Electric Dreams 2024

Electric Dreams

For this family home, the priority was to maintain comfort, minimise the carbon footprint, reduce energy costs and long-term impact to the environment. The owners wanted to go fully electric and originally considered building a passive house, however, the cost for a passive house this size was out of their budget. The owners decided on using a mid-size volume builder and worked closely with them to build a fully electric home that was affordable to achieve.

To achieve their goals, the family had the idea of maximising their large roof to maximise a solar system. This system feeds their Tesla battery (to run the house when the sun isn’t shining), charges their electric car, and heats and cools their house. Add to this a highly efficient heat pump to provide hot water and the electricity imported from the grid is minimal across the entire year. To further manage temperature control, all windows are double glazed, all walls, ceilings and the roof are fully insulated and all rooms have ceiling fans.

The owners worked closely with the builder to overcome some challenges that the builder had not previously needed to consider. Catering for a fully electric house requires some additional planning when considering long term usage such as power efficiency and including provision for multiple electric car chargers.

The house has a fully native garden and nature strip that is drought tolerant and requires little to no watering. Whilst there was some concern about the typical “woody” natives, the owners discovered that there is a treasure of native flowering plants that are beyond the stereotype they had in their mind. A rainwater tank was installed to provide water for non-human consumption.