As a teenager I used to read Dad’s Owner Builder and Renew magazines, not really knowing why. Then in 2001 as young Uni students we were shown through a new strawbale house in Bundanoon, setting us on the path to ‘one day we would like to’… Well somehow we ended up doing it, owner designed and built solar passive strawbale. Two years living on-site to get to know the site, and local weather/climate, a year of design and planning approval and four years of weekends, nights and holidays to build it, and the next 30 years to refine it. It has cool stuff like off-grid solar/water and worm farm septic, well insulated envelope with thermal mass internal and all that fun stuff. Thanks go to so many wonderful resources we could draw upon (Sanctuary, Your Home, Viva Homes, Renew, Owner Builder Magazine, friends/family, tradies).
Our Esse stove heats our hot water in winter (so that we don’t have to use the heat-pump on our off-grid battery and also avoid the anti-frost cycle of the heat-pump). We also do most of our cooking on it during winter. Finally it does the majority of active heating of the house during winter as well, the solar passive does the majority of the heavy lifting in keeping the house pretty stable, with the wood fire lifting the last few degrees overnight and on multiple overcast days. The pattern we see is that on a sunny day the solar passive keeps the house between 21 and 26, we light the fire and it keeps it up around 22-24 while we are awake and then it burns down overnight and the house drops to around 18.
We also have electric appliances which we use through spring-summer-autumn when day length and solar production allow. We have an electric oven and an induction cooktop. The electric part of the hot water system is a Sanden Heat Pump.
The house without the garage is 270m2.
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