The first hurdle... pleasing the experts

It was inevitable.

Sometime, sooner or later, we would run into a roadblock, either in the design process, the planning stage or the build itself. In a way, we're happy that it did happen sooner, rather than later. And again, it confirmed the need to go to this kind of detail before Neal started drawing the building design.

All the necessary experts have been out to the site - the Structural Engineer thought we were mad, but believed we could do it; the Surveyor also thought we were mad, but believed we could do it. Then came the Bushfire Consultant who not only thought we were mad, but said a resounding and unequivocal "No!" to our proposed house site. Drat and bother.

It does, however, have a very serious context.

In light of the devastating bushfires in Victoria in 2009, the Tasmanian Government sought to develop appropriate controls for the construction of buildings in bushfire prone areas.  Planning applications for residential uses in bushfire prone areas need to demonstrate that risks to people or property from bushfires can be minimised to an acceptable level.

This primarily means ensuring that residential lots and dwellings can be defended during all but the most extreme bushfire events by the provision of a defendable space around dwellings, adequate access for fire-fighting vehicles and adequate water supply. This is usually demonstrated to Council by a bushfire hazard management plan (BHMP) that has been endorsed by the Tasmania Fire Service.

Essentially, the Bushfire Consultant rejected the proposed building site on three main factors:

1. A cleared Building Protection Zone with a 40m perimeter around building, and a second Fuel Modified Buffer Zone with a 50m perimeter outside Building Protection Zone would be needed. Due to the proximity of the proposed site to the property boundary, the required clearance Zones would necessitate the clearing of trees on neighbouring property
2. In the event of a bushfire, the steepness of the rock escarpment would create some kind of flaming vortex which would frizzle the house and anything in it because of the proximity of the building to the cliff edge
3. As there was only one access road, any inhabitants would be trapped in the building and because of point 2 above, this would be bad.

Fortunately, because Neal had gone out to the site with the Bushfire Consultant, they were able to discuss other potential house sites at the same time. Even more fortunate, the Bushfire Consultant agreed that a position about 40 metres further to the north-east along the same rock escapment was far more suitable - the house could be set back from the cliff edge, the slope wasn't quite as steep and the Bushfire Zones could be accommodated on our property.

So while we await the official report from the Bushfire Consultant, Neal is taking the Surveyor back to the site to get some more measurements of the land further along the escarpment.
The 2012 Conference of the Australian Institute of Architects is being held in Brisbane and Neal will be flying up from Tasmania to attend. The plan is for Viktoria and the Android to pick Neal up on the Sunday and bring him to our current home so we can catch up face-to-face.

And maybe - just maybe - begin to sketch out a house plan...

The cost of things to come

The experts being consulted obviously aren't doing the work for hugs.

As we've said before though, we would much rather invest money into getting all the 'ground research' done now, rather than have an amazing design that we find out we cannot use because the house would be under threat of sliding down the mountain.

To give you an idea of the cost of expert advice for building a house in Tasmania (prices exclude Goods & Services Tax of an additional 10% unless stated):

1. Soil Test - $409 (3 test sites and report)
2. Structural Engineers - $165 per hour for the Engineering Director; $120 per hour for the Design Engineer
3. Land Surveyor - $165 per hour (about 4-5 hours to survey site)
4. Bushfire Consultant - $1,320 (inc GST) on-site consultation fee

Neal has been excellent at copying us in on emails and relaying information from the various consultants engaged on our behalf. Getting this level of feedback has been invaluable in reminding us exactly why we picked JAWSarchitects - we would have been totally out of our depth in even guessing where to start.  

If all of the above looks daunting, don't forget - ours is a difficult site, with 'interesting' access issues in a remote area of Tasmania. Costs and the degree of additional expert involvement are indicative of this.

Assessing the "potential house site"

A few months earlier, before Viktoria and the Android departed the site following their ill-equipped camping trip, we purchased a bundle of stakes, spray-painted them a lovely shade of fluorescent pink, and hammered them into the ground in a rough amoeboid shape demarking the "potential house site" (as it was now known).

Deliriously giving Jackson Pollock a run for his money, we called our installation Pink Poles and toasted the site with a cup of billy tea. The fluoro pink stood out beautifully amongst the lush green trees - making it much easier for anyone needing to visit able to locate the potential house site.

Towards the end of 2011, we had engaged an engineer ourselves to take some initial soil tests. There is something very cool about knowing your landscape is comprised of Jurassic dolerite and Triassic sandstone...

