Sustainable House Day, Cairns, Kewarra Beach QLD

          KULA HOUSE – KEWARRA BEACH    

The ‘Kula House’ has been designed and built by parents of young families and will take the next generation into the future. The house is affordable, practical, and comfortable and complies with many ‘green’ principles. Sustainable building principles include smart design producing smaller houses that deliver standard features. The 180 square metre internal floor plan delivers four double size bedrooms, a full size ensuite and walk in wardrobe for the master bedroom, a large main bathroom, a laundry and storage room, dedicated kids play area and a study.    

    Owners: David and Emily Wood  
Designed and constructed by: Edge Project Constructions PL and Beachcomber Building Solutions PL 
This house displays a variety of sustainable features including:

     Roof: This contemporary low set home design follows a ‘Beachcomber’ philosophy that the structural lines should be simple with the main emphasis on the roof. Get this right and everything else falls into place. The roof’s principle job is to protect the occupants from the tropical rain and heat whilst promoting natural light into the internals and visual appeal from the street front. The long house has a 1:2.5 width to length ratio and works with a contemporary steel frame skillion roof system. The main double skillion has an average height of 5.5 metres with a 20 metre spine. Clerestory windows run for three quarters of this central span. The double system skillions to the front and rear with the carport skillion roof flying over at complementary angles mixes practical function and style well, delivering on sustainable ‘green’ living outcomes.   The roof is a light colorbond steel with 8 mm E-Therm reflective thermal insulation blanket under the roof sheeting in a 260 mm cavity with a raked ceiling achieving a R3+ rating. 

    Heating and Cooling: The ‘Kula House’ has a central split in the main double skillion and along this spine the high clerestory louvred windows deliver light and cooling breezes. Every room in the house has an external wall with large full height louvre galleries. The cooling breezes push hot air up into the high raked ceilings to the clerestory windows promoting passive cooling. Sea breezes and monsoon north easterly breezes can also be captured through the 7 metre opening onto the rear deck. This means that Kula house is air-con free.  

Lighting: Traditional ‘Queenslanders’ in the tropics can be quite dark in the middle of the house, particularly during the weeks of very high rain fall when we are in the hottest part of the year. The ‘Kula House’ has a central split in the main double skillion and along this spine the high clerestory louvered windows deliver light and cooling breezes. Compact Florescent (CFL’s) or LED lights are used in 100% of the house, including the outdoor floodlights.  

Water Heating: A Conergy solar hot water system is installed.  

Future Plans: Plans are in place to also install Photo Voltaic Panels, water tanks and a grey water system as time permits. Most importantly, the design of this house reduces the demand for electricity, in particular, air-conditioners throughout the long summer months.       >