house profile inner urban adelaide

Visionary
villa In its original state this Adelaide
villa was hard to love, but a clever
renovation has turned it into a
bright and comfortable family home

Words Rachael Bernstone

Photography Andy Rasheed

L
From the street, the house is
intriguing, with the modern
lines of the new living room
and garage tucked beside the
retained gabled facade and
ironwork verandah.

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J
Vents at the top and bottom
of the living area’s north wall
allow air warmed by the
Trombe wall to be admitted
or excluded.

Having lived in their old house for 14 years, Adelaide

couple Margaret Tonkin and Chen Au Peh and their son were well aware
of its shortcomings. “While we liked the location, the old villa was very
badly designed,” Margaret says.
“The orientation was poor – the northern elevation was close
to the boundary so it didn’t get much natural light – and most of the
rooms were dark inside because the windows were small and poorly
located. Combined with the thick stone walls, the small windows meant
the house stayed cold in winter and, once it warmed up after a run of
hot days in summer, it was hard to cool down without the help of air
conditioning,” she continues. “Even worse, it was subsiding on one side:
it had major issues! We’d spent a lot of money over the years trying to
address these, with little impact, so we felt like we were throwing money
away.”
Having weighed up their options – whether to sell and move on,
undertake a major renovation or rebuild – the couple decided to knock
down the house and start again. Researching sustainable designers
in Adelaide, “Energy Architecture was a name that kept coming up,”
Margaret says. “They’d done big and small projects, and were obviously
very committed to sustainability.”
The family provided a fairly straightforward brief – keep the front
facade, create more space inside and incorporate energy and water
efficient technologies to increase comfort – so they were initially
taken aback by Energy Architecture’s radical suggestion of keeping
the perimeter bluestone wall, taking the roof off and making a garden
courtyard inside the old house.
“It was a bit of a shock, actually,” Margaret says. “We thought
we would do the standard thing: keep the front rooms and create a
renovation behind, so we were surprised when they said we should
hollow out the existing house for a courtyard and build an entirely new
house behind.”
“Because the local council is keen to maintain heritage values, and
because there is a lot of embodied energy in those old brick and stone
walls and they provide great thermal mass, we thought it would be good
to keep them,” says Mark Thomas, the project architect. “But the design
process aimed to make the new house face the right direction, so we
pushed it towards the southern boundary to open up to the north, which
resulted in the new front courtyard to capture winter sun.” The new
house’s three bedrooms, two living spaces, study, loft and kitchen were
built over the driveway and into the large backyard, to the south and west
of the new courtyard.
An interesting feature of the home is its Trombe wall on the north-
facing stone wall of the new living room. A steel frame sits slightly
off the rendered and painted stonework and is clad with Danpalon
polycarbonate panels to create a warm cavity, which transmits heat
through vents in the wall in winter. In summer, any unwanted heat in the
Trombe wall is vented to outside and a large retractable shade – taking
the place of fixed eaves – protects the courtyard and the Trombe wall

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The courtyard created inside

the stone walls of the original
house allows the sun in. The
north-facing Trombe wall on the
right is clad in Danpalon
polycarbonate panels. The
courtyard tanks represent only
part of the property’s 60,000
litres of rainwater storage.

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Clerestory windows bring
north light into the bedrooms
located on the southern edge
of the property. Rammed
earth walls provide a lovely
warm aesthetic in the living
areas and bedrooms, a huge
amount of thermal mass that
helps to moderate the internal
temperature, and a necessary
sound break between living
areas and bedrooms.
Rammed earth is a mixture
of sand and rubble from a
quarry mixed with cement
and a little water. This is
D tipped into in situ 600mm
A large retractable shade high formwork and
protects the courtyard and compacted with rammers
the north-facing wall of the approximately 200mm at a
house from the summer sun. time… gradually the wall is
L It cost approximately $8000 built up in 600mm
The exterior of the house is for around 16 square metres. increments. In the wall in this
clad with Colorbond and fibre photo you can see the lines
cement sheet. Eaves protect left by each form section.
the north-facing windows of
the upstairs loft or hobby
retreat, and the house’s living
areas open out to an
expansive patio covered with
Vergola adjustable roofing
louvres.

from the sun. Deciduous plants in the courtyard will provide further
summer shading as they grow.
Inside, Thomas specified polished concrete floors for additional
thermal mass, keeping the house warmer in winter and cooler in summer.
Good ventilation helps too: a series of vents at floor level distributes cool
air from underfloor pipes while higher vents expel hot air from under the
“They were very good clients. They wanted to do everything they
could to be green, and they had a realistic budget to do that,” Thomas
says. “Most of our clients are committed to green design, but some
decide that some of the ‘bells and whistles’ can be added later. In this Ground Floor Plan
case, the clients let us drive the selection of construction techniques, 1 Bedroom
1 2 Bedroom
materials and technolgies, and we were able to design a fully integrated GARDEN

3 Bedroom

Do not scale dimensions. Confirm all dimensions on site. Inform Architect if conflict occurs between details. Ensure that any alterations to the documents are in writing before proceeding.
raked ceilings. A Seeley Climate Wizard “dry” evaporative cooler helps to system hence significantly increasing the level of efficiency. 4 Living room

