Castle Phoenix
Slide show of the Basement of Build at bottom of home page
Building Castle Phoenix
We are both artists. Building Castle Phoenix and all the garden features is the most major art project either of us has ever undertaken. So far, the build has been self funded but we are trying to see if we can obtain Government funding for either Tourism or Art as our project falls between these two. We envisage sculptures, sculptured seats entirely covered with mosaics, murals, mosaics set in walkways, huge basalt boulders and exposed basalt as features.
2010 May -
The Build site
Francis designed a castle home and worked through many variations. He then made a detailed model of our proposed new home. We contacted a draughtsman to draw up plans for our castle, but on seeing the proposal he promptly put us on to someone else. The second draughtsman was initially enthusiastic but it all seemed too difficult for him. Thankfully, for us, he took the designs to a meeting of architects and luckily, there was one bold creative designer who was keen to work on a distinctive design.
​When our first set of plans were ready to put to council for approval our designer approached all the councillors on our behalf and made a meeting date. Francis had made another beautiful detailed model of the new design which we took to show the councillors. A couple of weeks after this meeting we attended the public council meeting. They debated the pros and cons of our project while Francis and I sat tense in our seats. They voted and all bar one approved! Amazing! In an area of 8 metre limit, we were being given planning approval for a castle 17 metres high! All this happened in late 2009. Our designer now had to redo the plans with the detail required for building permission. We received this permission at the end of June 2010. Now comes the challenge of building our Castle Phoenix.
2012 January -Getting the basement floors concreted.
31st January 2012 Six basement rooms were concreted with underfloor heating.
​29th February 2012 We installed conduits and electrical cabling in four of the basement rooms.
31st March 2012 Eight doorway arches were constructed.
30th April 2012 We started the front steps to the Castle and did a lot of rendering.
31st July 2012 We made a start on the driveway walls down to the basement garage.
31st August 2012 The first driveway wall was concrete filled and the second wall was hand excavated down to the rock.
30th September 2012 We concreted two Castle front steps and part of the garage which took 37 mixes.
31st October 2012 We built support towers and built a lintel for the garage.
30th November 2012 We built Gothic Arches in the open foyer area.
30th December 2012 We completed the Roman Room
2011 January - Setting all the reo bars into the rock.
Our official start was 20th September 2010. A lot of the early work was hand excavating and cleaning the rock. We waterproofed under all the walls with a bitumen based paint.
4th January 2011 266 holes had to be driiled into the rock for the reo bars to be glued into. All external walls were hand rendered and sponged clean.
14th February 2011 We started to brick up the inner walls. Now we have to tie longer reo bars to the short lengths we glued into the rock. Horizontal reo has to be tied every 400mm.
31st March 2011 We brought the outer walls up to the first floor level and put in air vents for the basement rooms.
​30th June 2011 We brought our inner walls are up to powerpoint height.
31st August 2011 We started to vault the walls.
30th September 2011 We started the spiral staircase.
31st October 2011 We made the first doorway arch.
2013 December - Filling the footing walls with 44 cu mts of concrete.
In February we got a helper from Helpx - an online site. Our helper stayed with us for seven months. A lot of work he did for us was on the Sculpture Gardens and The Cave. However in June 2013 we had him making rubble fill for filling in between buttress walls in the Sphere Room. We also concreted the Central Foyer Ceiling and the Roman Room ring beam which took 22 mixes.
31st August 2013 Plumbing work was done on the Castle.
31st December 2013 Finally, the event we had been working towards since September 2010 - the footing walls were concrete filled. It took 44 cu mts.
We would like to thank The Bendigo Bank for the line of credit that is enabling our build to continue.
31st January 2014 The Sphere Room was completed. Two courses of bricks around the Castle perimeter as the first floor slab boxing.
28th February 2014 We hired two labourers to help us put down the enormous amount of reo mesh and reo bars required for the slab. We hired professionals to do the plumbing and the electrical work. Francis laid two rolls of underfloor heating pipe over the mesh using about 3000 ties.
14th March 2014 The first floor slab went down today!