Build your own house
Builder ZEN
By Roditch
www.roditch.com
copyright © Roditch 2019
all rights reserved
roditchr@gmail.com
Contents
Introduction
Building your own home.
Years ago I built my own home. I was given an old house. I pulled it down and trucked it to my land and built a new house, with a new design using the materials from the old house. It was cheap to do: just hard work. When we borrow money for a new car and a new house we pay enormous amounts of interest. We are already paying personal income tax, sales tax, VAT and incur large work-related expenses. We can be earning $1000 a week and only get to touch and see a few hundred of that as the rest wings its way to wars in Iraq, bank CEO’s performance packages and politician’s pensions. Salaries are half what they were in 1972: equivalent. Nothing can tie you to a boring monotonous desk more, than having to pay a mortgage for 30 years: is it worth it? No, it isn’t.
Debt is more than debt: it is a loss of large amounts of your money. Sure you think one day your house will be paid off and it will be yours: it’s more than that. Interest is money lost. In the “good old days” most people saved money for a car or a house for this same reason: don’t burn years of salary on interest. What are the alternatives to debt and interest: saving, building your own, starting small, or build a home from natural and cheap materials like mud, stone, rock, recycled materials and your imagination. You will also need a simple plan and a few basic tools.
In the West it feels like everyone wants to be a doctor or lawyer so they can afford a big luxurious house and car. The other option is to be “handy” and learn to do lots of things yourself. They are both valid options. If you do a great job of your first house or renovation and loved doing it then offers from other people to help them will come. Owning your own home has always been the fundamental grounding for having a life. In the past 30 years the already rich doctors, dentists, lawyers have inflated the price of houses as they buy them like we would a basket full of apples as an investment to get even richer. I do not believe homes should be “profits” for anyone: just wonderful happy loving homes.
There are many philosophical reasons why everyone should have their own home: if they are prepared to work for it or make it. The amount of money grafted out of your pockets by merchants is enough to make your life hell and theirs like heaven. For example, if your salary is 2,800 dollars a month, I would estimate Merchants will legally steal 80% of your salary every month. A small list to get the idea: income tax 30 to 40%. Sales tax and VAT 10%, profit on things you buy 20%, interest on loans 10% and inflated cost of housing 10% (which increases the interest you pay). At the end of each month, the actual cash you have to pay the principal on your house and car, buy food and pay bills is around $560. That is about right.
Out of an income of $2,800 a month, Merchants have stolen all but $560, before! You have bought anything. So everyone wants to be a Merchant so they are the ones taking the money and not giving it. You can call this capitalism if you like, I don’t, I call it theft. If you are outraged by these figures you should be. A dog eats dog world; top dogs eating underdogs. In America, average Democrat politicians are earning two million dollars a year and then say they are socialists working for the benefit of all: joking.
Getting started
What you need to start building your house is a piece of string, a hammer, a level, and a saw. You will also need a basic plan and lots of confidence. If your partner would like to help then be an encouraging and a patient teacher. Some land will also be necessary; think about if you can build on land that you already have or someone else’s in your family. Depending on what materials are available to you, choose what kind of house you want to build. No matter what, you will need some wood, some bricks, and some cement. Some friends of mine, years ago, worked fulltime in the city and saved money. They would buy a truckload of bricks, then timber, bit by bit all the materials new and secondhand they would need. This could take three or four years: take your time and enjoy it. If you don’t have any land then work and save for the land first. You will probably need some approval from local government. They may need designs from an architect. It is best if you do the designs yourself and make them look like an architect did them as much as you can.
Other tools you will need are a cement mixer, an electric saw, tin snips, some spanners, shovel and wheelbarrow, a cement trowel and float, an electric drill, some chisels, and a square.
Every country and state will have different laws; it will be easier to build in the country than in the city. If you want a cheap home in the city then I suggest you apply a lot of this information on building a new house to renovating an old one instead—or an old warehouse.
Lastly, if you don’t have any building skills you will need to get some. Go to night school and learn about bricklaying, plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, cabinet making, painting, and tiling. Read books, check out the internet, talk to friends and other builders. The most critical skills you will need all the time are making things horizontally and vertically level and square. For this, you will need a good spirit level, square and a tape measure you have to be perfect every time.
In South-East Asia farmers build their own homes. It is not a big deal if you take it step by step. They share labour too. Four or five farmers will help each other build their houses over time. This works extremely well: you can share your expertise and each other’s company. You will always need at least two people when building because of lifting, holding and carrying.
