your abode starts new sustainable house construction in Sydney

Here is an image of our new sustainable house project in Collaroy, Sydney which we will commence building in early 2009. Green building is what we are about and this house typifies everything about our approach to sustainable houses.
The house will be very eco-friendly both in its design and construction. Water and energy consumption for the house will be very low due to the house:

1. being totally self sufficient for potable water. All water for drinking, cooking and showering will be collected on site and stored in rainwater tanks for re-use in the house
   
2. all grey water from showers, hand basins and the washing machine will be recycled through a grey water treatment system and re-used for flushing toilets and washing clothes in the washing machine.
   
3. not having any air conditioning because of the excellent breeze ways that provide for summer cooling
4. having high thermal mass in both the walls and exposed concrete slab for winter warming and summer cooling
   
5. using an in slab gas hydronic heating system for winter heating
6. using low-e thermal glass in all of the windows to reduce heat loss in winter and prevent heat gain in summer
7. having good eaves and sun shading to keep it cool in summer
8. being designed with good orientation and zoning of rooms

But we haven't only considered water and energy efficiency. Occupant comfort and materials sustainability are also high priority:

1. all internal paints and cabinetry will use low VOC products.
2. recycled Australian Hardwood will be used for the stair construction and for the skirting board and architraves around windows and doors
3. any waste created during construction will be separated into differing materials and recycled

This is a very exciting project for both us and our clients and we will post progress photos and updates as we move through construction.

House energy star ratings - what do they mean?

Many of you may be aware that the energy efficiency of new houses is measured using a star rating system. This system has existed for a number of years and rates houses on their energy consumption from one star at the lowest level through to ten stars at the highest. But what do these rating mean in reality for you, the consumer, home purchaser or new home builder?

NatHERS, or The National Home Energy Rating System, has a great on line description of each star rating in each locality in Australia, and what it means in terms of anticipated energy consumption in a house for heating and cooling.

For example in Sydney East, a 1 star rated house will use 230MJ/m2 and a 10 star house will use 6MJ/m2. This equates to the 10 star house using only 3% of the energy of a 1 star house or being 38 times more energy efficient than the 1 star house.

Something else to be aware of is that the ratings are not linear from the 1 star through to the 10 star. A 5 star rated house does not use half of the the energy of a 1 star house, 115MJ/m2, but only uses 50MJ/m2.

This is invaluable information for anyone trying to find their way through the maze of energy stars and ratings.

Building Green : an overview

An eco-friendly home is better for the environment as well as your health.


Building green is about the way your home is designed, constructed and operates in order to reduce its impact on the overall environment whilst creating a healthy and enjoyable environment for you to live in. Key green building strategies include water and energy efficiency, sourcing sustainable products and materials, and using renewable energy.

The buildings we live and work in have a profound impact on the natural environment, the economy and our health. The built environment accounts for:

• 40 per cent of our total carbon emissions
• 33 per cent of all product and material resources consumed
• 42 per cent of our total energy consumed
• 12 per cent of water use.
  

In the past the building industry has been inherently wasteful, lagging behind other industries when it comes to sustainability. The statistics should be impetus enough for everyone involved in the building industry to accept a greater responsibility in adopting more sustainable practices.

But for green building to succeed it has to be mutually beneficial: there has to be something in it for consumers as well as for the environment.

And there is. The win for consumers is a more modern, healthier home with lower energy and water bills. A well-designed home can, without any change in occupant behaviour, reduce energy use by about 60 per cent and water use by about 30 per cent.

Research indicates homes that incorporate environmental initiatives now sell more quickly and command higher prices than those that don’t. The objection that building green is too costly has been overstated for far too long. Achieving the energy and water savings cited above need add no more than 5 per cent to the cost of construction.

Building in a more eco friendly way simply creates a better house to live in. Studies show that indoor air quality is usually about five times worse than outdoor air due to the pollutants given off by everyday household furnishings and products. By using eco-friendly materials you create a healthier indoor environment for you and your family.

Accelerating green building

As part of the Clinton Global Initiative 2007, a panel was brought together to discuss green building and how to take things forward.

Of note was Bill McDonough of Cradle to Cradle fame, and Australian Maria Atkinson who is the head of sustainability at Lend Lease. We were really impressed with contrary to a lot of opinions in the 'west', India is really making a huge effort.

The discussion is in two parts which you can check out below.

