Langwarrin Eco Home 2019

House Notes – Langwarrin Eco Home

The Langwarrin Eco Home is a prototype sustainable house built by Pure Eco Homes.

This build was the first of its kind to combine passive house principles with Bondor Insulliving (Insulwall and Solarspan) SIPs. It is also one of the first full double-storey residential homes to be built from Bondor SIPs.

The house boasts additional eco features such as a 13kW PV array, 10,000L rainwater harvesting that supplies filtered water to the entire house with a smart switch to mains backup, low-e double-glazed windows for north and west sides, large north-facing solar-gain window for winter heating (not low-e), external solar heat shield blind for summer, energy-efficient appliances, and energy recovery ventilation (ERV). Since last years open day we have added additional features including Thermadoor garage insulation from ClimateDoors.com.au, a Sanden Eco hot water heat pump and smart-home automations. This has lead to further substantial energy savings.

Our previous home was only 93m2 (10 sq), but energy costs were $3200 p.a. (as at 4 years ago). This house is now on track for ~$200 p.a. and that includes the running costs of several large tropical aquariums, which we didn’t have previously and without them our energy bill would be in surplus credit. That’s a huge saving compared to our previous home and this house is three times larger.

Toyota Prius C hybrid 2012 EV on display for SHD

Energy Efficiency Certification and Blower Testing
The house scored 3.3ACR under blower testing, which is phenomenal for a large 307m2 (33sq) home. The house also achieved an 8.8 real Star rating .

The house also achieved 10 stars on the Victorian Residential Efficiency Scorecard. In real terms, the house has much lower energy costs than our previous home and maintains a comfortable temperature year-round.

In our tours we will discuss different technologies we have tried, some initial mistakes and their solutions, and changes in habits over the 4 years since we built the property. The main thing we discovered on our sustainable eco house journey was some technologies look good on paper but don’t always work out quite as expected, so tweaks were certainly needed which have been making the property more and more energy efficient and cost effective year on year. We will also discuss additional practises such as zero waste living, recycling and composting.