Braamekraal: The House In Its Context

An Odd Problem#

One of the most difficult decisions we faced was where to place the house in relation to the entire plot.

I guess its easy on a small, city property; you're so constrained by building offset regulations and the ratio of house-area to land-area, that there is usually very limited choice in siting a house. With 17000 square metres[1], its a whole different question. I guess a body can suffer from too much choice!

Zone-and-sector analysis is some help here, since it rules out various spaces -- possible fire sectors, wind/sun/rain sectors. Areas of differing soil health also serve as guides, since we did not want to place buildings on the healthiest soil, preferring to keep that for cultivation.

Ultimately we "just chose", and it has worked out pretty well, except for one factor: What we envisaged as the "back" of the house turned out to be the front-door, and vice-versa. Oh well!

Oops!#

One significant fuckup -- and, I guess, a predictable hazard of remotely owner-building from a distance of 500km away -- was the exact orientation of the house. Despite my very clear instruction that the house was to face True North -- "Not Magnetic North, Cliffie." -- the builder oriented the house about 30° West of True North!

This has cost us the Optimal Configuration for solar panels, and makes the house hotter (in Summer) than it ought to be come late afternoon.

This is the one Significant Error that I refuse to take responsibility for. Many other errors and mistakes along the way were All My Own, and I gladly claim them. But not this one. I repeated my instruction to the builder several times, but was never in a position to check his work. Once there's 96 sq.m. of concrete poured for the foundation slab it is too late. What are you going to do? Tear out the foundation slab and do it all again? We had told our landlord that we were moving out on a given date. The furniture truck was arriving on a set date. We had to have the building in some sort of usable state. Sue the builder? He went out of business a little while later anyway! Besides which, he was a really nice guy who helped us hugely, showing us ways to cut corners that saved a hell of a lot of money.

I guess we're never going to turn the thing to face True North now...