The Jika Jika Neighbourhood House will be open to the public as part of Sustainable House Day 2011 in conjunction with the Greener Houses Growing Greener Neighbourhoods Project. The unique and exciting approach of Greener Houses has been to train teams of local volunteers in home sustainability and empower them to design the retrofit of their local Neighbourhood House.
At Jika Jika Neighbourhood House, we have just begun our retro-fitting sustainability journey. To get us to this stage, we attended several workshops teaching up about sustainable design techniques, auditing skills (such as energy, lighting and passive design) and community engagement.
Our process started by completing an audit of the neighbourhood house and determining from this the areas we felt was in most need of attention. For example, heating and cooling, stand by power, hot water, and lighting were the biggest energy users. So we made these our top priorities.
We completed research on project ideas, to determine what was feasible (in a community house setting regarding the users, and also regarding financial budgets). We then compiled a list of projects to be completed.
The following list details the exciting projects that you can see on the Sustainable House Day:
• Insulation: ceiling and wall.
• Draught sealing: range of EcoMaster door and window seals. An Ecomaster representative will be present on the day, with products available to look at and for purchase.
• Windows: secondary glazed by EcoMaster, timber frames replacing aluminum,
• Shading: External awnings
• Skylights: domestic and commercial Solartubes
• Water: tanks for garden & plumbed to toilets, grey water piping, water efficient toilets, waterless urinal, water efficient basin taps.
• Painting: the roofs are painted white to reflect the most light and therefore heat.
• Stand-by power reduction: Future Switch.
• Hot water: new Bosch system.
• Composting: kitchen & garden waste
• In progress - window coverings: internal drapes, roman blinds & pelmets. Security grills will allow secure night purging.
• In progress - renewable energy: PV solar system to be attached in the near future.
Being a Volunteer
I'm Mel. I had not known about the Jika Jika Neighbourhood House until I joined the Greener Houses project. It has been a very rewarding experience, with a few challenges along the way. We have had volunteers come and go, different opinions on what projects should be proposed, and timelines to fit in with everyone’s busy schedules.
One of the main things that have come from this experience was to keep our projects realistic. Because we were retrofitting a community house, we had to think about all the building users. We had to come to terms with the fact that not everyone is as passionate about sustainability as we are; therefore we had to consider what projects were likely to used by the building users. For example, when it came to stand by power saving devices, we chose the FutureSwitch because we felt it was the easiest to use and most likely to actually get used.
We also considered the ‘low hanging fruit’. For example, attaching a PV solar system on the roof was not our number one project, becoming energy efficient was. This aspect also relates to the fact that we understand that not everyone can afford a solar system on their roof, so by having simpler and cheaper alternatives to becoming more sustainable, we hope to reach out to a wider range of the community, and help more people to start or continue on their path to becoming more sustainable.
We hope to see you on the day, where will show you our new sustainability features and explain how we weighed up the options and made our choices, and answer any questions you might have!
(August 2011) (
