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Low-energy houses

(298 posts) (50 voices)
  • Started 14 years ago by GarrySpeight
  • Latest reply from Catopsilia

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  1. annie67

    annie67
    Member

    G'day, I think I'm writing on the right thread. My husband and I want to purchase a block of land 2 to 3 hours South of Perth, in Western Australia. in nextcouple of years. We have very little money so we are looking at 'little houses.' We are 50, and looking at just something cool and comfortable knowing what we want, probably won't happen : that is a tiny rammed earth home......

    We have read and read this awesome site........can anyone give us some very easy places to discuss CHEAP little houses for Western Australia ?
    Thankyou from Annie

    Posted Tuesday 8 Nov 2016 @ 1:23:26 pm from IP #
  2. Catopsilia

    Catopsilia
    Member

    Hi, Annie,
    I hope you can find some advice. This should be a good place to look for it.
    I am sure that 'little houses' are the way of the future. Big houses are not sustainable. I am afraid that my house could be considered sustainable only when occupied by about five people. That would reduce the floor area per person down from 150 square meters to 30 square metres.
    The "McMansion" lunacy must stop, and it will.

    Posted Tuesday 8 Nov 2016 @ 10:20:44 pm from IP #
  3. IAEA

    IAEA
    Member

    annie67 asks ......
    G'day, ...... can anyone give us some very easy places to discuss CHEAP little houses for Western Australia?

    You and your husband may be interested in something like this? This perhaps is at the upper end of this type of build as the Architect (being the client as well) wanted to make a statement and installed a £16,000 bespoke bath tub.

    You can also make your own statement if you/designer/architect treats your specific requirements in a build like this.

    When this was built, the cost came in at approx. £130,000, and personally think it certainly makes a statement and stands alone.

    As far as containers go, you should also be able to get 3.048metre (10' 0") high containers.

    https://www.google.com.au/search?q=irish+architect+container+house&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiEvp3k0prQAhUJvbwKHdPxC7UQ_AUICCgB&biw=1080&bih=558

    https://www.google.com.au/search?q=45+foot+containers&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&biw=1080&bih=558&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjnot3a2prQAhWIiLwKHSceAogQ_AUIBigB

    Good luck with your collective dream. Let us all know what you end up deciding?

    IAEA

    Posted Wednesday 9 Nov 2016 @ 3:26:14 am from IP #
  4. rockabye

    rockabye
    Member

    Here's an NZ one.

    https://www.tinyhousecommunity.com/map/0921-new-zealander-says-that-living-in-his-tiny-house-was-actually-awesome/

    And some Au ones.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-19/tiny-home-design-competition/7856854

    This one looks interesting.

    The one bedroom, 13.75-square-metre home comes on the back of a trailer.

    A drill, a hammer and a wrench are all that are needed to put together the 37 panels that make up the house.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-28/flat-pack-homes-to-bust-australia's-housing-shortage/7885696

    Enjoy.

    Posted Wednesday 9 Nov 2016 @ 3:43:58 am from IP #
  5. annie67

    annie67
    Member

    G'day, I am smiling from the nice messages Ive received.

    Thank you Rockabye

    IAEA
    Catopsilia

    We will need to struggle with little money and age and I think that we can do it with kind suggestions.
    This is an interesting good site.
    Thanks I've started my own thread .........
    Annie

    Posted Wednesday 9 Nov 2016 @ 8:47:03 am from IP #
  6. rockabye

    rockabye
    Member

    More ideas from the UK here.

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/12/we-moved-to-a-tiny-house-to-get-more-room-and-it-worked

    Posted Tuesday 15 Nov 2016 @ 8:35:20 am from IP #
  7. architect_yourself

    architect_yourself
    Member

    Hi everyone,
    This is a really long thread so I am still reading through all the great responses. Can I ask..how do people go about finding designs for their small, green homes usually? Have you employed an architect or building designer or designed it yourself?

    Posted Thursday 17 Nov 2016 @ 3:45:40 am from IP #
  8. Greg C

    Greg C
    Member

    Basically designed ourselves, then went looking for finishing ideas and walked into a house with virtually the same plan. It was one of the project building companies who employed an architect, we got to meet him to tweet the design for our site. Fasham Johnson Low Energy Range. A basic passive solar house that has done us well for 30 years.

