Updated: House Plan T: Zero Balanced Energy House.

What with just finishing and filing away the house plan T file i thought it would be a perfect time to upload part of it onto wordpress. There’s been so much detail to include into the site plan layout. 5 months later its naturally found its form.

House plan T moved on from a working prototype models like the: flat pack low energy house plan O and house plan I  and managed to get off the drawing board and into construction.

The last design making it to reality was the low energy house  project in Germany which gave us the great opportunity to play and experiment with a complete landscaped project. This time we continued with our theme of breaking the barriers from the outside to in, Integrating playful flowing organic shapes from the outdoors into the houses interior foot print.

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This was a much tighter and complex site plan to work with. The bullet points below are the priority features that made it from a list as long as your arm.

• Extensive vegetative roof. Sedum carpet to ground floor flat roof.
• Pump track. (figure 8) with a twist.
• Bike workshop
• Natural pond
• Wooden terrace areas: shaded and exposed
• 4 cubic m log store
• Parking. porous surface
• Alpine rock gardens
• Shaded lawn
• Sunny lawn
• Herb garden
• Gravel porous pot plant garden
• Vegetable patch
• Tree, shrubs and flowers planting scheme
• Provence gravel courtyard
• Japanese bathing area and changing room
• 4000 ltr rain water tank
• BBQ area. porous surface
• Tool shed & bins storage

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Its still way to early to to post online performance figures for the house, however below is an 8 page selection of the full 32 page document we prepared for the planning department and building construction drawings for the building industry.

Please take a look through the slide show

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House design plan T is closing in on completion now. Just waiting on the weather to improve now so we can continue with the long awaited works to the houses exterior wood facade and the hugh south elevation sliding shutters. Then finally its garden time.

Concept For a Green Community: The Design

Concept for a green community:

Top obligation for the green community project would firstly be to achieve a 100% renewable energy supply. The design itself would drain such a low amount of energy that the produced bulk of its electricity would be transferred to the national grid, giving the advantages of supplying more energy than it requires and so offering the community with its own private 15 year investment plan. Working firstly with “passive design” we can reduce the sites energy desires at the conception stage and forecast accurately calculate energy required vs. the energy produced.

Passive design: To achieve this objective I worked with a mixture of earth rammed structural walls combined with light laminated timber frame beams tied into a two layer summer/winter buffer compartmented glazed area shaded by a thin vertical larch open able facade to the lake view.

Backbone of the design: Rammed earth structures utilize locally available materials. Setting up an earth mover to the centre of the lake would supply the material for a giant in situ earth rammed curved wall constructed to the outer ring of the project, minimal to the environmental impact and generating very little waste. The materials mass allows the building to “breathe”, avoiding condensation issues without significant heat loss and offering stunning “time lapse” performance figures from the materials natural make-up.

Roof design: 70% Extensive Sedum carpet green roof systems: Ecological alternative to large conventional surfaces so contributing to lowering the summer radiant heat temperature to the local site. 30% Metal finish to the insulated garage roof tops merge into the green roofs so offering an area of non-soil contaminated rainwater supply for the rain harvesting system.

The site: By means of an in-depth site study we can precisely arrange the site to take full advantage of the solar calendar, which would include collecting data with regards to solar radiation, solar orientation, local wind directions, monthly temperatures and so on.  From this collected data we manipulate the usage of the yearly seasons to our advantage. A ring of deciduous trees would encase the project but only by carefully planning. The planting scheme would help shade the site only where needed but not to interfere with the sites air -flow and shadowing of the solar farm. Grass paving system to the parking outer ring pass ways, solar farm zone, community hall’s exterior, site slopes and banks. Clay inter locking blocks to the main outer ring service road fitted with storm water drains complete with oil catch filters and channel piping directed to the grey water reed bed irrigation zone.

Artificial lake: Shallow to edging 1m – 5m at the deepest part of trench. Gentle run off created to beach area. Naturally landscaped edge. Aquatic plant management plans for stabilising the lakes ecosystem yet still offering areas for swimming, boating and fishing to segregated areas.

Concept For a Green Community: Geographical Alignment

The green community is a design idea for a future living and lifestyle concept.

In furthering my understanding to my proposed site I started researching “geographical alignment” for site planning and fell across some interesting similarities.

Obviously a perfect starting point was Stonehenge.

What did they use Stonehenge for? We simply don’t know, but we do know that all the theories are speculation based on flimsy evidence.

