The rammed earth walls, along with the slab on ground and tile floors ensures enough thermal mass to keep the temperature inside the house stable all year round (tiled floors throughout - no carpet, as this acts as an insulator and reduces the thermal mass efficiencies of the slab).

 

There are plently of louvres to provide cross-flow ventilation to cool the house in summer and the fireplace provides more than enough heat in winter. There is also ceiling fans throughout, thus eliminating the need for air-conditioning.

 

The winter temperature indoors has never fallen below 18 degrees celcius (C) with no fire, but with the fireplace lit it hovers around 22-23C, even with no curtains at all in the house and wide expanses of glass (I had a yearning, from when I was a very young child, to live in a house where I could ‘see the trees from every room’). Similarly, the summer temperature inside is kept at around 24-25C with the help of lots of windows and louvres for cross-flow ventilation from the predominately south-easterly breeze.

 

The raked ceiling in the living area gives a sense of spaciousness which is carried through to the other rooms by the 2.7m ceilings and all doors and windows at 2.4m high. This also allows maximum light and air-flow.

 

There are four generous sized bedrooms, all with sliding glass doors and louvres looking out to the dams. The main bedroom has an ensuite and built-in robe. The main bathroom has an open plan shower and a spa bath.

 

The kitchen and bathrooms benches are all hand-made from local Blue Gum. The stove and oven are both electric and there is also a generous sized pantry.

 

The laundry is large and functional with plenty of cupboard space.

 

There is a tiled patio at the front of the house and a double carport at the back.

 

Rain water is provided to the house via 4 tanks (2 x 5,500 gallons off the shed and 2 x 8,000 gallons off the house), giving a total of 27,000 gallons (122,500 litres).

 

The hot water is provided ‘free’ from the sun via an evacuated tube solar hot water system. A 2kW grid-connected solar array on the shed roof covers your electricity needs.

 

The waste water system uses worms, not chemicals, and only requires one inspection per year.

 

There is Telstra mobile reception and internet is available by NBN satellite or mobile broadband.

​​The House

​

The house was architecturally designed and built to provide maximum sustainability.

 

In order to ensure that our house turned out exactly how we wanted, we lived on site and supervised the building process ourselves.

 

In our travels we had come across several rammed earth buildings and fell in love with the earthy look and feel of this type of construction.

 

We decided to build in rammed earth from the soil on our property, taking a total of 2 ½ years to complete (completed Nov 2009).

 

The remainder of the external walls are clad with maintenance-free corrugated iron which is doubly insulated, along with the roof/ceiling.