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Kapiti Off Grid
listed by phptek

House at March 01, 2010

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New Zealand > Wellington > Otaki

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Property Details
Land area:   13910 m2
Building area:   166.6 m2
Date built:   2009
Bedrooms:   3
Bathrooms:   2
Living areas:   2
 

Property Features
Dining room
 

Description

For continuous updates, please visit: http://www.theruss.com/blog/ and http://www.theruss.com/gallery - updates are also posted automatically to Twitter (@therussdotcom) and if you know me personally, my wall on Facebook.

While this property is listed under the banner of an "Eco Home" I dislike the term, mostly because it draws a division between one type of home and another. Our home will appear like any other because the "Eco" features shouldn't be obvious.

Environmental Sustainability:

Wherever possible, we take into account that the home will at some point in the future be returned to the ground. This does indeed sound like Hippy talk, but it's fact nonetheless. So 100% wool insulation, untreated and Boron treated framing, trusses, roof beams and cladding, low VOC paints and FSC sourced weatherboard, hopefully position the house nicely in this arena.

Future Proof Building:

Double-glazing 4/10/4 (Argon), partially insulated concrete slab (slab only, not perimeter), above standard insulation (wool - R2.5 walls, R3.6 ceiling), solar hot water (30 evacuated tubes NW+NE facing) and a woodburning kitchen range (Rayburn ~16kW) powering the central heating system via 6 cast-iron radiators and 2 hot-water towel rails, will insulate us and future owners of the house, against rising electricity and gas costs (i.e. we won't be using them). Costs derived from conventional water and space-heating in much of the current housing stock.

The home will be wired with Cat6 ethernet cable and RG6 coax in each room for net access, PC movie hosting but primarily to allow for a flow of data from sensors around the house concerning: Solar collector temperature, wind speed and direction, rainfall, electricity usage etc. It also allows for the future installation of smart appliances and allows occupants to connect to the internet without assuming the presence of a wireless network.

Survivalism:

The self-sustainable central heating with timber eventually coppiced from the section, rainwater capture, chooks and veggie garden will go some way to ensuring we are able to survive relatively comfortably should anything from a power outage to a natural disaster or worse hit the area or the country.

Electricity Use Reduction:

Because we will be eventually generating our own power, it is therefore very prudent of us to build-in energy efficiency at the outset. The heating and insulation described above will contribute to this. We will also be purchasing a GRAM M60 KF320-01 (6 star energy-star rated) fridge. Because fridges are always on, purchasing an energy efficient one is a great way to make a decent dent in power consumption.

Off Grid:

* We will be self-sufficient for potable and irrigation water
* We will be self-sufficient for space heating and domestic water heating
* We will be self-sufficient for some food
* We will be self-sufficient for wastewater
* We will eventually be self-sufficient for firewood
* We will eventually be self-sufficient for electricity

 
 

Your comments:

by trikee 24 Oct 09, 3 replies : Last Post Sort by:
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Author Post
trikee
4 posts
This forum thread has been marked as a question for other Ecobob users to answer. Heating 
Posted 24 Oct 09 8:00 PM
Hi, can you please tell me the name of your heating system and how it works? I am hoping to build a house in the next couple of years and looking into all the information I can :-) Thank you
phptek
42 posts
Re: Heating 
Posted 25 Oct 09 10:26 AM
Certainly!

The heating system doesn't have a name as such. But it works like this:

The HWC (Hot Water Cylinder) will be heated primarily by solar evacuated tube collectors in summer and boosted by a Rayburn solid fuel cooker. The Rayburn will then be the primary heat source for the HWC in winter with there being less sun about.

The DHW (Domestic Hot Water) will be on 2 separate piping circuits. When the HWC is up to temperature, any further heat coming from the Rayburn's own backboiler, is automatically switched and re-routed to the 2nd circuit with all 6 of the radiators and 2 towel rails connected to it.

It's pretty simple really, what's difficult is ensuing pipe-sizing. lagging and HWC position are as optimal as you can make it.

We were quite conscious of these things and made sure we used a company that had done CH (Central Heating) with a Rayburn before.

I hope that helps you out :-)
trikee
4 posts
Re: Heating 
Posted 30 Oct 09 4:06 PM
Thanks so much for that, I will have a look into the Rayburn but sounds fantastic! Have a great weekend :-)
phptek
42 posts
Re: Heating 
Posted 10 Nov 09 12:09 PM
No worries - re: the Rayburn. We've put a down payment on one from Classic Cookers, Cantrerbury: http://www.classiccookers.co.nz/

Cheers.
Russ
 

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