Some thoughts on sustainability

Given the title 'Sustainable Solace', it provokes some thoughts as to what elements of the design an implementation that constitute sustainability.

To start from the ground up, the design of the house requires no excavation apart from removing a few rocks and trees. For every tree cut the goal is to have three planted elsewhere on the property. The garage site however, did require quite extensive excavation resulting in a large cut. Rock from the site was used to create a retaining wall which means that there is no cartage or offsite production to consider.

The foundations of the house are designed using a 'Mega Anchor' system, which uses galavanised pipe driven into the ground at different angles using a jackhammer. No heavy machinery is required. Being steel all of the pipes are recyclable should the need arise. The house sits 500mm at the lowest point at the back and around 3.5m at the front off the ground.

The floor is constructed of 150mm thick polystyrene panels sandwiched between steel. A concrete slab is then poured on top and polished, acting as thermal mass and the finished floor. Walls are constructed from the same sandwiched polystyrene as the floor, which gives the house a high R value.

On the North side there are 3.3m high windows allowing the winter sun to come in and warm the concrete slab. Windows are all double glazed and Low-e coated, with thermal break aluminium frames.

The house will have no grid connection. We will have a 2.1kw Solar system installed with deep cycle batteries providing all of our power for the house, we may look at integrating wind turbines at a later stage. Sewerage will be treated by an AA wormfarm system which does not utilise any chemicals and pumps the treated liquid and worm castings our into trenches.