Live Lightly

Golden Rules for Healthy, Sustainable House Design and Liveability…

1/ Orientation — Your Pavilion Off-Grid Home is sited to take advantage of climatic features such as sun and cooling breezes.

2/ Shading — Pavilion Off-Grid Homes are built to shade your house to reduce summer temperatures, improve comfort and save energy. (Did you know that direct sun can generate the same heat as a single bar radiator over each square metre of a surface!)

3/ Passive Cooling — A Pavilion Off-Grid Home builds in passive cooling to cool both the house and the people in it, carefully integrating design elements such as breezeways which combined with clerestory windows create thermal updrafts to draw out heat, as well as specifying high “R” values in our selection of building materials.

4/ Sealing — Air leakage accounts for 15 to 25% of winter heat loss in buildings and can contribute to a significant loss of ‘cool’ in when the air conditioner is on. Pavilion Off-Grid Homes are designed to minimise air leakage.

5/ Passive Heating — Passive solar heating is the least expensive way to heat your home. A Pavilion Off-Grid Home is designed to keep out summer sun but lets in the warm winter sun, whilst ensuring that the building itself keeps things cosy inside in winter but allows heat to escape in summer.

6/ Insulation —  A Pavilion Off-Grid Home is built to perform as the manufacturer intended by making sure all insulation is correctly installed.

7/ Glazing —  Windows and doors bring in light and fresh air and offer views connecting inside living spaces with the outdoors. However, they can be a major source of unwanted heat gain in summer and heat loss in winter. Pavilion Off-Grid Homes design all glazing elements to protect you and your family from the extremes of heat and cold while reducing your power consumption.

BASED ON CAREFULLY CONSIDERED PASSIVE DESIGN ELEMENTS that ensure that you and your family remain thermally comfortable with minimal auxiliary heating or cooling. Pavilion Off-Grid Homes work with you in identifying your particular climate zone and understanding the principles of thermal comfort to help you make informed design choices for your new home.

We believe that design, price, energy efficiency and quality are not mutually exclusive. With careful design and a touch of flair, we ensure our homes offer optimal quality with the joy of stylish and practical living, whilst reducing your energy bills to zero.

KEY ALIGNMENTS AND SUPPLIERS… Building your home should be as stress-free as possible with reduced building timelines - with pure delight awaiting you the moment you turn the key to your new Pavilion Off-Grid Home. Each home is personalised and nestles into your allotment by lightly touching the earth as a true reflection of each owner.

Our construction pathway “lightly touches the earth” and incorporates exacting tolerances and reduced build times - by prefabricating a number of core building components off-site. And, through the judicious use of timber - a natural, sustainable and renewable resource - we specify a sustainable and, of course, termite-resistant building product.

Ø  Sustainability - a process that maintains the environment, economy and social wellbeing.

Ø  Biophilic design - to increase occupant connectivity with nature by incorporating natural materials, natural light, and views of nature

Ø  Universal design - creating ease of access and amenity regardless of age, size, ability or disability.

Ø  Minimised Embodied Energy - reducing the amount of energy consumed by all of the processes associated with the production of a building, from the mining and processing of natural resources to manufacturing, transport and product delivery.

Ø  Circular Economy - an alternative to our (make-use-dump) economy. It’s based on eliminating waste, pollution and regenerating natural resources

If your home is completely off-grid - your Powerstation is completely reliable — with automatic backup power when needed. We engage SPS Energy (established in 1987) as our preeminent supplier of energy management and renewable energy for your new home. SPS Energy has a long-established, proven track record for on-time, on-budget installations with an uncompromising approach to quality of product, workmanship, advice and service. As an option, should you be also fully carbon neutral with your motoring, we can upscale your power station to provide overnight recharging capability for your electric car - using completely free energy from the sun!

If your home allotment is not connected to the town sewer — we specify Advanced Enviro Septic. This wastewater treatment process is not only good for the health and well-being of your family and neighbours but it is also designed with the environment in mind - an innovative Advanced Secondary Wastewater Treatment System that is passive and non-mechanical giving it one of the lowest carbon footprints in the wastewater treatment industry. This system reduces the use of electricity, eliminates harmful chemicals from the water treatment process thereby protecting groundwater catchments and the soil, and utilises recycled plastic in the construction of the system.

WHY USE TIMBER? Timber has the lowest level of embodied energy when compared with all other traditional building materials. Embodied energy is defined as the quantity of energy required by all activities associated with the production process of building materials. Buildings have a significant impact on the environment due to the energy embodied in construction materials. Low embodied energy timber buildings nurture local industries as well as its benefit of being natural, durable and recyclable. Timber’s versatility and light weight mean it can be designed to be easy to disassemble, recover, reuse and/or recycle.

Recent research by the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Accounting www.greenhouse.crc.org.au demonstrated that by substituting timber in the construction of a typical family home, greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to up to 25 tonnes of CO2, could be saved.