General News
12 October, 2023
“They are amazed at how comfortable it is.”
MOST people dream of having cheaper power bills, but one Camperdown resident has built a house with zero power bills.
MOST people dream of having cheaper power bills, but one Camperdown resident has built a house with zero power bills.
Sophia MacRae, a town planner, has built a house in Camperdown using a variety of design tricks to efficiently live comfortably.
Ms MacRae said she knew she wanted a house that was as energy efficient as possible, one that was comfortable with “hardly any” power bills.
“As it turns out, I’ve got no power bills, so that’s why I wanted to do it; I wanted to save money,” she said.
“I decided that I wanted to build the house, so I could do the design from scratch, and that meant that I could make sure my house was oriented correctly so that the living areas would get all the northern light coming in.
“It was oriented with all the living areas to the north. That was the first most important thing.”
The solar-powered all-electric house uses thermally broken double-glazed windows, allow the aluminium frames to maintain the heat within the house.
In addition, Ms MacRae ensured her house was well-sealed, preventing any leaks in the framing, insulation and plaster board.
“It’s a modular build; it was pre-fabricated at the builder’s construction yard, which meant that it was a bit cheaper and there was no wastage tin the construction,” she said.
“All those things meant that it was going to be really well-designed so that it would be warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
“I made sure that the eaves designed to the correct length so that it gets lost of free winter warm sunshine coming in, but it has zero hot summer sun coming in.”
In doing research for her efficient house on the online government resource YourHome, Ms MacRae found out about changing her thermal mass from concrete to water.
Typically, a polished concrete slab is used to capture the winter sun during the day, slowly releasing it at night.
To keep costs of building her home down, Ms MacRae found on the online resource water works better as a thermal mass and decided to seek out bottles for the mass.
“Because I grew up on a winery, I’d grown up seeing stacks of bottles on top of each other, so I knew that it would be quite safe and secure to just stack up the water in my living room to catch the sun and use wine bottles,” she said.
“My dad’s a winemaker, so I said, ‘hey dad, can you tell me where I can get some cheap wine bottle?’, and he said ‘well, as it happens, I have two binloads of wine that I’ve bottled, and I can’t sell because it’s gone off.’, and so he gave them to me.
“Instead of having water as my thermal mass in wine bottles, I ended up with wine in my house for my thermal mass, but no-one is allowed to drink my thermal mass. The wine can’t be sold; that’s why he gave it to me.
“It’s not meant for drinking, and it was just taking up space in his warehouse.”
Ms MacRae acknowledge that many people cannot access discarded wine, but said water is just as good for those who wish to try the idea.
“It also keeps it cool in the summer; because my house is all electric and I’ve got solar panels, I run my appliance during the daytime,” she said.
“My air conditioning is free because it’s run by the solar panels, and that cools the house down, and because it’s well-insulated and has no leaks, it stays cool all night.
“I don’t need to worry about the air conditioning, and the thermal mass helps keep it cool.
“I’ve got a heat pump hot water system, and so that means I get my hot water for free because I heat up my water during the day when I have free electricity form the solar panels, and then I can have hot water all night.”
Ms MacRae said many people are amazed she was able to build a house with no power bills for such a low budget.
“I’m a single parent, so it’s only a single income, but I was able to make this house super-efficient and it didn’t cost more money,” she said.
“They are amazed at how comfortable it is.”
As family and work commitments see Ms MacRae spend most of the week in Melbourne, she has enlisted the help of housemate Jess Maxwell to produce a sustainable garden.
“I’ve been really lucky; I’m really good at designing houses, but I’m useless at designing gardens and a garden is part of what makes a sustainable house because it helps with cooling and it helps with cooling and it helps with habitat, and it helps with growing your own food,” she said.
“I’m really bad a gardening, so my housemate Jess’ job is to make a wonderful sustainable garden, and I think my job was to make a sustainable house with zero bills.
“The house wouldn’t have been half as good as it was without Jess doing the sustainable garden.”
Ms MacRae said she hopes she can inspire people to make changes to their home, whether they plan to build a new home, make changes or are renting, to make it cheaper and more comfortable.
“First of all the most important thing is to check your house for drafts, or leaks, and seal them up,” she said.
“The second thing is to make sure your insulation is good.
“The third thing is to gradually replace the gas appliances with electric appliances; get off gas, bit by bit.”
