Philip Marr of Marr Construction has Designed a completely off grid house to passive house standards with high levels of insulation and comfort and also generating your own power and having no more household utility bills.
He has designed and priced for supply and installation of a timber framed, 83 square metre house, with two bedrooms, bathroom, open plan kitchen and living space with outhouse storage and sauna from €225,000 including vat.
The house is totally off grid and generates its own power from PV photovoltaic modules for electricity to power lights & sockets for appliances, and backup heating of hot water. The house is so well insulated with heat recovery ventilation you only need a wood burning stove with a back boiler to heat the domestic hot water and heat the house via a few radiators at certain times of the year in cold weather. The wood burning stove has diverter valves to distribute heat either to the large hot water cylinder, radiators or the sauna room for relaxing or drying clothes. The south facing roof of the house has 4 kWatt solar PV modules and an inverter for self generating power and with a battery bank for storing excess electrical energy which will run the lights and sockets day and night. It will electronically divert excess electrical energy to an immersion heater which will heat a large hot water cylinder as an extra water heating source. An alternative is to install a cedar hot tub beside the sauna room which will also take any excess energy to heat the water in the hot tub and act as a heat dump as a safety mechanism if the house is unoccupied .
The heavy electrical loads such as cooking are not on the electrical circuits as they use up too much electricity, so all cooking is done with bottled gas or a wood fuelled Aga type oven and hob.
This may not appeal to everyone as it requires some lifestyle changes such as being more aware of wasteful energy usage, collecting, chopping and storing of wood. But we should do our bit for the protection and non pollution of the environment.
Water supply is by means of a water well and an environmentally friendly puraflow waste water/ sewerage treatment system would be installed pumped by solar pv . Rain harvesting tank is another option for using water to supply toilets or watering plants.
For Marr construction’s floating house pontoon designs we filter the river water through a series of water filters with either UV filtration or electro positive filters to take out bacteria. The latter using no electricity. This water is perfect for washing. Another series of filtration is required for drinking the water using the “Grander water revitalization” system. Safety water monitoring devises are incorporated and water is automatically drained off and refilled if the storage tanks are unused for long periods of time. The passive house floating house designs have holding tanks for grey water ( waste kitchen and shower water ) with either another separate holding tank for sewerage waste or using a compost toilet, which may not be the most favourable.
We use a structurally certified and engineered reinforced concrete pontoon filled with polystyrene for buoyancy designed to take the house loads.
For more information contact Philip Marr on the passive house off grid independent and sustainable living house and we will be pleased to chat about design and materials and off grid living. This house can be built anywhere in rural or even urban areas. We can design and cost the house for free if you agree to complete the house building project with us.