Breaking Ground

20th March 2020

Finally, a few days shy of one year after we first met with Luc and Steve from Detailed Green to start the design process, we finally got the building permit and were able to break ground. The process of getting the building permit took 9 weeks. Surprisingly, it wasn’t any concern about the Passive House concept that held up the approval process, rather we had a 17yr old covenant that specified a particular fence colour while the existing houses around us had without exception gone with a different colour. As our plans had not specified the covenanted colour, we had to negotiate and agree upon waiver to remove any risk to council in going ahead with the locally used colour.

I had been hoping for an earlier start to construction activities and he had contractors lined up ready to go. It was a relief to get underway with only a few days delay to the first of them and so the first two weeks seem to have gone smoothly.

So far we have had:

· the site laser levelled by Shane from Simdig (important to have an absolutely level subgrade plane to support the XPS insulation that is going under the slab to insulate it),

· 70 piers drilled by Jamie Cirillo (the soil test from BM Civil identified as Class P because of 700mm of uncontrolled fill but hey – that slab’s never going to move now!)

· 14 cubic metres of concrete pumped in with some help from two good mates and a pump truck from PJ’s Concrete Pumping. After filling, we put a Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) reinforcing rod (V-Rod from Inconmat) into each pier. While that isn’t needed under the Code, Scott and our engineer thought it makes sense both to prevent any uplift from our reactive clay soils and also bear some of the load imposed on the slab that would otherwise be supported by the XPS. While the XPS (50mm DCT GA300) has a bearing capacity of 300 kPa, it does so with 10% (5mm) deformation so the reo will prevent any movement under the expected loads. The GFRP reo has a much lower thermal conductivity than steel - it would have been a backward step to tie the fully insulated slab to the piers using steel which would have acted as a significant thermal bridge.

· Sewer installed and connected – a great job by Morgan Pugh.

· Electrical and NBN cables/conduits installed by Cale and Fergus from Paul Reilly Electrical who look to be up to the challenge that Passive House detail is going to demand.

Building during a pandemic

Covonavirus is spreading through Australia and the world and our fingers are crossed that it will not significantly affect the build process and supply chain. Whole countries are in lock down and toilet paper and hand sanitiser are out of stock everywhere but we feel pretty safe from infection working outside on the building site. We are hoping that our concreter can continue to get his other commitments completed but need to just concentrate on getting our jobs done; the next being a final re-levelling with stone dust to the top of piers before the XPS insulation can be laid out for the concreter. More to come – hopefully soon!