This modest, passive solar house – dubbed ‘the house that feeds’ – was designed as a simple system to support practices of ecological living including growing, harvesting and storing food.
Situated on muwinina country, lutruwita (Tasmania), the house is all-electric and double-glazed with rooftop solar and hot water, on-site water collection and wastewater. Built in 2012, its design was based on ecological design and resilience principles to meet my needs in a ‘just enough’ way with multi-use spaces, renewable and healthy materials, and the expectation of needing to adapt to both climate extremes and life stage changes.
Since 2016 when the house became home to us as a couple, we’ve added the solar system (for which the roof angle was designed), double-glazed and insulated the patio to create a heat sink extra room without enlarging the original footprint, and switched to an EV with charger. We’ve also expanded the native garden to over one fifth of the 1800sqm plot and we’ll continue to adapt the garden for both food and biodiversity, also keeping bushfire aware.
We are now thinking more about adapting the house for ageing in place and potential ways we could combine in-kind care while housing one or more others as even modest housing becomes harder to achieve in Australia.
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