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Sustainable House Day, South Hobart, Tasmania |
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Category: Sustainable House Day 2009 |
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by southhobart  (August 2009) (rank 87th) |
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This house was completed in 2008. It has been designed for a family of four with three bedrooms and has an attached bakery. The house is located 300 metres above sea level, close to Mt. Wellington, on the mountain's north-east slope.
Originally designed to have a concrete floor slab on the ground, the design was required to be changed to a raised timber framed floor, above the ground, in order to reduce the possibility of flooding from a creek culvert on the other side of the road. As a result, the house construction is entirely timber frame with no thermal mass.
The house faces north and has double glazed 'low E', cedar framed windows and celery top sunscreens to prevent overheating in summer. Casement window sashes with high quality seals and connected double sash locks keep the heat in, in winter.
External walls have R2 insulation and 'Eco-ply' external cladding. The roof is metal deck with an R1.5 foil and insulation blanket over roof battens and R3.5 batts between the rafters. Floor joists are hybrid timber 'I' beams with R3 insulation, placed on top of 4.5mm cement sheets, set between the joists. Flooring is 19mm particle board with 13mm local hardwood tongue and grooved flooring overlay.
Hot water is supplied by a flat plate solar collector on the roof, and a grid connected 1kW photo-voltaic panels system has been recently installed. The house has a small water tank for drinking water, and compact fluorescent lights are used in all living areas.
A data logger has been used to chart internal and external temperatures, and it has been found that the house fabric is very efficient. In winter, occupants only felt the need to turn the heaters on fairly late in the evening, and peripheral unheated rooms of the house cool quite slowly throughout the course of the evening,
This house design achieved a 'FirstRATE 3.5' point score rating of 59 points, 44 points higher than a 5 star score (which is only 15 points in Hobart), and equivalent to 7 stars using the latest FirstRATE programme.
