COLORBOND® steel lends environmental credentials to sustainable home
Roofing and wall cladding made from colours in the COLORBOND® steel colour palette has played a vital role in the custom design and construction of a sustainable residential property.
Straddling picturesque Brisbane Forest Park in the western Brisbane suburb of Brookfield, a recently completed residence built to sustainable design principles blends into its environment.
The exterior is striking and distinctive. Wide eaves overhang the house and a palette of complementary colours selected from the COLORBOND® steel range feature throughout what is dubbed Jarden House after the owners, Ross and Georgina Jarden.
While the previous structure was architecturally designed, it was built in 1963 from brick veneer and was low-set. Its poor insulation and improper situation meant it was hot in summer and cold in winter.
The Jardens set out to create a more sustainable residence that would capture the breeze and maximise thermal insulation.
“The brief we gave the architect was simple: open-plan living, a light and airy design to benefit from the north and south-easterly breezes, generally sustainable design principles and minimal horizontal surfaces,” explained Ross Jarden.
To achieve this, the house has been totally resituated on the land. The open design ensures the house is passively heated and cooled, regulating temperature effectively without any need for active air conditioning.
COLORBOND® steel features significantly throughout the design.
The roof is made from 450 square metres of COLORBOND® steel in the colour Shale Grey®. The upper roof section is in LYSAGHT CUSTOM ORB® profile with a nine degree pitch, while the lower roof is in LYSAGHT TRIMDEK™ profile pitched at three degrees.
With the house footprint occupying 320 square metres, the oversized roof creates large overhanging eaves that provide ample protection and capture a large amount of rainwater. It takes only two inches of rain to fill the 22,000-litre tank. The Thermatech® technology featured in the Shale Grey®-coloured COLORBOND® steel roof chosen for this project assists with cooling by reflecting solar heat.
The thermal performance of COLORBOND® steel with Thermatech® technology helps reflect more of the sun’s heat (compared with non-COLORBOND® steel roofing materials of similar colour with lower solar reflectance), keeping the home cooler in summer.
The walls of the house are also made from COLORBOND® steel in LYSAGHT CUSTOM ORB® profile, this time in the colour Wallaby®. The Jardens selected the colour for its earthy and natural mid-grey tone.
A west-facing feature wall is made from COLORBOND® steel in LYSAGHT CUSTOM ORB® profile, in the colour Shale Grey®. The profile on this wall, as is the case for all walls in the house, runs vertically to avoid the unrelenting dust that gathers on horizontal surfaces in the local area.
“For the walls we ended up with CUSTOM ORB®. We ran it vertically so it wouldn’t be a dust trap as dust is a bit of a problem up here,” Mr Jarden said.
The guttering on the property is made from 175mm COLORBOND® steel QUAD gutter made by LYSAGHT®, finished in the new colour Basalt® – a powerful grey with a neutral cast.
COLORBOND®‘s online visualiser was used extensively in the Jarden family’s decision-making process.
“The colours tie into the natural surrounds really well; we get a lot of comments about how well it fits into the environment.
“We found that the online visualiser was a great help. The ability to just start plugging colours in and comparing them gave us a really good reference point,” Mr Jarden said.
“One of the features we really like about the Wallaby® colour is that it takes on grey, brown and olive green hues depending on the light at different times of the day.”
A business development manager with Watpac, a national construction, property development, civil and mining services company, Mr Jarden has a longstanding awareness of and relationship with COLORBOND® steel.
“Having been in the industry for approaching 40 years, I’m acutely aware of the benefits of BlueScope’s COLORBOND® steel products and the company’s reputation for durability, reliability and product versatility.
“That awareness and trust, combined with the availability of a BlueScope warranty*, ease of maintenance and the proven resilience of the product, made COLORBOND® steel an easy choice when considering materials to build our home,” he said.
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