    Posted Thursday 17 Nov 2016 @ 7:29:51 am from IP #
  9. architect_yourself

    architect_yourself
    Member

    Wow Greg C. I didn't think project home builders even cared about low energy houses (maybe they did 30 years ago!)
    Did you produce any drawings yourself or did the architect do that for you?
    Do you think you will ever design a house for yourself again?

    Posted Thursday 17 Nov 2016 @ 9:18:06 am from IP #
  10. Greg C

    Greg C
    Member

    I would love to do one again but this will have to do. A friend of my mothers once said you don't get exactly the house you want until the third one. This is our second. It is still very good, a little tweaking here and there will make it better. The only real issue is that the kitchen is on the north side. I see most passive solar houses now place the kitchen on the south side, with dinning in front which is the only thing I would change on this design.

    I had not done any drawings, a passive solar house is a very simple concept, long skinny house, living areas on the north side, bedrooms and wet areas on the south. Lots of windows on the north face, with calculated shading, smaller windows on the south side, no windows east or west. The Fasham Johnson Low energy range ticked all those boxes. The other very important thing is to have a suitable block of land. When we bought ours, I got the plan of the of all the blocks and put a red dot on all that would be suitable and only looked at those.

    As I meant to say in the last post, you got to meet the architect to tweak the design for your site. In our case we had to move the master bedroom from front (east side) to back by rotating one of the kids bedrooms 90 degrees we sat it in front on the north side. This gave room for a carport on the east side behind the front building alignment. Because the houses were designed to use concrete block internal walls it was easy to swap components around. They even encouraged doing it, if you like the bathroom arrangement in this design, just cut and paste into the other.

    There were a few others doing good design in the '80s, another one we were also interested in was by Merchant Builders. Pity not now although the Petit and Sevit Low Line is back from what I heard in Streets of Your Town on ABC TV.

    Posted Thursday 17 Nov 2016 @ 11:12:43 pm from IP #
  11. architect_yourself

    architect_yourself
    Member

    Hi Greg,
    Yeah watched the first episode of Streets of Your Town last night and I thought it was very good, albeit a bit nostalgic. I live in a 1960s house here in Port Fairy that we have refurbished but maintained the original floor plan and footprint. It is laid out exactly as you describe with the main living spaces along the north, and bedrooms and wet areas along the south. The bedrooms are on the eastern end and benefit from some morning sun too.
    I am an architect myself and that is what we bought the house. Even though it was built in the 60s it is how I would have laid it out, more or less, if I was doing it today.
    The reason i ask is because I am considering creating an online course teaching people how to design their own affordable, small and sustainable homes and I wondered if there was a market for it. To me it seems you currently have two choices - to employ an architect, which can be prohibitively expensive for most, or settle for a bloated and poorly built project home. I think it would be much better if took took back control of our homes and became much more involved in their creation.
    what do you think?

    Posted Thursday 17 Nov 2016 @ 11:38:28 pm from IP #
  12. KayKay

    KayKay
    Member

    Hi architect_yourself, it seems to me that lots of the contributors to this forum already have a pretty good idea how to go about designing & building affordable & green homes. (I certainly have used the forum more than any other resource for my self-education: thanks everybody.) So, perhaps they are the wrong group to ask about whether an online course would be a good idea: they might not be able to take themselves back to a time they didn't have their knowledge. Maybe a more generalist forum like Whirlpool or Homeone would give you better feedback about whether there is any demand for your idea?

    In my opinion the design & materials specs is in some ways the easy part. The harder part can be finding builders who get the vision, & are interested in working with you - as this almost inevitably will require them to find the time to educate you.

    Interesting that you as a professional thought Streets of Your Town was good! I as a complete amateur didn't rate it ...

    Posted Friday 18 Nov 2016 @ 3:05:29 am from IP #
  13. arttt

    arttt
    Member

    architect_yourself said:
    The reason i ask is because I am considering creating an online course teaching people how to design their own affordable, small and sustainable homes.

    So many smart well educated people that i know have no idea when it comes to this. Any resource that helps someone understand the basic principles involved is worth while.

    I've given a little assistance to a few people with no idea to get their design right. My experience is that if they don't grasp the simple physics involved they end up compromising some important aspect of the designs function. Very frustrating for me and they are left wondering why their house doesn't work quite right.

