The owner of this house, wanting more from their retirement house-swapped with their daughter, who at the time was living on the coast.

 

The daughter, and now client was seeking a house that could accommodate her young growing family.

 

With much sentiment of the house, there was an explicit focus on modernising as much of the old house, without competing against its original functionality.

 

Once we were engaged, our approach included upgrading room layouts, and readdressing the functionality of the house, to take advantage of the north facing rear yard. 

 

This included bringing the existing pool up to standard, and repurposing the location of kitchen, living, dining to maximise access to the north and hence the thermal comfort.

 

Although insulation was improved and new window sizes and locations were carefully selected, to improve the passive design features, we also cleverly integrated 20,000L of onsite water storage under the kitchen floor. On the roof, we included a 6kWp Solar PV system, on a roof with a sophisticated smart metering system.