sanctuary magazine issue 14 - visionary villa - parkside, sa green home profile

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hoUSe pRofile iNNeR URbAN AdelAide

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iN iTS oRigiNAl STATe ThiS AdelAide villA wAS hARd To love, bUT A CleveR ReNovATioN hAS TURNed iT iNTo A bRighT ANd ComfoRTAble fAmilY home

Words Rachael BeRnstonePhotograPhy andy Rasheed

LFrom the street, the house is intriguing, with the modern lines of the new living room and garage tucked beside the retained gabled facade and ironwork verandah.

Visionary Villa

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having lived in their old house for 14 years, adelaide couple Margaret Tonkin and Chen Au Peh and their son were well aware of its shortcomings. “While we liked the location, the old villa was very badly designed,” Margaret says. “The orientation was poor – the northern elevation was close to the boundary so it didn’t get much natural light – and most of the rooms were dark inside because the windows were small and poorly located. Combined with the thick stone walls, the small windows meant the house stayed cold in winter and, once it warmed up after a run of hot days in summer, it was hard to cool down without the help of air conditioning,” she continues. “Even worse, it was subsiding on one side: it had major issues! We’d spent a lot of money over the years trying to address these, with little impact, so we felt like we were throwing money away.” Having weighed up their options – whether to sell and move on, undertake a major renovation or rebuild – the couple decided to knock down the house and start again. Researching sustainable designers in Adelaide, “Energy Architecture was a name that kept coming up,” Margaret says. “They’d done big and small projects, and were obviously very committed to sustainability.” The family provided a fairly straightforward brief – keep the front facade, create more space inside and incorporate energy and water efficient technologies to increase comfort – so they were initially taken aback by Energy Architecture’s radical suggestion of keeping the perimeter bluestone wall, taking the roof off and making a garden courtyard inside the old house. “It was a bit of a shock, actually,” Margaret says. “We thought we would do the standard thing: keep the front rooms and create a renovation behind, so we were surprised when they said we should hollow out the existing house for a courtyard and build an entirely new house behind.” “Because the local council is keen to maintain heritage values, and because there is a lot of embodied energy in those old brick and stone walls and they provide great thermal mass, we thought it would be good to keep them,” says Mark Thomas, the project architect. “But the design process aimed to make the new house face the right direction, so we pushed it towards the southern boundary to open up to the north, which resulted in the new front courtyard to capture winter sun.” The new house’s three bedrooms, two living spaces, study, loft and kitchen were built over the driveway and into the large backyard, to the south and west of the new courtyard. An interesting feature of the home is its Trombe wall on the north-facing stone wall of the new living room. A steel frame sits slightly off the rendered and painted stonework and is clad with Danpalon polycarbonate panels to create a warm cavity, which transmits heat through vents in the wall in winter. In summer, any unwanted heat in the Trombe wall is vented to outside and a large retractable shade – taking the place of fixed eaves – protects the courtyard and the Trombe wall

JVents at the top and bottom of the living area’s north wall allow air warmed by the trombe wall to be admitted or excluded.

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the courtyard created inside the stone walls of the original house allows the sun in. the north-facing trombe wall on the right is clad in danpalon polycarbonate panels. the courtyard tanks represent only part of the property’s 60,000 litres of rainwater storage.

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64 Kenilworth RdParkside SA

20/01/2011 2:55:16 PM

0711

Author Checker

JUNE 2009

New Residence

M Tonkin & C A Peh

Unnamed

CONSTRUCTION

A26

ISSUE DATE REVISION

gRoUNd flooR plAN1 Bedroom2 Bedroom3 Bedroom4 living room5 Kitchen6 study7 laundry8 Bathroom9 stairs to loft10 living room11 courtyard

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Lclerestory windows bring north light into the bedrooms located on the southern edge of the property. Rammed earth walls provide a lovely warm aesthetic in the living areas and bedrooms, a huge amount of thermal mass that helps to moderate the internal temperature, and a necessary sound break between living areas and bedrooms. Rammed earth is a mixture of sand and rubble from a quarry mixed with cement and a little water. this is tipped into in situ 600mm high formwork and compacted with rammers approximately 200mm at a time… gradually the wall is built up in 600mm increments. In the wall in this photo you can see the lines left by each form section.

Da large retractable shade protects the courtyard and the north-facing wall of the house from the summer sun. It cost approximately $8000 for around 16 square metres.

Lthe exterior of the house is clad with colorbond and fibre cement sheet. eaves protect the north-facing windows of the upstairs loft or hobby retreat, and the house’s living areas open out to an expansive patio covered with Vergola adjustable roofing louvres.

from the sun. Deciduous plants in the courtyard will provide further summer shading as they grow. Inside, Thomas specified polished concrete floors for additional thermal mass, keeping the house warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Good ventilation helps too: a series of vents at floor level distributes cool air from underfloor pipes while higher vents expel hot air from under the raked ceilings. A Seeley Climate Wizard “dry” evaporative cooler helps to moderate internal temperatures when Adelaide heats up. With LED lighting throughout most of the house, gas boosted solar hot water and a 2.6kW solar power system, the family aims to conserve energy and produce at least half the electricity it needs. Although there have been some teething problems. “We had the solar panels installed in April, but an issue with the power company means they still haven’t calculated our feed-in to the grid,” Margaret explains. “So we still don’t know what percentage of our consumption we are generating, but we estimate it will be about 50 to 60 per cent.” The house also ticks plenty of boxes when it comes to reducing water consumption: technologies introduced include 60,000 litres of rainwater storage, greywater recycling for subsurface irrigation of the family’s extensive vegetable garden and fruit trees, and low-flow taps and shower heads.

