Former Mud Brick Home

Architect Marcus Ward, from Kyneton, Victoria, drew up the official house plans, based on my design ideas and specifications, ready for Pyalong council (now Mitchell Shire) approval in June 1989.

Raydon Mudbrick House Site Plan.

Raydon Mudbrick House Floor Plan.

It was a simple mudbrick house design. A 10m by 10m square with a surrounding 2m veranda, gives 100 sq metres of house and 96 sq metres of veranda! The wooden post and beam framework supports the roof and the mudbrick walls were not load bearing.

Raydon Mudbrick House North and South Elevation.

Raydon Mudbrick House West and East Elevation.

The solar efficient design, combined with a layer of polyester insulation against the Colourbond roof, plus a layer of polyester-wool insulation bats in the ceiling, means the house stayed cool in summer and warm in winter. With only a few rooms and 3 metre ceilings, the feel of the house was quite spacious.

Mudbrick House Construction

Mudbrick house under construction (late 1989, front)

Construction by the chosen professional builder did not go as planned. The builder's inability to follow the plans came ito sharp focus more than a few times. Everything was supposed to be completed by Christmas 1989. Instead, we couldn't move in until Easter 1990.

However, the process was made enjoyable by "working bee" days on the weekends when we'd head out to Glenaroua to see what had been done for the week, often joined by friends, do some work ourselves, have a BBQ and go swimming in the front dam.

Mudbrick Home Cabling

Steven Adler (then the network specialist working with me at MicroHelp in 1989 and later with Microsoft in Redmond, USA), came out and helped me to run phone, TV and alarm wiring one Sunday. The job was relatively easy without the ceiling in place!

Of course Steve wanted to run coax cable suitable for an Ethernet network. The thought was to perhaps create the world's first network enabled mudbrick house. The Ethernet cable was run, but a network was never setup.

"Raydon" mudbrick house (Jan 2000, rear)

"Raydon" kitchen (Jan 2003)

Download/view the "Raydon Mudbrick House Plans" as a PDF file.

This mud brick house and the native bush property were sold by Lloyd in January 2008.