Back to South East Asia. They build their houses, bit by bit after they get money from their harvest. Their houses are quite modern: tile floors, rendered concrete brick walls, plaster ceilings, and tile roofs. They like to use steel roof frames. The houses are brightly painted like Mexican houses and they use concrete pillars to hold the roof up and tie in the concrete block walls (the same as building a mud-brick home). They have the same issues as all of us with paying interest but have even bigger problems when it comes to borrowing money: paying it back. We can all learn a lot from them.
Square
I am not an expert on this, so reinforcement from the internet and some building books will help a lot. First, you prepare your house site with a tractor if it’s not level; if it is level then it makes life a lot easier. Get out your floor plans and make .5 meter long wooden pegs, pointy on one end and four .5 meter long two-inch wide planks to sit on the+m. Measure the front length of the house, keeping it parallel with the front road or with what feature you want to. Bang in two pegs temporarily 30 meters apart as an example. Then using a big square (make one with three pieces of wood and a string line) measure and square off the ends of the house and put in the pegs. Then measure the back of the house the same as the front and move the pegs to fit. This is a rough measurement. Now you can make four wooden peg batter boards two meters out from the corner (bang two pegs in the ground and then nail the two-inch plank on top of the pegs.
Do this eight times so you have two sets of batter boards in each corner two meters out from the first four pegs and level . Take the string from the first peg and transfer it to the batter boards and tie them down by wrapping them around the two-inch plank. (this is all on the internet). Put your wooden square in the corners to see if the strings are square. When they look square, measure diagonally from each corner to the other corner: these measurements have to be exactly the same. If this is hard to understand, don’t worry, everything I am saying will be on the internet somewhere. This book is about giving you the courage to do it yourself and the basic skills to get you started. All your rooms will need to be done the same way (made square), your window and door frames all need to be square and level. Your cupboard doors, everything needs to be square: it looks good and makes cutting timber, tiles, and roofing so much easier.
Level
The floor needs to be level. Whether it is a wooden or concrete floor. You can adjust the strings going around the house so they are level using a spirit level and a clear water pipe. Start in one corner at the right height, fill the water pipe with water and hold the level in the first corner and have someone else hold the pipe at the other end and move the string until it is level with the water level in the pipe. You will have to be careful about the right amount of water in the pipe. Do this in all the corners and then double-check holding the spirit level carefully on the string. If you are using wooden or concrete pillars you can level the top of them using the same technique. As always if your not sure lookup water pipe levels on the internet. Like here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2ReUiJsFiw
Everything needs to be level in your house. The top of your walls. Your floor. The top of your roof and the top of your doors. Use a good level and master the water pipe level technique and you will be fine. Starting a house needs a lot of patience. You need to get the foundations right no matter how long it takes. Any mistakes at this point will create so many problems later on in the building’s progress.
Materials
There are a few different types of houses you can build depending on the materials. It is important for home builders on a small budget to use simple designs and cheap materials. The most common are: wooden planks that overlap each other either vertically or horizontally. Mudbrick or rammed earth, using a mixture of clay, soil, and straw. Stone houses are common in Great Britain. If you have access to stones it is pretty easy making a stone house. Brick houses either red clinker bricks or concrete blocks are pretty easy to make. You can make your own concrete blocks whatever size you like and lay them in place using mortar and a trowel. In the next chapters, I will go into a bit more detail about each type of material and how to use them. There are also straw bale houses which work well and bamboo houses which are amazing.
Like I said earlier you will need to think about what materials you can get easily, cheaply, and you can use competently when building your house. Some materials are relatively free like mud bricks and other materials are expensive like wood and clinker bricks. Secondhand materials are a great option and will cut the price by 2/3rds. You can visit your local house-wrecker and buy a set of windows and doors from the same house to give the house a good look. You can buy wooden rafters, floorboards, and studs from the same house too. Hey, if you can find a nice old house nobody wants, do what I did, pull it down and rebuild it using your own design. Sometimes you can get a house for free if you take it all away and clean up the site before you leave.
Tools
Compared to buying a home buying tools is pretty cheap. The things I can think of include: A good hammer like an Estwing. Three different sized chisels, a super sharp hand saw, and a spirit level. You will also need a square, string lines, a cement trowel, and a float. Screwdrivers, spanners and wire cutters. Some electric tools like a saw, a drill with quite a few concrete and wood drill bits, and a grinder. Bigger tools include shovels, rake, wheelbarrow, welder, step ladder and cement mixer. Maybe a crowbar, jemmy bar, hacksaw, pipe cutter and sledgehammer.
