North Wollongong sustainable home | April 19, 2024 | Illawarra Mercury - video Dailymotion

Illawarra Mercury

WATCH: See inside 'Exeter Ecoshift', a sustainable home in North Wollongong by Anneleise Carratt and Jarrod Thompson. Video supplied

Transcript

00:00 Hi everyone, welcome to our place.

00:19 My name's Anneliese, I'm a building designer and I'm married to Jared who is a builder.

00:24 So this project here was our first home that we bought and we've done a big renovation

00:30 in order to try and make it more sustainable and just more comfortable to live in and also

00:36 to experiment with a lot of sustainable ideas that we've been learning about.

00:40 So my background, I'm a mechanical engineer but wanted to go into something a bit more

00:45 of a sustainability focus.

00:47 So I'm doing a PhD in sustainable buildings at the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre

00:52 in Woolloongong.

00:54 My partner and I have just started our own company and so this home here was kind of

00:59 our first foray into seeing what we could do with the renovation and seeing how much

01:06 better we could improve and how much more comfortable we could make a home.

01:11 We bought this place 2018.

01:13 It is a brick veneer 1940s post-war era home.

01:21 Really simple, it had a tacky old little extension on the back.

01:27 It was just quite horrid to be in.

01:32 We had horrible temperatures in winter.

01:35 We were going down to 11 degrees in the house and then in summer, hot the whole night through.

01:42 Really poor insulation, well no insulation at all to be honest.

01:47 The windows are single glazed aluminium, super rickety, you can feel the air coming through

01:53 it, creates a tonne of condensation mould issues.

02:01 So we started off demolishing the old Queenslander out the back and then putting on a nice solar

02:08 passive extension for the living and kitchen areas.

02:12 The space includes north facing highlight windows to maximise solar ingress during winter

02:17 and the ease help to protect the space during summer.

02:21 We used recycled brick on the inside as well as a concrete floor to help with the thermal

02:27 mass as well.

02:29 The space also includes a large covered deck to the north to help to create that integration

02:36 with the outdoor areas.

02:38 We also did a lot of work to the front of the house.

02:40 We cladded over the existing brick.

02:43 We replaced the roof with a light coloured metal roof.

02:47 We replaced all the existing windows with double glazed timber, removed all the internal

02:52 lining and re-insulated and re-lined with VJ groove to kind of fit in with the existing

02:57 character.

02:58 Because we had all of that northern light, I really wanted to focus on a lot of passive

03:06 techniques and passive technologies to start off with.

03:09 So solar passive, air tightness, insulation, what can we do before we start to introduce

03:15 active systems like solar panels or air conditioning or anything like that.

03:20 I kind of wanted to see if a place like Wollongong which has a super temperate climate, were

03:25 we able to create a home that was comfortable year round without any active heating or cooling.

03:33 To be honest, it has been really, really interesting to see surprisingly how well it has performed.

03:40 In our first attempt we didn't get it perfect but I'm just really, really impressed that

03:46 all of this hype around things being solar passive and picking the right windows and

03:51 insulating and air tightness and thermal mass in the right areas, it actually has made a

03:56 massive difference.

03:57 I realised that you can have a comfortable home, not run air conditioning and not run

04:03 a heater for most of the year and it's possible.

04:07 Not only are you going to reduce your bills, you're going to be more comfortable, you're

04:10 going to be more content and happy.

04:13 We've got the beautiful concrete slab that's left really raw.

04:18 We've got this brick wall that we've created.

04:22 This is all recycled bricks.

04:23 Some of these bricks are actually from the original home, others are from job sites where

04:29 they were just going to end up in the waste and just reclaimed from other jobs or other

04:33 projects that the bricks had been demolished.

04:39 So we also put a lot of thought into our window selection.

04:43 So all the windows in the house are double glazed except for the louver windows.

04:49 We felt that the ventilation benefits that we gained from the louver windows helped offset

04:54 the reduced thermal resistance of going single glazed.

04:59 We also installed some raided glass for some privacy and we got these made up of double

05:06 glazed too which is a little bit different to normal.

05:12 So Jarrad, my partner being a builder, gets to see what would normally be done on most

05:17 job sites.

05:18 So it was really interesting for us as we built this place together to see how we could

05:23 up spec a lot of the air tightness features without not going all the way to a passive

05:29 house standard.

05:31 So we made sure of course that we wall wrapped with a vapour permeable membrane and then

05:35 taped every join that we could.

05:38 We also ran silicon between the bottom plates and the slab and then also taped down the

05:45 vapour permeable membrane.

05:47 We've done the things like putting backing rod and sealing up around with silicon all

05:52 of the windows and the doors.

05:55 Any holes or penetrations we made sure we sealed.

05:59 Through my studies with the university I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a temperature

06:05 monitor that I had sitting in the old part of the house prior to and during the renovation.

06:13 So during winter the internal of the house was quite often getting down to temperatures

06:20 as low as 11 or 12 degrees.

06:23 But what we've been noticing in the extension especially is that while the existing dwelling

06:30 can be quite cold, during winter we're getting temperatures up to 23, 24 degrees quite consistently

06:38 regardless of how cold it is outside, especially on a sunny day when we get really good sun

06:43 penetration.

06:44 And now that we've finished the front of the house with all of the insulation and weather

06:49 sealing it's going to be really interesting to see this winter how much better the whole

06:53 house performs compared to prior to the renovation.

06:56 Thanks so much for taking the time to come explore my home with me.

07:02 It's been a bit of a journey, we've learnt a lot.

07:03 We've still got a little bit of work to do, some landscaping and our wardrobes and just

07:08 little bits and pieces.

07:10 We absolutely adore living in this house and it's been so nice to see all the science actually

07:16 work in a real life setting.

07:19 We're really excited to take what we've learnt on this project and help our clients in their

07:24 homes to make them more sustainable and comfortable.

07:26 Thanks so much.

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07:55 (upbeat music)

07:58 (upbeat music)

North Wollongong sustainable home | April 19, 2024 | Illawarra Mercury

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