Crater View House and Apartment
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Crater View House and Apartment
Our sustainable and natural house is on the lip of an old volcanic crater and is north-south oriented with wonderful views both ways in Southwest Victoria. The existing site features required a double storey design to maximise the views.
From a sustainable design perspective, we wanted a house that offered a high level of comfort that had the following attributes:
• built to last for many generations.
• highly thermal efficient.
• low operating costs and low ongoing maintenance requirements and,
• fire resistant to BAL 29.
We also wanted the house to be configured in a way that allows it to be adaptive and support multi-generational living. It is designed to be primarily a family home that can adapt to be a home with an attached rental apartment to provide an income, or live in carers, as well as being flexible for extended family stays.
External walls are a 300mm thick lime rendered hempcrete which ticked the boxes for us in terms of its characteristics, sustainability and being carbon neutral. Hempcrete has been proven to absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits during its production, making it a remarkably eco-friendly building material. It is also a great insulating material, a source of thermal mass, a non-toxic material and has walls that breathe, reducing moisture and condensation issues.
We have installed uPVC triple glazed timber like windows to attain similar R values to the walls and allow large windows to the south and north to give panoramic views.
The house is all electric, has 6.6KW of solar, reverse cycle air conditioning and ceiling fans, a Sanden heat pump for hot water and a charger for an EV. It has an 8.3 Nathers rating.
In the past year and a half we are loving living in the house. It is thermally efficient; we have not really had to use the air conditioning other than for a few hours if we have a run of days over 35C or no sun in winter for a few days. The house rewards us with a very natural lived in feel due to the rendered walls and use of timber details throughout.
- 445 m2 total floor area
- Garage and workshop add up to 69.92 sq m
- House and apartment area is 375m2