Welcome to our page 4, Australia wooden houses
in Brisbane
This timber house was the old ideal timber house in Brisbane. The photo beside here is a large Queensland-er note
the pretty design, all the open space on the verandas and also all the open
space under the house, which could be used in very hot summer days to catch the
breeze and stay in the shade.
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Australia wooden houses
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This is a typical smaller version of the
houses, sometimes they are called workers cottages, because they were made for
people that could not afford the more typical Queenslander
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Some fret works that can be
found in and outside those old houses, there is a lot more than what we
are showing here, but this will give you some ideas, about what we are talking
about.
Australia wooden houses
The convenient and pretty wooden houses in Brisbane
and Australia; when we came to Australia in the early sixties, we found that
the houses here were made of timber, which were very different from the houses
we had left in Europe.
For us Italian migrants that had lived all
our lives in solid masonry buildings, when we arrived in Australia at the
beginning it seemed a strange thing that in Brisbane lots of houses were made
of wood and most of them were set on wooden stumps, but then we started
thinking that after all they were still good to live in anyhow, so, we got used
to live in them rather quickly.
So, we had to forget about how we used to
live in our motherland and also my native town of Genzano
di Lucania since
we were living now in Australia the Australian way, after all as the saying
goes, when you are in Rome do what the Romans do, and we did that; but then,
what were the reasons and why these houses were made of wood, or to use another
word for wood how the locals called it here, they were made of timber.
So as you can see, this question arises,
why these houses were made of timber and not masonry? And then try to see if
they were better or worse that the houses made of bricks or masonry. If we use
logic reasoning there is no difference whether houses are made of timber or
masonry, as long as they are able to give the people that live in them that
filling of safety and privacy that we aspect from them, when we live in our own
home.
Having said that now let us see or guess the
reasons why these houses were made of timber, and why they were set on wooden
stumps.
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Wooden houses on stumps
The wooden houses on stumps of Brisbane
and/or Australia
As we have already said above in Brisbane a
lot of houses are/were made of timber, but not only are they made of timber,
they are set on wooden stumps. So let us see the reasons why they were made
this way.
From what explanations we have heard, and
also by using our own imagination and intelligence one can come to the
conclusion that there were several reasons why houses here were made of timber.
The first reason is that when the first settlers started to build Brisbane,
there were plenty of trees that could be cut down and make very good timber to
build those houses; and then the
people that came to live
in Brisbane and Australia had a very good knowledge of how to use timber, since
they came by boats and in the boats of those days, there were always carpenters
and carpenter tools on board, so to build timber houses was the easiest way for
them, since they had the knowledge the tools and plenty of timber in the woods
surrounding Brisbane ,an also other parts of Australia that needed houses.
At the beginning the houses were just simple
shelters, but as the time went by they became better and better, because
the builders also became aware that here around Brisbane and northward when the
wet season comes the ground becomes too wet for the houses to stand on the
ground, in hot summer days everything becomes too hot and there were lots of
vermin on the ground, so they found a way how to build houses that would avoid
most of these problems; that is why in those times the houses on stumps became
a necessity, of course slowly they became even better and even pretty, that is
how the Queenslander house was born, which is a large house with verandas
around them that keeps the weather and the hot sun off the main walls of the
house. One can see these pretty Queensland houses if you look around even
today.
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The Queenslander houses
The Queenslander House
The Queenslander house is a large timber
house; some of them are pretty too and they serve the inhabitant very well, as
they have been built to take the advantage of the hot climate in Brisbane and
north Queensland regions. Now since I have been working in these houses to
maintain them, let me describe them to you a bit more in details. As anyone can
guess there are a few different types of these houses, but here to make it
easier we are talking about the large real Queenslander and the workers
cottage, which is a small and cheaper version of the real Queenslander.
As we have already said above in this hub,
when the first settlers arrived here, there were plenty of trees around to make
timber, a lot of this timber is called hardwood, which as the name suggests is
hard and very strong, some of this timber are even stronger and longer lasting
than the European oak or other strong European
woods. So the houses were strong and secure, the only natural real
enemy of these houses were the white ants (termites), which are able to eat
through the wood and destroy the houses. The termites are native to Australia
and if one goes up north in Australia one could see strange ground made mounts
of earth springing up from the ground, these is how the white ants live, they
eat wood from the inside and they make these mounts of earth.
So as you can see this was another reason
why the houses were built on stumps. The stumps were made of whole sections of
trees that are very resistant to rot; of course the white ants could still be
able to eat those stumps, but they were treated with some paints and at the top
they all had a capping of metal that would make a barrier to the white ants if
they came from the inside the stump and also a barrier to the other ants or
crawling insect from the outside.