Many of these tools can be bought secondhand. Sometimes they are of better quality than new ones. Auctions, garage sales, and antique shops can turn up some real treasures. Maybe your grandfather and father have tools they don’t use anymore and they are more than happy to give them to you to use and keep.
Most electric tools from China are cheap and break quickly. I am no expert on this but when buying any electric tools I suggest you do your homework and find a good balance between quality, strength, warranties, and price: if I could I would buy two very good quality drills, one cordless and the other quite the powerful drill for drilling into concrete. Also an electric saw, grinder and plane.
You can hire tools like a saw bench if you can organize cutting all your wood in one weekend. Lots and lots of good tools make building a house more enjoyable.
Things like chisels, hand saws and wood planes have been around for hundreds of years, they are usually very good steel and if you learn how to sharpen them properly they will last you a few lifetimes too.
Size
I like these cottages in Australia: very cosy, cheap and easy to make. In the future, you can extend add a few more rooms and have an amazingly beautiful house/ https://grampianspioneercottages.com.au/cottages-cabins/mudbrick-cottage/ I prefer small houses to big ones. Whether I have a lot of money or not. I have lived in a cottage like these before and it was all I ever needed. Easy to keep clean and no wasted space. If you want a bigger house that’s a personal decision. It will cost more to build and take longer to make. Like these http://elthammudbricktour.org/
There are common success markers in all societies: a BMW or Mercedes Benz, a very big house, fashion clothes, smartphones, exotic food, and toiletries. A lot of money and happiness is wasted measuring yourself against these markers. I am grateful to have a small house, a normal car, and basic everything, as long as my soul can fly free.
Monkeys, we are all still monkeys playing with power. Humankind is developing at a snail’s pace on all issues to do with power, money, classes, and spirituality. So many wars, so much hate, and disunity. Building a beautiful two bedroom cottage with natural or recycled materials, with an organic garden and lots of fruit and nut trees is quite a spiritual and wonderful thing to do for ourselves and the universe.
Mudbrick
In places like Australia and New Zealand, Mudbrick houses are very popular with home builders because they are cheap, strong and look natural. To make a mudbrick house you need to buy (and sell when you are finished) a front end loader. The bricks are usually made in a small pond like impression in the ground where you mix the clay, soil, and straw. Once mixed the mixture is patted into metal mudbrick moulds and left to dry for a few weeks. Some people put a handful of dry cement into each block to make them stronger and you can use a Cinva Ram to make the brick much stronger. While the bricks are drying you dig holes for the wooden posts or slabs that form the doorways and window edges. You place them in the ground cut them level at the top and nail a large board/s (a top plate) on top the full length of the house. Concrete footings are poured into a trench between the posts at least 6 inches above ground level (you will need wooden planks to make boxing to support and level the top of the footings). You use solid concrete and steel reinforcing in the footings because they will hold the weight of the mudbricks in the wall.
When you are ready to lay the mudbricks you can use normal cement mortar and lay them like bricks. Every two layers you place barbed wire onto the mudbrick running between and nailed onto each of the posts to keep the wall from falling over or out. Keep going like this until you get to the top. Depending on if you have large verandahs or not the wall is finished. If there are no verandahs you will need to seal the mudbricks with a special cement mixture and rub it as a slurry onto the mudbricks using old hessian bags. It is common to use secondhand timber for the roof rafters and place secondhand floorboards on top of them to be a cathedral ceiling.
The windows and doors are framed with the large wooden pillars that hold the roof on and become the support for the mudbricks. Inside these frames, you can make your own windows and doors or as I said earlier buy a set of doors and windows from an old house that has been pulled down so you have continuity in your house. If you build a mudbrick cottage you will not need large wooden posts to frame your house. If you put some cement into each mud-brick or use a Cinva Ram the walls can be more load-bearing like a double brick house.
The floor can be a concrete slab covered in tiles or just smooth concrete sealed with a sealer. Another option is to make a slate floor. Slate can be laid directly onto a sand base alleviating the need to pour a concrete slab. Slate comes in many colours and shapes and looks beautiful.
