Wow this is beautiful! We are building a new house and our designer has specified silver top ash cladding in a few places... Your photos really make it obvioius…

Thanks everone for the comments... Unfortunately I think Ed is right... in fact they were really clear that we would have to use all their suppliers and wouldn't quote on…

Hi everyone,
We are trying to get a custom house built and are talking to some of the project builders that will do custom designs. The only builder in our…

Hi everyone,
we are looking to build our new house in ICF (Zego, Ecoblock etc) and need an experienced builder. We have concept drawings and very soon a CAD model.…

Interesting idea Elizabeth... At the very least it gave me the idea to put our water tanks against the west walls of the house where possible.... It should help a…

Thanks guys for the comments...
we are trying to keep the cost down so we have been talking to the project builders that will do a custom build. The trouble…

Hi all,
we are planning to build a new house and we are trying to make it nice and warm in winter and nice and cool in summer. We were…

We were looking at using Ecoblock for the build but not all builders will work with it. Instead it has been suggested to use Hebel blocks and render... So…

very interesting Frank.... i love the idea... something clever and simple... I have been trying to work out if we could use the swimming pool (if it was in a…

Hi Guys,
I started my own thread for our custom build but I should have put it here.... So the other thread is viewtopic.php?f=31&t=37670
But our current…

So does this mean we want to insulate the edge of the slab but not the rest of the slab? Or are you suggesting we shouldn't insulate the slab…

very interesting... We are designing for passive solar as a starting point but I guess I liked the simplicity of the EcoBlock. It makes sense that only the outside should…

okay so have had a look for recycling demolition companies... Has anyone used Pace Demolitions? (http://www.pacedemolitions.com.au) They apparently sell the materials from demo's at…

That sounds more reasonable than some of the quotes I have had so far summergrace... Can you tell me which company you are using?

wow thanks guys for the detailed info... this is exactly what I need...
I was going to make some phone calls tomorrow to see how much underfloor (instead on in-slab) hydronic…

That's a lot more reasonable than I was expecting... Are you happy with it? ie running costs, does it do what you expected, what is the best thing and what…

Hi Dymonite69,
I was hoping you might reply to my post. I had noticed you seem to be very knowledgable in this area. Yeah, there are a number of issues…

Valid point free will (about demolition) but there are some serious issues with the house.... All the wiring and plumbing needs replacing... a lot of the rooms and windows face…

We are looking at this system for our new house so I was wondering roughly how much this system costs to install? If you don't mind saying...

Hi Everyone,
I really need some help with this.
We are building a new passive solar house. We have an awesome block with and north backyard and we are…

Hey MJ,
yeah selling the boat is a great idea now I just have to convince 'you know who'!
The ensuite needs work like you say. I had the…

Hey boiselfish,
the front lounge is 3.5 by 5.5 m excluding the walk through hall part so I hope that makes it useable... You are right about the massive garage, it…

and with different landscaping....

So here is version 2:
It's pretty different but I think this one works better....

Thanks for the encouragement and the comments... The basics I understand, it's everything after that is where it gets tricky.... The big block in the garage is parking for a…

thanks for that higherdestiny!
see link for jpg...
http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/8553 ... nhouse.jpg

okay the image didn't attach... apparently the image quota is full... anyone know how to fix this?

Hi everyone,
I have been reading this forum for ages but now we are actually thinking about building I figured it was time to join in... So we have a…