Tailor Made

“Iwanted to do everything I could on this one because I never get to do that with anyone,” Megan says of the renovation,

which she recently spent nearly two years designing and building. For Megan, her art director partner and their two young daughters, the aim was to create a super-efficient, flexible four-bedroom home and lush productive garden that retained the original footprint, reused and recycled demolition materials and went to great lengths to retrofit improvements rather than raze the old place to the ground.

“If you take an old house and bring it up to good energy efficiency levels that’s kind of the best thing you can do because most of the housing stock is existing housing stock and that’s what we’ve got to deal with,” she says.

The challenge was to cram Megan’s “exhaustive lists” of technical requirements into one 180-square-metre home. “I was a little bit like a dog with a bone,” she concedes. “If I do it again I’ll probably let a few things go. But it was sort of like my one opportunity to throw in all the tools.” Her tenacity boosted the energy rating from less than 0.5 stars to 6.75 stars, but her motivation was less about score cards than design ideals rooted in permaculture.

“I wanted to design a house that made living sustainably easier,” she says. Hence practicalities like odour-free composting, a north- facing undercover clothesline, and dedicated storage for bulk foodstuffs. “I’d thought about all these things that had always been a bit unwieldy in my old house and wanted to make them seamless. It’s all about the ultimate system.” A heritage overlay on the site confined new works to the rear.

Initially Megan considered dropping in an energy-efficient prefabricated extension by Modscape but the site proved too complex due to flood restrictions imposed by the nearby creek and heritage-related height restrictions. Instead she took her schematic design to Geometrica, local building designers well versed in local and heritage planning requirements, and collaborated with them on the build, focussing her energies on sustainability specifications, materials and technologies as well as the interior design.

In essence, the design retains the original façade and front rooms, moves the front entrance to the south side of the house, and opens up the interior to accommodate a long, deliberately narrow, northern-oriented two-storey timber addition. Its height is masked from the street by the site itself, which slopes down at the rear towards the creek. Living areas are grouped to the north, utilities to the south. Wet areas are clustered beneath a solar hot water system that’s enclosed in a drying cupboard at the top of a central timber staircase, ensuring water doesn’t have far to travel.

The staircase, topped with passive stack ventilation and a hopper-style window with automated rain sensor, acts as a thermal chimney. It’s augmented by careful window placement throughout and a judicious use of ceiling fans. Glazing is limited on the eastern side and extensive to the north. At just five metres wide, the extension is fully penetrated by winter sun.

But the devil – and delight – here is in the details. From non- arsenic treated pine plinth boards to fridge-cooling air vents, nothing has been left to chance. Pantry shelves are 15 centimetres narrower than usual to prevent the accidental overstocking of food obscured from view. Utilities indoors and out are positioned with the permaculture “slipper test” in mind to ensure daily chores like picking herbs, feeding worms, composting and air-drying washing can be completed year-round without the effort of donning shoes.

Worms feed plants as well as chooks, who earn their keep by weeding, pooing and turning over soil in the magnificent front and rear gardens, which brim with edible, native and ornamental plants and trees. Megan designed the gardens too and cultivates them with regular help from WWOOFers (Willing Workers On Organic Farms), who exchange labour for board. Drainage swales along natural run- off paths direct water away from the house and into garden beds, which are made from salvaged timber stumps and recycled bricks. The pergola is made from ironwork from the original house; a cubby and front balustrade are fashioned from gum-tree branches collected along the creek.

Overall the sustainability design consultant is pleased with her work, aside from one small flaw: a living room with some wasted space, which could have been smaller. “I was completely against wasted space, which kind of meant that I couldn’t work with an architect because they love voids and circulation space,” Megan says with a laugh. “Every square metre in the building has a very real financial and environmental cost as well, so I just think you need to be able to justify all of it.”