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Home Design Ideas with Orientation and Location
Home orientation is very important to reduce your living costs. Unfortunately, very few of us have a real choice to tell the builder/developer how to position our home. High prices of land in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth allow very little scope for good house orientation. However, for those lucky ones who inherited the land this topic can be of great value.
How to Decide on House Orientation and Location
In order to get this spot-on position you need to investigate:
- Temperature ranges (daily and seasonal)
- Humidity ranges (a cheap humidity reader is sufficient here)
- Direction of cold, hot, wet and dry winds
- Effect of geographic structures on the climate
Remember, your local council can assist you with most of your location and climate questions. This way you can save on experts and have your high council rates work for you.
Home Design Ideas for Passive Heating
House orientation for passive heating is all about seasonal location of sun. We want a lot of sunlight during cold winter and little during summer.
For Australian homes this means that main windows should face north. This way the high rising summer sun is shaded by the roof.
During winter the low rising sun shines directly into north facing windows. The rear windows are shaded throughout the year.
The site is also important. You should observe if neighbours' houses or other structures overshadow you at any time of the year.
If you view the north then you have the winning house location. However, if you view the south then ensure minimal heat loss with insulation and glazing.
Also, west and east facing windows may dramatically increase heat gain during summer. Shade it or insulate it where possible.
Home Design Plans with Geographic Location
The ideal geographic location of the house is within 15°W-20°E of true or 'solar' north. Yap, you may wonder how to be so choosy with the current property prices.
However, you may have the choice for your home location in the new estates. You can check the geographic location using simple tools like Google Earth.
Home design plans should (if possible) consider either the location/orientation matched to the house or vice versa. You should not settle for anything less (otherwise you will face high cost of heating and cooling).
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