Last weekend my family and I visited some interesting places during Sustainable House Day. This year there were so many houses on offer, it was difficult to choose which ones to visit — our time was a bit limited because we had a four year old and a small baby with us.
We chose the Hawkesbury EarthCare Centre, an owner-builder house constructed from interlocking concrete blocks and a new house using many clever environmental elements.
First place on the list was the Hawkesbury EarthCare Centre, which is not a private house but a purpose built environmental education centre. We wanted to check it out because its walls were built using mud bricks, rammed earth and straw bales.
For many years, my husband and I have been dreaming of eventually buying some land and building a straw bale house using solar passive principles. We had also heard about rammed earth, so the centre gave us a great opportunity to check out both.
I have to admit now that I prefer the look of rammed earth over straw bale, but both have their pros – straw bale having superior insulating properties, and rammed earth having superior thermal mass properties. Maybe we could use both?
The centre also had loads of other great things to check out like: a large organic food garden, water harvesting devices, composting toilet, solar panels and a wind turbine project.
If you want to visit the centre, it’s holding and Earth Care fair this Saturday.
We also visited an owner-builder house constructed from interlocking concrete blocks in Berowra Heights. According to the owners, the house is positioned to maximise solar principles; access to sunlight for PV cells and solar hot water while retaining the existing native plants and eco systems around it. This means the house uses little energy for heating and none for cooling.
The house backs on to native bush, and has a fabulous rooftop edible garden with a greenhouse and lemon tree. It was interesting to hear they had possum problems too when it came to preventing their crops from being eaten.
The last house we visited, and probably the most inspirational, was a new place in Turramurra. The house was built about three years ago and is surrounded by new houses with similar aesthetic features. However, instead of taking on the form of an energy guzzling and poorly designed McMansion, the owner has incorporated many clever environmental aspects.
Amongst its many green credentials, the house has polished cement floors for thermal mass, a 2.97 kW Grid-connected Photovoltaic system, 25,000 litre water tank under-the-driveway plus a system that recycles grey and black water. Amazingly, the house is not connected to Sydney Water and the occupants drink the water (after it’s filtered) collected from its roof.
Of course I could not help having a sticky beak around the back garden, which nicely balances an area for the kids (lawn) and a food garden with two roaming chooks called Itchy and Scratchy.
If you missed Sustainable House Day, you can still download information sheets about all the houses on offer around Australia. Who knows, the ones you like may be open again next year.
If you did see some houses, please let us know what you thought in the comments below.
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