enough with the timber already

When your on a roll as they say.. well the is the Last timberlicious entry (possibly)
The Master Bedroom retreat has a Plasma of course and a very comfy Bay Leather couch and a wall or two that needed something? what about timber panelling... of course!
here are some picks...

Timberlicious 2

After the Timber Lining Project under the front balcony and the outdoor room Western Red Cedar - applied another idea upstairs.
Here's the result... took around three square meters of Paneling. All affixed with the trusty Bosch cordless nail gun with 32 mill braids into wall studs.

Timberlicious Part 1 & 2 &

The underside of our front balcony looked fine but was lined on plain old plasterboard. Nothing wrong with that right? - correct!. However, a wander through Bunnings and a "clearance" sign on some interesting timber flooring inspired a project. Sure you can buy laminated timber look flooring but after all its just a picture printed on plastic and stuck on MDF. Well this "special" was actually engineered Australian timber (Real Timber on 4 ply veneer - so it was actually timber and the construction was stronger and 12 mill thick verses just 8-9 mill for most laminates. It was also light and rigid which means it doesn't sag like most laminates. The system was tongue and groove so so easy for overhead installation verses most laminates which a some sort of "clip lock" which in fine for flooring but near impossible for overhead installation.

Most of the higher end Metricon display homes have the underside of two story verandas lined, but of you ask the price you quickly are satisfied with plaster. So this project costs around $350 to DIY and probably takes up one and a half days. Hardest part is cutting out down lights and security camera holes. The part finished effect looks great and theres nothing quite like the look of natural timber.

It's not quite finished but heres the progress so far.



Finally Finally Finished
You know what they say "the first 90% of the project takes 90% of the time and the last 10% of the project also takes 90% of the time. The cut in's and horizontal cuts took hours but it's all done! see below:



Now there's some inspiration to timber-up other parts of the house. Here are some interesting wow treatments of the Wolesley residence by Mckimm in Brighton. don't quite have the budget for this... but it's are great inspiration nonetheless

Outdoor Roomification

Outdoor Rooms are meant to be outdoors right, but sometimes you want them to be a tad more roomy. After all its Melbourne right... stinking hot one month and Antartica the next. Plus once you get a few electronic installed you want a bit of protection from the full effects of the weather... be it good or bad. On a recent trip to masters we spotted so steel laser cut screens and the sizing was right and the application was perfect.

Still lets the inside out and the outside in, so one day later hey presto all done, screens (3) cost $240 and the associated woodgrain effect extruded aluminium was around 200 on top of that the effect looks cool and with around 60% screening works a treat. There is still plenty of outdooriness about the space but more roomy feel with added protection from the elements

Front Landscaping - Complete

12 months on the front garden is complete. we've gone for selected rows of Rosemary and Lavender, Large Bamboo's (that will get larger and several giant Bird of Paradise, plus giant Agave and a number of unusual succulents. We've also dropped in a American Cotton Palm to match the ones in the rear garden, which should eventually hit 6 - 10 metres in height. I don't miss mowing the front lawn at all and it's great to experience the perfume effect from both the Rosemary and Lavender, Overall the effect is a simple semi tropical feel that looks after itself. An automated sprinkling system system from Gardina also makes this a self sufficient space..

Solar Gaining

All Done - Solar system installed - After much investigation, pondering, and comparison, we decided to go with Solar Gain. They are reportably the second biggest in Australia and aside from Solar Power they also do solar boosted hot water systems - so on balance they "get" solar energy. The Bloggesphere gave them a pretty good rap on sites like Product Review and Whirlpool and the conversations were intelligent and informative unlike some of the headline marketing outfits which are clearly focussed on "closing" sales. There are a bunch of Panels on the market but some are Chinese al'cheapo's and then there is the Inverter selection. Most of the "Deals to there are cheap 2nd tier technology and have a limited practical life - So these are both areas where you don't want to skimp on.

We went with German Q Cells and Austrian Fronius Inverter - don't know why but I kind of trust Germans - well some of them.

Install took about 8 hours and the team was great and seemed to go the extra mile especially on the wiring - The electrical inspector arrived the next day and gave it a big tick - so thats a reassuring sign.

System headline specs:

Q-Pro C-cells : Panels 14 ~ around 3.75 Kw
Fronius Galvo Inverter
Monitoring - Fronius "solar.web and iPhone / iPad apps

The Inverter install was very clean, very neat - no conduit, no cables, no mess they were all hidden. Plus the proximity to the Fuse Box was perfect - which helps maximise self consumption (so Im told)

The Q Cell Panels - are lighter and stronger than cheaper panels, meaning less weight and higher strength alloy and glass. Plus of course higher efficiency = higher wattage

The Fronius Galvo inverter has built in Wifi and a data server, and a iPad / iPhone app that means you can monitor them real time and it also logs a full power generation history, complete with graphs etc etc. It's a cool piece of kit

Here are some picks of the install:

Also here a snap of the Fronius Inverter iPad app in action. Yesterday on a mostly cloudy August winters day we generated around 10 Kilowatts respect!

The Metricon Adventure: Solarisation

The Metricon Adventure: Solarisation: As per a previous post we talked about how we installed an off-grid system that peaks at around 1.5 Kw that supplies the outdoor room LED TV...