    Posted Friday 18 Nov 2016 @ 3:42:11 am from IP #
  14. architect_yourself

    architect_yourself
    Member

    Thanks for the feedback KayKay and Arttt,
    Its interesting that you say finding a builder is the hard part. What else do people on here struggle with do you think?

    RE: streets of your town - much of what he was saying about smaller houses without all the bling slapped on is what I have been going on about for ages. Like I said, I found it a bit nostalgic, but the overall message that we need to get back to building better quality, smaller homes I wholeheartedly agree with. I am also passionate that everyone should be able to benefit from good design, not just a rich an privileged elite, so I was pleased he mentioned Robin Boyd and The Small Homes Service too

    Posted Friday 18 Nov 2016 @ 4:11:03 am from IP #
  15. Greg C

    Greg C
    Member

    I don't know wether an online course would work, just don't know the market. However I think some education is urgently required. Married children of friends of ours were very keen to show me the plans of their new house a few years ago. They didn't realise how wrong a person I was or maybe actually how right I was. First was to look at was the block of land and they had the perfect block, the side boundaries running perfectly east west. The house design of course occupied the whole block with windows only on the east and west face. No problem just run the air conditioner!! I was just at their first born's first birthday on a new block for a new house. Typical me first thing out with the iPhone, compass app to get an idea of the solar lie of the land. Brilliant, the view is to the north so the design should be OK. No they were going to face the house west for privacy from neighbours on the east. This on a block of 5 acres.

    I would say it should be in the high school curriculum, you can even use your trigonometry there. Its that fundamental to good house design.

    Where an architect comes in is in the clever design ideas. Like having the laundry and bathroom side by side separated by the linen cupboard. Behind the linen cupboard we put the toilet entered from the laundry. So we have a toilet that is separate also accessed from outside easily. Another nice one in our house is the doors to the kids rooms are in the hall, so they don't impinge on the room space. The two houses Seidler built after the Rose Seidler are very good from a solar perspective, the Rose Seidler house is not and Harry acknowledged that, he had the house design in his bag before he arrived. I think all his later designs acknowledged the sun.

    Posted Friday 18 Nov 2016 @ 7:16:15 am from IP #
  16. Catopsilia

    Catopsilia
    Member

    Hi, architect_yourself. Welcome aboard!
    You say:
    "...I am considering creating an online course teaching people how to design their own affordable, small and sustainable homes and I wondered if there was a market for it."
    I think it is a niche market in a niche market.
    At ATA we are a community encouraging each other. Without ATA we might find it all too discouraging. At "Sustainable House" events there seems to be quite a lot of public interest in responsibly designed houses. However, the total number of people putting that interest into practice could be only a few thousand. Pig-headed stupidity prevails throughout the unsustainable Australian housing market. Earlier in this thread there are anecdotes about it, and Greg C has just given another one.
    Being able to prepare one's own plans would give a lot of satisfaction and save money. Only some of those aiming to build sustainably would take that path, however. In my case, I had pretty much settled on a design, in imitation of some houses I had seen in books such as "Australian Solar Houses" by Parnell and Cole (1983). All I wanted was guidance, practical suggestions, and drafting by an architect. I was fortunate to find one ideally suited to my needs: practical, inexpensive, and not doctrinaire.

    Posted Friday 18 Nov 2016 @ 9:31:07 pm from IP #
  17. KayKay

    KayKay
    Member

    architect_yourself, maybe the market for your idea is that middle choice some homebuyers make: not architects but drafters, and not volume builders but small family building companies. I'm thinking a sell to them might be that they can value-add and differentiate from competitors by offering punters home designs/ homes that are greener, cheaper to run, more comfortable, more beautiful inside, with better resale value, and for the same cost as an ordinary build. Or do they get taught all this stuff during their training anyway?

    Posted Saturday 19 Nov 2016 @ 9:09:26 am from IP #
  18. architect_yourself

    architect_yourself
    Member

    Hi everyone, thanks for the feedback. I am starting to think that perhaps training is not the right way to go. The reason I got into this was because I am hugely disappointed by the standard of housing that most of us live in. Why should good design benefit only the rich elite? That coupled with the huge size and poor build quality of most project homes made we want to try and help.