DeMaria Design - Redondo Beach House

The Redondo Beach House is a project by DeMaria Design Associates in California. The house utilises shipping containers as the basic construction system for the house, mixing in conventional stick frame construction and prefabricated assemblies.

This mix of materials and methodologies results in a house that is affordable and nearly indestructible. The modified containers are mold proof, fire proof, termite proof, structurally superior to timber framing and along with the other “components” come together to create a system/kit of parts that is cost affective, achieves construction time savings, and is energy/environmentally conscious.

70% of the house was built in a factory environment and brought to site to be "assembled". This can help to ensure that quality control is kept to a high standard.


With the quantities of unloved shipping containers cluttering up all of our docks, they are the ideal module for building. just like LEGO for adults!

DeMaria Design are also involved in a new residential housing system called Packaged Architecture which they will be launching through Logical Homes.

Turning Sydneys' rooftops green

There was a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald about a group or architects and environmentalists who want to make use of all of the unused rooftops in the city and turn them into 'green rooves'.

For those who aren't aware, a green roof is basically a rooftop garden that can be used as somewhere for food production or planted out as a cool place to hang out. They have very good environmental credentials providing an excellent insulation layer helping to evenly balance a buildings internal temperature. They have been used for centuries in Europe but for some reason haven't been taken up in Australia.

As Sydney becomes more densely populated such green spaces are going to become more and more important in providing respite for its inhabitants.

Shipping Container Homes by Container City

We recently came across this great video on you tube for the container city in the UK. Photos and details of the city have been around for a while, but the video gives some great insights into living there from some of the residents.

Amongst other things, the unbelievable cheap rent that the residents pay for a great space so close to London is genuine food for thought in the affordable housing stakes.

It has been said plenty of times, but surely shipping containers will come in from the fringe soon and become a genuine low cost housing system.

Euopean passive houses

There is a real drive in Europe to create what they are calling passive houses. A passive house can be defined as a house that:

• reduces heat losses through improved insulation;
• reduces heat losses by improved air sealing of the building;
• has improved air quality due to ventilation systems with highly efficient heat recovery;
• uses passive energy
  
• has a low energy demand through using efficient appliances.

The aim is to create a house that is able to guarantee a comfortable indoor environment without needing a conventional heating system. The building is no longer heated actively and is then called a 'passive house'.

The people behind the initiative are using the term 'passive house' to refer to construction standards that goes further than what would be classified as low-energy house.

They have an event on in September in Brussels Belgium that seeks to expand upon knowledge of passive houses as well as an interactive presentation outlining the broader issues of passive houses.

Felipe Assadi and Francisca Pulido deck house

We have written a few posts recently about Chilean architecture because there are some fantastic young Architects there. Felipe Assadi and Francisca Pulido and their deck house is just another fine example.


The house is unapologetically modern, but sits very comfortably in its natural surroundings. A combination of the use of natural materials and working with the natural fall of the ground, not against it, have made for an excellent example of siting a house for minimal impact on the environment.


Inside, the interaction with the natural environment continues with masses of natural light and the unavoidable views and blurring of the lines between what is inside and what is outside.

F3 architectos forest house

The forest house is another fantastic project from Alejandro Dumay Claro, Nicolás Fones Claro and Francisco Vergara at F3 architectos in Chile.
The house is an excellent example of design living with, and accommodating the natural environment. The house not only has had a minimal impact on the natural environment, but has been built around it, with trees forming an integral part of the aesthetics of the structure. The house has the appearance of having grown in place along with the trees.







Alejandro is also involved with the design of the espacio minga prefab building, below, which is now at the prototype stage.

Asserbo summer house

Christensen & Co architects in Denmark has come up with this wonderfull piece of modern design, the Asserbo summer house. At 64m2 (704ft) it barely qualifies as a house, but it everything that is good about Scandinavian design.

A finely crafted pavilion, the structure seems to hover over the ground, giving the building even greater connection with the surrounding environment. Simple materials used well will win out every time.


I challenge anyone to not enjoy summers with a building like this to pass away the time.

Toma House modular buildings

TomaTech are the manufacturers of a range of prefab houses and buildings called The TomaHouse. TomaTech seems to be based in Indonesia and Spain. Their main business angle for their products to date is in tourism resorts. However they have a range of modern house designs which can be purchased in kit form online.



