Portland Energised House

From Greenlivingpedia, a wiki on green living, building and energy

The Portland Energised House is a home in Portland, Victoria which is a fully self-reliant project.

The goal of this project is to raise awareness and interest in self-reliant housing. To support this house has the following features:

• Very-efficient with 7.6 house energy rating (HER) stars. This means it uses only 93MJ/m2 of energy to heat and cool per year, which is 47% of the energy used to heat and cool than a 5-star house (192MJ/m2), and only 18% of the energy used to heat and cool an average (2-star) house (493MJ/m2). The maximum in the Australian system is 10-stars, and is defined as never needing artificial heating, cooling, or ventilation. On the South-West coast of Victoria this is 2MJ/m2 which is regarded as being impossible to achieve due to our climate, and 8.5-stars is accepted as the maximum achievable rating for this region.

• Fit out with very low energy consumption appliances (solar hot water, low consumption whitegoods, etc)

• Use rainwater tanks to collect stormwater to supply all or the vast majority of the house’s needs

• Install grey wastewater management system to recycle as much wastewater as possible

• Generate enough electricity through solar photovoltaic panels (and possibly wind) to drive the house's needs for an estimated net benefit of at least $1,000 per year over an average house. This is based on zero power bills plus payments from surplus energy grid feed-in tariff.

• Use only sustainable building materials and practices, such as only using plantation and/or recycled timbers, low toxin glues/paints, etc. Also each material/practice’s embodied energy to be as low as possible.

• Site the house with productive permaculture principles, to incorporate food production (vegetables, fruit, and eggs), and native wildlife refuges.

[edit] External links

• More info & Photos