    I thought that if I could teach people the fundamental principles of good design they might be able to be much more involved in the process, either by designing the house themselves or at the very leat more informed when dealing with designers or looking at project home plans. The problem I have got is finding people who actually want to learn this stuff.

    As some have mentioned on here already, the majority of the people on here are pretty savvy already and tend to know what they are looking at or looking for in their next house. Whereas, other forums, such as HomeOne seem to be more focussed on which project home builder is best... perhaps my market doesn't exist!

    Posted Saturday 19 Nov 2016 @ 9:25:41 pm from IP #
  19. Catopsilia

    Catopsilia
    Member

    Cold October 2016 for solar-passive

    At Manilla, NSW, October 2016 was the coldest in the 21st century.

    I have given details of the effects on my solar-passive house in my blog.
    https://climatebysurly.com/2016/11/20/house-in-a-cold-october/

    Posted Sunday 20 Nov 2016 @ 12:15:11 am from IP #
  20. Greg C

    Greg C
    Member

    It is amazing what a cool winter and spring we have had. Just when I am about to adjust the shading on the north windows to keep sun out more to deal with the warming climate so clearly illustrated in your graph. I wonder what summer will bring.

    Posted Sunday 20 Nov 2016 @ 7:50:33 am from IP #
  21. Catopsilia

    Catopsilia
    Member

    Thanks, Greg C, for mentioning "the warming climate so clearly illustrated on your graph".
    I am sure you are referring to the dramatic increase of 4.5 degrees in October temperature at Manilla, NSW, from 2011 to 2015.
    I hope it is clear to most people here that such a rapid rise has nothing to do with global warming. The rate of global warming is about one degree per century. In the four years from 2011 to 2015 that would be only 0.04 degrees, which is less than the width of a data point on the graph.

    Posted Monday 21 Nov 2016 @ 1:40:12 am from IP #
  22. Catopsilia

    Catopsilia
    Member

    House in its hottest January

    This month has been hotter than any in the eighteen years since my house was built late in 1999.
    Room temperatures have also been the hottest, but no hotter than expected. I was only mildly uncomfortable. I used fans a lot: a total of 464 hours. At 40 watts, that was 18.6 kWh, to add to 11 kWh used by fans to assist night purge cooling. At 25c/kWh, fan use cost $7.50 in the month.

    I graphed January mean data (indoors and outdoors) in an earlier post in this thread, dated 21 April 2014:
    http://www.ata.org.au/forums/topic/3/page/8#post-55068
    The same material is in my blog:
    https://climatebysurly.com/2014/04/21/january-coolth-in-a-house-without-air-conditioning/
    Three more years of January data has left the regressions almost unchanged. The new record high figures for January 2017 are:
    Outdoor mean maximum: 36.4°
    Outdoor mean: 28.7°
    Outdoor mean minimum: 21.0°
    Indoor mean: 28.0°.
    As I established, by far the best relation is between indoor mean temperature and outdoor minimum (pre-dawn) temperature. This is due to the night purge cooling. The relation stands at:
    y = 0.87x + 9.62, with
    R-squared = 0.97
    The new January 2017 data point, x = 21.0°; y = 28.0°, lies on the regression line.
    As before, the simpler expression: "Indoor mean temperature in January is 7.3° above outdoor minimum temperature" is very nearly correct.

    Posted Wednesday 1 Feb 2017 @ 3:11:44 am from IP #
  23. Catopsilia

    Catopsilia
    Member

    This graph shows daily cycles of temperature in my house during an extreme of cold weather.
    The thermometers form a vertical profile from below the slab to the clearstory above the rooms, with a screened thermometer outdoors for comparison.
    I have also plotted the amount of cloud, so you can see how that affected the temperature. Other controls were thermal mass, insulation, shading, and north-facing windows.
    I have posted a detailed analysis on my blog:
    https://climatebysurly.com/2017/07/05/house-june-warmth-profiles-ii-2/

    In response to a question about the thermal effects of a stairwell, I posted related graphs to the thread "Staircase position for stack affect and energy efficiency"
    http://www.ata.org.au/forums/topic/46857#post-99150

