The budding building scientist Gary James of the Environmental Technology
Centre has just completed installation of a thermal performance monitoring
system at the Subiaco Sustainable Demonstration Home with the support
of the talented university technician Dan Hewitt.
The Subiaco
Sustainable Demonstration Home is a newly
constructed house in the City of Subiaco. What was once
a light industrial area has been redeveloped into a new suburb called
Subiaco Rise. The house has been designed to be environmentally sustainable
with the integration of passive solar, energy efficient, water efficient,
universal access and low-allergen design principles. The house sets
a new benchmark for environmental design of our living spaces. The
house is currently operating as a display home and will be sold to
private owners in eighteen months.
Minimal data is available for actually proving the environmental
benefits of applying the design principles. A thermal monitoring program
of
the house has been implemented which will run for approximately two
years. The monitoring project is being conducted by Murdoch University
Honours student Gary James, shown below with calibration equipment.
Two stages of thermal monitoring using stand-alone dataloggers have
been employed already, with the third stage of a permanent hard-wired
computer based system being currently installed and calibrated now.
Preliminary data
indicates that the house will remain within established human thermal
comfort levels when it is actually permanently lived
in. A conference paper has already been prepared for the World
Renewable Energy Congress VIII which
presents the preliminary data. The abstract is presented below:
THERMAL COMFORT IN A PASSIVE SOLAR BUILDING
Gary James, Martin Anda, Goen E. Ho, Kuruvilla Mathew
Environmental Technology Centre, Murdoch University.
Murdoch WA 6150 AUSTRALIA
wwwies.murdoch.edu.au/etc
ABSTRACT
The Subiaco Sustainable Demonstration Home (SSDH) is a collaborative
effort between a local council and the building industry to create
a house that uses fewer resources than normally built homes during
its construction, use, and eventual demolition. The home is a showcase
of environmentally friendly energy, water, building and lifestyle technologies
that can be easily applied during the construction of new houses, or
even retrofitted into existing housing. See www.subiacosustainable.com.au.
The house has
been designed using Passive Solar principles, so should remain thermally
comfortable inside for most of the year, without the
need for active heating or cooling systems. Although not a perfect
passive solar design, the SSDH should still be able to remain thermally
comfortable throughout the year without the need for mechanical cooling
or heating. Results of preliminary monitoring are provided in this
paper.
Special thanks
are extended to the City of Subiaco and Solar Dwellings for funding
of Gary James’ Honours
scholarship, Dan Hewitt for technical assistance, and staff at the
Environmental Technology Centre
for support. Prof Goen Ho, Chair of ETC Board, and Dr Martin Anda ETC
Research Manager provide academic supervision. Martin has been providing
technical support to the City of Subiaco for the house since inception.
