Sustainable House Design

Thoughts and Tips For Greening Your Palette

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For house designs there are some important areas where a tip or two can go a long way. Increasingly, I regard the greening of the palette a very important approach.

Beach house lifestyle of course is very popular and so is the townhouse building fever. Meanwhile, the climate is quietly heating up and energy costs are increasing.

But if you plan for more enjoyable and more cost effective longer term use right from the beginning you are in for some pleasant surprise.

Hidden Costs

The Big Picture

Often, house designs with the "lowest first costs for new construction will require higher maintenance, repair, replacement, and energy costs during the building’s life. So, even with their low first cost, these buildings will have a higher life cycle cost. Conversely, durable materials such as concrete often have a lower life cycle cost. In the world of selecting the lowest bid, owners" planning for long term ownership can be made aware of the benefits of a lower life cycle cost so that specifications could and would require more durable" or better recyclable building materials. Read more here.

Still, this is not the mainstream practice yet, and Placemark is only participating in pilot commercial CRC developments for the moment where operational costs are routinely three times as much as initial building costs and where design measures only add up to 2% to such building costs.

Still it is worth considering that the lowest bid, increasingly, will not provide for the most benefits. Because beyond a typical 4-6 year time horizon, operational costs begin to take over from the intial outlay.

So if you plan to hold the building as an asset for long term profit, it is best to think sustainability now.

Design Issues

Tips for less known details

Structure and Frame, We Call Shell

At the extreme, sustainability practitioners advocate the foundation and shell of new houses should be designed for a service life of 200 to 300 years.

What I recommend if you plan to own the property for a long time, is to allow extra capacity in the columns for extra floors and floor loads, and extra capacity in roofs for roof-top gardens. (Thin gardens can be established even on slanted roofs.) This will add to the useful life of the durable shell as well as to the long term flexibility of the entire building.

Home Air Condition: - Room Sharing

Thinking of sharing the cooling load between rooms? Hey, not a bad idea.

The Hidden problem with heat insulation

This is a well-hidden problem, which is not generally understood. We ask you to consider it carefully in the design of your house: - If heat insulation does not completely cover the timber frame it may deteriorate much faster than you might think. Also, if you don't let that insulation breath, moisture there may drastically decrease the amount of energy you save. All it takes is a few extra centimetres in the design of the cladding here and there.

Fun up your Home Lighting Design

Home lighting is in massive shift of easthetics as well as economy of usage. Join the trend and fun it up.

Beach Houses are a natural choice for Effective passive ventilation

As these assets are only temporarily used when the weather is relatively good, this option could save quite a bit on your bill.

The two main components are letting breeze in and out, and moving indoors air naturally, not mechanically.

And speaking of houses on the beach what could be more natural then taking advantage of sea breazes. You can see this working on these illustrations.

How to make Townhouses more than just 'units'

Here, pictures should speak a thousand words. And once you start looking for the right things, you will pick up a lot of clues both from site photos and advertised pictures. We help you a bit to get right there.

As you can see, the greening of the palette is increasingly a major consideration from early house design onward. These links will also assist you:

Australia's guide to environmentally sustainable homes
Your green home technical manual

For commercial design case studies with cost savings shown visit Sustainable Commercial Office Buildings.

Related Articles

Design home Air Conditioning for room sharing

In the design of a Beach House apply these concepts of natural ventilation.

Select the design for a Town House after picking up important 'locality clues'.

Related Resources (links open in new window)

Our own consumer information guide about the future of LED house lighting.

Guide to Environmentally Sustainable Home Design
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/yourhome/technical/index.htm

Commercial Office Building Case Studies
http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/../sustainable-commercial-office-buildings.asp

Eco friendly houses from Eco Info Online http://www.ecovoice.com.au/enews/enews-50/BUI_yourabode.php

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