    Posted Wednesday 5 Jul 2017 @ 5:38:28 am from IP #
  24. Catopsilia

    Catopsilia
    Member

    Lost Images

    In this thread I have used many images, mainly graphs, to make my points.
    Unfortunately, none of the images of mine that I posted (or linked to) dated earlier than April 2014 can be accessed now.
    Until that date, I was uploading my images through the photo hosting site "Photobucket". Photobucket has advised that they will not now allow external linking (such as to the ATA forum) unless I pay a $399 p.a. subscription. I have not bought that subscription for two reasons: I can now host my images on my own blog with better results, and I have found Photobucket impossible to deal with due to deluges of spam (see Wikipedia).
    I am going through my posts on this thread to see what I can do to repair the damage. Generally, I still have the images that I prepared for uploading. I may re-post some of them to posts in my blog and link to them here. Much as I would like to, I cannot edit my earlier posts in this ATA forum.

    Many of the images that are missing from my posts in this forum can be found somewhere in the "My House" page of my blog:
    https://climatebysurly.com/

    Here is a new image of my solar-passive house:

    Posted Saturday 22 Jul 2017 @ 2:03:59 pm from IP #
  25. Catopsilia

    Catopsilia
    Member

    Adaptive Comfort

    You need to know what range of temperature you are likely to find comfortable when you are planning a house or its heating and cooling. This graph is a guide to the temperature range for comfort. (It has been posted here before, but the image is lost.)

    The graph explains itself. People are comfortable at rather higher temperatures in places, or at times of year, when the climate is warmer. They are comfortable at lower temperatures if the climate is cooler.
    For any month in any place, you must simply look up the mean temperature for that month. Then 90% of all people will feel comfortable at temperatures in the five-degree range between the magenta line and the green line. At temperatures in the seven-degree range between the orange and blue lines, 80% of people will feel comfortable.

    Generally, using the local mean temperatures for January and July will give enough information for your planning. Sydney provides an example:
    Because the Sydney mean temperature in July is 13°, 80% of people will remain comfortable if a house gets no colder than 18°.
    Because the Sydney mean temperature in January is 23°, 80% of people will remain comfortable if a house gets no hotter than 29°.

    A house that maintains comfort

    The graph below shows how a solar-passive house maintained comfort for the whole year, despite a climate where winter mean temperature approaches zero. Quite often, indoor temperatures were near the lower limit of the Adaptive Comfort Standard. (Hourly indoor temperatures also varied much more than the weekly averages shown.)

    https://climatebysurly.com/2011/07/20/one-year-of-house-performance-i/

    The adaptive comfort Zone shown on the first graph was proposed by Richard de Dear and Gail Schiller Brager (2001).
    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs004840100093
    This adaptive comfort zone has been incorporated in the de facto international standard: ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 55-2004, Section 5.3,, as summarised here:
    http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2m34683k#page-1

    By this innovation, the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recognised publicly that full climate control of buildings at one "ideal" temperature and humidity may not be the way of the future.

    Posted Sunday 23 Jul 2017 @ 4:19:20 am from IP #
  26. alberto

    alberto
    Member

    How much do you save with your solar-passive house? What about the ROI?

    Posted Monday 24 Jul 2017 @ 6:26:46 am from IP #
  27. Catopsilia

    Catopsilia
    Member

    Hi Alberto

    I think I save about $400 per year by paying almost nothing for heating and cooling.
    I estimated the net extra cost for solar-passive features on building the house in 1998 as $15,000.

    Does Return on Investment now have any meaning until a house has been sold?
    The mother of all housing bubbles is due to burst.
    Whether the value of the house has appreciated more than that of a McMansion built to a similar budget depends on whether the buying public is growing wiser or more stupid. I suspect it is growing more stupid, but I could be wrong.

    Posted Monday 24 Jul 2017 @ 11:12:39 am from IP #
  28. Catopsilia

    Catopsilia
    Member

    The value of clear-story windows

    The use of north-facing clear-story windows above room level helps to bring winter sun into a solar-passive house.
    However, the windows can also leak heat out again, so their value is debated.
    I have posted a graph showing the temperature rise in my clear-story space in mid-winter. It is in this other thread:
    "Clerestory windows to heat double storey house" begun by HowardH.
    That thread also has links to several of my blog posts on the topic.
    I would show my graph and links here if the "No content submitted" bug in the forum program had been fixed, but it hasn't, so I won't.

    Posted Friday 20 Oct 2017 @ 1:02:38 am from IP #

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