Sanctuary: Modern green homes

Building your sustainable dream home

From Sanctuary issue 10. More articles like this

By Alan Strickland with Judy Celmins

Excerpt: Wanting to live sustainably is not a fringe occupation. Millions of Australians want to make a difference to their homes and lives. But as a member of the Alternative Technology Association and an organiser of Sustainable House Day the question I am constantly asked is: “Where do I start?”

Many people come away from Sustainable House Day fired with enthusiasm. They see homes that are warm in winter and cool in summer, without the need for large heaters or airconditioning. They see water-wise homes that gather rainfall and greywater and use these to produce wonderful, food-producing gardens. They want that for their own home. The problem is that visitors only see the finished house. Time doesn’t usually allow visitors to ask the owners about how they went through the whole saga of planning and creating a sustainable home. The wondering, the indecision, the frustration and dead ends, and the many stages of learning they had to go through.

This article aims to help fill that gap. The more you learn before you start, the easier the process will be and the less the likelihood of repeating the mistakes that others have made before you.

Further information

This article is the combination of two online posts at shmeco.com: “I’d like a sustainable home but where do I start?” by Alan Strickland and “Building the self-sufficient dream” by Judy Celmins. Alan Strickland is the Alternative Technology Association’s South Australia Branch Treasurer. Judy Celmins is a director and co-founder of shmeco.com. shmeco.com invites people to exchange their ideas, stories and experience on sustainable living choices. shmeco are managers of Sustainable House Day.

www.ata.org.au
www.shmeco.com
www.sustainablehouseday.com
www.yourhome.gov.au
www.sanctuarymagazine.org.au

Recyled timber

This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 8.

Recyled timber is all the rage. In all the partially or substantially timbered houses Sanctuary has profiled since 2003, 60 per cent used recycled timber!

Many will tell you its the story behind the timber they love – an old wool shed here, ship’s ballast there. Others say its that lived-in look.

Because it’s so well seasoned, recycled timber is more stable than the kiln-dried product, and its also possible to find in lengths and thicknesses you can’t find anymore.

Resources

Australian Architectural Hardwood
Australian Recycled Timber
Bowerbird Timber
Thor’s Hammer
Urban Salvage

Recycle your demolition

This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 7.

Over a third of all waste in Australia that ends up in landfill is from the construction and demolition industries, and over two thirds of this is clean material – bricks, concrete and timber – that could be reused. If you’re undertaking a renovation or building demolition and you’d like to ensure the materials are put to good use, there are a number of things you can do.

One of the first things you need to do is to create an inventory of all the materials available to be reclaimed, including number, size and condition. You need to ensure that the builder and/or demolition contractor you hire is sympathetic to your goals, is willing to work to this inventory, and that you discuss and agree upon any extra labour costs that you may incur by using reclaimed materials.

Get in contact with your local second-hand or reclaimed building materials company to sell the materials. Alternatively you could put the materials up for free on a website such as Freecycle Today – Australian Recyclers Community, Freecycle, Freecycle – Melbourne and Australia, or sell them on eBay.

Select salvage

This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 7.

Try to picture a house built on a shoestring budget using mostly second-hand materials sourced from a demolition. You’re probably conjuring a rambling structure with a hodgepodge of materials. Au contraire. This professionally designed house is built largely from reclaimed materials, but it cuts no corners in terms of style and comfort.

Kir Larwill and her brother Sid are close. Sid and his family were looking to buy a property in Castlemaine, one of Victoria’s former gold mining towns. Kir was also looking for a new home, so Sid and Kir decided that they’d buy a block with enough space to build a modest house down the back for Kir and her young son. The family found a site within walking distance of the town centre, and Sid took on the role of project managing the construction of Kir’s place.

Given Kir’s restricted budget, she was planning to buy a kit house until her friends Kim and Jeremy offered the materials from their partial home demolition in Melbourne.