Corrugated iron is the most common roofing material. It is easy to install and lasts a very long time. It comes in many different colours too. Brands like colourbond are popular. https://colorbond.com/
A chimney is an important part of your house if you have cold weather. It is not easy to build a chimney (but not impossible). It would be a good idea to find a professional chimney builder and pay them to build you a chimney that works well.
Cupboards in your kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom can be built with recycled timber and secondhand bricks. Build the frames with bricks and then make the doors with wood and tops with concrete.
There are endless things you can do when creating your own house. Luckily on the internet, there are lots of good ideas for fitting out your house with interesting and beautiful cupboards and accessories. Some houses are built similar to a traditional square format and others are round and free-flowing: it’s up to you and your partner to have fun designing what you really want.
A link to a government website about mudbrick houses. http://www.yourhome.gov.au/materials/mud-brick
Here are some beautiful cottages in Australia. https://grampianspioneercottages.com.au/cottages-cabins/mudbrick-cottage/ Keep searching Mudbrick homes in Australia for all the ideas and tips you will ever need.
Wood
Wooden houses, especially cottages are popular all around the world. You can use weatherboards which are overlapped horizontally or wooden planks which are overlapped vertically. Weatherboards are machined so they are quite thin on one edge and thick on the other so they can overlap easy. If you have access to a timber mill and timber you can saw them yourself. Vertical planks are much easier to make. A wooden house means everything pretty much is wood apart from the chimney. You really will need to collect or buy a large stack of wood; for the rafters in the roof, the wall studs, the floor joists, the outside wall covering and the floorboards. You will need a good set of chisels, hand, and electric saws and drills.
Wooden houses can be built on a concrete slab. You measure your house and pour a concrete slab off the ground as required by local weather conditions. Once the slab is poured by yourself or a contractor you make wall frames which are measured and pre-made and then erected into place using nails and screws. The frames are nailed together and also nailed into the concrete slab. Once the frames are in place you can go on and put your rafters for your roof in place at an angle of 35 degrees or whatever shape you like. Once the rafters are in, place you nail battons at 90 degrees to the rafters running the full length of the house and around a meter apart. Once the batons are on you can then nail your corrugated iron roofing on, leaving an overhang for your guttering to catch water.
An alternative to a concrete slab are concrete stumps with termite caps on them. You have to dig rows of holes around a meter apart and put lots of concrete stumps in them all at the same level. Once the stumps are completed you will place large timbers on top of them running the full width of the house. Then more floor timbers running front to back on them and finally your floorboards. Your walls will sit on your wooden floor or on your floor joists depending on the weather. If the weather is very hot or rains every other day then you cannot put your floor on until you have a roof, otherwise, it will be ruined.
When building your door frames you leave holes for your doors and windows. There are usually two wall studs side by side running up the sides of doorways and windows.
The lining for your walls and ceiling inside can be wood or plaster. Your ceiling can be a cathedral ceiling which is open and follows the roof joists or you can have a flat ceiling by building a frame in place to support plaster or timber. I like cathedral ceilings and they are pretty easy to make. You can use a bigger sized rafter and expose them by lining your ceiling on top of the rafters and not underneath. Do a google search for “cathedral ceiling”.
Plaster looks ok but is not easy to do. I have done it successfully but you will need some study before attempting plaster. With plaster, you need all your wall studs and ceiling joists to be perfectly straight and in line. If your wood is warped you will have to either plane off the parts that “stick out” with an electric plane and fill the parts that stick in with scrap pieces of timber. Some builders put small 2 x 1 “ size timber over the wall studs and ceiling joists to make them all line up perfectly.
Plaster also comes in set sizes like 8’ x 4’ so you will always have to have timber underneath the join (wall studs spaced at 2’ intervals.
you can use lining boards or floorboards on your walls and ceiling. Lining boards are quite a bit lighter than floorboards. Lining boards are often used for ceilings and you can also use them on walls. One option is to: halfway up the wall use lining boards and the other half use plaster. It depends whether you want a traditional look or you are using recycled materials and design as you go.
Bricks
Concrete or clinkers.
Reb brick houses are common all around the world. They usually start with a timber frame on the inside which is later covered with plaster and a single brick wall on the outside. These houses are called brick veneer. In the good old days, they were double brick walls with a two or three-inch gap between them. This book is about building your own house cheaply and easily. A brick veneer house is not easy to make, but not impossible.
