All of us at Your Building Broker are Green Smart Professionals and we take pride in being aware of design ideas that enhance green living. It’s vitally important for us all to capture the importance of sustainable energy and green living to minimise our impact on the planet.

Good Solar Passive Home Designs take a great deal of expertise to develop properly. It’s not just a matter of putting living rooms to the northern elevations. It’s far more involved than that. Perth homes are also about to undergo a significant change due to the energy efficiency rating for new homes being lifted from 5 stars to 6 star ratings in 1st May 2011. To achieve these ratings most project builders will add additional costs to the home by adding expensive cavity insulation and other upgrades that would not normally be required if the home design was developed from scratch.

It’s for this reason that we highly recommend a custom home design to achieve the best passive solar outcome for each new dwelling. To think that a home stand for an average lifetime brings to the forefront of your mind that this is too critical to sweep aside. More consideration must be given to the orientation of the block and how the home design will utilise the natural elements to be as efficient as possible.

Energy costs are rising and the carbon footprint left by each of us is becoming measurable and indeed very soon we’ll have ways to measure each of our impact on the planet. It’s a scary thought to think that we have contributed perhaps, to our environments current and future demise. Being more aware now than we have been before we can make educated decisions to lessen our impact and infact create a positive change through our actions.

If all new homes in perth were seriously considered for solar passive design principles, our energy usage would drop significantly in the future. Incorporation of solar orientation, clever product use and material selection, colour scheme designs for heat absorption or resistence and cross ventillation are but a few principles that can and will make a difference for today and tomorrow.

We encourage all home builders to take this approach. If you’re considering using a new home designer who is unfamiliar with these techniques then change to someone who is. It’s too important to let this opportunity slip past you. Some may say it will cost extra, and in some cases this may be unavoidable. But good solar design can be incorporated without hiking building prices. It takes a skillful designer to achieve these results and we are proud to say we have previously and will continue to create new home designs that rate well naturally first, without added expense, then we offer further product enhancement to reach even higher levels of rating as options to our clients.

For those clients that share this view we approach the design phase using the following principles and more;

  • Solar Orientation utilising both the summer and winter solstice
  • Thermal mass elements for winter heating where applicable
  • Materials selection for minimisation of heat transfer or loss
  • Air movement utilising cross ventilation for summer cooling
  • Passive solar energy design for lifestyle comfort as personal satisfaction
  • Green building techniques and products

Let us help you understand how your new home can be designed effectively, without costing you (or anyone else) the earth.