MELBOURNE: Architect Bill McCorkell describes his latest house as like “a fridge, fully sealed”.
The 75-square-meter home looks sleeker than an overturned Kelvinator and is, Mr McCorkell says, one of the world’s first carbon-positive prefabricated homes, hence the need for its airtight, fridge-like structure.
“Carbon Positive”, in simple terms, means putting more energy back overall than is taken out to build a home, Mr McCorkell says. That means the house has to be more or less self-sufficient to run, and constructed from modern carbon-neutral materials.
“We have no mechanical heating and cooling in the home. We’ve got cool tubes to pull in cool air from the earth, which is used to ventilate the house.”
Air is drawn through the house in vertical stacks as the tight seals keep the cool temperature in and the heat out.
“We have five kilowatts of solar power on the roof, edible gardens within the house itself, so it can be a bit self-sufficient for food production… green sliding walls. The whole house has been designed to maximize solar gain. There are no fans, it’s all just naturally ventilated, cooled and heated.”…
