Cosy living off the grid
Mercury dropping? Welcome to the warm home with no power bills.
As temperatures sink and heating bills rise, wouldn’t you like to live in one of New Zealand’s most sustainable homes?
Check out Jeanne Gray’s off-thegrid country log home in the South Island.
“It’s about 18C or 19C inside right now, a bit hot for me,” said Gray, a farmer near Oamaru where temperatures have dropped sharply lately.
Asked how it felt not to get electricity bills, she said: “It’s lovely. It’s just ticking over by itself. I built it because I had dreams about living a more natural life. But it was a major undertaking because the builders had to live here.”
Laine Hellmrich of High Country Carpentry said the house had energyefficient features backed up with LPG generators for use in times of extremely low sunlight.
“It has solar hot water-heated radiators, an AGA wood-burning stove which heats the concrete floor slab, a log burner and solar hot water,” said the Fairlie builder.
“Around 60 per cent of the water is heated like that. It has backup solar system batteries. The house is completely off-grid. The entire house has no power bill.”
“The only thing that’s required to run the house is occasionally big LPG generators. They kick in and charge the batteries. This house could be in a mountain valley all by itself and survive for the next 50 years.”
Getting power to the rural site was expensive so the solar option became an obvious choice. Geraldine’s Natural Log Homes supplied the Douglas fir logs that Hellmrich said were up to half a metre thick and formed internal/external walls.
“They’re New Zealand-grown Douglas fir. Some of the logs are 400 to 500ml thick. Insulating properties of logs can be up to 10 times the insulation value of a standard timber framed house,” Hellmrich said.
A spokeswoman for Registered Master Builders said people could learn from Gray’s home.
“Central heating is non-existent in more than 95 per cent of New Zealand homes. It is considered a luxury and out of reach financially for most Kiwis. Finding other ways to incorporate sustainability into our homes is vital to keep New Zealanders warm and healthy throughout the winter months and the extreme temperatures we are experiencing.
“This would be a fantastic house to be living in right now, as New Zealand’s temperatures plummet.”
Andrew Eagles, Green Building Council chief executive, said off-grid houses were often very energy efficient.
“It is nice the wetback supplies under-floor heating and it has been constructed with untreated [Forest Certified management] timber, so that’s good.”
Developers, architects and other leaders had developed a system for rating the sustainability of homes with Homestar, he said.
He cited a Papamoa house that had been independently verified as sustainable on energy, water, materials and construction waste, using that Homestar standard.