“They were very good clients. They wanted to do everything they could to be green, and they had a realistic budget to do that,” Thomas says. “Most of our clients are committed to green design, but some decide that some of the ‘bells and whistles’ can be added later. In this case, the clients let us drive the selection of construction techniques, materials and technolgies, and we were able to design a fully integrated system hence significantly increasing the level of efficiency. “This was a great project because sustainability is not just a matter of plugging elements onto an existing house; a house has to be designed from the ground up as a system of integrated features.” Having gone the extra mile, the clients couldn’t be happier in their new abode, even if their unusual facade does raise some eyebrows in the neighbourhood. “Passers-by are intrigued by what’s happening behind the wall,” Margaret laughs. “It’s been rather nice, because a lot of people stop and talk to us and give us enthusiastic comments about it. “Inside, our comfort level has gone from 10 to 100 per cent, in terms of temperature, ventilation and light,” she adds. “We hardly need lights on during the day now; we like the configuration of the spaces, and the front courtyard. Whereas before we had a large backyard that we found hard to manage, the new smaller outdoor spaces are delineated and therefore easier to use. It’s just a great house to live in and enjoy now.”

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sustainable features Hot water

Apricus evacuated tubes (array of 60) heating a 500L

custom-made tank, boosted with a Sime 34E

gas-powered hydronic boiler www.apricus.com.au

Renewable Energy

2.6 kW grid-connected photovoltaic array, with Sanyo

HIT panels www.sanyo.com.au

Water saving

– 60,000L of rainwater storage in six tanks around the

property. All tanks plumbed together and feeding the

whole of house and garden. Manual change over to

mains for house OR garden OR both

– Low flow HANSA taps

www.starionaust.com.au/hansa

– Greymate greywater diverter delivering bathroom

and laundry water to approx 100sqm of garden

subsurface irrigation

Passive heating & cooling

– North facing windows for passive solar gain

– High level of internal thermal mass made up of

bluestone walls retained from the existing house;

concrete slab; rammed earth internal walls; and

reverse concrete block construction

– Bradford SoundScreen R2.5 insulation in all walls;

Bradford Gold High Performance R5 bulk to ceilings

www.bradfordinsulation.com.au

– Solar control with Vergola adjustable roofing louvres

over outdoor living area www.vergola.com

Active heating & cooling

– Solar heated (gas boosted) water delivered through

REHAU pipes for underfloor heating and into

DéLonghi vertical radiator panels in rooms that

don’t have a slab www.delonghi.com.au

Windows & glazing

– Stegbar AT 2000 combination aluminium and

timber frames www.stegbar.com.au

– Double glazing with Viridian ComfortPlus on outer

pane, 12mm argon, 6mm clear inner pane

www.viridianglass.com

Lighting

– Ledion LED lighting to all living areas and

bathrooms, sourced from CIDA Lighting

www.ledion-lighting.com; www.cida.com.au

Building materials

– Reverse block veneer with 90mm Boral concrete

block on interior, and Colorbond cladding and

rendered and painted fibre cement sheet on exterior

– Internal rammed earth walls (300mm thick)

sustainable ProduCts Climate Wizard Cooler

This system delivers cooled air, via a series of

underground pipes, through vents situated in cupboard

kickers and some walls just above floor level. The

Climate Wizard uses a modified evaporative cooling

cycle incorporating a heat exchanger to provide cooled,

dry air to the home. They are more effective than a

regular evaporative cooler and can work at higher levels

of humidity without making the house uncomfortably

humid or excessively dry, as they neither extract or add

water to the incoming air as it is cooled. Energy

consumption is around the same as a similar sized

evaporative cooler and water use is around 25 litres an

hour for a typical domestic installation on a typical day.

www.climatewizard.com.au

Trombe Wall

The Trombe wall in this house is a north-facing

Danpalon layer, a vented air gap, and a rendered stone

wall. During winter, as air is heated in the cavity on the

outside of the wall, it can be vented into the living

room; the vents can be closed at night to slow heat

transfer. During summer the vent at the top of the

Trombe wall can be opened to exit warmed air.

The Trombe wall provides an insulating layer on the

outside of a thermally massive wall. Without it there is

nothing to stop the heat flowing (albeit slowly!) out

through the wall in winter and in during summer.

See www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombe_wall

designerEnergy Architecture—Websitewww.energyarchitecture.com—builderAdelaide Prestige Homes—ProjeCt tyPeNew build using some existing structure from old house—ProjeCt loCation Parkside, South Australia—Cost$900,000—sizehouse 220 sqm; land 790 sqm

pARkSide ReSideNCe

sanctuary magazine issue 14 - visionary villa - parkside, sa green home profile

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