From the owners:

Lisa and Michael

Samira means "breath of God" and we hope that our new home reflects a bright, new and blessed way of living for our family.

We started designing Samira with TJP Pty Ltd in December 2006. Our brief was simple - we wanted:

• A contemporary sustainable house
• To be as independent and responsible in our living style as was possible
• To attain a high level of natural light and air quality in the house
• To be mindful of the sources of building materials used
• To be gentle to our surrounding environment

So how did we do??

We are happy to report that we moved into our beautiful home in December 2008.

The house is fully self sufficient with regards to our power requirements. All our needs are supplied by a Remote Area Power Supply consisting of 16x175 Watt solar panels, a 75kW Inverter and a 1320 AmpHr Battery Bank (giving us 5 days of autonomy). To supplement this we have a backup generator in case of failures in the system. All appliances have been chosen with respect to their efficiency and robustness.

The lighting used within the house was designed by LAD (Brisbane) and reflects the most up to date low energy lighting alternatives available. Our oven and cook top are gas only, and we use demand gas hot water.

The house was specifically designed to be solar passive. Airflow and temperature are easily controlled by banks of louvers and sliding doors.

Solar radiation angles were taken into account when eaves and house orientation were designed. To heat the house we rely on a slow combustion fireplace. This utilises fallen timber found on our property.

Our water is harvested from our roof (that was again designed to provide maximum capture area). All the water is stored in two 35,000 litre tanks. This water is pumped (as required) up to a 12,000 litre header tank (some 25 metres higher than the house). We preferred the option of gravity fed water to avoid using power every time we turn on the taps. Overflow from our tanks is directed to a naturally ocurring gully that feeds to a small creek at the bottom of our property. We are mindful of not depriving the surrounding environment of water that would otherwise flow through it.

All grey and black water is treated  on the property. We use a Biolytic system that provides subsurface irrigation to our front lawn. We preferred to use an aerobic living system rather than sand filters or anaerobic treatment systems. Power consumption was also a consideration in our selection.

Care was taken by our arthitect to ensure  that the timbers used in this house were sourced ethically and sustainably from a 'local" property. The timbers used in our bathroom and power room were from our architect's personal supply of recycled timbers.

Samira is not as low in embodied energy as we would have liked. However this has been a trade-off against maintenance in the future. The house itself is constructed of ply and iron. Both of which we anticipate will require low levels of maintenance over the coming years.

Paints and floor finishes were selected on the basis of low VOC emissions and we are very happy with the result.

Our downstairs area incorporates two bedrooms,bathroom,laundry and office. This space is unique because it utilises a system of sliding doors to open the whole space up or shut it down into separate rooms. The guest room is private with its own access to an outside deck. The other bedroom suits our daughter well as she can choose to be in her room or have a huge playroom.

A minimum of disruption was caused  to the surrounding vegetation - a rare species "Giant Ironwood" stands within 3 metres of our house and was an integral part of the building process. In addition, the road builders heeded our requests to leave large trees untouched. The vegetation that was lost was some wattle and a lot of lantana (we were building on a previously used site).

We have had a survey of the vegetation of the property completed by the Land for Wildlife and have decided to follow their advice regarding tree and shrub selection near the house. We are basically looking to replicate the "good" vegetation that is naturally occurring in the property.

In the future  we intend to follow permaculture principals to construct an abundant supplement of food for the household. Areas for fruit trees and vegetable gardens are already in the planning stage. So much to do, so little time. Our efforts have been more focussed on weed eradication currently.