Progress Update and Colour Survey...

Things are still on track for a December opening. The piling for the foundations of the Carriage House got under way  last week (at least the drought has had some benefit - that the ground work has not been delayed by rain)...

Above: View of  Carriage House site from roof of green barn.

Below: View of the site from roof of The Manor. 

Peter and I ventured up onto the roof for the first time through the trap door to the large central area where the outside units of the air conditioning systems will be hidden from view.

Above: Peter atop the front gable with Mt Pirongia in the background.

Below: Closer view of Mt Pirongia (west of WBP).

Below: View of me atop the roof from the Bell Lawn.

The flat roof area is quite large entirely suitable for sunbathing a la Brideshead Revisited style...

 Below: The inside units for the air conditioning, which resemble turbo thrusters...

Below: The pad for the Chapel site and the West Colonnade...  

Above: View from the East.

Below: View of the North West corner.

Below: View of the West elevation.

 Above and Below: View from atop the roof of the Bell Lawn and Urn with site for future parterre (mown circle). 

Below: The paint colour choices for the walls. The plaster for the manor, carriage house and chapel is going to be coloured to the same colour as the paint we choose, and will then have sandstone particles mixed with it so that the finished walls resemble sandstone. 

Please vote on the colour you like the most (A-E).

Water Spouts and Rain Heads...

My discovery of the down pipe on the Adelaide Art Gallery got me thinking about the other details of the gutter systems. Willowbrook Park has three water supplies, which is very handy. Firstly we will have roof water for domestic use. The quality of rain water in rural NZ is very good, and the manor house has a large catchment area. We are using slate shingles instead of lead or glue and chip tiles which would taint any water making it non-potable. Secondly we are connected to the town water supply, and thirdly we have a bore down to an underground river, which doesn't run dry even in droughts and will be used for farming and irrigation purposes.

With the large catchment area of the roof, we have to have not just gutters and down-pipes, but also large rain heads to cope with large volumes of water, and the rain heads themselves must also have an overflow hole or spout to push excess water away from the house if they overflow.

Determined to customise even these, instead of having a steel box on the wall, we are looking at a variety of iron and copper detailed rain heads, and also holes and spouts. As WBP has ended up having a slight lion theme to it (the front entrance, the courtyard fountain, the terrace fountains and the door knockers) I think having a lion detailed on the side of the rain-heads, with its mouth functioning as an overflow spout would be rather fun and fitting...

Below: Our rain heads have to be fairly large as they sit at the confluence of 3 slopes...

The importance of a decent rainhead:

There are a variety of other traditional shapes...

There are even modern versions of gargoyles, whose purpose was to shoot water away from buildings from the gutter line...

with complementary fittings at the lower end of the down pipes...

We won't be using these obviously, as the water goes straight into a filter and sterilisation system, and then into two large underground tanks. But they are very decorative.

Pictures of copper rainheads taken from www.rutlandguttersupply.com