RAIA Architecture Awards 2008

I saw an article on this house by Dan Sparks and Margo Reardon in the paper. Their house won the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) 2008 Regional Architecture Awards. They are both architects, and the house is on the Sunshine Coast, Qld.

Some pictures here in an ABC article. Here's another article from the Weekender.

I love that they used a concrete water tank as a plunge pool. They also have water tanks under their house with glass port holes that you can see down into them. They are lit up at night and throw reflections up into the house. Lovely idea. But why does the water move in the tank?

It gave me an idea of using a concrete water tank as a cellar. I wonder how well that would work, whether it could keep out the damp well enough and how much it would cost for excavation. Or if it would be more affordable if we put other tanks under the house too. Could they act as a heat sink?

Armidale Sustainable Living Expo (SLEX)

Last weekend we went to Armidale for the Sustainable Living Expo (SLEX). This is the second year it has been held, but the first time we've gone. It was excellent, and we'll definitely be going next year.

They had a Sustainable Living Tour of eco houses on the weekend, the Australian Open Garden Scheme had a few open gardens and there was an expo, Live. Garden. Farm. on as well. There was a tour of sustainable farms on that we couldn't make it to (because of our toddler - I am amazed she let us see as much as we did).

There were more houses open the weekend before, but we could only make it down this weekend.

I took some pictures of the houses I liked.

This first house owned by David and Camille at Invergowrie (west of Armidale) was built in 91-92. It's a small mud brick house, with kitchen living and bathroom/laundry downstairs and a loft bedroom upstairs.

They have a single room studio out the side with lovely sunny windows facing north east (for the morning light).
Inside the roof they have Solomit straw panels, which I hadn't seen before, but they are very visually appealing and apparently have great acoustic properties.


The second house was also in Invergowrie, owned by John and Jane, who bought it off the builder. It was built entirely from stone gathered from the block, and is very beautiful. 2/3 of the floor was on bedrock, and covered with slate makes for a very good heat sink - soaking up winter sun and radiating it out during the night.


All the living areas face north (and a beautiful mountain view), and one bedroom faces north too. They say the temperature inside very rarely wavers from 17/18 degrees celcius, even in winter (I did notice they do have two wood fireplaces though!).

This is an internal view from the east most room looking through the kitchen/dining area into the lounge.


The third house was my favourite, and a beautiful example of how good straw bale can be. Modern and sleek.


This house, owned by Maree and Neal, is on the south-eastern side of Armidale. It's almost finished, they hope to move in in the next month or so.

It has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a study and a living area and rumpus. I quite liked the layout, and I think it will be a really lovely place to live in.

I love the wide straw bale walls.

I got to have a long chat to Maree, and took lots of notes. The cost was about $300 000 all up, not including the cost of the land. A bit scary as they did a lot of work themselves.

The floor is acid stained concrete, in four colours. I'd never seen this kind of finish before, and it is truly beautiful. It is neutralised with bicarb of soda and then finished with polyurethane.


The septic system is a worm farm (will add what the brand is when I find the card). All black and grey water is processed and irrigates the entire lawn and tree area. The compost bin sits above it, so all your scraps can get added too. There's not much of an ongoing cost to it, unlike something like the Biolytix system.


The last place we visited was the Michael O'Keeffe Woodland Centre, which is in town.

The glass house on the northern side is used to help heat the rest of the building during winter. The vents allow them to control the amount of heat being directed into the house. Great idea, but I wonder how it goes during the heat of summer? Do they cover up the topmost glass?


They have clerestory windows to let light into the rear of the building.


There were a few other places I would have loved to have visited. I hope they will be open again next year.

Our search for an affordable eco house

This blog documents our search for an affordable eco house. We're not handypeople, so we're probably not going to be able to do it ourselves. We do want a nice house, not flash, but comfortable and beautiful to live in. We like some alternative building methods, like straw bale, but we're not sure if we can go down that path.

We have 20 acres of land, ex-orchard, cleared, north aspect, two big dams, near Stanthorpe, Queensland, Australia. Although we are in Queensland we are the coldest town in the state, and do have temperatures up to -5 degrees celcius in Winter, and sometimes snow.

We would like our eco house to include passive solar design, solar hot water &/or power, recycled grey and black water, sustainable building materials.

Our budget: we currently owe $50 000 on the land, and with our combined income of $80 000 a year (at the moment), we would like to not have to borrow more than another $200 000, or less, if possible. Or much less if we can have the house we want for less. A few people have said to budget $50 000 for services (power, sewerage, etc), leaving us with a maximum of $150 000 for our house. I know to some people $150k is a lot, but that's our topmost budget and we do want a nice house, and not a shack.

I'm sure houses can be built for that price, but we want to make sure this is the house for us forever - we're not planning to move. Ever. And with one child, and a few more probably down the track, we have to future proof.

Our options for our house are at this stage:

• An architect designed eco house - we spoke to one experienced in sustainable design from Armidale, NSW, and she estimated at least $300 000 ($30 000 at least her fees for the design and management of the project). Twice as much as we can afford. Reluctantly we will have to put this in the "if we win lotto" category.
• A local builder - we haven't spoken to any local builders, so we'll have to see if any of them have experience in this area, and whether what we want can be constructed for that price. Not sure if they will help us with the design, or if we need to bring a completed one with us. We've only moved back to the area a few months ago, so we need to find out more from locals who have been there done that.
  
• A pre-fabricated house - there are some companies starting to make ecological pre-fab houses. I've looked a few, but none in proper detail yet. From what I've seen pre-fab houses tend to have really tiny rooms. If none are exactly what we want, we are also considering getting a pre-fab house that's ok for a few years, and then building our proper house, and when that is done we can sell the pre-fab house and move it away.
• A removable house - this was just suggested to me by a friend a few weeks ago, and had not crossed my mind before. For approximately $50-90 000 you can have a house moved and restumped on your site. What could be more eco than not building a new house at all? Although, of course, finding a decent house would be tough, and one that doesn't feel like a dodgy sharehouse rental, even tougher. Though it would save us a lot of $$$ and we could, as described above, build our dream house in front and then on-sell the removable house.
• A shed - sheds have come a long way, apparently. You can buy shed kits (that don't look anything like sheds) and put proper walls up and they look pretty good.
• A kit home - these seem like a good affordable option. Most are meant for owner builders, and we're not likely to be able to put one up ourselves anytime soon. So, we'll find out from the local builders how much they would charge to build a kit home. Some kit homes are very eco-friendly these days.
• Not build at all - we're staying with my parents at the moment (very handily next door to our block of land). Rent is cheap, combined bills even cheaper, and we have free babysitters. Very tempting :) But I would like to have a place of our own.

At the moment none of the options stands out as the best. Over the next few months we'll investigate these options in more detail.