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Our wall held up pretty well to our water test. There were no leaks through the window opening and the other moisture-proofing measures (sarking, flashing) kept everything else nice and dry. I did get a bit wet from the hose overshooting the roof, but the wall held up just fine.

Detailing the wall was interesting. Because the BCA makes no reference to a cavity with reverse brick construction, it is possible to design a wall that is either fairly thin (as narrow as 90mm for studs + 110 for the bricks, if you specify a thin cladding to the exterior and add no plasterboard to the interior) or quite thick. In the end, we built our wall with a 20mm cavity, but with the thickness of the cladding (salvaged from pallets), the window had quite a deep reveal. We thought this was quite a nice feature and complemented the mass of an inteior brick wall nicely.

Almost all of the materials were salvaged and reused. The main structural components were made of pallets, which helped in terms of minimising waste, as most elements were already the correct size. The roofing and some of the timber was found at the Outlook shop, offcuts from other projects. In the end, the new materials we used amounted to a handful of nails and a few metres of aluminium foil.

We also limited the use of power tools. On the first day, everything was dismantled, cut, nailed and screwed by hand. I had a go at using tinsnips to cut the roofing to size (one sheet had to be cut in half), but soon abandoned that and resorted to the angle grinder on day 2. We also had a bit of help from a cordless drill and power saw.

It was a really interesting exercise following the wall through from research to design to construction. I think we all learned a lot , particularly about what works on paper but not when it comes to construction, which will be valuable in the future when designing. Plus, it was kinda fun.

Our wall ended up being a bit over-engineered and very sturdy and we are now on the hunt for a new home for it, rather than consigning it to landfill.

So, if anyone is in the market for 1/4 of a cubby...