Given the frightening  unusual  complex  challenging nature of our site, architect Neal Mackintosh recommended that we get the input of a few professionals first - before he considered putting pen to paper.
This was very sage advice, especially considering:

1. we didn't know if the top of the cliff could be built on
2. the shape of the land on top of the cliff would ultimately dictate the shape of the house
3. we didn't know what kind of vehicles would be able to make it up the access road without the road collapsing underneath them
4. Tasmanian law requires a Bushfire Management Plan in rural areas to approve a site

It's been just over a month since we engaged JAWSarchitects.

It's quite amusing to see people's reactions when they ask us what the house looks like and we answer "Absolutely no idea!". Naturally, we would love to be fantasising about designs now, but there would be no point going to all that work, only to find out that the house couldn't be built where we wanted, because we hadn't carried out any due diligence first.

So we were happy at accept Neal's advice that we needed some expert input first.

TIP: Your architect knows more than you do about architecture. Deal with it. You also need to be patient. Try deep breathing if patience doesn't come naturally.

We were also happy to accept Neal's advice when it came to which experts to use - odds were that Neal had far more experience at JAWSarchitects than us when it came to working with Structural Engineers and the like. He recommended a Structural Engineer he had worked with in the past, together with a Land Surveyor. Both provided us with quotes before we agreed to engage them

So far, we have had an initial inspection by the Structural Engineer, and a Land Surveyor carry out a survey of the potential building site (as well as a couple of the trickier corners on the gravel track up to the site). The Bushfire Consultant is due to go out to have a look within the week.

When all the reports are collated, then Neal will be able to start developing the design...

JAWS is more than a movie about a big fish

One of the (many) things that we love about JAWSarchitects is that it is impossible to take one of their designs and transplant it to any other environment.

Each design is unique to its site, speaking a language only heard in that forest, in those stones, near that ocean.

While we know that other architects would be capable of designing us a beautiful home, we would be certain with JAWS that we would have something in harmony with the beautiful surroundings of our Huon Valley land.

It is very exciting to know that we are working with a company that has done such magnificant designs as the Tahune Airwalk, and Mount Field National Park Visitor's Center.

JAWSArchitects have also recently been awarded the redevelopment of the Cradle Mountain Park Centre.

It is very humbling when we think that such a little project like our home is being considered alongside such extraordinary projects.

And as Viktoria and the Android set out with Neal planning the next steps we had to take, it was also very reassuring to know that we would be in the very capable hands of someone who had probably encountered similar obstacles in the winding path that is architect and design.



Meet the architects

All of the architects we selected were happy to visit us on site.
This was a very good thing as, in our infinite wisdom, we had decided that the best way to 'get in touch' with land was to camp on it. But after spending a week in a converted 4WD troupe carrier doing a poor imitation of a camper van, about the only thing Viktoria was truly in touch with was her spine. The Android seemed happy enough to make fire and ignore her princess-like moaning.
We cannot over-emphasise how important it was to meet with the architects on site.
Granted our site is a little more "challenging" than most (to use the architectural vernacular of the day), but we really couldn't understand how someone who didn't see the site would be able to provide any kind of useful advice. Sitting in an office is no substitute for seeing how the architect responds to your particular site, what suggestions they can make on the spot about where to position the building, and any sorts of challenges that may be encountered (which, in our case, started with the gravel road up to the block).

TIP: Always try to meet with the architect on site!

While it was relatively easy to get a 'gut feeling' about each of the people we met, in hindsight we appreciated that meeting with three different firms was ideal.
We were confident that any of the firms we picked would be able to design us a beautiful home.
But as architect-friends had advised us, the architect you pick will largely come down to personality-fit.
Meeting with the three architects gave us a good point of comparison.

TIP: Always try to meet with three firms if you can - any fewer and you may not get a good 'holistic' understanding of what different people may be able to offer you; any more and you will thoroughly confuse yourself.

We were also careful to ensure that, after meeting us and seeing the site, the architect was still willing to take on the project - the architect has to like you just as much as you like the architect or it's just not going to work.
In the end, we chose the first person we had met with; Neal Mackintosh from JAWS Architects.
Apart from having that certain je ne sais quois which suited us, Neal manages to infuse a sense of calm and order into the chaos, which appealed greatly to the ever-so-slightly-anally-retentive Viktoria.
Having survived our gestapo-style interview in the back of the troupe carrier (it was pouring on the day we met), Neal immediately clambered over one of the cliffs and suggested there as a site (instead of the 'safe' sites we thought would be more feasible).
When he asked if we had considered an earth-roofed house the Android nearly blew a gasket with delight. We would have hugged Neal if we thought it wouldn't have terrified him.
Before heading back to Queensland once more, we spent our final night at a lovely B&B in Huonville, Walton House (hello John & Tanya!) - Viktoria's diva-fits about wanting to wash her hair and sleep in a bed becoming too much for the Android.
We were excited, we were freaking out, but we were keen to boldly go where lots of people had gone before and build our home.