I have built a double brick house before and I quite like them. The bricks take longer to lay of course, but you don’t have to worry about building wooden frames and plaster. You can use new or secondhand bricks. When laying bricks you will need a small cement mixer. You can buy one and then sell it when you are finished building or keep it for your next project. It is good to lay bricks in normal weather: not too hot or cold. If it’s hot your mortar will dry quickly making it hard to place the bricks down and if the weather is cold the mortar will dry slowly and make your bricks sink a bit. Mixing cement mortar is a real art: it needs to be butter-like. Your mortar has to be firm enough to carry the weight of a brick, but not too firm that when you tap the brick down with the end of your trowel that it doesn’t move.
You can finish your brickwork off just by cleaning the mortar that has squeezed out between the bricks by using the edge of your trowel like a knife or use a jointing tool that creates a smooth inverted circle. There are many books and videos available about bricklaying. Normally you will use a string line to make them straight. Concrete bricks are layed the same.
Stone
I have seen a few stone houses being made. If you can get lots of nice big, thin, and small square stones then a stone house is a good option. Normally a stone house will be about two feet thick and you will need a lot of skill to choose and place rocks so that the finished wall is straight and level. A modern way of building a stone house is to make a metal wall or walls on the inside using building materials (metal panels) that bolt together (for making concrete walls). You support the walls so they don’t move and then on the outside put the stones up against the steel and level, vertical and beautiful: using lots of mortar. When the wall/s are finished you take down your temporary steel or wooden frame and cement render the inside walls and paint them. On the outside, you have a stone house and on the inside, it will look like plaster.
You will start building a stone house with concrete footings. You measure out the house and dig trenches the width of the finished wall and at least 18” deep with lots of steel reinforcing to hold the weight of the wall. Mix your concrete using cement sand and gravel. To get the footings level all the way around the house you will need wooden ‘boxing’. Planks of wood 6” x 2“ set in place by small wooden stakes that have a point on one end and you drive into the ground and nail the planks onto them in the right place and level.
When you are around a foot from the top of the wall you will lay long steel bolts or strapping into the wall that will hold the roof on. When the stone wall is finished you will run timber around 8”x3”(a top plate) all around the top of the wall and fix it to the bolts or strapping. The ceiling rafters will be nailed onto this wall plate.
The ceiling in a stone house is often a cathedral ceiling as mentioned with the other houses; with large maybe 10”x4” rafters as a showpiece and the lining board nailed on the top of the rafters as a finished ceiling. As in a double brick house, you will make window and door frames and set them in place as you are building your walls. It is important that these frames are securely kept in place: level and square.
Different kinds of floors: wooden floorboards, tiles, slate and roofing slate, smooth concrete are all good options. Once the roof is on you can make your floors in each room. You can make a floating slab for the whole house before you start: it all depends on what kind of floor you want. The roof can be corrugated iron, slate or tiles. This is a personal choice depending on availability, aesthetics and skill levels.
Cupboards in the bathroom, kitchen, and bedrooms can be either all wood, a mixture of brick, concrete, and wood or all concrete. There are many beautiful designs on the internet that you can choose from.
You can use secondhand windows and doors bought as a set like the other houses. You can also make your own windows and doors if you have a saw bench. Cottage style windows are not impossible to make and again there will be a lot of videos on the internet showing you how to do it. Also, doors of all shapes and sizes can be made if you have a saw bench. I think making your own doors, windows, and cupboards is a lot of fun and they can be real standouts in your house.
Many home builders use stained glass in their doors and windows which is very beautiful. You can make your own stained glass windows after some fast learning on the internet or your local short class institution. There is quite a bit of artistic skill needed and technical skill to make them. The good thing is you make templates from other drawings and paintings to layout your design so you can printout pictures you like at the right scale and go for it.
A chimney is necessary for cold climates. You will need someone to build one for you and it will be pretty costly. If you don’t want an open fire and prefer to use a steel wood heater or ‘potbelly stove’ then you can do it yourself. You can either build a chimney (it doesn’t have to draw the smoke out) for the pipe or run the pipe from the stove through the room and out through the roof: gaining the extra heat from the pipe which is called a flue.
Verandahs
If you are building a verandah on one side, two sides or all the way around your house you will need to include this in your design and planning right from the start. Some verandahs can be built after the main structure and other types are incorporated into the main structure and have to be built at the same time.
A wooden veranda with a wooden floor will need concrete stumps like the rest of the house and a wooden floor with special water-resistant wood. It will also need ceiling rafters and a corrugated iron roof.
