Hi Everyone , so blog 2... 


Today as I mentioned on my Mandy Knebel The Journey face book post today, I found very useful information on a what I think is a NZ Government site..... "Smarter Homes". Here is the link if you want to take a look...
https://www.smarterhomes.org.nz/smart-guides/siting-and-location/house-orientation/
 
This reminded me of a manual I read some years ago now. I came accross it before starting my design or  looking for an architect. I read this manual more than once in fact a few times it was called  "Design for the sun", it was very useful. Lots of information from including orientation along with layout design, Insulation, heating, over heating, and much more.

So Orientation... This was one of the first items in the manual and this is a biggy, when I say a "biggy" I mean very important for a high performance or energy efficient homes ect.
We allready have the land and it was perfect as long as we designed and orientaded the house for the sun, it was also key we orientated the house for wind and vegetation.

So at this stage we were starting to plant out our land with an orchard and privacy planting.
We planted our orchard in the south/west corner, that way it would not shade the new home at all nor the existing granny flat. Our privacy planting needed to be to the north, so we had to choose the plants carefully, so not to shade the home at all. We did this with help from good friends of ours who know their stuff when it comes to plants. (Michelle and Graeme Hopkins from Ground Cover and Deb Brookes)
Our winter southerly winds we are protected from the granny  flat and the orchard and our summer north west breezes should flow into the site still with the way we have planted.
Top pic is privacy planting, bottom pic is the orchard, excuse the orange tempory fencing!




So as you can see 4 years on our baby plants have grown and are starting to give us privacy and  fruit.

I really wanted to have a pic of my design on this blog  today but I am going to get the design we are going to council with from my architect to show you all.  Hopefully I will have that ready for the next blog.  
We all love to see the design! Dont we? Well I do! 

Thanks for reading, speak soon






Location: Cambridge, New Zealand

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