Front Verandah

The design of the verandah seems to have been more tedious than the design of the frame for the whole house. I am not sure why.

We have chosen a roof profile that is radiussed in such a way that it is convex on the top. Some Victorian homes also had it around the other way, so its concave on the top surface. We like both versions, but eventually we went with convex.

We painted all the verandah components (posts, rafters, battens) before our carpenter installed the frame over. The posts are laminated clear-pine, rafters are clear-pine radiussed to about 4metres. The base of each post is made from merbu so it wont rot, and its mounted on a hot-dipped galvanised steel stirrup (currently this puts the post 50mm above the concrete to allow 40mm for the tiling of the verandah).

Posts are modelled on a commonly used design from the Victorian period (octagonal base, fluted body, Corinthian capital, with cast-aluminium lace [not fitted yet] between the capital and the verandah beam).

External Window Sills Fitted

Our window sills are made from dark-grey concrete, and are intended to emulate the bluestone sills originally used. We were happy enough with the apperance of the concrete that we felt we didn't need to spend the extra to get machined bluestone sills made.

As the sills have oxide colouring in them, we had to install them after the brickwork was washed-down, thus avoiding damage to the sills from the acid used to wash the bricks.

Note the "wash-out" in the top of the sill to encourage draiange. Some excess mortar is yet to be cleaned from the sills following installation. One of the cast-iron "Victorian" wall vents we used is also visible (made in China!).

Rain Water "Harvesting" & Droughts

For some time now we have been in drought conditions in much of Australia. The water storages serving Melbourne are down to 40% of capacity, and we are restricted in how we can use water.
To counter this, many people in Melbourne's suburbs are installing water tanks. (This used to be illegal not long ago! But now the Government encourages it, and has made water-collection or solar hot-water services mandatory in new homes).

To collect rainwater from our roof, I have put two sumps/pits in the ground, which are connected to the total roof run-off. Our roof is about 400 sq-m , so 1mm of rain will give 400 litres of run-off water. In Melbourne we should get about 50mm of rain per month, on average (except that it hasn't rained for ages here).

The first pit (shown at above-left) is a settling pit to allow any grunge from the roof to settle in the bottom, As this pit fills, it over-flows into a second pit which contains a sump-pump in the bottom. The sump-pump is activated by a float-switch when the water level in the pit rises. The water is pumped to to a 12,000 litre storage tank.

To clean the first pit out, I have left a connection to the drain, which can be opened by removing a cap from the PVC pipe.

Our pump is made by Davey. I have selected it on the basis of the flow required, and the amount of head, As there is about 4m of rise, from the pit to the out-fall into the tank, the pump selected will have a capacity of 200 litres per minute (i.e it would take an hour to fill our tank if it was raining that much).

Under heavy rainfall, the pump will not be able to kee-up with the flow of water into the pit, so there is an over-flow out-fall from the second pit into the storm-water drain.

I have yet to commission the pump, but included here is a photo of the first "settling" pit.

Andy the Miniature Pony

Not strictly house-related, but here is Andy.

Andy is owned by one of our neighbours. Andy also lives with a lot of other animals, including two dogs who love to chase him around. So he loves to escape over to our place from time to time, just to eat different grass, and relax away from the dogs!

Also in-shot are three concrete window-sills yet to be installed into the brickwork.

Coolattie

Julie thought it would be a good idea to re-post the photo of Coolattie (located in Melbourne, Australia) as it is the house which was the biggest influence on the design of our Victorian home.

The other house that was influential is also from Melbourne, Australia: