Rayburn Royale

When designing our home, we incorporated a wood-fired stove.  The main reason was that we figured we have 50 acres and plenty of trees so we would be able to harvest timber from our property in a sustainable way to fuel the stove.  Secondly, we like the idea of slow cooking.  The gentleman builder loves stews and I cannot go past a good soup, especially in autumn.  Those cold days where you cannot justify starting a fire (or turning on the heater) but want something warm and tasty for lunch are perfect soup days, in my opinion.  

Just today, I made a vegetable soup with produce generously given to us by the gentleman builder's mum.  It contained fresh organic carrots, beetroot and zucchini in stock and tinned tomato base.  Delicious!

We had been looking for a second-hand Rayburn Royale for months when the Gentleman Builder came across an ad in The Weekly Times.  I knew straight away that it was the stove for us, even though the ad was generic and did not specify the brand.

The Rayburn Royale is made by AGA and, unlike the AGA, designed for solid fuels.  I had my heart set on a white or cream model but we were getting desperate so was willing to negotiate on that point, if a stove in good condition came along.  We had a firm budget of $3000 including transport.  We had seen plenty of good Rayburns which would have come in at $3200 but we just could not afford to extend beyond the budget.  After the purchase there would be additional costs involved in repairs (inevitable when you move something that weighs 300kg and is probably 50 years old), additional parts (our roof is tall and most second-hand stoves do not come with a flue included), and installation (the water jacket needs to legally be connected by a plumber).

When the gentleman builder called the number in the ad, the news was good.  The price, including transport, would be less than we budgeted and when the photos came through, the stove was white.  We purchased and the sellers very kindly assisted us in getting the stove onto a pallet and to their local depot for collection by the trucking company.  We collected from Stoites in Welshpool where they kindly used a forklift to put it into the trailer and just had to work out how to get it safely off the trailer and into the shouse.

The gentleman builder had prepared well.  He had moved the pile of ironbark beams to fashion a ramp that was the right height for the trailer and we made a monorail to use some metal rollers to get the stove around the north and east sides of the shouse and into the front door.

Padawan and little miss were somewhat excited about the acquisition.

Part of the recycled packaging warned to bend your knees to lift the box with a weight of 10-16kg.  Funny when the stove weighs more than 300kg and with both the gentleman builder and I pushing we could barely move it until it was on rollers.

 The monorail we set up to get the stove from the trailer to the north of the house, around the east side and in through the front door.

The stove has an inbuilt hot water jacket which will boost the solar hot water in winter.  This will be plumbed in when the second fit is done.

The gentleman builder was pretty happy with the condition of the stove.  We're all looking forward to the first roast meal we cook in the 'new' stove.

Interior fit

With the plumbing and electrical phase one complete, the gentleman builder sanded and stained the beams with a mix of linseed and tung oil.  The transformation was a bit Cinderella and we are very happy with the result.

The shower base was installed with cement sheeting and silicone at the joins.

We spent a great deal of time researching insulation.  Ideally we would have loved to have purchased a pure wool insulation.  In the UK you can purchase pure wool insulation, in New Zealand 100% wool that is treated with borax.  In Australia, you cannot get such great products (note to Australian wool growers - there is a potential market here).  So, we settled for Earthwool.  It is made from recycled glass (read, beer bottles) and is lower VOC than any of the other products we looked at.  You still need the full garb of safety gear to cut and install it but it's much less itchy than standard pink batts.

We purchased a second-hand plasterboard lifter and what seemed like an awful lot of pasterboard.

We started with the internal wall. Covering it with plain plasterboard made such a huge difference to the space.

Serious measurements were required to get a close fit around the irregularly shaped beams.

 The result was pretty good!

After the insulation dramas the resulted from the Victorian government rebates in 2007, changes were made to the building code which now requires a 5mm air gap between insulation and electrical cables.  To achieve this you can purchase "standard" cardboard separators.  These are available in standard nominal widths to suit common building timbers.  We went for a cheaper option and recycled the cardboard boxes we get when we purchase fruit and vegetables from our local green grocer.

 Again the trusty staple gun earned its place among our most treasured tools.

The Earthwool insulation was cut to length and installed.  Initially we used string to hold it in place but we quickly learned that friction was enough to stop it from falling it we went straight to putting up the plasterboard.

Our joists were not standard spacing throughout the shouse because rather than employ the standard building practice which is to space the joists at 450mm centres and then the last two joists at whatever the leftover is.  Mathematician that the gentleman builder is, worked out how many joists we would need based on 450 centres then divided the space by the number of joists and spaced them evenly.  Thereby, we marked the location of the joists on the beam and the external walls so we could align the screws with the centre of the joists along the plasterboard.  

The external walls, being rendered by hand over strawbales, are far from square.  As a result, we utilised a technique which employs a pencil embedded in a block of wood to mark the wobbly edge of the plasterboard to match the profile of the wall.  A plasterboard saw made pretty easy work of cutting the irregular edge.

Now it is back to rendering the third coat inside before the electrician and plumber come back to install fittings and fixtures.