We have to say that some of these timber
houses have been made also pretty, because timber can be cut to different
shapes easily, so they were somehow pretty compared to the house made of
masonry, which would be very expensive to decorate them with masonry, so the
houses are usually square boxes with a roof at the top.
Decorative
fretwork was
easy to make with timber and a lot of these houses had some decorations, in
them in one way or the other. Now I can go on and on telling you how these
houses were made, but that would be hard to do, so I am going to search the
Internet for photos that could show you what I mean, about fretwork and other
timber names, anyhow there are a lot of names given to these pieces of timber
that would be hard for me to name and for the readers to understand what is
meant by that particular name. So I am going to leave it to your imagination,
once you see some photos of the houses and the fretwork in them.
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These wooden houses need some
care
Just as most of us thought, these wooden
houses need some maintenance and care
For those people that have not own or lived
in timber houses before, they should ask questions about them before they get
involved in owning one of these houses; perhaps the first question that would
come to their mind is: are these houses safe to live in and how long these
houses can last? And then, what sort of maintenance they require? You see, they
have a right to know that, so let me try to explain this timber housing
situation.
Timber houses need perhaps more maintenance
that masonry houses; because first of all you need to paint them for the timber
to last longer, otherwise the timber on the outside walls will slowly rot away,
but then, there are also some advantages because, you see if you want to change
something it can be done easily a lot easier and cheaper than if you have a
masonry house, therefore, it is a lot cheaper also to do some alterations, so
it can work well after all.
Having said that we need also to say that
these wooden houses have some problems of their own, apart that they need to be
painted for the external timber to last longer, they also have some vermin
enemies everywhere in the houses, because the timber is more vermin friendly
than masonry and bricks and cement, but the normal vermin are not a big problem
for the house structure itself.
The greatest enemy of these wooden houses
are the termites, or white ants as some of us calls them; The white ants can
really destroy entire buildings by eating the wood from the inside, a lot of
times people don’t even know that the white ants are there eating their houses
away while they are living in them; you see, unless you know what you are
looking for, it is hard to see any sign of them from the outside. So one day
suddenly one can find out by toughing or putting some pressure on a spot where
the white ants have eaten the wood from inside, and here one can have a great
shock to see this happen, as everything starts collapsing inward and where
there was a wall now there is a big hole.
Therefore, it would be worthwhile to learn
how to recognize the signs if there are white ants; and definitely call an
expert to check the building if you are going to buy it.
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How to defend our homes from
these pests
The white ant problem
How to defend our homes from these pests
There are a few things that we can do to
prevent this pest destroy our homes; the first thing that one has to do is to
check that there is a barrier that stops the white ants to enter your building,
for instance if your house is a high-set house on stumps, check that at the top
of the stumps there is a metallic ant capping; this metallic ant capping is
usually a large galvanized round dish or square of metal and it is bent down at
the edges so that any crawling insect will find it difficult to enter your
house that way; we hope you can see the picture? The ant capping prevents also
the white ants to enter through the stump itself, if the stump has been
infested with white ants, because when they reach the top of the stump they
cannot eat through the metal capping and so they are stopped entering that way,
of course there are a lot of different buildings and a lot of different ways to
set a barrier; but sometimes the white ants find their way around.
Now there are ways that one should be
looking for if there are white ants; here the first thing that we have to keep
in mind is that white ants eat everything from inside and they don’t like to be
exposed outside for long, so, the first thing one can do is to tap on anything
that is made of wood; if the wood sounds hollow then the white ants might have
eaten the inside, so a complete check is needed to see what is the cause;
another way to look for white ants signs is that if they are forced to go
outside to move from one place to another, they will construct a tunnel, so
that they can go up and down without being seen, so one has to look for these
signs anywhere under the building: Now some expert has told me that what
happens here is that the white ants need moisture, so they have to travel to
the ground to get the moisture and then they go up again their tunnel to eat
the timber; now if the building is solid and there is no other way for the ants
to go up they will construct their tunnel from the ground up, so we should be
looking for signs to see if there are ants tunnel constructed, and if there are
tunnels, it means that there are white ants also, therefore you need a pest
control expert to poison these pests, and you need him fast.
Some natural enemies of the white ants
White ants have very few enemies because
they live and hide inside the timber, but there are some natural enemies of
course in their natural habitat, a couple of which are pictured here. As I said
before, one needs to learn the signs how to spot the white ants presence, and
do something if you find that they are there, otherwise they could eat your house
away pretty quickly.
Here under we have pasted two links about
termites that other Huber’s have written for you to check them out.
Good luck to all houses owner!
Dear readers, our intention here is that we
are going to write several hubs and talk about houses, how to own them, how to
maintain them and how to build them, because that is what I have done during my
life; so, even though in our next hub will be talking about: is Australia the
land of opportunities, we will be talking about the opportunities that I had in
the house building industry. So, see
you soon in our next hub.
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