WATCH: See inside 'Exeter Ecoshift', a sustainable home in North Wollongong by Anneleise Carratt and Jarrod Thompson. Video supplied
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00:00 Hi everyone, welcome to our place.
00:19 My name's Anneliese, I'm a building designer and I'm married to Jared who is a builder.
00:24 So this project here was our first home that we bought and we've done a big renovation
00:30 in order to try and make it more sustainable and just more comfortable to live in and also
00:36 to experiment with a lot of sustainable ideas that we've been learning about.
00:40 So my background, I'm a mechanical engineer but wanted to go into something a bit more
00:45 of a sustainability focus.
00:47 So I'm doing a PhD in sustainable buildings at the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre
00:52 in Woolloongong.
00:54 My partner and I have just started our own company and so this home here was kind of
00:59 our first foray into seeing what we could do with the renovation and seeing how much
01:06 better we could improve and how much more comfortable we could make a home.
01:11 We bought this place 2018.
01:13 It is a brick veneer 1940s post-war era home.
01:21 Really simple, it had a tacky old little extension on the back.
01:27 It was just quite horrid to be in.
01:32 We had horrible temperatures in winter.
01:35 We were going down to 11 degrees in the house and then in summer, hot the whole night through.
01:42 Really poor insulation, well no insulation at all to be honest.
01:47 The windows are single glazed aluminium, super rickety, you can feel the air coming through
01:53 it, creates a tonne of condensation mould issues.
02:01 So we started off demolishing the old Queenslander out the back and then putting on a nice solar
02:08 passive extension for the living and kitchen areas.
02:12 The space includes north facing highlight windows to maximise solar ingress during winter
02:17 and the ease help to protect the space during summer.
02:21 We used recycled brick on the inside as well as a concrete floor to help with the thermal
02:27 mass as well.
02:29 The space also includes a large covered deck to the north to help to create that integration
02:36 with the outdoor areas.
02:38 We also did a lot of work to the front of the house.
02:40 We cladded over the existing brick.
02:43 We replaced the roof with a light coloured metal roof.
02:47 We replaced all the existing windows with double glazed timber, removed all the internal
02:52 lining and re-insulated and re-lined with VJ groove to kind of fit in with the existing
02:57 character.
02:58 Because we had all of that northern light, I really wanted to focus on a lot of passive
03:06 techniques and passive technologies to start off with.
03:09 So solar passive, air tightness, insulation, what can we do before we start to introduce
03:15 active systems like solar panels or air conditioning or anything like that.
03:20 I kind of wanted to see if a place like Wollongong which has a super temperate climate, were
03:25 we able to create a home that was comfortable year round without any active heating or cooling.
03:33 To be honest, it has been really, really interesting to see surprisingly how well it has performed.
03:40 In our first attempt we didn't get it perfect but I'm just really, really impressed that
03:46 all of this hype around things being solar passive and picking the right windows and
03:51 insulating and air tightness and thermal mass in the right areas, it actually has made a
03:56 massive difference.
03:57 I realised that you can have a comfortable home, not run air conditioning and not run
04:03 a heater for most of the year and it's possible.
04:07 Not only are you going to reduce your bills, you're going to be more comfortable, you're
04:10 going to be more content and happy.
04:13 We've got the beautiful concrete slab that's left really raw.
04:18 We've got this brick wall that we've created.
04:22 This is all recycled bricks.
04:23 Some of these bricks are actually from the original home, others are from job sites where
04:29 they were just going to end up in the waste and just reclaimed from other jobs or other
04:33 projects that the bricks had been demolished.
04:39 So we also put a lot of thought into our window selection.
04:43 So all the windows in the house are double glazed except for the louver windows.
04:49 We felt that the ventilation benefits that we gained from the louver windows helped offset
04:54 the reduced thermal resistance of going single glazed.
04:59 We also installed some raided glass for some privacy and we got these made up of double
05:06 glazed too which is a little bit different to normal.
05:12 So Jarrad, my partner being a builder, gets to see what would normally be done on most
05:17 job sites.
05:18 So it was really interesting for us as we built this place together to see how we could
05:23 up spec a lot of the air tightness features without not going all the way to a passive
05:29 house standard.
05:31 So we made sure of course that we wall wrapped with a vapour permeable membrane and then
05:35 taped every join that we could.
05:38 We also ran silicon between the bottom plates and the slab and then also taped down the
05:45 vapour permeable membrane.
05:47 We've done the things like putting backing rod and sealing up around with silicon all
05:52 of the windows and the doors.
05:55 Any holes or penetrations we made sure we sealed.
05:59 Through my studies with the university I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a temperature
06:05 monitor that I had sitting in the old part of the house prior to and during the renovation.
06:13 So during winter the internal of the house was quite often getting down to temperatures
06:20 as low as 11 or 12 degrees.
06:23 But what we've been noticing in the extension especially is that while the existing dwelling
06:30 can be quite cold, during winter we're getting temperatures up to 23, 24 degrees quite consistently
06:38 regardless of how cold it is outside, especially on a sunny day when we get really good sun
06:43 penetration.
06:44 And now that we've finished the front of the house with all of the insulation and weather
06:49 sealing it's going to be really interesting to see this winter how much better the whole
06:53 house performs compared to prior to the renovation.
06:56 Thanks so much for taking the time to come explore my home with me.
07:02 It's been a bit of a journey, we've learnt a lot.
07:03 We've still got a little bit of work to do, some landscaping and our wardrobes and just
07:08 little bits and pieces.
07:10 We absolutely adore living in this house and it's been so nice to see all the science actually
07:16 work in a real life setting.
07:19 We're really excited to take what we've learnt on this project and help our clients in their
07:24 homes to make them more sustainable and comfortable.
07:26 Thanks so much.
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