Sustainable House Tour - Sunshine

Take a tour of Sunshine, a sustainable home in The Angle

About the home and the owners:

Our property is named Sunshine. Hopefully it reflects our sunny personalities but is also about how we have incorporated sunshine into the design of our home and our sustainable energy supply.  It is thirty years since we started working earnestly on the dream of building a sustainable house in the country near Tharwa, near Canberra. For me the dream started as a student at ANU, studying a Human Science major, including Human Ecology and Human Adaptability, where I learnt a little about sustainability and house design.  

We had hoped to build a rammed earth home, but our soil was the wrong composition and trucking soil in wasn’t a good start to our sustainable future. The house we built and moved into in 1998, more than 25 years ago is double brick, with double glazed windows on an insulated concrete slab.  It is essentially passive solar, facing north, with large areas of windows on the northern side and none on the west.  We have kept windows on the south to a minimum. We do have windows on the east, partly to take in the view.  One of those now has a book case over it.  

Vivienne, my partner, was a little sceptical about the impact of passive solar design. However, in the first few winters she kept on remarking how warm the house was during winter. If there is any sun during the day a fire for a few hours a night is all we need.  And the house stays cool in summer with the exception of maybe a few days in February. These days houses can be built much more efficiently so that heating is almost never needed.   

We started off with a low voltage envirocycle waste water system, choosing a company and system, recommended by council over a septic tank. This system, which cleaned the water and sprinkled it on to plants, was damaged in the 2003 fires.  It was never repaired as the company went bankrupt. We now have the septic system, which is now approved by council. 

The choice of living off grid was made even more compelling by the prohibitive cost of delivering mains power to the house. We started with a tracker and half a kW of panels.  We have upgraded a few times and are now on our second lot of panels, our second inverter, and fourth lot of batteries.  Our power system now looks much more professional and space age than ever and we have over 9 kW of panels, more power than we know what to do with.  With this capacity we will be able to run an electric car in the future.  We have a back up generator, which are unlikely to ever use, except in an emergency.  

There are two sources of water, rain and creek.  Both have gravity fed lines into the house.  We can run the house off all creek, all rain or our current configuration of creek water to the toilets and everything else rain water.  We have never run out of water.  It has come close, but the creek that overflows across our driveway has always had some water in it.  The rainwater tank we built as part of a collective of neighbours.  

While on the subject of neighbours, living in a community that sustains you emotionally and physically is an important aspect of sustainable living.  That doesn’t have to be in the country.  Ours is and we are lucky to share our beautiful part of the world with an eclectic, caring and resourceful group of people.  We are certainly not in each other’s pockets but can rely on them for a loan of an auger to dig some tree holes, a coffee and a chat, or some advice on how to manage the latest problem weed.  Not to mention working with them at the local fire brigade.  The other aspect to living in a small community is sharing of plants, materials and harvests of fruit and vegetables. We have a growing number of fruit trees and a veggie garden. Unfortunately, too many neighbours know where the apple and walnut trees on our driveway are. As do the birds and wild pigs.  

I have often been asked about making compromises to our lifestyle so that we can live sustainably. Of course that is the case, however, they have been minor ones and have lessened over time, until now we don’t notice our lives being any different than anyone else’s.  To start with we had to be careful not to use too many big appliances at one time, trying to use them during the day.  We still had all those appliances, just managed their use.  We started with a gas fridge and freezer; we now have a normal fridge-freezer.  Even though we didn’t really need to we have kept on with the habits developed over time and only recently forsook our stove top kettle for an electric one.  Luxury!  We even have a sandwich press now. Double luxury!! 

The other compromise is of a different sort.  How much do you compromise on the principles of sustainable house design.  You will see houses with different levels of compromise.  We compromised on the windows on the eastern side, for the view.  We probably wouldn’t do that again.  We didn’t fancy a composting toilet, having previously lived with a drop pit toilet.  I’m not sure if everyone believes that is a compromise!  We would do that again.  Everyone has to make their own decisions about these compromises and live with them.  

While it has been hard work, taken a long time, and we have had some challenging times: fires, floods, lightning strikes frying inverters, amongst a myriad of smaller issues, we are proud that we have created a little oasis, a ray of sunshine and have lived independently of the electricity and water grids for 25 years.  And we still have a house full of sun and our sunny dispositions!