What goes on behind a wall

In November 2011, we were finally finished a full coat of render inside and removed all the strawbales.  We installed the conduit in the walls and were finally ready for the plumber and the electrician to do their first fit.

For a small house, it was amazing how much wire the electrician managed to install.

These wires will control the lights in the living and dining "rooms" and the fan in the space between the two.

It amazes me what a wall hides.  We have taken detailed notes about the location of the pipes and wires, especially in the bathroom where we plan to hang a mirrored medicine cabinet.

While I would have preferred the plumber to use entirely copper pipes, we just could not afford it.  I don't like the idea of unknown chemicals leaching from the plastic into our drinking water.  Unfortunately, we just did not have the finances to make a different choice.  We have consoled ourselves with the thought that at least our water is stored in food grade stainless steel and does not spend any additional time in plastic.

The chemistry of lime render

Lime render is made from lime putty and sand.  The render mix we make is three parts sand to one part lime putty with water added, as required, to make the correct consistency.

For the first two coats of render we used washed sand.  For the final coat, we will use fine washed sand.  Ideally, with lime render, you want the strongest coat as the first coat and for subsequent coats to be weaker.  To achieve this, our first coat outside was made with one part red brick sand, two parts washed sand and one part lime putty.  The only problem with this is that the brick sand has a clay component to it which shrinks and swells.  As such, the first coat outside cracked quite considerably.  We've learned over time that it's best to keep water up for at least three days after putting a coat of render on.  This means that the render dries slowly and is less likely to crack.

You can purchase lime putty but it's costly so we make our own.  We purchased two second-hand food grade 220L plastic containers that we used to make lime putty in. We make our lime putty in a ratio of roughly one part hydrated lime to one part water (by weight).  You can get hydrated lime from hardware shops as it is used in making concrete.  Making the lime putty requires a great deal of mixing.  Ineffective mixing leads to hard lumps of lime in the render.

Hydrated lime (calcium hydroxide) is made from limestone.  The limestone (CaCO3) is mined then baked at high temperatures (about 800 degrees Celcuis) to release carbon dioxide (CO2) and leave behind calcium oxide (CaO).  The calcium oxide is then slaked (by adding enough water until the exothermic reaction stops) to produce hydrated lime (Ca(OH)2).  We then take the hydrated lime and add more water to make lime putty.  

The lime render applied to the walls and then reacts with the carbon dioxide in the air and reverts back to calcium carbonate. So essentially our straw bales will be covered in rock!

As the render dries it gets whiter

The Green Beetle

The gentleman builder is not only adept at building houses; he has also turned his hand to boat-making. 

For Christmas, the gentleman builder made a boat, the Green Beetle, for padawan.  The boat is a wacky lassie design  obtained online, here.  It's made from left-over ply with fibreglass and epoxy for waterproofing with an oil based paint to protect the wood.  It took longer than the originally anticipated day but the kids get such joy from it and it was a well-deserved break from the monotony that is shouse building.

The gentleman builder's brother made a timber canoe (of much higher quality than the Green Beetle), and the race was on.  No prizes for guessing the winner but the boys had a great time!

Power to the people

At the block we plan to be self-sufficient in terms of power.  We have a Lister Petter generator that provides power to our tools and cement mixer at the moment and will provide back-up to our solar system once the mains power is connected.  We don't plan on using the generator as a standard but will start it up if we need to run the dryer, which is one of our most power-hungry appliances.  

While we are hoping that the wind and the wood fire at the block will allow us to  dry the majority of our washing outdoors or on a clothes airer, I am no stranger to the mud Gippsland can provide and the magnetic forces children seem to possess in attracting it to their clothing.

As the batteries and power connections provide a risk to small hands and the generator is loud when running, the gentleman builder designed a 3 by 3 by 3 metre shed that will house the generator on an independent slab, the batteries and power controls with some space to the south for storage.

Due to the fall of the land, we used prefabricated cement  footings with standard metal ant capping to address any potential termite issues.  We used some of the beams we rejected for the house (because they were not long enough) as bearers. The joists are F17 hardwood and the frame was constructed with structural grade pine (to minimise costs) and this was reinforced with metal strapping for cross bracing.  The winds we get at the block can be pretty severe so the gentleman builder tends to brace everything that can be braced, just to be sure.

The generator will sit on a reinforces concrete slab that sits upon separate concrete footings and is not connected to the rest of the shed.  This should eliminate shake as the generator tends to wobble.

The shed was insulated with air-cell glareshield and clad in colourbond in a shade darker than the shouse roof.  This is one of the cheapest wall cladding you can get that is non-toxic and does not require maintenance.

We picked up some pre-fabricated treated pine stairs from Bunnings for two reasons.  Firstly, they were a quick solution to the fact that two of the doors are about 500mm from ground level.  Secondly, they were incorrectly marked at $15.95 rather than $159.50. 

The batteries we decided on are 600 amp hour deep cycle Hoppecke from Germany.  We have a bank of 12 batteries that are 2 volts each.

The control system is an Outback Mate charger, controller and inverter.

We put on standard external doors (painted with Dulux weathershield) and locks so that we can secure our $19,000 battery investment.