The home, designed by ‘‘Detail Green’’ for the McManamny family, has been described as the result of a personal drive to provide a better future for themselves and the environment.
The construction was overseen by Ant Foubister and Scott Fox of Ground up Earth Builders.
‘‘It’s a very modest house from a budget perspective, requiring careful planning to fit the design to the set price limit,’’ Ant said.
‘‘At every stage, where a change was required to reduce cost, the McManamnys were prepared to compromise either finish or size over structural integrity and performance.
‘‘But we also needed to respect that The McManamnys, and Luc from Detail Green, had a style and feel they did not want to let go of.
‘‘The end result was a great balance between performance, energy use, style, site requirements, required features and cost, which all resulted in sustainable, easy living at its best.’’
Property owners Shaun and Tegwyn McManamny said the finished house has three bedrooms and a study, is single storey and designed to make the most of a large, lightly sloping block.
The building is clad in a combination of metal cladding with feature areas of Corten steel and timber.
The double insulated exterior walls have stud framing, which is wrapped entirely with 15mm plywood.
The building uses large amounts of insulated thermal mass in the form of internal rammed earth walls.
The concrete slab has under-slab and slab-edge insulation to reduce winter heat losses and summer gains.
‘‘The energy rating on this house is high,’’ Scott Fox said.
‘‘But what makes it really comfortable is the large amount of thermal mass.
‘‘In the winter when you’ve got heat from the sun pouring in the windows it is stored in the rammed earth walls and released overnight when you need it.
‘‘And in summer time, when you’ve got daytime heat, it hides it away in the walls and releases it overnight.
‘‘It’s beautiful and won’t stop being like this for generation after generation after generation and that’s just the way we reckon it should be.’’
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