Our Lucas mill home

**Sigidi** · 12th February 2009, 05:00 AM

I started to post what we had in mind for the bluegum we just saved then thought it was getting a bit off track and too large for a post, so decided to start a thread...

The boss is eying it off for another 100sqm of deck to add to the house... hmmmm Dunno, that'd push us to around 500sqm for the house - around 200 sqm of deck and about 300 sqm of walled in floor area. (outside maximum dimensions would be something like 28.4m x 21m, but not totally square)

The bit in red is what the boss has in mind for the bluey's, not sure about running it at 45 deg to the outside modules, but we've got some time to figure that bit out. All the decks/breezeways have/will have roof over them. The tiled decking is more like extra living area. Out of the adults games room (pool table, bar, plasma, surround sound mounted in walls and ceiling, fireplace) there are 4 bi-fold single pane glass doors onto the 2nd module back tiled deck. The BBQ will be mounted into a bench set-up with a sink, couple of cabinets, timber slab bench-top of course.

Virtually all the timber in the house - posts, bearers, joists, wall frames, battens, deck joists, decking, handrails, deck rafters, deck roofing battens (you name it) has been cut from Larry (my Lucas)

These are the first module (kitchen, Bed 1 etc) posts and bearers in place with the first few joists going on. The bearers are 200x75 spotted gum, 5 of which are 6m long (around 105 kg each) and I cut 'em, loaded them on my little truck Donkey, drove from milling site to building site (50m) and then put 'em on the posts myself.

We've (the Boss and I, some occasional help from munchkins) nailed screwed, glued everything together ourselves. Had a plumber out for 5 days so far and a sparky for 3 days. Other than that no other trades, oh my Uncle semi-retired builder came out for a day and put up the trusses for the first module.

Old Larry the Lucas has cut a fair pile of timber to go into this house 3 truck and dogs, plus 6 other individual truck loads of logs have all been sliced up to date for the house. The boys with the truck and dog say they can get about 40 ton on that rig, all in 6m logs. Their crane is rear mounted and can pick up 2 ton at max reach of 12m, so they load the truck and trailer, then off-load at my place.

This was the trial run and our lads accommodation when his tent fell apart after being lived in for 6 months straight, poor bugger, he never complained about being in that tent though.

When it came to the house, we couldn't get enough timber to do weatherboards as we wanted, so we've had to go with Hardiplanks instead, that worked out fine as the Boss painted the house white anyway, which I couldn't have handled if we had nice solid timber weatherboards like Ty's room - having said that, She's painted Ty's room white now anyway

Well looking at the time, I'm definitely waffling now, just wanted to say we're thinking of using the bluey's for the 'front deck'...

**bobsreturn2003** · 12th February 2009, 11:45 AM

well done you are certainly getting some good timber and a fine house . cheers bob

**Sigidi** · 12th February 2009, 09:44 PM

Thanks Bob, hopefully by the time it's done the house will be great - maybe the kids will have moved out too???

**glenn k** · 14th February 2009, 12:21 AM

Well done it's good to start from basics (Trees). I did mine 13 years ago. Bluegum sub floor pine frame cypress weather boards, Sugargum floor boards, Elm Kitchen, cypress stairs and 4 panel doors, sheoak bathroom cabnet. The chippies loved working with straight wood which they hadn't seen before.
Good luck with your building

**Sigidi** · 16th February 2009, 10:53 PM

I found a few other pics of the build and I wanted to share and as I milled the timber required for it I guess there's a loophole for putting it up here...

