Is this Australia's most sustainable display home?

The Cape housing project, located on Victoria’s Bass Coast, is said to be Australia’s most energy-efficient housing development, with minimum standards of 7.5-star energy efficiency, 2.5 kW solar and 10,000 L water storage per home. The >$100 million project, based 1 h and 40 min from the Melbourne CBD, includes 220 homes, 32 apartments, a conference centre and cafe.

The first display home at the residential community — a double-storey, four-bedroom house — costs only $500 a year to run, or 15% of the power and water bills of an average Victorian home, according to analysis by the Alternative Technology Association (ATA). Built for $390,000 by TS Constructions, it won the Master Builders Best Sustainable Home, South East Victoria for 2015.

The home is rated 8.2 stars for energy efficiency, fitted with 7-star heating and cooling systems and employs passive solar design, LED lighting and solar energy. It is designed to operate without the use of gas and maintains a comfortable temperature range in all weather conditions, thanks to features such as correct orientation, insulation, double glazing, ventilation, thermal mass and innovative efficient heating and cooling systems. It has been built with inexpensive materials and actually creates more energy than it uses.

The people behind The Cape are Bass Coast builder Small Giants and project director Brendan Condon, whose vision has been to prove that sustainable housing can be affordable. Condon said, “Residents can purchase a 2- to 3-bedroom home, fully fitted out with all the sustainable bells and whistles and energy systems, for under $300,000,” he said.

“We have developed a ‘design hub’ of sustainable builders, designers and trades now forming around this project in Bass Coast, and all future buyers here will have access to this expertise in developing super-efficient, high-quality, affordable homes. Our project is one of the only places nationally where you can access housing built to these standards.”

All 220 homes at The Cape will be connected to superfast internet speeds through the nbn with optic fibre to the home, enabling households to take advantage of ‘smart home’ sustainable technologies like energy storage batteries and energy management systems. When all are built to the standard of the display home, the community has the potential to pocket $500,000 per annum in avoided energy bills.

The project is additionally planning for the uptake of electric vehicles, with EV adoption across the community potentially enabling savings of over $1 million in avoided energy and petrol bills. A 6000 m², water-efficient, highly productive community garden is also currently under construction.

“The methods we have used here to achieve these results are able to be followed by the large-volume builders across Australia, and we hope our project kickstarts a period of innovation in Australia’s housing industry,” Condon said.

“Today we throw out a friendly challenge to the large developers around Australia to get on board — if we can do this in Bass Coast, it can be done anywhere. It is undoubtedly the way of the future.”