A practical family home designed and built with sustainability in mind.

The owners of this award winning house wanted a sustainable home that would cater for their growing family as well as a separate granny flat for overseas visitors, all with a tree house feel.
They chose the builds master building designer, Dick Clarke (of Envirotecture) because he focuses on ecologically sustainable and culturally appropriate buildings.
The Tree House flows over three levels, from the street down with living areas and pool on top, bedrooms in the middle, and the guest room and laundry at the bottom, all with generous ceiling heights. The Study/Rumpus Room, being a potentially loud space, was placed in the mid-level against the hill.
The top level sits adjacent to the lower tree canopy to the north-east. Solar access along the long axis is reasonable, and this allowed classic passive solar orientation to north whilst still allowing unfettered views to the east. The top level was squeezed between permissible driveway transitions and planning height limits. Lower levels were numerically ‘suspended’ from this upper level.
Geotechnical slip zone issues made masonry construction unfordable, so a lightweight timber frame was used with solar hydronic heating as a proxy for thermal mass. The house is cool in summer and warm in winter with minimal cooling or heating costs, achieving 8 stars BASIX equivalent and is fully self-sufficient for energy and water.
Before construction began, the site in North Narrabeen with views to the coast had lots of established trees and a very steep decline, sloping away from the road. This contributed to the challenge of providing universal access to the main living area of the house.

Deck Area

The house was owner built and the budget modest, dictating the construction method remained lightweight. Therefore the best insulation details and thermally broken, double glazed windows were installed to help maintain the house’s passive solar approach. Hydronic underfloor heating was also installed to boost the comfort levels in winter.
Under the garage, 4 x 20,000L rainwater tanks harvest the roof water used for the whole of house. A 2.5 Kw PV system provides the house’s electricity needs and the solar hot water system with gas boost provides the domestic hot water and hot water for the hydronic heating and on occasion the suspended pool. The gas boost system is being replaced by an electric heat pump powered by the PV system which is truly omission free and cost effective. The pool is ionised (no chlorine or salt) to minimise chemicals used and is covered with an automated pool cover which allows the pool to be used from early August through to late May with minimal heating costs.

Water Tanks

The house is clad in a combination of Weathertex weatherboards and steel providing a durable and sustainable exterior. Windows and doors are thermally broken double glazed products. There is pre-weathered recycled bluegum cladding at the entry and poolside walls. Insulation is post-consumer recycled PET, and double sided foil. Sublime Shutters in North Narrabeen provided the shutters.
All timbers used are recycled, FSC or bamboo and all paints are zero or low VOC.
The garden was covered with running bamboo, bits of cars, barrows of long neck bottles and a menu of weeds. The owner, a landscape architect, designed a native garden using recycled materials for retaining walls, garden edging, vegie patch and the kid’s cubbies. There is a 4-bed rotation vegie patch, permaculture beds and chicken coop.
This project won several awards: The Sustainable Residential Building Award 2013 at the Building Design Australia design awards; the manufacturers of the thermally broken double glazed windows and doors, AWS Vantage, in 2012, for its use of the Thermal Heart suite; and Residential Sustainable Buildings Design Award in the 2013 BDA NSW.
Treehouse is opened each year to the public for sustainable homes day.
sustainablehouseday.com/item/reece-house
Treehouse is also available for short term holiday let.
labodeaccommodation.com.au

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