Trixee's Passive Solar Build Perth

So, it looks like we've hit our first delay - we're going to have to replace a fence as it's not on the boundary (it's about 30cm inside our property line) and it's in the way of where the retaining should be. Does anyone have any recommendations for a fencing company?

Bugger! Sorry I can't help with fencing contractors- know a few down our way but that's no good to you trixee. Good luck!:-):-)

Hi trixee, sorry I'm no help with the fence, may need someone ourselves for front fencing and retaining after handover. I did catch up on your blog however. Very interesting about the star rating info. We were quite disappointed in our rating as well. We felt we really put a lot of effort into passive solar design principles while still using an off the shelf plan for budget reasons. We paid for an independent solar assessment to help us with some design and prestart issues and were feeling very confident that on our own we'd reach at least a 7, if not an 8. Well we got a 6.5 and were pretty disappointed (though our builder thought it was wonderful!), but being somewhat time poor I never did much follow up on it and couldn't really understand all the technical jargon that I did find . I just sort of figured what was important was how comfortable and cost effective the house actually ends up being. But after reading your blog I feel somewhat vindicated and will just assume that some worker bee did what they needed to do to show that we reached the minimum requirement Thanks for all the info. I'm glad you have time to research for me When we went out to the house yesterday it was about 5:30 in the evening and we were so pleased that the veranda was blocking almost all of the afternoon sun into our Master Bedroom! We'd had some doubts about the size of it, windows, etc. but it all seems to be working quite well. Had some nice breezeways across the house as well, though it wasn't a true southwesterly at the time.

I also appreciate your fan research. I was just reading the Choice article the other day and trying to hunt down the Brilliant Galaxy locally. I couldn't find it either, so let me know if you do. May end up just ordering it online sight unseen. Anyway, I really hope 2015 brings some fast paced building for you. I am so anxious to see how your house all comes together. Merry Christmas!

Oh well, I guess the local paper it is!

Ardie and Trees - I've been given a name for an energy assessor who is supposed to be *very* good and reasonably priced - PM me if you want details.

I agree with Ardie in that at the end of the day, how comfortable it feels is the important thing, and you can do lots of things to heat and cool that aren't included in the standard assessment. The rating system is incredibly flawed. If your block is not the right orientation, it's practically impossible to achieve a 10 star rating, but you can still have a house that performs well.
In my opinion, land developers should be creating estates with north-facing blocks and anything else should not be sanctioned at all.

I think it's a combination - many people just don't have the awareness and understanding of the benefits of good design, and this coupled with the lack of options for standard volume builder designs means that when crunch time comes, solar passive design is abandoned because it's too hard.

When we were looking for designs at the planning stage, I found 1 design that would maybe suit our block orientation. 1 design. Which we then had to discard because it didn't suit our way of living. (more to come)

Sorry, got interrupted. Most designs have living areas at the back and master bedroom at the front. The living area at the back was fine, but we simply could not have the master at the front as we have too much traffic on our road. So trying to get anything different from that was a challenge in itself, let alone anything else to complicate things!

Ardie, I've seen so many poor designs. Josh's house is trying to push builders to create better designs but I'm not sure that will work without the demand, and I think that many people don't know that it's possible to live without airconditioning most of the time, we're just so used to having it on demand. And therefore they don't know what questions they should be asking, and rather rely on things like solar panels to try and get power costs down.

I dunno, maybe at the end of the day it doesn't matter, but it's always been important to me. I don't actually enjoy having the aircon on all the time as it makes me too cold!

Ouch, that block sounds like a challenge!

viewtopic.php?t=72683

oooh.. a pod house?

Pole houses also suit but this family has two young kids and two huge dogs.

This is the block
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North is up.

Downslope is 1 floors worth on the south side.

Anyway was just here to ask Trixee a question (I'll put it in a separate post) but thought this would be of interest (esp while we all wait for the tradies to come back from Xmas breaks!)

Hi Yvonneh, I've sent you a PM on the pods so we don't hijack Trixees thread...