The mother of all extensions (for me anyway)

[brissyboy]

Hi All
Have been writing for a little while on here and lurking for longer. I thought I would share my inbetween other things extension project.Have done bits over the last few years but as I am now inbetween other things I am going fulltime on the place. I have done up a lot of qlders over the years with all sorts of extensions, decks etc. but this is my biggest to date. I used to develop renovate full time and had staff and subbies, that was somewhat quicker than this as this is all me.

Start with a 1928 cottage, 7m wide, 11m long (including built in verandah) so 77 sqm. Sitting low to the ground. End product 15m wide, 23.5m long over 3 full stories. 1057.5 sqm. And with demolishing the old front and rear built in verandahs the original part of the house is 7mx7m. Character residential so full demolition not really an offer and I prefer to keep some of the original anyway.

I will put together some photos over the next few days of the progress. Here is the starting photo

So you can see that the cottage is small and low but in the middle of parkland, so position is great

[dazzler]

Is that a detective or a real estate agent..... Tell me a D, we need some juicy goss around here, like the body you found under the floor...

[brissyboy]

Stage 1: was town planning, nearly a year's worth after submission. My wife is a townplanner so that helps a lot. This was a tricky one as the block was mistakenly rezoned as parkland. It has no neighbours and has parkland to left and right and a waterway to the back. When they digitised all the plans and redid the town plan they missed that there was a house on this block. So we bought cheap with the risk that we may never be able to do anything, if the house burnt down we would not of even been able to rebuild.

Since we new it was going to be a fight and because we had no neighbours and also a boat ramp and jetty at the back, and the parkland sitting we thought we would go all out. So we went for an over height approval, by a whole 3m. This involved sun studies (where our overheight parts of the building cast shadows at different times of the day and different times of the year) and a lot of work.

Stage 2: Approval through over a year after purchase. Time to slide and jack the house. Because of the height I actually did this one in reverse to normal. Myself and my staff at the time put 200 pfc (steel channel) on all existing bearers. We also put 200 pfc down both sides. The original house had bearers at 1800 centres so way too many posts for window and door positions etc. The house was sitting on concrete stumps so we actually had to knock out the top corner of stumps to get the channels in, took some stumps out, propped with acrow's etc.

Hand over to the regular house raising guy I used. He jacked it about 1m to make it easier to work under, then put the 4 steel beams underneath on the timber sties ready for sliding. Sliding is not actually that technical. You put 100x50 hwd between the steels in the direction you want to slide, and the special ingredient on the hwd, sunlight. You rub soap into the hwd to make it slippery. You also have two guys at the end house in the direction you are sliding with sand in buckets in case it gets a move on when you are sliding, you just throw the sand on the sunlight and friction does the rest. You can either than push the house with a bobcat, if space permits or you use block and tackle to pull it.

House was slid 3m to the right and a couple of metres back, it was then jacked 6m up in the air or so. Jacking is literally done with truck bottle jacks. On a small place like this you would have 4 sties and 4 jacks and 4 guys. the 2 guys on 1 side jack up 200mm at a time and then put a 200mm block under neath, lower jack onto timber, yell safe and the other 2 jack their side. My slide and 6m jact took one long day.

While it was jacked and sitting on the sties I excavated a level pad under the house and where the sides where going to be added latter.

The boys and I then came back and marked the stump positions and drilled 450mm holes 1200mm deep, started drilling with the bobcat but moved onto the jackhammer pretty quick as we were in rock. The reason for the depth was that I new that the house was going to stay this way for a while and I wanted nice deep foundations as it was going to sway a lot. Then we hung the 90x90mm supa gal stumps from the old bearers (welded to the PFC's) into the footing holes. The house gets jacked slightly above the finished level and you leave the posts hanging on the bolts so that you can get the tops all level and the house can be lowered on to the stumps so the raisers can get their gear out. I also had to have a crane swing in a 310 ub to hang out the back as I had a large open plan living area going in the back so could have a post to support the middle of the rear of the house. I have moved 1 house onto a site and jacked and raised several others but mostly only 3m ish underneath (the removal house i did to 4.5 as it was split level). But this place was around the 7m to ground at this stage. It was very interesting hanging stumps and welding them to the bearers at that height. It was strange having the highest trestles to work under the house. I also was supposed to have the concrete footings poured 300mm below ground level so that I could excavate to the exact level I wanted at a later date. Though it didn't matter so much at the time (although the boys had to mix a couple of footings with the mixer later cause they ran out of concrete) I was finishing off another site and left some of my guys to pour the footings with the truck, having had all the stumps hanging in the right position. WHat could go wrong, they had poured footings with me at another site, know the importance of making sure the the stumps hung level in their holes, I told them several times about leaving the concrete 300mm from the ground level. Anyway they poured them to the top of the holes. This meant that I recently hired a labourer who became very friendly with a jackhammer.

Here is what she looked like jacked. More to follow as I dig out the other photos

Anyway here is the

[brissyboy]

Yeah he even had the academy issue moustache. No only bodies I found were the pet possums the old fella used to feed and let live in the walls. When I pulled one of them out , I didn't realize he was a bit nervous and was peeing everywhere, so when i turned around he showered one of the blokes who was working for me.

The missus always thinks were going to find a stash of money but no luck
Some of the interesting things i have found over the years are:
Old newspapers used under the lino, pretty regular thing but gives you some dates and an interesting read
Old hand drawn maps of morteon bay
old hand tools
an encyclapedia britannica set from the 50's

No bodies though

[sundancewfs]

The sliding operation sounds like fun! :)(

[jago]

Hello brissy boy,

I see what you mean about getting up high ..feck !

How is the war of the worlds house progressing, any new pics and if you don't mind 1000m2 house how many of you living there?? Lol:)(

[brissyboy]

here is some more inside ones

[brissyboy]

Here are few photos of the middle section of the house. The doors were stock individual ones that I made into doubles, built my own frames, made the glass sections etc. Kwila stairs built from scratch. I love doing stairs, the most technical things I build anyway.

[brissyboy]

A few more pictures showing the addition of side decks.

[brissyboy]

Rear extension going on. Have to find more photos and will upload when I remember

[namtrak]

Wow!

[jago]

Rear extension going on. Have to find more photos and will upload when I remember


Those headers above the windows what size are they?..are you going to put webstiffners or pinch blocks in along side your ibeams?

Whats the view like from the upperfloors...any pics?

[brissyboy]

Hi Jago
Lintels are 125x50 f14hwd for 900mm openinng as specified by engineer. Yes have blocked in between joists using same smart joists as per usual. but needed crane in to lift up a second steel beam that was behind what you could see so got him to flooring on at the same time.

Next lot of photos will try and find are with the 3rd storey frame on and then the rafters and tin. Roof is a stick frame as 10.2m trusses at that height by myself without a crane there the whole time would have been painful, whereas stick frame i did the rafters, battens tin etc by myself.

BB

[jago]

Lintels ...

Its amazing what one engineer will specify compared to another on a multi storey building.

My door openings, middle floor (2100mm wide) he specified 240 x 45 double, laminted KD F27 I had a chat with the older builders at the building yard and they ran through the Hyne span tables and came up with 2 x 195 x35 KD would more than be sufficent went back to engineer and he said yep thats fine!!!! Go figure :rolleyes:

[Scotty_K]

G'day mate. How's the reno going? you must be close to finished by now? Just bought ourselves a house and are hoping to raise it up and add on a bit of an extenstion build in etc. Just wondering about who you used? Thanks