The TomaHouses are made from an easily erected aluminium framing system. Nothing more than simple hand tools is required to bolt the whole system together. Their site claims that a couple of men can built one of the house framing systems in a couple of days. Due to the inherent light weight of the structures, the foundation support consists of nothing more than screw piles.

The system is well thought out and utilises a plug and play style of connection for electrical wiring between modules. The first house shown above, known as the Bauhaus 2 is available as displayed for 310,000 euros.


Although it is hard to argue that virgin aluminum is a green material due to the energy required in its manufacture, a light weight and easy to erect structure such as the TomaHouse will require minimal foundation disturbance and consequently reduce their impact of the immediate environment.

via equitygreen

The Wall House in Santiago de Chile

In the wall house, Frohn & Rojas Architects in Santiago de Chile have created a fantastic example of how to interact with the outdoor environment through the creative use of materials.


The house has several 'layers' of skin, each reducing in substance as one moves towards the outside of the house and interacts with the outdoors. The architects have described these layers working outwards as the 'concrete cave, stacked shelving, the milky shell and the soft skin'.


What we love about it is that it is breaking down the formality of a house and making it more akin to camping. It is the sort of house that would go someway towards reconnecting humans to where we belong, in the natural environment and away from where we don't belong, in a heavily built up environment.


The external 'skin' also allows wonderful filtered light into the house and externally cuts a cool geometric shape.


via dezeen

The ZEDfactory

Bill Dunster Architects is the ZEDfactory. They have been around since the late 1990's specialising in Zero fossil Energy Developments (hence the ZED in ZEDfactory). We have had an interest in their work since they first really came to everyones attention in 2002 when they completed the highly acclaimed BedZED (above) for the Peabody Housing trust in Surrey UK. At the time it was the UK's largest carbon neutral eco community.


Their recently completed Jubilee Wharf project in Cornwall (above and below) is another fine example of a carbon neutral eco community containing homes, workshops, bar/cafe, offices and a nursery.

The project features a wood pellet boiler and 4 wind turbines. The wind turbines will generate most of the expected electrical demand, whilst all the space heating and hot water will be met by solar thermal and the wood pellet boiler. The project also used local, reclaimed or recycled materials wherever possible.
The business plan for the ZEDfactory also extends beyond design services and includes ZEDprojects, sustainable property development, and ZEDfabric, a supply chain management system designed to procure products and components for the sustainable building industry that aren't readily available or cost effective at this stage.

via FUTURE HOUSE NOW

The beach shack is back

Whilst we are talking about plywood houses, we thought it was important to talk about a house we haven't blogged about before, The Parish House on the Central Coast of NSW.

Conceived by Jeremy Edmiston and Douglas Gauthier of SYSTEMarchitects in New York in collaboration with Robin Edmiston and Associates in Australia. The Parish House, or Burst 003 as they call it, is built entirely from laser cut plywood pieces.

Burst is a kit house with a difference, steer ring prefabrication towards product design and manufacturing. According to SYSTEMarchitects, it is a prototype of a prefabricated, affordable housing system that they plan to launch in the American market called “Burst”.


The plywood was laser cut to produce 1,100 nonidentical plywood pieces, each cut, drilled, and etched to determine its location in the house. These arrived flat-packed in on site, where a team of 12 students from the architecture program at nearby Newcastle University was prepped for a fast-build process that the architects likened to a barn raising.

The frame came together in three weeks, built initially atop a scaffolding platform, and then lowered into place on the footings. The project was delayed, however, when SYSTEM determined that a large amount of additional blocking and cross-bracing was needed to support the structure. This, along with the general prototype nature of the project, blew the budget out by 100%, final cost around $250,000.

To add further credibility to the project, it was joint awarded the Wilkinson Award last year by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, their highest award for residential architecture.

Structural support for house frame above.

Internal shot showing the plywood panels

The flatpack shelter

Gregg Fleishman is an Los Angeles based architect, designer, artist and inventor who is driven by a desire to make building easier. His two flat pack shelters, Shelter system 01 (above) and DH1 Disaster Housing (below) are good examples of his approach to simplicity in construction.
They are both made from sustainable European birch plywood with phenolic resin finish both sides. The structures are router cut from sheet plywood making them easy to ship and transport. They assemble without any fasteners, by using integral slots and notches, even employing wood springs and wood hinges. To complete the structures, some form of weatherproof covering such as canvas is required externally.