Design Principles
Our energy-efficient homes are built on these design principles.
Our energy efficient homes are built on these design principles
Carefully oriented
We site your home to ensure it soaks up winter sunlight, while being shielded from the harshest summer heat. The result? Light-filled spaces that are easier to heat and cool, reducing ongoing energy costs.
Cross-ventilated
We carefully position windows and doors to capture breezes, flushing out hot air to help naturally cool your home.
Thermal mass
Our insulated concrete slab absorbs direct winter sunlight, storing the heat during the day and releasing it at night. This helps flatten out daily temperature extremes, making it easier to keep your home warm.
Well-designed
Our architect-designed homes focus on creating efficient floorplans, multipurpose spaces and design details that enhance the sense of space – including a connection to the outdoors.
Insulated
We know that a 5% gap in insulates results in a 50% drop in effectiveness. That means we not only optimise insulation levels to suit standard Australian structural framing, but we also closely manage installation during construction to get the most effective result.
Shaded
Summer sun protection is critical to a home's energy performance. With that in mind, we conduct extensive modelling at the design stage to determine the most effective shading for windows & glazed doors.
Airtight
Building energy-efficient homes means preventing draughts. We install high-tech ‘Gore Tex’-like breathable building wraps to create a very airtight building envelope, which optimises cavity insulation performance. And as a standard step in our construction process, we pressure test our homes to quantify the build quality.
Electric Powered
We want to help you make the most of opportunities to power your home with renewable energy, so our homes are designed to be run only on electricity.
Age in Place
Wider than standard doorways, seamless transitions between different flooring finishes are some of the standard details that we design into our homes from the outset, enabling to home to easily accommodate aging in place.
OUR HOMES TYPICALLY INCLUDE
DOUBLE GLAZED WINDOWS WITH THERMALLY BROKEN FRAMES
Highly insulated and well sealed doors and windows are critical in achieving an energy efficient home. As a standard we install double glazed uPVC windows and doors which provide a great deal of comfort to our light filed homes.
ELECTRIC HEAT PUMP HOT WATER SYSTEM
We install electric hot water systems powered by heat pump technology that requires 80% less energy compared to traditional electric hot water systems.
MULTIPLE CLADDING TYPES
Watch the video above to see some examples of wall cladding that are typically incorporated into our homes
CUSTOM JOINERY
Customised joinery brings unique spaces to life, creating warmth and texture while provide amenity and efficiency within the overall floorplan. Commonly included items are comfy window seats and joinery units that help create separation between living zones
SEALED EXHAUST FANS
With the focus on creating well insulated and airtight building envelopes, avoiding the build up of warm moist air inside the home is very important. For this reason we use quiet but powerful in line fans with dackdraft dampers in all wet areas.
PRESSURE TESTING ON COMPLETION
We provide our clients with the certainty of airtight levels by pressure testing homes on completion. To strike a balance between cost effectiveness and energy efficient levels the standard build target is to achieve between 4 & 6 ACH @ 50pa.
DECK AND PERGOLA
Not only a great transition from indoors to out, an appropriately sited pergola can also provide effective sun shading in summer
DESIGNED FOR AGING IN PLACE
Wider than standard doorways, seamless transitions between different flooring finishes and providing supports for future grab rails are some of the standard details that we design into our homes from the outset, enabling to home to easily accommodate aging in place.
PHOTOVOLTAIC SYSTEM
We can assist with the right sized system to meet the needs of your low energy use home.