A verandah for a mudbrick house may go all the way around the house. The rafters and verandah posts will be done at the same time as the rest of the house and the roof as well. The floor of the verandah may be at ground level (lower than the floor in the house by 6 inches or more) You can use red bricks with the large face facing up as a floor. You can also make a concrete floor similar to how you would make a concrete path.
For a stone house, you may use a veranda the same as a wooden one or a mudbrick one. For a brick house verandah, you can use any of the above styles.
There are many different styles you can choose from on the internet, just search verandahs.
Spouting
Spouting is usually the job for a plumber as is corrugated iron. Depending on where you live you have to be careful and be aware of all the rules and regulations. In more remote places you can probably do everything yourself as long as you read up and do a professional job. In less remote places that require registered tradesmen then you will have to find a good one that is not too pricey to do your plumbing, roofing and spouting or guttering.
If you are installing your own spouting or not, you will have to leave an overhang of your corrugated iron of around two inches for the water to run into it. At the end of your roof rafters that form an eave ( like a small verandah of one meter or so), you will need a barge board nailed to the end of it, the full length of your house, vertically level. The barge board is necessary to keep out vermin and also to install your spouting.
Stairs
Stairs and steps are needed sometimes if your floor levels aren’t the same. They are difficult to make: some study will be necessary. Depending on your skill levels (if low) stairs and steps should be made by a professional. I have made stairs before and as long as you carefully follow instructions from a book or the internet you should be ok.
Vermin
White Ants
Nematodes are parasitic worms that love to munch on termites. You can buy these tiny worms online or in speciality stores. You can then release them into the area where you know (or suspect) that termites have settled in, and they will go to work for their lunch. The nematodes will reproduce and continue to seek out termites until they are all gone. They are very efficient at getting rid of termites if you introduce enough of them to the colony.
Vinegar is the wonder material for your home. Not only can you use it to clean everything from your kitchen counter to shower, but you can also use it to kill termites. Just mix up a half a cup of it with the juice from two lemons, and you’ve got your termite killer. Put it in a spray bottle and spray the mixture around the area where you suspect the termites. The acidic substance will kill the termites on contact. Make sure you spray regularly to catch any termites you didn’t get with the last treatment.
Sodium borate, sold commonly as borax powder, can kill termites – as well as wash your laundry. You can either sprinkle the powder around the affected area, or you can mix it with water and spray it into an area that you believe to be infested. As with the vinegar, you will need to reapply the solution to ensure that you are reaching more of the colony.
Orange oil is made mostly of d-limonene, which is deadly to termites. The oil is derived from orange peels, and you can buy it from home improvement or garden stores, as well as online. Orange oil causes the exoskeletons of termites to dissolve, which causes them to lose moisture and proteins and then to die. Spray the oil directly onto termites or on areas where you suspect termites to be. You can also spray the oil to deter termites from coming into the area. Therefore, spraying it regularly is a good way to keep your home free of termites, whether you currently have any or not.
Termites love two things: Water and cellulose. Spray down a piece of cardboard with water, and you will be setting out an all-you-can-eat buffet for termites. Why would you want to do to this? Well, if you think that termites are already in your house, putting down this cardboard bait will lure them out and onto a specific spot. When you see that termites have settled in for the buffet, you can take the piece of cardboard away and burn it, killing all the termites with it. Repeat the process as often as necessary to draw out termites.
Birds
Seal your house up and down and all around to keep out birds.
Rats
Rats and mice usually stay away from well sealed and clean houses. When you are building think about places they can get in and live and fix them.
Environment
It is good to have two or more wooden louvres in your roof to allow airflow. The louvres should have mosquito wire on them to keep out vermin. If your weather is extreme then you may want louvres that open and close so that in summer you open them to let the hot air out and winter close them to keep the heat in.
My current house does not have many windows. The idea is to keep the heat and cold in and in reverse the heat and cold out. In cold climates, you may want a large North facing window with an eave to let warm day time winter sun into your house (the eave will stop hot summer sun coming in). You may also have a solid brick or concrete floor and a brick wall opposite the window to act as heat banks. The solid mass will store the sun’s energy during the day and radiate it at night when it is very cold outside.
When you are building a new house you have a lot of options to incorporate environmentally friendly assets into your house. There is a lot on the internet and it is certainly worth reading up on as it will make your energy bills lower and your overall comfort much higher.