Level 1, 192 Waymouth St Adelaide SA 5000

Energy Architecture Pty Ltd
5

T 08 8410 4999 F 08 8410 2566

11 5 Kitchen
moderate internal temperatures when Adelaide heats up. “This was a great project because sustainability is not just a matter 6 Study
6
With LED lighting throughout most of the house, gas boosted solar of plugging elements onto an existing house; a house has to be designed 7 Laundry
8 8 Bathroom
hot water and a 2.6kW solar power system, the family aims to conserve from the ground up as a system of integrated features.” 9 Stairs to loft
energy and produce at least half the electricity it needs. Although there Having gone the extra mile, the clients couldn’t be happier in their 10 Living room
11 Courtyard
have been some teething problems. “We had the solar panels installed new abode, even if their unusual facade does raise some eyebrows in the 10 4
in April, but an issue with the power company means they still haven’t neighbourhood. “Passers-by are intrigued by what’s happening behind 7
9 3 2
calculated our feed-in to the grid,” Margaret explains. “So we still don’t the wall,” Margaret laughs. “It’s been rather nice, because a lot of people
know what percentage of our consumption we are generating, but we stop and talk to us and give us enthusiastic comments about it.
estimate it will be about 50 to 60 per cent.” “Inside, our comfort level has gone from 10 to 100 per cent, in terms
JOB NO.

0711
PROJECT

New Residence

The house also ticks plenty of boxes when it comes to reducing of temperature, ventilation and light,” she adds. “We hardly need lights CLIENT

M Tonkin & C A Peh

water consumption: technologies introduced include 60,000 litres of on during the day now; we like the configuration of the spaces, and the
ADDRESS

64 Kenilworth Rd
Parkside SA

rainwater storage, greywater recycling for subsurface irrigation of the front courtyard. Whereas before we had a large backyard that we found
DATE
JUNE 2009
SHEET NAME

Unnamed

family’s extensive vegetable garden and fruit trees, and low-flow taps and hard to manage, the new smaller outdoor spaces are delineated and DRAWN

SIZE
Author
CHK

SCALE
Checker

A2 1 : 100

shower heads. therefore easier to use. It’s just a great house to live in and enjoy now.” ISSUE DATE REVISION

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CONSTRUCTION

DWG. NO. ISSUE

A26

20/01/2011 2:55:16 PM
house profile inner urban adelaide

Parkside Residence

Designer Sustainable Features Building materials

Energy Architecture Hot water
— Apricus evacuated tubes (array of 60) heating a 500L
Website custom-made tank, boosted with a Sime 34E
www.energyarchitecture.com gas-powered hydronic boiler www.apricus.com.au
—
Builder Renewable Energy
Adelaide Prestige Homes 2.6 kW grid-connected photovoltaic array, with Sanyo
— HIT panels www.sanyo.com.au
Project type
New build using some existing Water saving
structure from old house – 60,000L of rainwater storage in six tanks around the
— property. All tanks plumbed together and feeding the
Project location whole of house and garden. Manual change over to
Parkside, South Australia mains for house OR garden OR both
— – Low flow HANSA taps
Cost www.starionaust.com.au/hansa
$900,000 – Greymate greywater diverter delivering bathroom
— and laundry water to approx 100sqm of garden
Size subsurface irrigation
house 220 sqm; land 790 sqm
Passive heating & cooling
– North facing windows for passive solar gain
– High level of internal thermal mass made up of
bluestone walls retained from the existing house;
concrete slab; rammed earth internal walls; and
reverse concrete block construction
– Bradford SoundScreen R2.5 insulation in all walls;
Bradford Gold High Performance R5 bulk to ceilings
www.bradfordinsulation.com.au
– Solar control with Vergola adjustable roofing louvres
over outdoor living area www.vergola.com
Active heating & cooling
– Solar heated (gas boosted) water delivered through
REHAU pipes for underfloor heating and into
DéLonghi vertical radiator panels in rooms that
don’t have a slab www.delonghi.com.au
– Reverse block veneer with 90mm Boral concrete
block on interior, and Colorbond cladding and
rendered and painted fibre cement sheet on exterior
– Internal rammed earth walls (300mm thick)
Sustainable PRODUCTS
Climate Wizard Cooler
This system delivers cooled air, via a series of
underground pipes, through vents situated in cupboard
kickers and some walls just above floor level. The
Climate Wizard uses a modified evaporative cooling
cycle incorporating a heat exchanger to provide cooled,
dry air to the home. They are more effective than a
regular evaporative cooler and can work at higher levels
of humidity without making the house uncomfortably
humid or excessively dry, as they neither extract or add
water to the incoming air as it is cooled. Energy
consumption is around the same as a similar sized
evaporative cooler and water use is around 25 litres an
hour for a typical domestic installation on a typical day.
www.climatewizard.com.au
Trombe Wall
The Trombe wall in this house is a north-facing
Danpalon layer, a vented air gap, and a rendered stone
wall. During winter, as air is heated in the cavity on the
outside of the wall, it can be vented into the living
room; the vents can be closed at night to slow heat
transfer. During summer the vent at the top of the
Trombe wall can be opened to exit warmed air.
The Trombe wall provides an insulating layer on the
outside of a thermally massive wall. Without it there is
nothing to stop the heat flowing (albeit slowly!) out
through the wall in winter and in during summer.
See www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombe_wall

Windows & glazing

– Stegbar AT 2000 combination aluminium and
timber frames www.stegbar.com.au
– Double glazing with Viridian ComfortPlus on outer
pane, 12mm argon, 6mm clear inner pane
www.viridianglass.com

Lighting
– Ledion LED lighting to all living areas and
bathrooms, sourced from CIDA Lighting
www.ledion-lighting.com; www.cida.com.au

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