Queensland Owner Builder Course

In trying to get our renovation project off the ground more, and open up more options for getting the work down I did a Queensland Owner Builder Course.

The idea behind the owner builder course is to allow people who are not licensed building Trade Contractors to build their own homes and perform renovations, extensions, etc. on land that they own. A Owner Builder Permit is required for work where the total value would exceed $11,000 (including GST and labour) if performed by a licensed building Trade Contractor. With the Permit the owner builder is allowed to do all the building work, except for plumbing and electrical tasks.

The course can be delivered in many different ways, including classroom delivery or by correspondence. Because of my workload and family commitments, and the fact that I couldn’t find it being offered in Townsville, I took the course by correspondence with The Peach Institute. I probably could have completed the entire course in a weekend If I had sat down for an entire weekend to do it, but instead I spread it out over a few evenings in the span of a month and completed it.
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How Far Behind Schedule Are We?

At the moment I have two weeks of unused leave for this calendar year. In our original plan I was supposed to be using those two weeks to paint the exterior of the house.

Instead right now the only thing that I have that I can paint are the new front stairs. There are no walls or even frames under our house that I can paint.

To say that we are frustrated would be an understatement.

I only wish that I had the skill to do it myself..

Intelligent / Structured Wiring in the Home

This week we have to start to get quotes on electrical for our house (Thanks to all the help on my last post, “How many Power Points do I need?“). One of the things that I am wanting to look at is how I can set-up distribution and wiring for phone, network, audio and video, as well as electrical.

I received my owner builders package last week and it included an article about “Smart or Structured Wiring” for the home.

I had always planned to do this, but hadn’t really found a good solution that explained how to do it. I have found stuff about how to do one or two of them, but not something that included all of them together.

The documents that came with the package were good, but didn’t actually provide any DIY Wiring information, it only pointed you to certified installers. Here are some links to two of those sites:

If anyone out there has some good resources for wiring up your home can you please comment below.

I am going to be looking around a bit to see what I can find, as I’m sure I have read about it before, but I haven’t been able to find it yet. When I find some stuff I will make sure to put it all into a post.


On another note here in Australia you are not actually allowed to install your own data cable in a house without a special installer license. For me that means that now I will need to get the electrician to actually do it / oversee it, or I risk a $10,000 fine!

How many Power Points do I need?

I am trying to work out how many electrical points I need to put into the new ground floor that we are adding to our house. I have been able to find regulations for the US, but I can find nothing for Australia. I am almost starting to think that there are no regulations for Australia since my owner builders course says that I can not perform a whole bunch of work unless I have specific certification, but electrical is not listed.

Below is the new floor plan for the ground floor on our house.

New Floorplan for our Queenslander House

If anyone out there had advise for me about where to find information about Australian or Queensland regulations for electrical work please let me know in the comments.

Also if you have any advise with how many power points to install, how far apart, etc. please let me know in the comments as well.