Here's the kitchen in progress

and kitchen finished, the bench tops are silky oak salvaged from a housing estate in Brissy (they are temporary as I've got 2" SO slabs cut under the house waiting to dry out and replace the 1" boards I quickly joined together)

The back of module 1 - off to the left you can see the beginnings of module 2. Under Mod 1 you can see the stickered stack of 5x1 Silky from the Brissy development

Module 2 with posts and bearers done. The posts where milled by a local sawmill as I had no Ironbark left for these posts, the bearers are mine - again 200x75's. The joists you can see where supplied by a different sawmill (the only one in town who could cut 7.5m) and they were terrible. Dimensions where great, but bow, twist and spring were ungradeable for 10 out of the 24. Their response "tree's aren't the size they used to be... grading rules need to be changed" I fought for almost 2 hours with their manager here on site. Almost felt like burying him down the bottom paddock

Mod 3 posts, I cut these ones as we got a bit of Ironbark from a local tree lopper. All the house posts are 5x5's. If you look into the distance you can see two tree lines (well I can, cause I know they are there) Ok so we have a creek as our bottom boundary - the second row of tree's in the bottom of the gully about 260m away.

The pic is a bit out of focus, but you can see mod 1 locked up, with Mod 2 external frame up and ready to take trusses. All the framing was cut on site from logs salvaged from our local golf course expansion.

Another fuzzy one, dunno what the boss was doing with the camera, but this shows Mod 2 frame with the platform floor laid. The bearers and joists for mod 3 where engineered laminated things, we just didn't have the logs to cut these ones.

Ok here's a bit of a scary pic. Remember the pic above showing mod 3 posts? Find the blue walled paddock shelter, look directly above and in the distance and find a white roofline hidden by a young gum tree. This next pic is taken from next to this house and looking back on our property from across the hill.

The red lines are our side boundaries, you can see module 1 locked up, with module 2 framed next to it and module 3 is just posts (can't really see them). This was about 15 months ago, the creek is normally about 5m wide and was about 65m wide in this pic.

Hope you enjoy the pics

**Burnsy** · 17th February 2009, 10:31 AM

Looks great Allen, good idea using modules so you can stage it. Would love to do one with timber I cut one day although buying premade steel trusses was very easy and I can rest easy knowing the termites have nothing to eat

**Sigidi** · 17th February 2009, 01:20 PM

Mike actually we had to do it in modules for two reasons;
1) When I drew the plans I couldn't draw the roof with the house all together and couldn't get hardwood to conform to code and still run the spans we wanted, the boss saw it was roughly in 3 parts so we split into modules
2) also I was the roofing crew, so I needed something a bit easy to manage for my first roofing job, so 3 straightforward gables seemed easy enough to cut my teeth on

**weisyboy** · 18th February 2009, 08:43 PM

looken good.

**justinmcf** · 20th March 2009, 12:16 AM

hi sigidi, excuse my ignorance, but can you tell me, when you cut a log with the lucas mill, can that green timber be used straight away or do you have to stack and dry it for a certain period, if so, how long?

being a chippie myself, i can see a lucas mill in the not so distant future, i know nothing about this side of timber cutting, but i have done some research on the lucas mill, i think it is the right product for me.

i dont know if its possible, but i would like to gain some knowledge of the mill before i buy, is there any chance i could spend a day working with you to see how to use the mill?

regards, justin.

**Sigidi** · 20th March 2009, 12:33 AM

Justin give me a ring when you have a few hours - I'll go into great details

Number is on my website

**weisyboy** · 20th March 2009, 08:14 AM

make sure you aint in a hurry

**Sigidi** · 20th March 2009, 06:40 PM

now, now Carl are you trying to get at something? no point dancing around it, just come out and say it - I like talking about milling, especially my Lucas.

Justin, if you weren't too sure about buying a mill - you will be after we have a chat (epic) I have to admit I love milling, but I love my Lucas more, be on the look out for a thread coming soon about 350x350 posts cut using my model 6 Lucas

**weisyboy** · 20th March 2009, 06:47 PM

so ya been squareing some logs hey.

**Sigidi** · 20th March 2009, 06:48 PM

Yeah maybe a bit later tonight I'll get to putting it up...

**itsposs** · 5th September 2010, 01:22 AM

Allen where are the rest of the pic s of the house

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