Introducing ourselves to the architects

No-one actually tells you how you go about introducing yourself to your potential new architect - it's not a meeting that follows the norms of social interaction.
How do you approach someone who you will be working with intensely for a number of years, who will guide you through anything from light fittings to finances, and who will get to know you and your relationships better than many psychiatrists?
Architect friends of ours advised that it was usual for clients to speak with several architects before choosing one, and that architects expected clients to do so.
Still, it all felt a little weird.
Deciding that honesty was our best policy, we sent an email to our shortlist of firms being upfront about our intentions.
The basic email read:

We are wishing to build a new home in about 2 years and are in the process of choosing an architect. Through looking at past projects, we have ‘short-listed’ your firm and two others.

Our main priorities are:

1.       10 Star Sustainability Rating – 5 Star is so 20^th Century; our current home is solar-powered, supplied only with rainwater, with onsite biocycle waste-treatment, but has lousy passive design

2.       Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – omit wasted space (no ‘media rooms’ etc); incorporate our existing furniture; use timber from any cleared trees on the building site; get materials from demolition yards

3.       Be sympathetic to the landscape / environment – the property is 57 acres in the Huon Valley ranges with a waterfall, several 100 metres of sandstone caves and abundant wildlife

4.       No ‘standard family home’ – we require only a master bedroom & 1 guestroom, a combined living / eating / cooking area, AND purpose-built His&Hers studios (Andy is a musician and Vicki is a sculptor/painter)

5.       Low maintenance – we don’t want to be climbing ladders to patch the walls when we are in our 70s

6.       Must be indoor-cat friendly!

Finally, so you have some idea what you might be dealing with, two one-page personal profiles are attached – a simple “19^th-century-power-station-fused-with-Medieval-church-some-commercial-glass-and-a-bit-of-Gaudi-thrown-in” should do it!

If you are available (and interested) we would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you at your offices in late-February-ish (when we are planning a return trip to Tasmania).

We look forward to hearing from you.

Now we just needed to wait and see who would get back to us, who would 'get' us, and if anyone ran screaming into the hills...

Finding an architect

A quick search on the internet will tell you lots about how to find an architect. The advice can be summarised thus:

1. get recommendations from friends / family, and / or
2. look up architects' websites

We didn't know anyone from whom we could get a personal referral to particular architectural firm in Tasmania, so instead we used the neat little function offered on the website of the Australian Institute of Architects, helpfully titled Find an architect.

All we needed to do was enter the State we wanted to build in (Tasmania), narrow it by Region (Huon Valley), and click Search. Up popped a list of architects prepared to work in the area , along with a blurb about the firm, links to their website and some images of their work.

Some firms we could instantly remove from the list purely on the basis of aesthetics - their designs simply didn't resonate with us. We made a further cull after digging into the various firms' visions, profiles, staff, etc. Again, this was all largely a personal decision unlikely to stand up to the rigour of scientific examination.

From our initial list of almost 40 architects, we had narrowed our search down to four.

It was time to load the firebox, heat the water tank, and steam off to Tasmania to meet them (didn't we mention that our Time Machine was steam-powered?).

But first, we had to introduce ourselves...

Give me land, lots of land

Deciding to move from Queensland to Tasmania wasn't quite the quantum leap it sounds.
We visit there frequently, having first fallen for its savage beauty on holiday there many years ago. At one stage we even owned a house on the east coast at Scamandar with accompanying vague plans to eventually live in it.
But money and circumstance are the masters of many; the house was sold, we stayed up here and time moved on.
With age comes wisdom intolerance. With our "It will cost us what to build in Queensland!?" awareness were the facts that:

• Viktoria hated the heat
• the humidity was causing the Android to go mouldy, and
• we were getting tired of playing Corporate She-Devil and Managerial Monster

On a recent 'lightening' trip to Tasmania, over a shared Huon River Salmon and King Island Brie wood-fired pizza, we realised that we were actually sitting where we wanted to be.
Sometimes we can just be a little slow on the uptake.
Because we failed completely to learn from our own past experience, we went through the whole rigmarole of looking at existing dwellings first... an old apple shed held us entranced for sometime, as did a magnificent old mill on the Huon River (the glow not dampened even when Viktoria put her foot through the rotten kitchen floor).
Perhaps we somehow imagined that by simple geography we would fit into a Tasmanian house better. Perhaps we were just stupid.
Eventually, we were able to shake of the nostalgic grip of wishing to live in something built before the 1900's, and once more turned our attention to land.
Being ever practical creatures, we found 57 acres of uncleared forest, waterfalls, cliffs and caves at the summit of a mountain range in the Huon Valley, with access by a single lane gravel road, with no town water or power, and with the nearest neighbour over a kilometre away.

