Living in Northern NSW we get our share of floods that are declared a natural disaster.  Having experienced at least 3 major floods and witnessing the effect of power loss and storm damage to thousands of homes, we now realise that our choice of home and lifestyle have many benefits.

Living in a pole home allows for great advantages in times of flood.  Directly before torrential rain, during and after, there is a tendency for deadly funnel web spiders washed out of their burrows, scorpions, snakes etc to want to move into people’s dry dwellings.  Being off the ground in our pole home we have never experienced this inconvenience and potentially dangerous problem.  A major reason for structural damage and household losses in flood times is from the rising flood waters, however in our pole home any unusually wild water or flood water flows safely under the house.  We have found that as the ground below the house swells from water saturation our pole home compensates for this movement with the poles moving slightly up and down thus avoiding structural damage.  We have found that if a pole does rise slightly due to the swelling earth it will gently subside once the ground dries.

At present as I write this article we are in the grip of another major flooding disaster and thousands of homes have been without mains electricity for over 3 days leading to great inconvenience, loss of refrigeration, cooking appliances, internet connections, hot water etc.  These people have to wait for services to be reconnected and rely on the utility companies.  On the other hand we have stand alone solar  power and have been able to maintain our usual lifestyle with only minimal budgeting of power usage.  Even with a week of rain there has still been at times enough UV to maintain our battery charge.  Within this week we have switched on the generator once to help boost the battery charge to do a load of clothes washing.  A time period of about 45 minutes.  

During these times of great wet we light our fire place, which has a water jacket in the back so we are heating our water and at the same time keeping our home warm and dry, free of any mould, whilst cooking on top of the fire place and in the wood fire oven below and drying our clothes around it.

So while many have their lives turned upside down with often great loss from these damaging weather conditions, we sit high,dry and warm in our energy efficient pole home.

We encourage the use of stand alone power for a simple, rewarding life.

For more information about our home check out our website: www.reducingthefootprint.com

Where we live in Northern NSW it was very important for us to decide on a house design that was most adaptable to our local climate and topography.  We chose to design a passive solar pole home.

Our climate is one of hot and often rainy summers and mild dry winters with cold nights and occasional frosts.  For the hot summer months a pole home design allows for air flow underneath the floor.  As this sub-floor area is shaded, the air flow becomes cool as a result, and keeps the wooden floor boards cool.  For those very rainy weeks or months the pole home design allows the water to flow under the house in heavy rains thus requiring no special drainage or damp courses whilst avoiding the possibility of flood damage.  

Topographically our land is undulating with a gently gradient running down hill from the back to front of the house.  Building a pole home allowed us to avoid the need for a costly excavator to dig out huge amounts of earth in order to prepare a flat building site.  We have a sub-soil surface of clay which swells when wet and contracts and cracks when dry and a pole home can compensate for this with each pole moving slightly up or down with no structural damage.  

The pole home design allowed us some advantages over other construction techniques.  Firstly, the pole home has no load bearing walls.  This means that there are no walls directly bearing the weight of the roofing structure, allowing the roof to put up before any walls have been constructed.  The roof can be erected within a much faster time frame with the walls to be erected at a  later date giving the advantage of working under this roof for protection from the elements.  When the roof is on and the flooring in all work can be done from the safe platform of the floor with the roof providing protection to the builder, tools and materials from the sun & rain.

After 5 years of living in our passive solar energy efficient pole home we love the advantageous this form of construction provides.  Aesthetically it is very pleasing to the eye with the rustic look of the bush pole home blending in with the surrounds.

Discover more about our owner builder experience of designing and building our own energy efficient house by visiting www.reducingthefootprint.com

One of the most effective ways to lower our energy bills and reduce our carbon footprint is to incorporate passive solar design into any new home.  Passive solar design allows the house to be impressively warmer in winter and noticeably cooler in summer.  With this design you can easily harness the renewable aspects of nature, i.e. the sun, shade and moving air, to passively heat or cool the house depending on the season.  This in turn allows for less dependence on unrenewable fossil fuels to provide us with the same amount of heating or cooling, ideal for an energy efficient home. 

 

To help achieve the maximum potential for a passive solar home it is important to orientate the house to a northerly aspect, the reason for this is that during our winter, the sun sinks to its lowest point in the northern sky.  With the correct design the north-facing house gets flooded with this low winter sunshine and warmth during the coldest months providing you with a ‘free’ passive heating system.  To allow for the maximum northerly winter sun to enter and warm the home large windows must be placed at the very front/ northern part of the house.  Ensure that there are no trees to shade out this sun.  Also it is vital to choose a building material that provides good thermal mass.  Thermal mass is a measurement for the capacity of any building material to absorb and store heat from direct sunlight.  This stored heat is then released back into the house and with appropriate insulation, held within the home to provide you with effective passive heating.  Examples of good thermal mass are stone, brick and sawment.  Where the thermal mass is a darker colour it will heat up more readily.  So for the optimum passive solar winter design there needs to be large north facing windows for excellent solar access, whilst making sure the sun’s heat is being directly absorbed by good thermal mass.  In our house the thermal mass is sand, sawdust and cement (sawment).  Another important factor is to have appropriate curtains for the nighttimes so that all this captured heat doesn’t just dissipate through the large glass windows.

 

 

To achieve maximum potential for a passively cool house in summer, the house must have minimal access to the hot sun entering it and also allow any built up heat to easily escape.  One of the disadvantages of the modern pitch roof house is that when the house gets hot the heat rises to the ceiling and cannot escape, the house heats up and the environmentally expensive aircon needs to be switched on.  It is therefore important to allow this heat to escape, either through whirly gigs or effective passive solar design.   We built a simple skillion roof, which slopes upwards to the north with the lowest point being at the southern part of the house.  This allows easy access to the winter sun through the large north-facing windows and also provides a natural slope for the summer heat to rise up the ceiling and out open windows at the highest point of the house.  To take fullest advantage of this hot air rising it is necessary to strategically place doorways and hall ways to draw in cooler air that naturally replaces this rising hot air.   This passive cooling system in the hottest months can be referred to as ‘free aircon’.  For this cool air to be even cooler as it enters the house it is necessary to have verandas, awnings, trees etc to provide shade over these doorways.  We have purposely placed a hallway in our coolest, shadiest, southern part of the home to siphon this cooler air up the hall and into our open plan living area.    It is advantageous to have a light coloured roofing material for the hotter climate to reflect the sun’s heat and to have large shade trees on the western side for shady protection against the afternoon summer sun. 

 

So with correct passive solar design and the appropriate passive solar features incorporated into the home you can dramatically decrease your power bills and stay cool whilst others are sweltering and paying large electricity bills to burn fossil fuels to power dinosaur air-conditioners.   And you will feel comfortable vitalised and warm in your sun flooded passively warmed winter house.

 

 

You will love it and so will the Earth.

 

Booker & his partner Michelle designed and built an energy efficient, passive solar home in Northern NSW. Before they began they had absolutely no experience in building or using power tools.   For more information visit –  www.reducingthefootprint.com