Lathlain Sustainable Home 2025

Lathlain Sustainable Home

Our design brief for this home was:
-a home where the outside could be brought in.
-the garage should not be seen from the front street.
-the staircase should not be seen from the front entrance or the main living area.

Our home has excellent natural ambient light and natural cross ventilation in any season. Good temperature control throughout summer and winter. Ceiling fans are the only mechanical cooling devices we have.

Our favourite space is our large living area facing due north which is light, bright and nature is at our finger tips.

Outside in the front set-back, is an open-fenced garden with deciduous trees and green dichondra ground cover right up to the large glazed sliding doors. (No paving, no mowing.) In effect we have added another living area to our home that is entirely floored, decorated and ‘roofed’ by nature. It is always visited by busy birds. Summer evenings often bring the call of frogs from our small pond

In summer the trees and the ground cover protect us from direct heat and from radiant heat on the large windows. The trees also provide shaded outside sitting areas in Summer. In winter their bare branches allow the sun to penetrate inside for up to four metres warming the tiled floor, which releases the heat in the evenings.

Every area works as it should, and we have no wasted spaces such as corridors.

Our kitchen is open to our living area and we love cooking and entertaining there. When we cook we look out to nature as we’ve described. The storage, food preparation, cooking and cleaning functions are laid out perfectly. We often cook with guests chatting over a glass or two of wine.

When we are not cooking, all the paraphernalia (toasters, kettles etc) are tucked away out of sight in a cupboard at bench height, recessed into a space under the stairs behind the wall. All the other stuff hides away in under bench drawers in what would have been a dead corner containing the main plumbing duct, space was found for a terrific enclosed scullery with open pantry shelves, a large work bench for mixers etc and our coffee machine cabinet.

Our stairs are tucked out of sight from the living area between two blank walls in one straight run. The stairs are 1,300mm wide. One wall has the hand rail and will also take a stair-lift if we need one in the future. The other wall is entirely covered by book shelves for our large collection. The space under the stairs is additional open storage in the garage for equipment, and for the electrical switch panel and the invertors for the solar system.

This home was built before the getting off gas movement and has a gas cooktop and gas boosted SHWU.