Whether you have a large flat site with a north facing aspect; a steep, narrow, south facing block; or a block surrounded by dense development – every site’s opportunities and constraints are unique, and requires its own custom solution.
Understanding how your home will interact with natural elements and local weather conditions is a key element to designing a low impact home. Passive solar design should not cost you any more to build, and will reduce ongoing costs for running your home. Perth’s climate is well suited to the use of thermal mass for regulating the temperature of Perth's homes. A combination of strategically located thermal mass and insulation coupled with appropriate internal and external protection can be a simple way to make substantial improvements to a homes performance.
The way air travels through your home is a significant factor in both overall energy consumption and the indoor environmental quality of your home. We want a home designed to aid the breeze path to purge heat in summer, yet remain well sealed to prevent heat leakage in winter.
The careful selection of products can improve the health, comfort, cost effectiveness and energy efficiency of your home.
A combination of water-efficient appliances and low-flow fittings (such as showerheads, dual flush toilets, dishwashers and washing machines), and water sensitive landscape design can reduce household water consumption by as much as 65%. Rainwater harvesting and/or greywater systems will further help save water.
Renewable energy is energy obtained from natural resources such as sun, wind and hydro that can be constantly replenished. The incorporation of renewable energy systems into your home design can save hundreds of dollars off your energy bills each year as well as the planet’s precious resources.
Whilst we take pride in staying up to date with the latest products, green technologies and best practices for sustainable design we acknowledge that many principles employed are not new. In fact, passive solar design, biomimicry and seasonal home principles have been around for thousands of years. We often look to nature and/or our ancestors for inspiration when working on sustainable housing designs.
Passive solar design refers to the appropriation of free resources – the sun and wind, to provide heating, cooling, lighting and ventilation. This is not a new concept; our ancestors were far more rigorous in their use of passive design principles than we are today. The advent of building technologies (in particular air-conditioning) brought about a wave of architecture which did away with passive solar design and led to a vastly modified and energy intensive building sector.
At Custom Green, we believe in combining the proven sustainable design approaches of our ancestors with modern day technology to create innovative, low energy solutions.
Nature has been perfecting engineering for billions of years. While modern technology is predicated on the use of high temperatures and pressures to manipulate materials, if we look around we can see amazing forms developing with inputs as simple as sun, wind, water and soil.
In building design, biomimicry is using or imitating models, systems, and elements found in nature. It is an approach used to solve problems such as structural integrity and, more relevantly, harnessing of natural energy.
Seasonal homes are based on natural systems adapting to their surrounding climate. Deciduous trees grow and drop their leaves to provide shade in summer and let sun through to undergrowth in winter. Lakes freeze at the surface to protect aquatic life from the harshest cold temperatures. Houses often have some dynamic elements such as blinds and windows to help modify the internal climate according to the season, however we believe this can be taken further to create homes which operate according to the season. At Custom Green we can work with you to design houses which, through minor adjustments at the start of each season, function optimally all year round without the need for expensive heating or cooling systems.