Sustainable Design
Incorporating sustainable design elements into your home will keep your home comfortable year-round and save on heating and cooling costs. You’ll reduce your electricity bill, save money and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
Design a cool home
To maximise natural light in your home and keep temperatures comfortable year-round, it’s best to plan living areas in your home to face north.
In Sydney, the cooling breezes in Summer generally come from the North East. Minimising West-facing windows and locating windows along North East facing walls will create a cooler home.
To encourage cool air flow in a room, have small window openings on the side of your home that faces the wind, and large openings on the opposite side of the room.
Niches in the external wall of buildings can create pressure zones that force air into correctly located window openings. Small hatches at ceiling level will encourage the release of warm air.
Passive ventilation
An important principle for sustainable design is good natural ventilation avoiding mechanical or electrical powered systems to move the air.
By understanding local weather patterns including wind direction, and by employing the principles of air movement, sustainable design encourages hot air to rise and escape from a room and directs cool air into a room.
You’ll save on heating and cooling costs, reduce your electricity bill and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
Windows
Windows are responsible for large amounts of heat loss from your home in winter and up to 50% unwanted heat gain in summer. Heating and cooling your home to compensate, can make up around 22% of your energy bill.
Window and door seals prevent drafts, heat loss, noise and water infiltration. There are various types of seals for different requirements. For more information visit www.raven.com.au or www.neco.com.au
- Shade windows from summer sun with extended eaves, pergolas or external blinds
- Apply double-glazing or other performance-improving technologies to your windows to help keep your home comfortable
- Install lined curtains or close fitting drapes or blinds
- Install pelmets over your curtains or blinds to help prevent heat loss in winter.
Glass
A typically well insulated building, with ordinary clear single glazing, loses up to 49% of heat through windows in winter. The same window will allow up to 87% of solar heat gain in summer. Solar performance glass can help prevent heat gain and insulate against heat loss.
For more information on performance glass, visit www.viridian.com.au
For information on product applications to existing windows, see www.magnetite.com.au
Draughts and heat loss in winter
Whether you have an old home or new apartment, draughts or air-leakage can cause discomfort, and in winter draughts can increase your heating costs by around 25%.
- Close the gaps around windows and doors to reduce your energy bills and save money
- Insulate your home
- Install window coverings
Insulation
Insulation in the ceiling helps to retain heat in winter, and reflective sarking under the roofing material helps to keep radiant heat out in summer. All new and existing homes should be insulated to at least R2.0.
You can increase the comfort and value of your home and save around $200 a year on your electricity bill.
Sustainable design products in the Live Green House
Construction of the Live Green House
The Live Green House has been built using a plywood box frame spine that supports the roof and links together the different areas and rooms of the house. The plywood box spine serves as both a structural and joinery unit.
The plywood boxes are joined together with high tensile allen key bolts within a sandwich construction. The centre panel of the sandwich is sleeved into the floor, which is also bolted to the plywood boxes. Roof brackets are slotted into the top of the sandwich. The whole building from roof to wall to floor is integrated into one structural unit.
The combined thickness of the sandwich panel is 60mm, which is an effective structural post, but it is comprised of manageable components making transport and assembly easier.
The width of spine facilitates its use as cabinetry and benchtops for the kitchen, office and display area.
The Live Green House was left unpainted and sealed using a citrus oil.
Plywood
The components of the Live Green House are made from 25mm CD- grade plywood. This material is lightweight and structurally stable, if it deforms under moisture or humidity it will return to its original dimensional shape.
The plywood panels are made from 250mm diameter Australian plantation logs. It efficiently uses thin layers of low-grade timber within the panel, cross laminating them to improve their structural performance. Plywood panels can be finished with a high-grade veneer if required.
Plywood is a versatile material. It can be used for wall cladding, interior shelving, interior benchtops, structural beams, lateral bracing and vertical loading.
Within the Live Green House, plywood is used as a structural and finishing material. The plywood used is CD grade which allows for a greater variety of knotting on the surface veneer.
Solar panels
Solar panels used on the house are thin film amorphous. Thin silicon film (0.3 of a micron) is applied directly on to glass to create a thin film cell.
Thin film technology has many advantages including:
• Exceptional performance in low light and shady conditions – a crystalline panel can cease to function when shade falls on a small part of the panel. On a thin film panel, shade will only impact on the portion of the panel that shade obscures.
• Lower level of embodied energy – the energy required to manufacture a thin film panel is much less than the energy required to make a crystalline solar panel.
The energy payback for a thin film panel is less than two years.
• Exceptional high temperature tolerance. In hot conditions, regular crystalline cells decrease in power twice as rapidly as thin film.
• Uniform appearance is ideal where aesthetics are important.
• Increased power efficiency means 1000W of thin film will produce a greater amount of energy over one year than 1000W of regular crystalline.
Sustainable benefits
The latest generation Amorphous Thin Film PV panels typically outlast and outperform regular crystalline panels under Australian conditions.
