“HUMPY GUNYAH” by Baganan
sand, bark and acrylic
This catalogue is primarily to increase the awareness and choice of sustainable development options for Aboriginal communities, however we hope that all people may find some use for it as it grows.
If you are a supplier of goods or services relevant to sustainable housing, land management or town planning, from anywhere in the world if you can deliver to anywhere in Australia, please take advantage of this resource catalogue and send us details of what you are offering and we will happily include it, for free.
If you would like to be listed on this catalogue, please send an email to homeland@kalkadoon.org giving the following details…
1/ Name of company/individual/organisation
2/ A web link if you have one
3/contact details
4/ A brief description about your goods or services.
Please keep your entry short, you are welcome to include a photo.
We reserve the right to define what is relevant, but we are pretty broad-minded. Please keep it to housing for now but we will in the future, perhaps on another page, explore things such as feng-shui, natural medicines, meditation etc. and their relevence (or perhaps irrelevance in some aspects) to Aboriginal health paradigms in this country.
kalkadoon.org endorses the products of our partners, displayed in our “partners links” on the left of the page.
Goods and services in this Sustainability Resources Catalogue page are for the purpose of giving an idea of what is available in the market but we do not endorse these products (except our partners) and in many cases have only seen the advertising, and passed it on for you to check out yourself.
Sustainability Resorces Catalogue
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Housing
Kit Homes Australia -cheap simple steel framed kit homes
Sala Homes - state of the art ecological design and innovation.
Earth Building Association of Australia
AUSBALE.org - The Australasian Straw Bale Building Association
Energy
The Rainbow power company fit into most of the categories of this page as they sell such a wide range of stuff, not just energy systems but things like compost toilets, water pumps and heaps more. They deliver anywhere and have a full catalogue on their website as well as lots of info.
Rainbow Power Company click on the different parts of the house(e.g.solar panels) to get details.
Environmental planning and management
otg environmental solutions - project management, environmental engineering, community development andyirvine@otge.com.au
(also supplies modular kit homes)
Water Collection
Rain Reviva bladder water tanks
Waste water, water recycling and toilets
Biolytix Waste treatment systems
Hot water
Other on-line resources
Ecospecifier is a knowledge base of well over 1000 environmentally preferable products, materials, technologies and resources.
Eco Directory
Australian Eco friendly shopping
The Green directory
listing products and services that are eco-friendly and promote sustainability.
A modular kit home suitable for remote locations
ARCHITECT
Sue Harper, 0412 571 348
ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER
Andy Irvine, 9948 3950
Information from Domain and Sydney Morning Herald.
kalkadoon.org has discussed this kit with the environmental engineer, Andy Irvine, as well as a number of indigenous housing issues and can reccomend both this modular kit system as well as Andy’s understandings of indigenous housing and planning issues.
from www.smh.com.au…..
The system uses steel modules or “picture frames”, as Harper calls them. These modules have a small braced upper area and a larger lower section that is equal in dimension to a standard panel of building material. “They are all designed around the building material size of 1200mm x 2400mm,” Irvine says.
The steel frames are bolted together in a skeleton structure. Then, as these frames are of standard dimensions, building materials such as plywood or fibre cement sheets, glass louvres, canvas or even a roller door, are slotted or screwed into the skeleton.
“You can put a solid panel or flyscreen panels in it,” Irvin says. “If you wanted to, you could build in anything, even palm leaves. Most buildings you need to have a minimum 1200mm of solid walls that brace. This system, because it’s self-bracing, doesn’t need any structural walls.”
Theoretically you could design a simple house, using the modules to decide size and location of rooms, then work out which panels would be solid and which would be windows or doors. The house could then be put together by laypeople with building savvy. Each frame weighs 80 kilograms so can be carried by two, Harper says.
The system delivers big cost and time benefits. As it works on a standard grid and is fairly simple to construct, there are minimal waste of materials and reduced labour costs. Depending on wall finish, the system can eliminate the need for expensive “wet trades”, such as rendering - another potential saving.
Irvine says the system is well suited to indigenous housing needs, too. “They want flexible buildings,” he says. “They need, for example, to be able to quickly add another two bedrooms. Bedrooms are [typically] 3.6-by-3.6 metre grid size at the moment.”
Harper and Irvine have built their own weekender using the system and it fits their lifestyle and budget. “As with many of their friends, Irvine says, “we can’t afford to do it all at once”. The couple started with one large room with mainly plywood walls -now they are adding a pop-out and exchanging some solid panels for glass doors onto a deck.
With Irvine doing the building, their 50 square metre home has worked out economically, costing about $30,000 to date. And the system is innovative, durable and adaptable enough to shake up the building industry for the better.
THE AIM
To design an economical, environmentally sustainable house on a difficult site using a prefabricated steel system
TIME FRAME
Three-and-a-half months.
GREEN POINTS
* A heat pump is used to warm water.
* Roofs catch water for a tank that feeds toilets and the garden.
* All waste water is treated and used on gardens.
* There is an Aqua Clarus toilet, which breaks down waste on site.
* The house and skillion roofs face north.
* All walls, floors and roofs are insulated.
* Timber is used sparingly and is plantation grown.
* Breezeways set up cross-ventilation.