Sanctuary: Modern green homes

A new old Australian

This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 6.

Right next door to an 1858 hand-hewn sandstone cottage lies this light-on-its-feet home, a prime example of contemporary living that is somehow right at home in its historic surrounds. Old and new are beautifully paired – a wonderful example of different yet complimentary styles.

Architect Stephen Sainsbury says it’s his goal to make ecologically sound buildings that are “luxurious, exciting and beautiful places to live, work and play”. The lightness of the Newtown house is due to the way it cleverly features and coherently blends the prefabricated modular, extendable building structure he designed, called the “EcoShelta” pod system, within the original walls.

The whole house seems to be a living, breathing entity. Owners Jane Johnson and Brian Murphy were attracted to its “private, secure yet completely light and airy space”. It is perfect for entertaining says Jane, “People who visit love the open feel of the house, the way the inside and outside blend and the pool is almost set in the kitchen”.

A welcoming courtyard is at the heart of the L-shaped internal home. Recycled timber and glazed timber folding doors form the downstairs level exterior and open onto the courtyard and a rainwater-fed plunge pool.

With the wide eaves extending more than a metre over the lower level kitchen and living area, the downstairs doors can remain open even when it is raining.

The upstairs main bedroom can be opened to the elements through bi-folding glazed timber doors. Being located on one of the highest points in Newtown, a refreshing cross-breeze often floats through, and light and sky abound.

“In summer, ceiling fans are all we need to regulate the temperature and in winter, the sun comes directly into the bedrooms upstairs and warms them,” Johnson says. “And how many people can see the moon from their bed?”

The plunge pool helps to regulate the climate of the house. The pool is at the bottom of a two and a half storey void. When louvres at the top are opened, warm air transfers some of its heat into the pool so the air flowing into the house is comparatively cool.

If the air outside is dry, it will absorb some moisture from the pool and if the air is humid, some of the moisture will precipitate on to the cool surface of the water.

In-floor, saline phase-change heat store packs maintain a temperature of around 21 degrees through the ability of the saline crystals to absorb or release heat without changing temperature dramatically. Explains Stephen, “The plastic pods which incorporate the saline crystals are placed in the mortar underneath the downstairs floor surface.” Essentially, when it gets hot the crystals “melt” and absorb heat, and when it gets cold they “freeze” and release it.

The building’s strong, lightweight aluminium alloy frame that forms the basis of the EcoShelta pod system “results in the minimal environmental footprint,” says Sainsbury.

Natural swimming pools

This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 6.

There are few things better than diving into some cool water on a hot summer’s day, but with water an increasingly scarce commodity in Australia, home pools are becoming a questionable luxury. Pools are notorious for losing water from evaporation, not to mention the volume of water lost through backwash discharge via filtration systems, leakage, cleaning and so on. Some estimates have pools losing up to 4 to 5 times their volume each year. Pools are also energy guzzlers, with average sized pool’s pumps and filters chewing through up to 2,200 kW per year.

Installing a pool is something not to be done lightly, but not every part of Australia is water-stressed and if you do want to install one, there are plenty of things you can do to minimise its impact on the environment.

For existing pools you must have a good pool cover, which can help to reduce evaporation by up to 90%. Installing a cartridge filter instead of a sand filter, which uses a lot more water, will also help. And installing a rainwater tank to top up your pool is of obvious benefit. To save energy, solar pumps are available, as are solar pool heaters. For other tips see www.savewater.com.au/how-to-save-water/in-the-home/pools-and-spas.

If you’re in the market for a new pool, there is even more you can do – such as installing a chemical-free pool.

European countries have been installing natural pools for years. Now a handful of pool design companies, such as Bionova Natural pools (www.bionovanaturalpools.com.au) and Aquaviva Australia (www.mynaturalpool.com.au) have brought the technology to Australia, and are adapting it to Australian conditions.

Natural pools mimic the biological “filter systems” you’d find in a natural stream and pool. As long as you create the right environment, nature – supported by pool system technology – will take care of the rest. Impurities like decomposing plants and bacteria are filtered out by plants and by a specially designed, multilayered gravel filtration system.

Australian natural pool designers adopt a two-pool system, where one pool is for swimming and the other is for regenerating the water via the biological filter. You can have the two pools merged in the one body of water or two separate pools – it depends on what you like and how much space you’ve got to work with.