Evatt House
Location | Evatt, ACT Completed | October 2021
EER | 7.9 stars Area | house: 155 m2; garage/storage: 40 m2
Builder | 360 Building Solutions
Images | Ben Wrigley - March 2022
Awards | 2022 MBA ACT Excellence Awards - Sustainable Residential Project; 2022 HIA ACT/Sthn NSW Awards - GreenSmart Sustainable Home
With north to the front of the block (on the diagonal), on an upward slope, and views to the south, this one was a challenge!
The client was keen to take full advantage of the northern aspect to create a light-filled, energy efficient, comfortable and healthy home. High energy efficiency, comfort and health was ensured by combining solar passive principles with a building physics focus on a well-insulated and sealed building envelope. The client also wanted a beautiful, low maintenance home that would allow them to “age in place”.
The home sits back, and very gently, in its established streetscape and steps diagonally across the block to allow northern light to penetrate into three different sections of the home. The floor plan is space-efficient and flexible delivering an accessible, single level, 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom + multi-room home in a 154 m2 footprint. At under 200 square metres including the double garage, it has a significantly smaller footprint than typical new Canberra home but feels and functions like a much larger home.
The result is a beautiful, super-functional, solar passive 7.9 star home in place of an incredibly leaky, cramped, south-west facing, energy-guzzling 1960s house. This home has much lower embodied energy, and requires significantly less operational energy, than other typical new homes in Canberra. It meets the needs, and exceeded the expectations, of our client.
At 7.9 stars Evatt House is predicted to require half as much energy for heating and cooling per square metre, compared to a 6 star home in Canberra**. Given its space efficiency, and the reduction in resources used to create the home, this equates to a roughly 60% reduction in carbon emissions and global warming potential compared to a typical new Canberra home. In addition, with the high levels of air tightness achieved, the environmental impact of the home will be even further reduced.
With a 7.92kW photovoltaic system installed as part of the project, the home generates far more energy than it consumes across the year. The latest energy bill from February to May 2022 shows the home generated 1226 kWh of energy but only consumed 745 kWh.
A key innovation in this home is the achievement of such high energy efficiency without any high-tech, expensive construction techniques. In fact, we pride ourselves on achieving such incredible results with standard residential construction materials and methods. We do not use internal air barrier membranes or services cavities, which keeps construction costs much lower and provides excellent thermal bang-for-buck.
[**Please note, EER is climate specific. Houses in more extreme climates, like Canberra's where it can go from -8 in winter to 44 in summer, rate lower than homes in less severe climates like Brisbane and Sydney, because they require more energy to maintain at comfy temperatures all year round. When this particular house design is assessed in Sydney it rates at 8.8 stars, and in Brisbane it rates at 8.9 stars.]