Students' Award-Winning Home Leaves Small Footprint
A cost-effective, solar-powered home with good looks to match
With prefabricated components, solar power, airtight construction and a small footprint, this home, designed and built by a team of Victoria University students, earned third place in the US Solar Decathlon, an international competition that challenges 20 teams of architecture students to make a small, cost-effective, solar-powered homes. Now relocated to a picturesque beach in Hawkes Bay, its eco-credentials are quite possibly the greenest in New Zealand.
Houzz at a Glance
Location: Waimarama Beach, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand
Size: 79 square metres
That’s interesting: This house was originally constructed in Wellington where it went on show to an appreciative public. It was then dismantled and packed into a container for shipping to the United States – some 14,000 kilometres away. Here it was rebuilt in Washington DC as part of the US Solar Decathlon competition – then dismantled a second time. Finally, it was on-sold in New Zealand as a kit-set of parts and trucked to its final destination on a coastal section at Waimarama. So … a very well-travelled building!
A surprise inside: If you could look inside the walls, you’d make a fleecy find. The insulation is recycled sheep’s wool, which has been plugged into very generous 240-millimetre framing. It was also used in the ceiling and under the floor.
From the architect: “When our team turned up in the US with our strange New Zealand accents, many people thought we were from a small town in the Mid-West. We wanted to enter a quintessentially Kiwi home into the competition so we embodied the spirit of the New Zealand bach but, unlike a bach, it was built to perform, and designed for energy efficiency and warmth.”
Photos by: Ron Blunt
Houzz at a Glance
Location: Waimarama Beach, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand
Size: 79 square metres
That’s interesting: This house was originally constructed in Wellington where it went on show to an appreciative public. It was then dismantled and packed into a container for shipping to the United States – some 14,000 kilometres away. Here it was rebuilt in Washington DC as part of the US Solar Decathlon competition – then dismantled a second time. Finally, it was on-sold in New Zealand as a kit-set of parts and trucked to its final destination on a coastal section at Waimarama. So … a very well-travelled building!
A surprise inside: If you could look inside the walls, you’d make a fleecy find. The insulation is recycled sheep’s wool, which has been plugged into very generous 240-millimetre framing. It was also used in the ceiling and under the floor.
From the architect: “When our team turned up in the US with our strange New Zealand accents, many people thought we were from a small town in the Mid-West. We wanted to enter a quintessentially Kiwi home into the competition so we embodied the spirit of the New Zealand bach but, unlike a bach, it was built to perform, and designed for energy efficiency and warmth.”
Photos by: Ron Blunt
Oriented towards the north for the best possible solar gain, the home is laid out as two separate pods connected by a central breezeway. One pod contains a bedroom, bathroom, study and laundry; the other is a bunk room that is where one of the beds cleverly converts to a sofa, to lend extra seating to the living area. “We created a floorplan that allowed flexible spaces that could adapt to how the occupants wanted to live in it,” says architecture graduate Ben Jagersma.
The distinctive canopy roof, made up of timber battens, is like the wings of a bird. These ‘wings’ stretch out over the body of the home to shade it from harsh sun and prevent it from over-heating. One of the criteria in the Solar Decathlon was that the home maintain a strict comfort zone of 22-24 degrees Celsius at all times.
It’s difficult to discern that this house is made up of prefabricated parts. But the First Light house, as it is known, needed to be transported on a barge from Wellington across to Washington DC. For its third journey, it was dismantled and sent back to New Zealand where the parts were loaded onto a truck and finally rebuilt on a section overlooking a white-sand beach in Hawkes Bay. “The design of the house allows its occupants to reconnect with the landscape. Living outside on the deck is just as an important part of the home as having a quiet, comfortable bedroom to retire to,” says Jagersma.
In this view, the solar panels that power the home are more visible. The house uses 28 x 225W photo voltaic (PV) panels and the canopy roof allows them to be tilted at the optimum angle for capturing this free energy. Evacuated tube solar hot water collectors have also been used in the home, as well as an energy monitoring system, with results that can be displayed on an iPad. “While there was technological sophistication to the set up, we were careful to humanise it. This is a home, not some futuristic building,” says Jagersma.
SolarGenius hot water collector and ThermaGenius hot water heat pump: both Leap
SolarGenius hot water collector and ThermaGenius hot water heat pump: both Leap
The clip-on cedar cladding of the First Light house allows it to be transported. All timber in the home is FSC certified and water-based woodstains were used along with plant-based oils to seal it. Although the students who designed it were conscious of meeting the strict energy efficiency criteria of the Solar Decathlon, they never lost sight of the design aesthetics, which are based on the casual nature of the Kiwi bach (holiday home).
The kitchen and dining area is located in the central breezeway where the skylights and the doors leading to the front deck are triple glazed and argon filled with thermally broken timber frames to ensure the best insulation values. Dining with the sky above and a wide view through the front entrance allows the occupants to feel as though they are part of the Great Outdoors, yet be comfortably sheltered from the elements. “The house focuses on social interaction, which is at the heart of the design. This is where all our memories come from – hanging out with family and friends,” says Jagersma.
The master bedroom is light and airy, backed by a wall of white-washed timber. Textiles used here and throughout the home were sourced from suppliers who were able to trace the provenance of their products from raw material to the manufactured result. Plus, there was an emphasis on fabrics that could be recycled.
A 11000-litre tank on the property provides ample water for ablutions. The modest bathroom has white tiles and tongue-and-groove wall linings. The First Light team designed an innovative drying cupboard that uses water heated during the day by solar collectors then pumped through towel rails to dry towels. A 60-watt fan ensures that air circulates throughout the cupboard which is designed to dry six bath towels in two hours, for very little energy use. “The bathroom and laundry were located in the colder south side of the house, while the kitchen, living and bedroom was on the north.”
Within the home there is a mix of concrete and timber flooring. The concrete absorbs heat during the day to allow it to be slowly released when the evening draws in. The custom-made dining table is a fitting combination of both these materials. The built-in cabinet with cubicle space, seen here, does double duty for book storage to create a small study area on one side. It simultaneously acts as a wardrobe for the bedroom behind.
The living area that is seen beyond the dining zone is very compact – perfect for a holiday home where most of the activity takes place in the outdoors. The built-in bunk room can be seen to its right – a perfect set-up that allows the owners to accommodate visiting friends and family.
The back wall of the room is a feature element of the house. It concertinas out to reveal a bunk room (see next photo). It is made of recycled rimu that was sourced from an old warehouse. All the external walls are filled with Ecofleece insulation, which is made from recycled New Zealand wool.
The space-saving aspects of a built-in daybed with storage beneath and a concealed bunk room can be appreciated when you consider this home has a small footprint of just 79 square metres. Low-energy LED lighting has been used throughout.