The challenges
Living with his wife and three kids in the city, Melbourne-based chief executive Nick Keenan wanted to give his young family an experience of country living that was like no other.
He began his search in Victoria’s High Country and found what he was looking for in Buffalo River – the perfect block on top of a hill, with a northerly facing aspect with 360-degree views across the landscape taking in Buffalo Mountain and the river below.
He enlisted the help of Ivor Patterson of Ivor and Sons to help him fulfil his vision of a self-sufficient, off-grid American barn style home as his family’s High Country retreat.
Ivor noted that insulation and energy efficiency were going to be key factors in achieving Nick’s vision.
“Ivor basically educated me on the importance of insulation, in winter and summer, and energy efficiency to go off the grid,” Nick said.
“If you don’t have good insulation, if you don’t have an energy efficient home; there’s no way you can go off the grid in a way that you want to.”
Bondor’s InsulLiving® building system, combining InsulWall® walling and SolarSpan® roofing products provided the thermal performance Nick and Ivor needed to deliver their vision for an energy-efficient, environment-friendly off-grid home.
The solution
“Working with InsulLiving building system is like working with a Lego set,” Ivor said.
“It’s very easy to construct, with 200mm InsulWall panels on the walls while the roofs are all constructed with SolarSpan. And that’s all part of the bundle product. It makes it a lot easier.”
While InsulWall is normally supplied 140mm thick, Ivor ordered 200mm thick panels as he wanted to achieve an even higher insulation on the walls due to the alpine location that can be subject to snow. These panels complemented the SolarSpan roofing panels, also 200mm thick, offering an R rating in excess of 5.2.
The versatility of the InsulLiving building system meant that Nick and Ivor were able to combine the very latest in thermal and energy efficiency the InsulWall and SolarSpan panels provided, while incorporating traditional building products to achieve the American barn style aesthetic.
“With the Bondor panels you can add anything to the cladding, so internally we were able to incorporate exposed rafters and ply ceilings, with all timbers used naturally harvested on the property,” Ivor said.
SolarSpan panels offer long spans to significantly reduce structural framing requirements, allowing Nick and Ivor to feature several ‘tree trunk’ poles inside the home that were harvested and milled on the property for “the cost of a case of beer”.
Externally, the home features a combination of InsulWall panels finished in dark grey COLORBOND Monument combined with natural Silvertop Ash timber applied to the outside of the InsulWall panels, to provide the mix of contemporary and traditional finishes. InsulLiving building system achieves a bushfire rating of BAL 40 required for the bushland setting.
The ease of construction using the prefabricated InsulWall and SolarSpan panels meant that the home was completed in just six months.
Ivor, together with son James, continues to provide Bondor solutions to clients in the Geelong, Bellarine and Surf Coast regions of Victoria, citing how the system helps to meet changing building requirements and provide a point of differentiation in the residential home building market.
The InsulLiving building system is engineered to Australian Standards and CodeMark accredited, offering a complete thermal envelope exceeding the current thermal efficiency requirements of the National Construction Code (NCC) for a wide range of climate zones.
Project details
Project: Sunset Ridge Retreat
Location: High Country, Victoria
Builder: Ivor and Sons
Product: Bondor’s InsulLiving® Building System
- InsulWall® Walling
- SolarSpan® Roofing
Images: Sam Rogers
