63 Jansz Cres, Griffith

About This Project

The builders brief was to construct a new modern single storey house on a sloping site of 1147m2. The house design consisted of four bedrooms, three living areas, dining and garaging for two cars.

The proposed house features a flat roof design with wide eave overhangs and flowing internal spaces arranged around a main garden courtyard garden to the north, a smaller courtyard with a swimming pool & a courtyard off the street. With much of the house facing north the design utilises significant areas of floor to ceiling cedar framed windows through living areas & bedrooms. These glazed elements required a high degree of accuracy in the set-out of the exposed concrete floor slab and finished ceiling heights as well as the structural steel corner supports and window frames dimensions.

The main living areas were designed to have exposed polished concrete flooring. It required a high degree of accuracy and care to achieve the correct levels, finish & ensure no cracking. The builder’s contractor delivered a quality result.

All internal ceilings are aligned with external plasterboard eave soffits and the bottom edge of the rendered parapets. These parapets are very long and required a high degree of accuracy in the construction of the framing, cladding & rendering to avoid any misalignment which might be seen along its length.

Wall construction for the house is a mixture of face brick, rendered brick veneer and timber framed walls with cedar cladding. The window frames were designed to sit hard up against the rendered & timber clad walls allowing very little margin for error.

The house was designed to have a 6 star energy rating and require little in the way of energy to heat & cool. The large glazed areas to the north and wide eave overhangs allow significant solar gain in winter and little in summer. Hydronic gas heating pipes were installed in the floor slab and reverse cycle cooling units are concealed in several ceiling locations throughout the house.

Building with Phil was a great experience. We have heard lots of stories about how stressful it is to build, but we found it to be a great adventure. Phil initiated weekly site meetings to ensure we were engaged with the build. He also allowed us to visit the site whenever we liked. His open and regular communication was critical to ensuring the final product was exactly as we expected and desired. His whole team were friendly and approachable, and he selected contractors and tradespeople who would not only achieve a high standard, but would be willing to listen and work with both him as the builder and us as the clients. He went above and beyond by coordinating contractors outside of the building contract including the pool, retaining walls and landscaping.

We were very impressed by Phil’s willingness to accommodate our changes. He never complained about this, and would even identify improvements he felt would suit our aesthetic.

Phil and his team worked hard to ensure that we were in our new home by Christmas. On return in January they worked to complete any outstanding work, and finished the house to an extremely high standard. We are extremely happy with our home, and have only positive things to say about our building experience.

Philippa & Matthew