Thin film panels require around half the energy to manufacture compared with regular crystalline solar panels, and consume around 1/500th of the silicon.
These panels have superior light absorption, heat tolerance and shade tolerance which all go to higher energy yields compared with regular crystalline.
Although Amorphous panels take up more roof space than regular crystalline, their smooth glass appearance is generally considered more aesthetically pleasing than the traditional multi-cell crystalline design. They also provide an extra benefit in the form of additional roof insulation.
Polycarbonate wall/roof
Multi-cell polycarbonate cladding panels are watertight, allow light through the entire panel and provide insulation.
This lightweight cladding bears less weight upon the building structure - in comparison to materials such as concrete or glass - allowing the building structure to be minimised while maximising natural light and providing insulation. www.danpalon.com.au
Insulation
All new and existing ceilings should be insulated to at least R2.0. There are various grants and rebates to help you install insulation in your home. For more information see rebates.
Bulk insulation in the ceiling helps to retain heat in winter, and reflective sarking under the roof material helps to keep radiant heat out in summer.
Sustainable timber
There are a number of Australian and international certification systems for timber products. These systems register the location of the forest where the tree is felled, the logging and processing of the tree, and the end supplier of the timber product.
This “chain of custody” process allows consumers to make informed decisions about the purchase of timber products.
Recycled timber
Wherever possible reuse materials and choose recycled materials. This helps reduce landfill and the emissions created in the production of new materials.
Recycled materials can add character to a new home as well as reduce the energy needed to build the home.
Sustainable Design products in the Live Green House
Recycled post-consumer waste board
This lightweight, non-toxic internal boarding is made from recycled kraft paperandsugar cane.
For every 10 tonnes of sugarcane crushed, a sugar factory produces nearly 3 tonnes of wet bagasse – a fibrous waste. Created from bagasse and post-consumer recycled kraft paper, this building material diverts waste from landfill to produce a versatile building material. www.xanita.com
Performance glass
Standard glass can allow up to 90% of solar radiation through, heating the building’s interior in summer. Performance glazing can help keep interiors cool in summer and warm in winter.
Glass walls represent a significant wall surface on contemporary commercial and residential buildings, performance glass can reduce solar heat transmission through the glass by 70%, and provides 30% more thermal insulation over standard glass – smart glass makes for a comfortable home and helps reduce energy costs associated with heating and cooling. www.viridian.com
Samples used in the Live Green House:
Vfloat - provides up to 58% improvement in solar heat reduction, compared with ordinary glass
Comfort plus - provides up to 70% improvement in solar heat reduction and up to 30% improvement in thermal insulation
Evantage - pyrolytic glass with good light transmission
Eviroshield - provides up to 70% improvement in solar heat reduction and up to 30% in thermal insulation
Energytech - double glazing which provides up to 68% improvement in thermal insulation over ordinary glass.
For more information: www.viridian.com
Performance films over glass
High performance window films applied over glass improve thermal comfort and reduce glare, and UV radiation.
Increase the comfort of your home and reduce energy bills. For more information www.hpwf.com.au
Magnetite
This low-cost alternative to double glazing can be applied directly over existing windows. Its thermal insulating properties are equivalent to double glazing and it also reduces noise transmission. For more information www.magnetite.com.au
Low VOC paint
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) are chemicals containing carbon that evaporate into our homes.
VOCs have been linked to eye, nose and throat irritations, asthma and chronic respiratory disease. Choosing water-based products that have lower levels of VOC will help to make your home healthier.
Using low VOC paints and timber sealers will minimise contamination of the room’s air quality. This is particularly important for interiors with minimal natural ventilation, low air flow or air-conditioned spaces.
For more information on low VOC paints visit www.resene.com.au
www.coveredinpaint.com.au
Cool Paint
Dark colours on areas such as roofing usually soak up the sun's rays creating significant heat and causing stress to the coating and substrate. A rough dark surface absorbs around 95% of the sun’s radiation, compared with a smooth white surface which absorbs only 30% of the sun’s radiation.
The Cool Paint range of dark-coloured paints and stains reduces solar heat gain. Cooler temperatures mean lower energy bills. www.resene.com.au
Cork floor
Resilient cork flooring panels of various colours are used within the Live Green House. This versatile product is long lasting, if maintained, soft and insulating underfoot.
This renewable, natural material is anti-microbial, resistant to molds, mildews and common pests such as termites and is fire-resistant. www.comcork.com.au
Concrete paver – Cleancrete
Made with a photocatalytic admixture which reacts to sunlight, this paver clean itself and the air.
The paver converts pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) into harmless nitrates – creating cleaner, healthier air. Studies have shown Cleancrete can reduce atmospheric pollution by around 60%. www.masonryandslate.com.au
The products displayed in the Live Green House have been provided by sponsors for illustrative purposes. The inclusion of a product in the Live Green House does not constitute an endorsement by the City of Sydney of a particular branded product. There may be alternative products that are also appropriate choices.
Last Updated: Tuesday 16 August, 2011