The Larwills contacted Robyn Gibson and Paul Hassall of Castlemaine firm Lifehouse Design. Robyn and Paul welcomed Kir’s brief to design a house to her budget using reclaimed materials. “We’d previously designed houses where people wanted to use recycled materials, but not as extensively as this,” says Robyn. “From a design point of view, ‘reduce, re-use, recycle’ is the first priority, as far as being able to reduce the impact on the environment and energy use.”

Kir’s friends Kim and Jeremy not only gave the materials for free, but also supplied Lifehouse with a detailed inventory of all the materials their demolition was making available. “We saved a lot of time and money by integrating the ideas and reclaimed materials up front, in the design stage,” Robyn remarks.

“Kir’s aesthetic is really about collectables, so it works well with the house. For us it was a fantastic design challenge to incorporate these recycled elements into something retro, simple and clean, but not a pastiche. We wanted it to actually look designed.”

Kir says of her home, “It’s gorgeous! When I sit in here at night, I just look at it and think, how lovely.” Sid concurs. “It was terrific to work with designers willing not only to give it a go, but to make it into something beautiful.”

The time frame of construction (excluding design process and planning permission) was eight months, and the cost of building the house (excluding planning approvals, underground works, laying the concrete foundation and landscaping) was $72,000. All agree that using second-hand materials saved a lot of money; Sid’s ‘back of the envelope’ sums suggest as much as $40,000.

A truly sustainable tank

This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 3.

What to do when you’re finished with your tank? When the tank has reached the end of its useful life it will need to be scrapped. The best option is for it to be recycled rather than end up as landfill, giving you all the more reason to be careful when choosing your rainwater tank. A galvanised or lined mild steel tank will generally be quite corroded and you may even have to pay someone to take it away. Poly tanks have the potential to be recycled, but this is something to discuss with the tank manufacturer; if they don’t have a strategy to deal with the tanks then they will most likely end up as landfill. Fibreglass tanks are generally not recyclable. Stainless steel tanks maintain some value, with all of the material able to be recycled, and scrap metal dealers may even pay for it, giving you plenty of reason to plan for the next 20 or 30 years when buying a rain water tank.

Sustainable landscapes

This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 4.

It really doesn’t matter what style of garden you prefer, whether it be formal, Japanese, cottage, or contemporary, the principles are still the same.

Water sensitive urban design is one of the most significant changes in urban design in recent years. It is the practice of keeping water on site, at least for as long as possible, rather than send it immediately into the stormwater system. An important aspect of that is porous paving. Use porous paving wherever you can to reduce runoff from the site.

Another change is recycling. Concrete from the old gardens can be sent to a recycler and turned into crushed rock. Then used as a compactable sub-base under wall footings and paths.

A practice in the industry had been to import top soil as required, with little consideration to maintaining the existing top soil, which would be buried or compacted during construction. Since most of the imported top soil is from unsustainable sources, the practice is being replaced by stockpiling existing topsoil and importing composted greenwaste products as soil improvers as necessary.

Existing top soil can be scraped to one side and stored on site. When landscape works are completed, the top soil can be amended and laid back over, to provide a planting environment. This also reduces cart away to tips and landfill sites.

Plan for the journey

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

Make sure your home is designed for the long haul, that its materials are durable and able to be easily reused or recycled (an example is using screws in joinery instead of nails, to allow for easy disassembly).

Crucially, when designing your house, think ahead. Will your family grow, will it shrink or will it stay stable? How will your own health impact your needs in 10 or 20 years time? With these things in mind, you can design a house that not only meets your current needs, but can adapt to your changing needs without you later incurring the cost of an extension or renovation.

Know your product

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

Your choice of building materials can have ramifications far beyond your home. Choose sustainably sourced timbers, recycled and locally sourced materials, and low “volatile organic compounds” paints and finishes. When building, keep material use to a minimum. If you’re renovating, reuse what you can from the pre-existing building.

Inappropriate use of materials in building means one thing: waste. All materials have an “embodied energy”, which is the energy used over their lifecycle, from manufacture and transport though to disposal. If you build your house with poorly chosen materials, their embodied energy could cancel out the benefits of years of sustainable living. Generally, the more processed a material is, the higher its embodied energy, so go for materials that have a high recycled content and that are sourced as near to your home as possible.