Tarlo River Passive House 2023

House Notes – Tarlo River Passive House

We started exploring sustainable building when we treechanged six years ago, moving to a 100-acre block with a shouse (shed house) two hours from Sydney.

We’d built previously using conventional methods and loved the idea of creating something suiting our needs and priorities. However, we wanted to do something different this time for two important reasons:

1. We want to slow down and work less in the future, so a building system where you spend a little more upfront to save in the long run was appealing.
2. We’re building in a stunning spot and wanted to create something lower impact.

Living here while exploring options, experiencing temperatures ranging from -10°C to 46°C, confirmed our decision to build a Passive House. Our temporary shouse had no insulation and inefficient heating and cooling, leading to massive power bills (particularly in winter), which established the need to get this right.

We feel our design, comprising three connected pavilions, is unique. Our architect, Sue Connor, created a floorplan that maximises the views from every room while ensuring we’ll soon achieve passive house certification.

Our building approach was also a little unconventional. We worked with Eclipse Passive House, which employs a prefabricated system tailored to Australian environments to build high-performance houses efficiently.

The house, which was completed in early 2022, meets and exceeds the BAL29 requirements of our site while delivering a visual style that works well with the landscape.