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caption="Looking from dining to bedroom"]
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caption="ensuite"]
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In the wet areas and as thermal mass, it was decided to use timbercrete: waste sawdust, cement and sand which is formed into blocks/bricks and air dried. The beauty of this product is that it can be nailed into and cut like wood, it is lighter weight than similar sized masonary. I went for the larger block as I have lived with brick feature walls in our last house for 13 years and was over it. The other option was mudbrick. I feel the benefit of mudbrick is if you make it yourself and thereby save money and fuel miles not having it delivered, but if I have to have them delivered from afar then I can't see the point! We wanted the house finished in our lifetime so we chose the timbercrete. As you can see the hexagonal windows did prove to be a bit of a challenge to the bricklayer, Mike Pascoe but nothing he can't handle - awesome bloke! The local carpenter, Johan, was finding the framing for the straw bales very challenging. He kept muttering the word - difficult. So as a sign of mercy and peace of mind for myself, I let him go. Instead we now have "it's not a train crash" Nick and Roger of www.strawbalehouse.com.au who specialise in straw bale building. Nick and Roger believe that they can get the timber frame up before Christmas. We're hoping to do a wall raising one weekend soon so stay tuned! I'll try to remember the video camera for that one. Rosalba
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- media left, study right