High on a hill to harness the countryside – an eco house that epitomises an off-grid lifestyle.
This award winning eco house design was inspired by Threadgold Architecture + Construction as an energy efficient eco house for a young growing family within a surrounding 120 acre farm. The architectural design embodies the clients’ ideals to live sustainably and off-grid. The architectural brief demanded a power self-sufficient house design incorporating passive solar design principles to reduce energy consumption. The eco house design optimises environmentally sustainable design and passive solar design principles by being sited at elevation for cooling breezes and is surrounded by citrus, nut and pomme fruit orchards set out to permaculture principles as part of the design brief. It achieves passive solar design principles through a generous allocation of north facing glazing and end folding glass doors and highlight glass louvres for stack effect ventilation.
During summer, the owners open the glass louvres to the underside of roof eaves on the northern elevation to generate cross ventilation and cool the kitchen, living and dining areas. Throughout the colder days of a south west winter, the owners close the operable windows and louvres to enjoy direct sunlight across 85% of the living floor space. The honed concrete floor maximises passive solar design by capturing the radiant heat from the direct sunlight during the daylight hours and releasing the heat through cooler south-west evenings.