Step by Step
Time to repeat a few things. You and your partner really can do this; take your time and build it step by step.
1. Acquire land to build your house on.
2. Choose what kind of house you want and design it using lots of paper and coloured pencils. Consider all the environmentally friendly features you can incorporate into your house.
3. Either refine your plans into an architect style plan or get someone to do it for you.
4. Take your plans to your local council and get a permit to build it.
5. Buy your tools.
6. Buy your materials like a window and door set from an old house, bricks, stone, timber, corrugated iron. If you are building a mudbrick house you will need access to a front end loader.
7. Choose where on your land you want to build.
8. Level the ground if you need to.
9. Place your pegs and string lines into the ground to outline the house and make them level. Confer with an electrician about where and when he will do the electrical work. Also, confer with a plumber about where and when they will do their plumbing work.
10. Pour a floating concrete slab with extra depth and steel in the footings under the walls.
11. If the concrete is the finished surface make sure its finished glassy smooth.
12. If it is a stone house you may pour the footings first then finish the floors in each room with concrete or wood later on.
13. If it is a timber house and you want a timber floor you will dig all your holes for your concrete stumps and put them in.
14. Build your walls of stone, brick or timber. If it is a mudbrick house you will need to have placed your large timber poles into the footings when you poured them or bolt them onto the concrete slab after it’s poured. If it is stone you will need to make your steel shutters which bolt together first. If it is a timber wall then just start making it. Also, put all your pre-made door frames and window frames in place.
15. When the walls are finished make sure you have a timber top plate on top of the wall to nail the ceiling rafters onto.
16. When the ceiling rafters are in place nail your lining boards on top of the rafters to create a cathedral ceiling.
17. On top of the boards nail batons which are 2×1 inches the full length of your roof about a meter apart.
18. Then using full-length sheets of corrugated iron nail your roof on.
19. Install your windows into the window frames.
20. Finish your floor. Either pour concrete into each room or nail floorboards onto your floor joists that are sitting on the concrete stumps.
21. On the concrete floor place tiles, carpet, lino, slate or floorboards.
22. Hang your doors
23. Build or install pre-made cupboards in your rooms.
24. Install your wood heater if you have one.
25. Have the electrician finish all the wiring ( when you do this will depend on the style of the house, please make a plan with the electrician before you start building.
26. Have the plumber finish all the plumbing.
27. Do any painting
28. Move in.
Disclaimer
This book is only to encourage you to get started on the wonderful journey of building your own house. You will need to sort out all the details by your self. Any references to measurements are just examples and are not definitive in any way. You will need to be sure about any legal and local government requirements before you hammer in the first nail—and abide by them. Your tools will need to be in good working condition and safe to use. When using a ladder you should always make sure it is stable and someone can hold it when you are climbing up and down it. Some tools are dangerous and require great self-discipline to use. Never place a tool on the ground while it is still running. Never assume an electric tool is turned off when you plug it in. Take great care when you plug in an electric saw.
Always have a good first aid kit handy for those odd scratches that happen. Never ever leave nails in pieces of timber. After using timber for boxing or pegs extract all the nails and dispose of them thoughtfully. When you don’t understand something either ask for professional help or study a manual again. When using tools it is so important to protect your eyes, use safety goggles when using drills and saws. If you haven’t used a hammer before, buy a bag of 3-inch nails and find some scrap wood and hammer and hammer them all the way in making sure you don’t hit your fingers holding the nail. If you have a nail gun then be extra careful.
Always work with someone. Sometimes when you are working alone you do stupid things because you cannot hold something properly and cut it or nail it by yourself in a dangerous manner.
So many things to think about. I repeat, this book is about the joy and the possibility of building your own home. I have done it and so can you. A woman can build as well as a man with support and encouragement. This book is not a technical book in any way and should be not followed for that purpose. It is very important to understand that building a house is done in stages and if you make a project book based on the stages you will be able to do it. Just make sure that when you get to the next stage everything you have to do is detailed and put in order of action and you have all the materials, knowledge and tools you need to do it.
I mention the internet a lot as there is incredibly good advice there, especially in video format. The internet is your next step as you work through the project stages. Encourage your partner to study these stages with you and share the project management.
Thank you for reading this book. I wish you all the luck and happiness in the world. I will be so happy if you read this book and decide to build your own house and live a life with less debt and stress.
Roditch