Theories of Stonehenge: form and function.

Geometric alignment: That it was an advanced calendar to mark, to predict and observe astronomical and seasonal events such as summer and winter solstice, equinox and lunar eclipses. It is quite possible that, in its first stage, Stonehenge was purely a religious structure, and modified by later builders to serve as an astronomical observatory.

Cardinal orientation: Many ancient structures were orientated cardinally, such as the pyramids of Giza. Sites that have been orientated in this way demonstrate a fundamental understanding of astronomy

Lunar orientations: There is an apparent transfer from lunar orientation (worship) to solar orientation  (worship) in important sites such as Stonehenge and at Carnac. The hundreds of recumbent ‘circles’ in Scotland are orientated to phases of the lunar cycle.

See the similarity?

I was working with all the ideas of geographical alignment on the lake community concept so guess there was always going to be a surprise outcome.

Concept For a Green Community: Project Idea

Blueprints for Survival: Ideology for a self-sufficient community.

The heading comes from Edward Goldsmith’s1972 book: Blueprint for Survival which was a call for a new world order founded not on economic growth but on stable populations of small, self-sufficient communities. (Edward Goldsmith, died aged 80, was an influential environmental scholar)

Architecture cannot escape the social and political responsibility of responding to problems arising in the modern world.

Site plan key:

1. Rainwater storage tanks: Individual 4000 Litre Rainwater harvesting tanks to each family, plus 3x 4000 Litre community tanks.
2. Wetland reed-beds: area for grey water irrigation.
3. Bio-disc sewage treatment plant: A high performance, low maintenance system producing effluent which meets the rigorous quality standards demanded by the Environmental Agency
4. Wind catchers: (stack ventilators) extremely efficient way to ventilate spaces without using energy. After local climatic patterns have been accessed the stack ventilator idea will be designed to see which is suited best to the community. Climates will very from site to site so an effective study will determine the best choose between wind catcher design through to solar chimney design,
5. Community hall: Protruding into the lake, a quiet cool space to retire to on a hot summers day. Earth rammed centre courtyard walls with its orientation alignment to the site running due north – South. At the lake side of the aliment the design opens up onto the jetty flowing out into the lake. Either side of the courtyard houses a two-story glass structure hidden behind a wooden hoop style façade offering a shaded walkways. The power plant to the communities’ re-new able energy’s are housed in the communities hall (east wing) where the location of the (G.T.I) grid tied converters from the solar farm and the lakes wind turbines are netted together away from the projects habitable living spaces. The west wing offers the community a botanical gardens space over two floors. Somewhere to sit in winter over looking the lake from behind glass in the surroundings of a tropical landscape.
6. Photovoltaic solar farm: Located to the entrance of the community. No obstructive buildings or trees to this area. 25,500-Watt Photovoltaic solar array. 150 x 170 watt PV modules. Ground mounted system.
7. Wind turbine island: 3x vertical axis wind turbines: Quiet revolution QR5. Creates between 4,000 and 10,000 kW hrs per year on a typical site. Need very little wind and silent in running, lake art. Watching 3 turning in the wind over the lake would be an interesting focal point.
8. Natural Lake: Source in. Source out. The lakes water source flows from the communities managed woodland hills behind the site. Before the project has been started a small water turbine would be fitted to the hills flowing stream. A Mini-hydro electric station tapping into the communities’ water source from the hillside located to the north of the project would produce enough power alone for the power demands. With only the small turbine house visible it would be the least obtrusive design with regards to the in-pact on the environment. A 30’000 euro investment would in return produce on average 12’000 euros a year power supply. Estimating on these figures would supply the community with its own 15 yr private investment scheme supplying and selling all of its energy produced by its solar and wind farm to the grid over a period of 20 years.
9. Individual rainwater storage tanks
10. Recreational beach area: Volley ball court. Shaded sun lounge
11. Local trade wind: After the assessment of the local climate survey the design can get rotated to optimise to its advantage.

When other technologies become widely available the community would be ready to incorporate and integrate future possible amendments into its design. For example it could take full advantage of V2G (vehicle to grid) technology so being ready to offer immediate back-up power solutions.

The concept would allow V2G vehicles to provide power to help balance loads by “valley filling” (charging at night when demand is low) and “peak shaving” (sending power back to the grid when demand is high) for peak load leveling and backup power solutions. The design includes compartmented, insulated garage/workshop areas to each of the higher level zones found in the habitable floor plan area.