Josh’s House

Over the weekend, we watched the videos of Josh Byrnes’ sustainable house being built. They were short (less than 10 mins each) but quite interesting. Most of the stuff we were already familiar with, as we’d done quite a bit of reading around and we’re using the same architect, but there were a couple things we noted:

• We’re thinking about getting a bigger rainwater tank. We’ve only designed in 6000L at this point, but the 20,000L tank doesn’t actually look that big in his videos, and would probably supply us with 80% of our water needs as opposed to 50%.
• The hot water system I’d previously mentioned doesn’t actually look that hideous on the roof. It’s still a viable option.
• Some time down the track, we might consider putting in a bore so we won’t have to use scheme water at all in the garden.
• A site waste management plan had never crossed my mind until now. To be honest, I’m not sure what we can do in this area. We don’t want to annoy the builder unnecessarily, as I’m sure we’ll be annoying him enough during construction!

What I liked most about the videos was the general insight into specific aspects of sustainable building that are generally hard to find information on. I did end up wanting more at the end though.

Although he’s not doing anything particularly new, I have to admire the effort he’s putting into promoting sustainable housing. The best thing about this project is that all the plans are available free for download – have done that and will be perusing and comparing them to ours.

One final thing – the internal performance monitoring will also be available soon (early next year), so am looking forward to seeing that data.

Josh’s rainwater tank