Designing an energy efficient home. A novice's guide.

The enormity of planning and designing a home from scratch is unfathomable. You can have a vision and ideas of what might be wanted or necessary, but when it comes down to it, it's about necessity, practicality, functionality and affordability.

In our case, one of our main aims is to build a home that is energy efficient using sustainable materials. What does that really mean you may ask? It's a good question and one that requires a little more delving into.

Back in my 20's somewhere I became interested in energy efficient building. I guess all of that renting in horribly inefficient, cheese grater style housing caused me to dig deeper and explore what was out there. How could you improve what was already existing? (retrofit) Surely there was a better way of doing things? So I find myself asking those same questions today and exploring the topic even more. How can we build something that is superior to a standard build where orientation, additional insulation, ventilation, thermal mass and double glazing aren't known about or a consideration?

It's almost embarassing that it's been over 10 years since we've had any changes to the national NatHERS star rating requirement of new home builds in Australia. Thankfully, due to 3 years of lobbying by the ABCB (Australian Building Codes Board), things are now beginning to change. Australia can finally start the process of playing catch up to the rest of the developed world and improve our standard of living as well as reduce the associated costs.

So, back to those questions. What do we really need? What is practical? What is affordable? How are we going to achieve a home that requires minimal heating and cooling, is a pleasure to live in year around and is a clever design that utilises space well. A home that's built using healthy materials free from VOC's that are also recyclable at the end of the building's life? That's a lot to consider!

Hence the overwhelming task to sift through all of those things and come up with what you believe is a healthy representation. There will always be compromise, as with everything in life, this is no different. But we have vowed to do our best, to stay within our budget and use locally sourced materials where available and uphold our values in the best way possible.

It's been a long, cold winter here. We've eked our way ever so slowly towards designing and drawing up our dream home. It's taken an incredible amount of patience. There's been frustration at times and lots of negotiation. We've drawn up many floorpans at home on our lounge room floor, playing around with different layouts. The kitchen in the east or on the western wall? Where should the windows be and how big do they need to be to achieve our desired star rating? Of course we have our energy efficiency expert drafty on board and he's drawn things up for us as well as made suggestions on alternatives that may be more instrumental in achieving a better star rating for us.

We've finally come up with something that we both really love. The amount of research that's gone into getting to this stage has been pretty big, as you would expect. One person that really helped us enormously is Amelia Lee from the Undercover Architect. She gave us so much insight and invaluable information into what's important during the planning and design process. Her podcast 'Get it Right - With the Undercover Architect' is essential listening if you're in the early planning and design phase of your build or reno and the best part is, it's free!

Before I go I want to ask you a question.

If you were building a home or renovating, what should your number one consideration be when deciding on the design of that home? The one thing that will make a huge difference to the comfort and liveability of your home?

Amelia asks this question early in her design process podcasts and I think it's such a great question to ask, I wanted to ask you all too.

Feel free to comment in the section below. I wonder how many people will get it right?

Until next time,

Nat x