It was rural.

It was remote.

It was completely insane.

We bought it the day it was listed.
With the Title Deed in one hand and the keys to the caves in the other, all we had to do now was build...

To build, or not to build

Because we love where we live, we first looked around here for a suitable 'replacement home'. This is what we found:

• there is limited housing / building blocks as it is in the middle of a national park;
• existing houses are either just as big and cumbersome as our own, or old fibro shacks from the days when the area was a commune;
• vacant land was even more scarce and heinously expensive.

We rapidly dismissed the idea of buying one of the big, bespoke houses as a big, bespoke house was what we already have.
We toyed with the idea of buying one of the old shacks...but the cost of renovating an existing house is far more per square metre than building a new home home from scratch. And Viktoria stubbornly refused to live onsite in a shed.
We explored and rejected the ideas of buying vacant land after researching pre-fabs, relocating an old house, getting an architecturally designed place on the grounds of being not all that flexible, unsuitable or even more heinously expensive.

TIP Make sure all parties are on the same page. It sounds obvious, but make sure the other person is really saying what you think they are saying. Don't make assumptions.

By going through these often laborious and sometimes depressing steps, it helped us realise that what we were looking for in a home had to be:

• functional for our dysfunctional lifestyles
• able to offer increased self-sufficiency and sustainability (we are already grid-connect solar, rainwater only and biocycle waste management, but we want more!)
• a smaller footprint of usable space
• out of suburbia
• cost effective so it wouldn't send us to the cleaners

We weren't going to find that here.
We would have to move our explorations further afield.
And that was when we decided to venture outside the sub-tropics, and look to the mystical island state of Tasmania.

Why blog about building?

We started this blog because even though we have some awesome research, kept some awesome notes, spoke to some awesome people and (hopefully) have a little bit of awesome intelligence, building a new house is a lot like travelling through time... you will find some new and interesting technology; you will meet people who seem to speak a different language and communicate largely diagrammatically; you will meet beaurocracies apparently from a different era, and; when you exit the front door, you do so never quite knowing what you are going to encounter.
So grab your kinetic flash-light and some powerbars... it's going to be a long trip...

When it's time to move

To begin our journey, we travel back in time to 2005 - around when we bought our existing home. Before you start wondering what on earth this has to do with building a new home, hear us out... being in the right mindset, knowing why, is just as important as the build itself. Everyone will arrive at that point via a different route - this is just the path we took. But you should know your own reason why. It's important. Trust us.
We had always wanted to live where we are, from the first time we had a picnic here and got attacked by kookaburras with suicidal tendancies. Over the course of about 10 years, after buying, renovating and selling a couple of other houses, we had sufficient capital.
And this is where the first inklings that we might need to build at some point started to germinate. Yes, even as we were looking to buy an existing house.
You see, apart from the two of us, we had only felines as travelling companions. You would think that accommodating such a small family unit would be relatively easy. But we also both required studio spaces... Viktoria for her easel and sculpting table, and the Android for his plethora of electronic things that go "bleep". 
Eventually, however, we found a beautiful home... on just over a 1/4 acre, with views across the valley to the ocean.
Sound perfect? Well, yes, it is.
And, yes, we know how lucky we are.
We also know that we worked really hard to get here.
But after admiring those views from the 70+ square metres of deck that makes part of the 3 storey, 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom pole-house we call home, we have come to the realisation that, while we still love it, it's really a teensy bit on the "too large" side.

And soon other things became apparent...
The two bedrooms we converted to studios are on the top floor, near the master bedroom. This involves not only lugging equipment and supplies up numerous flights of stairs, but has led to domestic disharmony when the creative muse strikes one of us, yet the other is waiting for the Sandman.
Did we mention the stairs? There's a lot of stairs... lots and lots of stairs. Great for tightening the buttocks, not so great if you just want a quick cup of tea and the kitchen is 2.5 flights of stairs from your studio.
So where would we find a home, with one bedroom, a combined kitchen / dining / living space, and His&Hers studios?
We realised it was time to move...