Many people confuse sustainable building with things like solar panels and water tanks, low VOC paints etc. True ‘green’ design however combines form, function and practicality (in addition to ‘add-ons’ like solar panels and water tanks) to deliver ongoing sustainability. Based on our experience we want to share with you that sustainability and passive design is so much more.
Understanding Passive Design
Passive design features optimise natural light, warmth, cooling and airflow, substantially reducing the need for artificial lighting, heating and cooling. Basic fundamentals of energy efficient design and construction include:
- Orientate your living spaces to the north, larger windows & openings, allowing the winter sunlight into your living areas to warm these spaces naturally.
- Hard surface floors are beneficial in comparison to soft carpets as the reflective heat transfers better.
- Shading to the north for the higher sitting summer sunlight is paramount, so the transfer of heat through direct sunlight during the warmer months does not occur. This element is crucial to the overall energy efficiency of your home.
- Small windows and openings to the south.
- Insulate, underfloor, walls, ceilings and roof.
- Collect rainwater, its free and tastes great.
- Glazing: sizing, positioning and detailing windows to get the most benefit from the sun while avoiding overheating in summer and heat loss in winter.
- Grey water systems are a clever way to use your waste water for garden reticulation.
- Solar power systems can store your own power in battery bank systems or feed back to the grid system for power credits.
Quality is Sustainability
We cannot stress enough that good quality design and construction go 95% of the way towards achieving sustainability. When you compromise quality you compromise sustainability. A well built home will stand the test of time and won’t need to be replaced or modified for many decades to come. So always seek out builders that have a demonstrated reputation for delivering quality work!
Whole life costs
Good environmental practice usually goes hand in hand with good economic practice. Measures to reduce the consumption of energy and water not only benefit the environment by reducing emissions and conserving resources, but will also result in substantial financial cost savings over the lifetime of the building. We recommend you always think about the long term cost. An initiative might seem more expensive but it may be offset by longer term energy savings. Alternatively materials which might be branded as environmentally friendly but need to be replaced more often. All these things need to be considered when thinking about sustainability
Knowledge is power
Throughout the construction process, strive to educate and inform yourself to ensure you have the knowledge to achieve the maximum long-term benefits from your new home.
Energy efficient homes are not a compromise; they should be a goal we strive to achieve.
