Bay’s eco-friendly House Rhino receives accolades at global conference in the UK
A UNIQUE South African offgrid home, a model for future sustainable living, has been hailed at a global conference in the UK where a paper on its development has been named as the best piece of research.
“African Energy-Plus construction: A case study of House Rhino” received the Chair’s Award at the recent Sustainable Ecological Engineering Design for Society (Seeds) international conference at Leeds Beckett University in the UK.
The study of the unique offgrid eco-home, House Rhino at Crossways Farm Village outside Port Elizabeth, was compiled by two NMMU academics and presented to delegates from around the world gathered at the UK sustainability conference.
The research report by NMMU department of construction management academics Chris Allen and Katharina Crafford reinforces the growing call for housing developments worldwide to incorporate sustainable, “energyplus” homes.
House Rhino is unique to South Africa and, according to Allen, one of only about 50 globally to incorporate unique water and energy-centric ecobuilding solutions, making it an energy-plus home.
Energy-plus homes make use of energy-efficient appliances while producing more energy from renewable sources attached to the home than is used from external sources, such as the electricity grid.
“Due to the energy crisis that South Africa has experienced over the past seven years, challenging preconceived ideas by creating attractive, affordable, energy-efficient buildings has become critical to offsetting massive cost increases for electricity, while providing a proof of concept project that professionals can reference,” the research report reads.
Allen returned to NMMU ecstatic following the symposium, where he presented the study to his academic peers.
“The Chair’s Award is the pick by chairperson for the conference Professor Chris Gorse for the best paper at the conference. Awards were also given in a variety of other categories . . .,” Allen said.
“It is obviously significant that from his [Gorse’s] perspective, he believed that it was the best paper at the conference – I would suggest from a new knowledge perspective.
“He subsequently discussed with me the possibility of incorporating the paper in an international journal, as well as the possibility of a book incorporating it alongside other research from around the world of a similar nature.”
House Rhino developer Brian van Niekerk said the acceptance of the research showed a shift in the global mindset towards the benefits of eco-wise building.
Van Niekerk is the managing director of Rhino Group, the sustainable solutions company behind the project.
“In 2012 we took all our products and integrated them into developing House Rhino,” Van Niekerk said.
“This gave us the opportunity to build and integrate the unique off-grid solutions at the house, and at the same time expand our understanding into a number of new products and services.”
The paper’s abstract notes that “although the benefits of sustainable construction are well known, the ability to create viable energy-plus buildings using alternative construction techniques can now be proven in a warm climate environment”.