Often the first place people turn to when considering building their own home is beautiful housing magazines and display homes. These can be a great source of inspiration! But they are often not much help in achieving a thermally comfortable, energy efficient home.
And sometimes it seems like energy efficient house designs are only available to those with tens of thousands of dollars to spend on architect’s fees. Spending loads of money, just to ensure your house will be sustainable? This of course seems a bit ridiculous if one of your aims is to save money!
Free House Design Plans?
But now the Australian Government has released some free, energy-efficient house design plans to get your started in thinking of a great house design for your particular climate area. Yes, free.
At the moment, only plans for a 2 bed and 3 bed single story home have been released. But they are receiving positive feedback on these plans, and so hopefully the full suite of 7 designs will be commissioned and released soon.
Who has designed the plans?
The plans have been architecturally designed, with the brief to achieve a 7 Star NatHERS rating when built in the climate zones applicable to each of the State and Territory Capitals. The plans show how a house can be built to maximise ventilation, natural light, passive solar energy, and be functional and comfortable to live in.
Specification sheets are available to show the levels of insulation, roof colour, glazing requirements and so on for each of the Capital cities in order to achieve the 7 Star Rating, or higher.
How can the plans be useful?
So much has been written about the NatHERS Energy Rating Software, about the principles of sustainable design and about rising Energy Costs. But for the more practically minded, here are some plans that work, along with some brief explanations of how particular material and design choices will make a difference to the thermal comfort and ongoing energy costs of the home.
Considering the layout and material choices provided in “Design for Place” as you look at magazines, wander through display homes, and as you meet with designers and builders will help you consider energy efficiency alongside all your other design requirements.
The plans can be even be used by your building designer or architect to modify to your particular requirements. This could save you around $10,000, as it will provide that important first draft (with modifications no doubt) for your designer to work with.
If you are planning on buying a home off the plan, you can look at the Specification Sheet for your Capital City and use the advice there to inform your choices on external colour, levels of insulation and more.
Where can I access the plans?
These plans are accessible via the Your Home Website (based on the Your Home book, pictured above), in a dedicated section called “Design for Place” or House Designs.
If you just want to cut straight to the plans to have a look, you will need to use the menu system (Titled “House Designs”) on the left of the page to navigate to the “Plans and Elevations” options.
Happy Planning! And if you need to have your plans Energy Rated, contact us at BERA for a free quote.