#15: Learning and sharing (25 April 2025)
Sustainable House Day 2025 is almost here! Tips for choosing external cladding, tracking labour hours on site, and rangehood ventilation strategies.
Just over 1 week until Sustainable House Day 2025! If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the Sustainable House Day 2025 website. There are over 150 homes across the country that will be opening for in-person tours (plus many more with online profiles). It’s such a fabulous opportunity to learn from others’ experience and get heaps of design inspiration for your own build or renovation project.
I’ll be opening my home (Sands House), so if you’re keen to pop by for a tour and chat I’d love to see you there (bookings required, check out the SHD profile for ticketing info).
Sands House (Photo: Evan Bailey Photography) A reminder that SHD also features a great webinar series. I was especially excited to see two of my favourite sustainability nerd influencers - the FixIt Chicks - are doing a session on 6 May on budget-friendly sustainable home upgrades.
If you’re in Adelaide, the Adelaide Sustainable Building Network (ASBN) are hosting a Sustainable House Day showcase event this Thursday (1 May).
Sarah Lebner from Cooee Architecture shared some great tips about the pros and cons of different external cladding materials.
Last week I went to a great APA webinar on rangehood strategies and indoor air quality presented by Joel Seagren (@hrvguy_aus) and Dr Cameron Munro (Passive Analytics). My key takeaway is that the simplest option for rangehood ventilation (in a reasonably airtight house without any combustion heating appliances) is to design for an externally ducted undermount rangehood (positioned against a wall - not in an island bench), with a good quality damper (Thermobox) and to manage make-up air by opening a near-by window while cooking. It’s also motivated my to look into getting a simple consumer grade air quality monitor (like the VINDSTYRKA sensor from IKEA).
One for the builders… I really like this simple but comprehensive white-board tracking system for labour hours that Kyle from Zanetto Builders shared on Instagram.
And my design inspo for this week is the Silvertop House by Ben Callery Architects featured on The Design Files.
