Camperdown Passive

Description: Camperdown Passive House In Progress
Building Type: Residential
Location: Camperdown, NSW 2050
Number of Apartments/Units: 1
Treated Floor Area According to PHPP: 156m2
Construction Type: Sips Panel
Year of Construction: 2021

Background

This is a small footprint 156 sq meter family home, located in Sydneys Inner West. It is intended to demonstrate how we think family living in Australia should look now and in the future. Peaceful, bright, comfortable and fun! 

Architect and home owner, Linden has received the occupation certificate and a preliminary blower door test score of 0.37 air changes, but are yet to complete final certification assessment and still finishing off the garden and the joinery. 

The Design/Build Process

This is Linden's first Passive house project and their apprenticeship in Passive House Design. They worked with Andy Marlow from Envirotecture as their Passive House Consultant, whilst completing the certified Passive House designer course. Their builder, Life Structures is someone who they had worked with for many years and they were willing to learn how to do the Passive House Detailing with Linden's guidance despite not having previous passive house experience or training. They used a SIPS Panel Construction, with Certified Passive House Windows from Logikhaus and airtightness products from Pro Clima.

The Brief

For an architect designing their own home from scratch is a fantastic opportunity. Alongside the usual constraints of maximising what we can do with a relatively small 156 square meter site, the design brief brought together three key elements:

- An engagement with what we want our family life to be like and how that will change as our kids get older. 
- The challenge of placing a completely new building in a predominantly heritage streetscape and doing that really well. And, 
- Designing a house that would be comfortable and energy efficient despite the constraints of living under the flight path and having a three storey building to our north, where a traditional passive solar approach simply didn't work. 

They chose a courtyard design that gave Linden and their immediate smaller neighbours to the south and west, access to light and space between us all, despite being at very close quarters. 

Linden wrapped the living, dining and kitchen spaces around the courtyard, prioritising them over extra space in bedrooms and bathrooms and where possible got rid of corridor spaces that did not serve a secondary purpose.

Available height was used to capture winter sunlight over the top of our tall northern neighbour, and to help make living spaces feel generous and to accomodate playful children's bedrooms that are small in footprint, but fun to explore and feel cosy. 

From a heritage point of view they looked at the predominant materials, forms and proportions in the streetscape nearby and reinterpreted them. The street elevation carefully picks up lines in the adjacent buildings and simple pitched roof form and dormer windows get a sharper more modern look. Bricks, of a lighter colour, were used at the entry to the property to tie the building to the streetscape which is predominantly red/brown brick, as we step back and up, the building transitions to timber, a sharper version of the paling fences that predominate in the laneways and a material that will soften and relax into its environment over time, with final maintenance or upkeep required. 

By adopting Passive House planning principles, they have managed to minimise our use of eaves that would otherwise crowd their courtyard, while still affording much needed and targeted shade. They have sealed out noise from neighbours, overhead aircrafts, traffic and the street along with a significant amount of dirt and grime and are able to capture sunlight at a high level on the building and utilise it down low to stay comfortable with minimal energy requirements year round.  

Project Members

Certified Passive House Designer: Andy Marlow from Envirotecture
Thermal Bridge Assessment and PHPP modelling: Envirotecture
Wufi Modelling: LAB Design
Structural Engineering: John Carrick
Builders: Life Structures Pty Ltd
Sips panels: Sips Industries
Windows: Logikhaus
Airtight and Weather Resistive Barrier: Pro Clima with onsite training provided by Airboss Dan