Transportable Pod Homes, Small Cabins, Tiny Houses, Simple Living, Money Matters, DIY and Green Living.
Richard Neutra was an Austrian-American architect. Living and building for the majority of his career in Southern California, he came to be considered among the most important modernist architects.
Richard Joseph Neutra (April 8, 1892 – April 16, 1970)
Vienna University of Technology (1910–1918).
Homes Designed by Richard Neutra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Richard_Neutra_buildings
This is a fun idea and one I could do in Australia, a friend of mine has a tent cabin and it works really quite nicely. Here is another example of tent living
A collection of Havilah House plans.
These notes are for Kars the Architect who has helped me plan the interior of some of the rooms in my home, I hope these photos will give Kars a feel for where I live and what I like.
I feel its important to have different spaces and regions within a home, and these areas should interconnect with each other. Homes should also offer spaces where people can retreat and get some solitude, or where different groups of people can gather and not interfere with each other.
I’m situated on 2 acres close to town, (2km from town) this often annoys me when it’s noisy, but on the other hand I am 2 minute from the centre or town.
These notes and photos are mostly about Havilah House where I live, a few of them were taken elsewhere and included simply because I like the style or feeling evoked – for example the corrugated fence photos were taking in Mooloolaba.
I live amongst those mountains, the two smallest hills situated close together on right hand side, these are called the Coochin Twins (north and south) I can see the side of one of them from my garden and from my kitchen
This is one of my favourite spots in the home, I often sleep out here on a daybed which overlooks the garden.
This lovely photo taken from my dining room, the photo looks directly into the TV Room, where I have two day beds, and to the right you can see the lounge, the lounge overlooks the swimming pool, one day I hope to remove the two lounge windows and replace them with sliding door which open onto a timber deck which then overlooks the garden and swimming pool.
Our lounge and dinning room get rearranged quite often,
Another perspective
Queenslander homes get very cold in winter, we have been having problems with the fire recently, it no longer vents very well.
The Music Room is an ongoing project, I still have not finished it, but I know it will be lovely room (rooms) someday.
This a corrugated iron fence I would likes something like this along my front border.
This is another example of a corrugated iron fence
This is a passion fruit pergola made out of cut trees and reinforcing iron ( the iron grid the place in concrete) works just fine.
When I look at the ingredients list on a loaf of bread in my local superstore, I can’t believe that all of these ingredients listed on the label, are there just for my benefit.
I think that most of this incomprehensible long list is there to ease the manufacturing process, or to prolong the shelf life. I feel that this probably doesn’t do me any good.
After all, basic bread contains just four ingredients : flour, yeast, salt, water.
The compromise we are happy to make is that instead of eating a bunch of chemicals, we bake our own bread, and then either eat it warm right out of the oven, or freeze it till we need it.
This means that we only eat four or five basic ingredients, instead of somewhere between ten and twenty. My record label find so far was seventeen ingredients in one basic loaf.
This recipe is adapted from Jamie Oliver’s site.
4 cups organic white whole wheat flour
6 cups organic white flour
2 T fast acting yeast
2 T sea salt
3 T olive oil
1 Litre warm water
Measure the dry ingredients and put into a large deep bowl, add the olive oil.
Stir with a spoon just to blend. ( we don’t bother to use a machine). Add the warm water slowly mixing it in as you go.
Illustrates the progression of how the dough changes over the five minutes of kneading.
With your hands, no machine required, start to form the dough by putting a very wet dough onto a non-floured surface, and begin Chef Bertinet’s method of “kneading” the dough. Some folk say kneading can hurt their wrists after a while and therefore they use Chef Bertinet’s method of kneading dough. But we use it because its easy and quick. Chef Bertinet has the cool French accent that somehow makes bread making sound cool. http://www.thebertinetkitchen.com.
Put dough back into deep bowl, cover with tea towel, put in a warm area and let prove for 1-2 hours.
The dough will double or more in size.
Now gently take the dough out of the bowl and shape into 3 loaves which you then put into 3 greased loaf tins.
Let prove again, doubling or more in size.
Bake in a preheated oven at 225 C or 425 F degrees for 25 minutes.
Take bread out of pans, place on a cooling rack to cool. Once cool the loaves can be put in freezer or enjoy immediately!
If you want the crust to be “crispy” put a tray of water into the oven make steam.
We enjoy it with strawberry jam – Enjoy Chris’s post about making strawberry jam.
My electricity bill for the past 3 perhaps 4 years has been about $700 a quarter, ( thats $175 dollars each month), a lot of money for warm baths and TV.
We’re a large family of 6 and looking at the website usage estimate $700 seems reasonable for a fridge, swimming pool pump, 5 bedroom home with electric hot water so I had little choice given that ongoing warnings the electricity supply costs are set to increase manually.
Installers measuring up
The system I choose was provided by Tru Value Solar (TVS) they seem to have a good reputation, and each time I called them that had a different Investor on offer, and the longer I left my purchase the cheaper the overall cost. There were incentives and grants which I missed out on (I think) and my system cost me $3999, however on a 36 month installment plan it works out at a few dollars short of $5000 which spread over 36 months is about $64 dollars a fortnight.
So I left the installers at home to do their thing and I must say I was very impressed with the whole installation when they called me to say it was complete.
The Bosch’s BPT-S 4.6 alongside my existing distribution board
Above, my distribution board before installing PV Solar
This is the complete install, I am quite happy with what I got, but its not quite yet complete at this stage, it gets connected on the 9th of February 2016.
So that the first part of my install, I will let you know how it goes in a month or two.
Before I forget here is the type of Panel I’m using with this Solar Panel Setup.
Hanwha Solar HSL60P6-PC-1-260