Sustainable House Day, Altona Meadows, Victoria

Trafalgar House

The Trafalgar House is space, light and warmth on a small footprint, that captures all the benefits of Solar Passive Design and careful Material Choice.

New or Retro: New Sustainable Home, designed and built by Positive Footprints.

Architect: Chi Lu - Positive Footprints

Unique Sustainable Elements featured in this home

Water Harvesting: Entire roof collects to a 9000-litre Rainwater tank to run laundry, flush toilets, and water garden.  Automatic mains backup.  Gardens throughout are fed by efficient sub-surface drip irrigation from the rainwater tank.

Special Garden Features: Local Indigenous front garden to provide habitat, sense of place and low water use.  Rear garden is a food forest, with raised vegetable garden beds, espaliered fruit trees, citrus and stone fruits, in an effort to reduce food miles.

External Walls: Low embodied energy construction. Ecoply and Colorbond cladding over pine timber studs.  Insulation 2.5 wool/polyester blend batts with reflective foil.

Internal Walls: Plaster stud walls.  Sound insulation to bedroom zones.  Low VOC paints throughout.

Roof: Colorbond Tray deck roofing for ease of maintenance and water collection.  Curved roof central clerestory area.  Insulation:  R3.5 batts between rafters, plus R1.5 foil backed blanket under the tray deck.

Floor: Concrete slab on ground with tiles to all living areas to maximise thermal gain.  Bamboo flooring to all bedrooms.  Hard surfaces combined with ducted vacuuming for ease of cleaning throughout.

Window Treatments: Double glazed (4-16-4) plantation Hoop pine windows throughout.  Windows and zoning orientated to the Northern sun.  Clerestory windows to bring the sun deep into the house in summer.  Correct eave lengths to let in the winter sun and block out the summer.  Adjustable cafe awning to give total sun control to northern ‘alfresco’ deck.

Heating & Cooling: Greenheat Hydronic 5 star gas heating.  The house is designed to channel cooling sea breezes across the living space for summer cooling.  Hopper windows in the clerestory area help to purge hot air buildup.  Ceiling fans provide cooling when sea breeze not blowing.  No airconditioning required.  The house uses only 1/3 the amount of energy of a standard house to heat and cool.

Water Heating: Solar hot water linked to the Greenheat system. Enviro Save Water Valves have been fitted to send the first "cold" hot water to the watertank.

Appliances: Low energy lighting throughout.  Compact flouro downlights.  Reversible ceiling fan. Electric awning.  Electric hopper window.  Self-closing louvers to all extraction fans.  Cent-o-meter electric power display.

Other: Low Embodied energy materials.  Recycled, plantation or salvaged timbers throughout.  Entry airlock.  Ramp access front and back.  No lawn.
Post Occupancy Evaluation shows very impressive internal temperature performance with heating/cooling turned off.