Sustainable House Day, Anglesea, Victoria

New Building Construction:  Designed by owner’s architect son and engineered and built by owner in 2002 being completed in April 2003.  Architectually, this home has three distinct modules each quite different to either of the other modules yet combining to give a very inviting atmosphere.  The square donut floor plan of the home is situated on a concrete slab for thermal stability and earth insulation with the centre of the donut being a swimming pool, which in turn adds to some extent to the thermal stability of the home system. (This latter part is only applicable to severe daily movements in temperature.)

The main living area module is constructed in the current modern box externally.  It is sited with large North and East facing windows to catch winter sun for solar heating.  Summer sun is kept off these windows with removable 85% sun shades. All windows of this module are double glazed.  The area has two back up heating systems; wood fired combustion and reverse cycle Air Conditioning.  These are required in times of no solar heating and are used according to availability of wood and/or off peak electricity.  

The module has very high ceilings to create a large air mass, which is another measure to give thermal stability.  In addition the air space above the ceiling to the flat roof has been increased to o.75 m with insul wool and alfoil under the flat roof and then flocked wool over the ceiling and wirly gig ventilation for summer.  This area of the house is where most living takes place.   The module has lounge, dining, kitchen and family room areas without dividing walls.  

The other two modules contain bathrooms, laundry and bedrooms where no special forms of heating are provided.  Cooling is considered with R 3.5 Glass wool batts in the ceilings and R2.5 in the walls.  In summer, the area operates 10 degrees less than the outside temperature while in winter even with the weak and low sun, no supplementary heating is required.

WATER HARVESTING: 100% roof water is collected, stored in a 9000 litre polyethylene tank and used for pool top up during summer, drinking and cooking, vegey garden and toilet flush.  Back up towns supply is also connected.  The main garden is 85% indigenous with the balance being Australian native to similar climate, which needs almost no water. (Only in the most severe dry spells some tank water is used on the smallest and newest plants)

WATER HEATING: Solar water heating with a three panel system is used in both the House (Kitchen and Bathrooms) and the pool uses 30sq m of roof coils that can heat the pool up to 30 degrees C in summer.

ROOFING:  All roofing is metal, either light colored colorbond where exposed or Zincalum all with aluminum insulation underneath.

ELECTICALS: The whole house is controlled by a “C Bus” system which is  a computor controlled electrical system.  Every light can be programmed to operate in a particular way according to the messages it receives from it’s switches.  This means an owner can select particular operations from what looks like ordinary lights to suit the owners exact desire and save any unnecessary power use.  All 50 quartz halogen lights have been individually programmed for  operation according to one of five different modes.  Any one of these modes can be selected from a control panel mounted in the wall near the front door.  An owner can program their own normal use, party mode winter mode security mode, etc.

In addition to the room lighting there is eight movement or heat sensitive lighting areas which are also programmable by the C Bus system.  The main feature here is the elimination of switches and unwanted on time.  The light goes on according to are pre-programmed level when triggered by movement and goes off after a certain time if there is no further movement in a pre -programmed way, thus eliminating any wasted lighting time and thus saving electricity.

Combined with the heating systems, this house has reduced electricity usage by some 36% compared to our previous 2001 house of similar size, using standard electrics and human usage.

This house is an example of modern design combined with simple engineering to achieve a considerable reduction of overall impact on the environment without compromising on lifestyle.  Further reductions could easily be achieved with the addition of PV cells to the remaining roof area.