Hi Jess Jess Congratulation on your purchase on the foothills of the Otway Ranges is a great location and a flat site is a good site to build on. Doing all your doors at 870 is also a great idea - they will work with wheel chairs, hopefully you will never need them. Its a good size for a door as long as the occupants do not put on to much weight in the aging years requiring bigger wheelchairs. (I have some experience in designing for disability). Doors at 1050 are much better but it does require a bit of extra space and the doors will add to the cost a bit as they are non standard. As other have suggested a mud room and three bedrooms are really a good idea, you can always turn the non use bedrooms into a studio, theater, guest room etc later on when the boys leave. It is a great approach to get ideas, to design the house, however I think that when you consider your brief, designing the whole site might be a better approach. What I mean is that you have to consider lot of external issues like, water harvesting and position of tanks, onsite sewage management of grey and black water, composting bins and maybe worm farming, tools storage for garden and maybe a propagating area, solar cells and on site power storage, as you get nothing these days for pumping up to the grid, maybe an eatable garden design, reference to flora and fauna, also there may be other animals on the site (pets), and the fire issue. There seems to be a lot going on on the peripherals as much as the internals of the design. As for a being advised of the oncoming possible bush fire, I would strongly suggest that you build a fire shelter, and hopefully you will be advised in time and leave before the fire comes - and never have to use the fire shelter, and it will be the best money you have wasted in your house design. It would be good if you could get some separation from your "remote working office area" , from the main house. I have been working from home for about 20 years and I find that a little separation from the main house helps in maintaining - work away from home - concept. Although you might plan for your clients never to visiting you, situations can change and maintaining a separate relationship between live areas, and work areas, may be beneficial in the long run. As your views are to the west, good verandahs which connect to living and outdoor activities may be a solution, your second design seems to incorporate this idea, and it might need to be extended especially for the rest of activities that might occur on the site. There is certainly a lot to think about, you have a fantastic site, I hope you will take full advantage of the possibilities. Regards Michael Manias - Manias Associates Building Designers - mm407p@gmail.com

Hi renovationsnovice, Looks like a large home proposal, the ground floor plan is a little hard to read as there seems to be a number of edit attempts. Reading your initial Brief, to the extent that you have posted it appears that you might benefit from revisiting the brief, and perhaps coming to some compromise on some of the preferred areas. There may be a few items that you might consider on the drawings posted; The Upstairs areas seem not to relate to the downstairs area in terms of bearing, this could reduce some costs by having top walls bearing over bottom walls. The new width of the family room you propose at 8.5 m - for domestic construction this is a significant requiring decent size steel beams and steel columns - if it could be avoided it might result in some worth wile saving in both money and complexities. In all two story's home I always advise my clients to have an office/bedroom/guest room downstairs as it often serves for emergencies when someone breaks a leg or an elderly relative visits. (unless you can prove that such life complexities will not visit you). Its great that you have provided an airlock between the garage and the main passage, if you could locate the stair in this area you could regain some of the space lost by the airlock. There are other areas that my require editing, however it appears that you may have to settle some of the larger areas before you can move on to the next edit. I would be happy to comment/work on this project. Regards Michael Manias - mm407p@gmail.com Manias Associates - Building Designers

- Any wood fired heating we have would be purely run with wood from our farm, as opposed to buying anthracite. We would really like to have woodfire doing at least two jobs, i.e. cooking and heating/heating and hot water/cooking and hot water (as we are under the impression that solar hot water would not be enough in winter??). There's nothing like lighting a woodfire to keep your house warm, except for the great big hole in the insulation that it causes. As beautiful as they are (and I'm a massive fan of open/wood fires), they are pretty bad when it comes to ceiling penetrations. A lot of insulation is lost by having an open fire, a wood heater not so much, but still bad enough. For heating, the best advice I can give is this. You need a battery storage system! Then whatever type of heating you go for, you won't run out of energy for your cooking, cooling or anything else you won't to run at the same time. I believe this is a necessity, not to mention a very smart investment. If you want to be off grid, then be completely off grid. I personally don't believe in still being connected to the grid and having the energy your home creates, sold back to you for an absolute pittance. If you invest in a good battery set up, it'll last you up to 15 years and you'll have never have to worry about heating or cooling. I visited a house about 12 months ago that was off grid for power. They purchased an induction cooktop and electric oven, that way the idn't have to worry about refilling gas bottles or having a gas bill come in either. They didn't have the smartest idea when it came to lights as they were still using halogen's, but even still, their battery system never went under 80%. Even during winter, with two teenagers, and a couple of plasma tv's, playstations and all other sorts of electrical goods that they used. They were never too careful so as to make sure they had power in reserve. They just lived life and if they needed to make adjustments, then they could've done. But they didn't need to. That was all done with a 5.5Kw/H system. You'd be surprised how well solar hot water works. It just depends on the type of system you get. Again with battery backup, you won't need to worry. - We are planning to insulate the slab, but have not gotten as far as deciding what product we would use, are there several different products like the one you described? We do plan to have polished concrete flooring throughout the entire house – with the possible exception of bedrooms on the south, if absolutely necessary they will have carpet. I know it's probably more expensive, but I would recommend the Kingspan K3 Floorboards. It is a brilliant product and I recommend it to be used in all my jobs. The effect it has on an energy rating is massive. Depending on the layout and orientation of the house, just by adding slab insulation, I have noticed an increase of almost a full star difference in the rating. So that's from 6 star compliance, to 7 star above average. Here is the product site: https://www.kingspan.com/au/en-au/products-brands/insulation/insulation-boards/kooltherm-k3-floorboard - We will also be aiming to have the optimal amount of glazing for solar gain (and prevention of heat loss). I still haven’t worked out why I can’t upload a picture of our plans, but will do ASAP as we would love to hear feedback on our plan. As for the layout, you just need be mindful of window sizes and orientation. If you have the time before you build to play around with a few different variations of your plans, it might be a good idea, as just by changing a couple of small things, it can give you large benefits. One of the main focuses I have with my business is to help people such as yourself utilise the energy rating software to make small changes at the design stage, instead of just using such a powerful tool at the building permit stage. By then it's too late to make any significant changes. Just keep that in mind. It's a small price to pay to know that your house is going to be as energy efficient as it can be. If you want to, feel free to email me the plans and I can give them a quick look for you. Just to give you some quick advice on them. Giuliano green design & consulting

As the house is in a rural setting, a colour which blends in with the bushy environment would look best. A greenish-grey would look good, such as Linseed or Oyster Linen or even Bears Foot, as suggested above. I'm sure there are many more suitable colours to choose from and it would be a good idea to buy a few sample pots to test first.