Passive House Profile: Suburban Lake Haus

Suburban Lake Haus

Certified Passive Home in North Beach, WA

This beautiful home, accompanying its peer in North Beach, further demonstrates the leadership, accomplishments and most importantly necessity for Passive House in Australia. With clear focus on health, sustainability, energy efficiency, comfort and cost efficiencies delivered through Passive House. This is further proof of what Passive House coupled with decisive architecture can deliver even on a tight budget and with metropolitan design restraints.

This innovative project is the second of only two certified Passive House Plus homes built in Western Australia is again a leading example of how architectural innovation combined with Passive House performance delivers efficient beauty amongst the Metropolitan vanilla we have come all too familiar with.

Located in the busy Northern suburb of Wanneroo, this unassuming block is nestled into a quite pocket on the Eastern edge of Lake Joondalup Park, a beautiful parkland populated with mature trees and grasslands which opens out to the picturesque Lake Joondalup filled with natural wildlife.

Being a Certified Passive House Designer himself, the client designed this home. From concept box study discussions on site, to detailed overshadowing diagrams considering parkland tree canopies influence on windows and PV installations, Luke Kellett (Kellett Design Group) was the single biggest influencer for appearance and performance on this beautiful home. Luke’s architectural experience has delivered an invaluable example on the importance of merging form and function while delivering beauty and performance without compromise.

The high performance of this home delivers a healthy, whisper quiet environment, comfortable indoor ambient temperatures, extremely low pollutant indoor air quality all delivered at extremely low running costs.

This was achieved by utilising the following attributes in the design and build process of Suburban Lake Haus.

- High performance bulk insulation to roof walls and floor.
- High performance Thermally broken windows with high performance Double glazed, Argon filled, Low-E units.
- Complete pre-manufactured ISMART building group timber framed panels with no steel members eliminating thermal bridging.
- High performance Pro-Clima weather resistant barrier and vapour permeable air barrier systems ensuring a healthy air tight structure.
- Inclusion of a Steibel Eltron Heat Recovery Ventilation system ensuring 24 hour controlled and tempered air exchange.
- Detailed design process ensuring orientation optimisation, materials selection, structural value engineering ensuring optimal performance within optimal cost efficiencies.
- PHPP assessment was completed at a very early stage to identify the maximum performance from various material options and shading parameters.
- The inspiration for this design can be clearly identified through the surrounding parklands, however a blend of modern country with an Irish twist was the vision. The natural timber to the dining room raking ceilings, seamlessly travels through the high level gable windows to the raking alfresco, paying respect to the soaring mature trees hugging the fringe of the parklands outside. The street scape of this home was purposely modest to ensure it blends with the neighbouring dwellings, it’s unique with subtlety. The use of recycled brick to the garage and architectural pillars to the entry identifies this home as distinctive but both components are external to the thermal envelope and thus, simply architectural design features with no impact on the performance.

As one experiences this home you would come to understand the true importance of the necessity to connect architecture with its surrounding environment. Physical and visual connection to natural light and nature are quite generous but controlled, maximising the experience of the occupants and views, but regulating the impact on thermal performance.

Suburban Lake Haus is a blend of Passive House performance and European Architecture coupled with local architectural concepts to deliver an outstanding project. This will inevitably lead the industry to question the realms of possibility for performance and budget.

Thanks to the team at ISMART Building Group for sharing this beautiful property with us.