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A Federation home in the 21st century
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
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The owners are keen to make the house more sustainable and to rework the layout to remedy the dysfunctional floor plan. |
SITE NOTES
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The house is an old lady with 12 ft ceilings and multiple roofs, characteristic of the Federation style. The front of the home boasts large and elegant rooms while the back was clearly designed as servants quarters complete with narrow stairs leading up to staff bedrooms in the attic. Expectedly, the current owners mostly live at the back where the kitchen is located. |
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The back of the house reads as a long corridor with rooms on either side. The dining table seems to be at the end of a widened part of the corridor, providing no sense of arrival into the living areas. There seems to be no place that feels like the heart of the home, and nowhere to sit to talk to the cook, unless one brings a chair into the kitchen. |
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The house is poorly sited against the North fence (see photo), which makes it more difficult to bring the sunshine in winter. There are no north-facing windows in the living areas. |
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The main aspect from the home is towards the South West, not a favourable orientation for Passive Solar Design. The dining room can overheat in summer when hit by the lower afternoon sun. |
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The home features external double brick walls and many internal brick walls. This is too high a ratio of thermal mass relative to the small amount of solar gains made possible by the current design. This makes winter heating difficult, as the wall surfaces remain cold and radiate uncomfortably inside the rooms. |
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Owners are keen to collect rainwater, bring the laundry back into the main house (laundry is currently in an outbuilding), and provide parking for two cars at the back. |
THE PROPOSED DESIGN
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Conservation: The home size is adequate for a family of three, which allows us to allocate the bulk of the budget to the required internal remodel. New rooms are located within existing walls as much as possible to minimize rebuilding costs. |
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Orientation: To bring some North light into the home, the new design hinges around the relocation of the poky staircase, which can be rebuilt on the same side of the house without major structural expenses. This also has a positive impact on the upper floor, as it simplifies its layout. The North facing wall freed up by the relocation of the staircase, the poky bathroom and bedroom 2 can now accommodate the kitchen and family room. The 12ft high ceilings allow for a series of high windows to be installed on the North wall, letting warmth and sunshine bathe the living areas deeply in winter while providing a view of the sky – rather than that of the side fence. |
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Functionality and aesthetics: The living areas are now arranged in a close triangle and accessed through a set of decoratively glazed French doors set at the end of the corridor to provide some privacy and a sense of arrival. The new staircase can be made wider than the existing, which suits the scale of the home better. |
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Water: Rainwater tanks are dimensioned and located away from windows and close to the areas they are serving, namely: garden and new laundry. |
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Insulation: West facing windows are to be double-glazed and fitted with low-e coating to avoid summer overheating on that side of the home. A pergola with vine could be a pleasant addition to the new deck on the Western side of the home, this can be determined after some time living in the remodeled home. |
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Awareness: The owners were supplied with a list of green materials and information on best practices to make their home healthier and more energy / material efficient. |
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