of concrete was finally being poured for the slab. Very interesting to watch, and not surprisingly, the whole thing looks markedly different now. The concrete placers made it look very easy. And as Mark says, with the amount of concrete & steel in this slab, this particular house ain’t going anywhere.
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Posted by conor at 2:52 PM
December 1, 2009
One well insulated slab on it’s way, and we’re onto the second row of logs
Graeme is on to the second row of logs in his yard in Geraldine, and Mark is getting closer to pouring the slab concrete. It will be a very well insulated slab with 75mm of extruded polystyrene insulation (XPS) under the slab, and 30mm of XPS both inside and outside the block foundations. Also visible are some of the foundation “thickenings” that will contain bolt-down points for the hurricane rods through the log walls. The big blue coil is a future-proofing option of putting in water-circulating heating pipes through the slab so that in the future, we could choose to connect a heat-pump to the pipes for heating the house via the slab.
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Posted by conor at 11:28 AM
November 27, 2009
An in-situ “artists impression” of the house at Castle Hill
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Posted by conor at 12:21 PM
November 26, 2009
Checking out progress with my Mum & Dad
Mark the Builder needed a flat-plate compactor brought up to compact the material inside the slab, so it seemed like a good opportunity to take Mum & Dad up to check out the progress and explore around the village. We tramped up through the beech forest to the bush-line, which gave us a great vantage point over the basin, and from where we could see Mark & Jamie beavering away 300m below. I also stitched together a panorama of the Castle Hill basin stretching from Craigieburn/Broken River round to Lake Lyndon.
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Posted by conor at 2:21 PM
November 16, 2009
First sod has been turned!
Mark the Builder’s been busy on his first week; he’s encountered a fair amount of rock, but as he said, at least that means the house won’t be going anywhere! We’ve also got a big pile of soil/rock that we’re probably going to have to find a home for. Great to see work started though.
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Posted by conor at 2:45 PM
November 9, 2009
D-Day (as in Dig Day!)
Mark our builder will have started today on foundation work up at Castle Hill. We spent a great weekend camping with friends down near Geraldine which is where Natural Log Homes are based, so we called in to see how things were there. We were amazed to see the first of our logs (the “sill logs”) laid out in the yard, and Graeme also showed us the unusual log he proposed to use as the main support for the top ridgepole. Another milestone reached on the journey.
 Ildica, Ruairi & Evie sitting on the south bunkroom wall |  This support log will end up about 3-3.5 metres long |
Posted by conor at 1:45 PM
September 23, 2009
Building consent application is underway
Craig from Curio Design has finished our plans for the bach at Castle Hill, and pretty spectacular they’re looking too. He’s got a couple of elevations up on his website now here.
Posted by conor at 1:33 PM
July 20, 2009
"View" from the lounge
| After Evie and I checked out Porters ski field, we called in to Castle Hill village in the hope of having a chat with the Boulds who’ve spent the last 25 years or so lovingly working on their log home up there. It was great to see their place, and get some more ideas that we can maybe incorporate into ours. I took a wintry photo of the view NW from the “lounge” on our section, and a nice shot of the Castle Hill basin from up on the Porters access road. |
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Posted by conor at 9:53 AM
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
May 19, 2009
I found some firelighters for the logburner
Posted by conor at 1:51 PM
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
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
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
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
May 8, 2009
Holiday house model
I've enjoyed a bit of time over the last week or so mocking up a model of the holiday house we're hoping to build at Castle Hill when circumstances permit. I've used a free tool called Google Sketchup which allows me to display the model in Google Earth. I'm finding it useful for visualising sightlines, sun angles, etc. You can open the model yourself in Google Earth by clicking on this link (~6MB). Once you open it in Google Earth, the best place to start is to double-click the “Take the tour!” link in the “Bach” folder. You can also toggle the different parts on and off (e.g. the roof, 1st floor or site plan/sections). Double-clicking on each of the items under the “Views” folder will also show you different aspects of our proposed house. It’s been a very enjoyable project on which to learn how to use Sketchup, although I concede I may have gone slightly overboard downloading additional elements from the Google 3D Warehouse to place into my model!
Craig Boslem from Curio Design down in Cromwell is the log home designer working on this design for us. While a large part of the vision for the house is Ildica’s & mine, Craig is doing a great job of getting our ideas on “paper”, and guiding us as to what will and won’t work.
Linking is okay, but the Google Earth model, renderings & animations are not for reproduction without my permission.
Posted by conor at 2:06 PM