A Permaculture Home Design: solar passive house on a productive suburban block
I did my Permaculture Design Certificate in 1997-98 on the Sunshine Coast in Australia and have lived on a few properties aspiring to those ideals since. I bought this place in 2016 in the temperate zone, about 25 kms inland from Old Bar, NSW.
While I gave up on the goal of being self-sufficient decades ago, this property provides a good amount of fruit and vegetables, with plenty of excess to share. The savings at the checkout means I can afford better wine and cuts of meat, and don’t have to spend hours every day working to feed myself.
Here are the design features of my fairly solar-passive home and productive garden, and I talk through the basic permaculture energy audit:
Built on a north facing 1,250 m² block – north is to the right of picture – with the house high on the hill. A small front yard is easy to maintain for appearance’s sake. A row of Straight & Narrow Lilli Pillies planted alongside the car adds privacy from the street and some shade for the car.
The shopping goes from the back of the car onto the top step leading onto the deck, and it’s just 3m from there to the kitchen. Hardware and yard equipment goes into the garage and from there to where it is needed in the backyard.
The original cottage from the 1930s was two bedroom and the east facing verandah was covered in, converting it to a third bedroom, now an office, which leads onto the verandah. The large 1970s extension is a large main bedroom, lounge room and wide north facing deep verandah.
That was as solar passive a house as I could find in the suburbs. A north facing, back verandah allows sunlight into the lounge room during winter. The wide verandah on the east is a great entertaining area and has an outdoor kitchen for BBQs and when it’s too hot to cook inside during summer.
I will put on a bigger solar system including batteries when I finally switch to an electric vehicle (just waiting for a decent affordable SUV, although the MGs are just about there).
Access to the backyard was an issue, so we put in a rear door on the garage with a ramp coming down from that into the yard. A small water tank was added to collect water from the garage and house roof.
A ramp leads down from the house verandah to the yard and a laundry built underneath the house next to the fold up clothes line, to the left of this picture. The washing comes straight out of the machine onto the clothes line.
A herb garden is positioned along the north facing wall of the house, and that also includes the regular edibles such as shallots for Pho, cherry tomatoes, radishes and a few lettuce, spinach other salad / stir fry greens. These plants are the mainstay of my kitchen garden and are located just a few steps away from the ramp up to the house.
The garden shed is to the north of the clothes line, and a glasshouse to the north of that, with its rear wall being the garden shed and its stone foundations, which act as a heat store for the glass house. The glasshouse produces basil all year round without it bolting.
If anything, the glasshouse gets too hot during summer, so I’ve built a shade house to the north of that, so shade cloth can be extended over the glasshouse if needed.
The circle is an African keyhole garden with more herbs and chilli bushes in front of the studio / atelier / workshop, which has been covered in bamboo fencing to give it a more natural look, other than metal. A large jacaranda above provides shade and colour to the scene.
Also around this zone halfway up the slope in the central part of the yard is a larger 5000 litre tank to collect storm water from the front of the block, which we added during the 2017-2019 drought and haven’t needed.
The slope of the block provides gravity fed water to all parts of the block, another reason to have the house high on the hill.
The yard is easily maintained with an electric lawn mower, while the neighbours all drive ride-ons to look after their big lawns.
The middle of the block looks like a bit of a jungle from the air, and it is, but there are pockets for tables and chairs amongst the nooks and crannies to give us options whether we want to sit in the sun or shade. At the left of the picture but not clearly visible, is a shade hoop house growing the cash crops: ginger and tumeric.
This area requires the most amount of attention to keep the trees trimmed back with an electric chainsaw. Cuttings are put through a 240v electric mulcher which mixes nicely with the kitchen scraps in the compost bin to put on the vegetable and herb gardens. We make our own soil for the raised beds & keyhole garden.
The three long skinny structures in the bottom third of the block are raised garden beds, about waist height, which grow the vegetables, strawberries and other assorted meal plants.
A citrus orchard is next, to the right of this picture – oranges, mandarines, etc. A lemon tree was planted a few years ago which will eventually replace one of the trees which has been badly pruned before my time here and is not performing optimally.
In the middle of the block at this level is a hoop house covered in wire with a prolific table grape vine growing overhead. To the east of that is two trees, a fig and macadamia. Along the back is five olive trees, which will form an olive grove when they’re grown.
Finally, the back fence is still the old post and wire, and overlooks a five acre agistment paddock so we get a view of various cows or horses, whatever the neighbour is keeping.
The town, located in the Manning Valley, Mid-north coast, NSW, is known to flood, but this block with its house high on the slope, is situated along an old creek leading into the mighty Manning River. The sea level would have to rise 30m before the house floods.
The temperate zone in NSW starts around Port Macquarie, one hour’s drive to the north. You can search the climate zones in Australia, here.
This is just the basics of the design. I’ll add more pictures and notes as we build this section of our website. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. If this inspired you in any way, please visit our sponsor who might pay me a cent ot two.
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