The House
Double garage/workshop facing west on the street with huge loft over for storage or future conversion. Large Kitchen, dining, lounge with open access to music room and media. Bedroom 2 has own bathroom and separate exit through patio to street.
Large laundry behind solid wall to separate main bedroom and Bathroom from rest of house. Large study/bedroom upstairs with circular staircase around brick pillar with custom designed slow combustion stove with flat cooktop. To front of lounge there is a 3x3metre solarium with louvred access to heat house in winter. Cooking is by induction cookers and homemade solar cooker and as backup a woodfired stove and electic oven (about to become airfryer). Outlook is lush and green with flower and vege garden in front and jungle of Albany Woolly bushes & grevillea behind, much loved by birds. On top 6kw solar panels and solar HWS.
My story
My first home began after a midlife crisis and awakening environmental awareness. It was designed by A4 faxes between my workplace in the Gibson Desert and my friend, Proctor who moved to Tasmania. I also used a file from Victorian Government on Passive Solar Design supplied by another friend, Sunny Miller, designer of solar cookers.
Lucky enough to have a year off work, I ownerbuilt. I wanted to use rammed earth as I'd been labourer for one earlier but lacked any reliable energy transmission values and I wanted to use all recycled door and window frames but it proved too difficult to source enough of them .
I cut the bricks for the 11curved corners, inserted Astrofoil into the cavities, fixed the roofing battens and a few gutters, fitted all architraves and vanities and cupboards from recycled jarrah, laid quarry tiles throughout, painted throughout, constructed the solarium and the patio and planted grape vines to provide summer shade, and planted an all native landscaped garden to provide shelter from storms, and planted 12 permaculture vege beds, two fig trees, citrus.
