|
|
Sustainable House Day, Duffy, ACT |
|
Category: Sustainable House Day 2009 |
 |
by PeterO  (September 2009) (rank 135th) |
|
The brief was to renovate an existing 1972 typical Canberra 30' x 50' brick veneer shoebox to accommodate the contemporary requirements of a family with 2 school-age children. Design objectives were to increase the spaciousness and privacy of living and sleeping areas while maintaining a high standard of energy efficiency.
New Build: Designed by Anna Pender/Nabil Adhami and built by owners
Unique Sustainable Elements featured in this home
External Walls
The additional external walls were constructed using Thermacell 250 mm wide expanded polystyrene blocks with 160 x 160 mm reinforced concrete cores spaced throughout. This size of Thermacell block is virtually the same thickness as the original brick veneer construction and facilitated alignment of internal and external walls. With a minimum of 90 mm of polystyrene this building material offers a very high level of insulation in the walls.
Internal Walls
Acoustic batts were installed in new internal walls to provide better (but not perfect) sound isolation.
Roof
Colour Bond, R 4.5 insulation, sisalation were used to reduce heat loss in winter and to prevent heat gain in summer.
Floor
Slab construction with waffle pod was used for new master bed room, solid timber (Red Iron Bark) was used in living areas and hallways. New family room is a conventional 'sprung' hardwood floor.
Window Treatments
Schuster double glazed WRC windows throughout using 6-12-4 (outside-gap-inside) DGUs with mylar sheet in 6 mm pane. Motorised retractable awning used to reduce summer heat gain from morning eastern sun. Verosol highly reflective blinds used to reduce afternoon summer heat gain from western sun. Insulated blinds on many windows.
Heating & Cooling
The existing ducted gas heating system was retained and sufficient to heat the additional volume of living area. Post-renovation gas consumption is virtually identical to pre-renovation consumption despite the living area increasing by nearly a factor of two and the volume increasing by about 2.5 x.
