Roger and Jill’s House 2018

House Notes – Roger and Jill’s House

Nearly 40 years ago we designed a passive solar efficient house using the technology of the day. While there have been vast improvements in technology since then, at the time, the technology we incorporated in the house was quite modern.

We originally wanted to build a mudbrick home, but building that in suburbia for resale value was not a good option, so we built in double brick on all external walls. The floor is concrete raft, with darkish slate covering, giving maximum heat transfer in winter.

The roof is insulated, with cathedral ceilings.

The house faces north, so we get full sun in winter and minimum sun in summer, with enough eaves-overhang to prevent sun penetration in summer.

There is maximum glass on the north face, minimum on the south, and next to no glass on east or west.

The house is a three-level building, with single storey facing north and two storeys on the southern side.

We have been in the house for 35 years, and still do not have a heater installed. We have had a Solar Hart on the roof since new, with a manual switch to control when the booster is used, and we recently had solar panels and batteries installed to reduce our electricity costs. We originally wired the house with additional low-voltage wiring, as we were going to install low-voltage systems for everyday usage, but at the time of construction the cost of installing panels and batteries was prohibitive, so we were waiting for prices to come down to go completely off-grid. Now that panels and batteries are available, even though we are still connected to the grid, it is still a huge saving on our power bills.

We have low energy lighting throughout the house, with only a couple of fluro lights remaining – to be changed for LED units soon.

While our house is not using fully modern technology, the principles we applied 40 years ago still make our house a comfortable and energy-efficient home.

Our motivation for designing and building this house was to reduce our impact on the environment and to reduce our running costs, particularly in energy usage. It is low maintenance, energy efficient and comfortable all year.