The brief for Ghersi Road, in the NSW Central Coast beachside town of Wamberal, was to design a stylish, low maintenance, low cost house with views over the ocean for an 'empty-nest' couple. Danielle Bowling reports.
Building the three-bedroom home on a 322 sqm site which had been subdivided from the backyard of another residential block presented a number of challenges.
“It was a sloping site and it was really small in size,” says Craig Riddle, builder and owner of Living Green Designer Homes. “We had to fit in a house that worked with the contours and the tight boundaries. We certainly didn't have any room for large exca vations or monstrosity houses.”
Around 150 sqm of James Hardie's Scyon Axon cladding was used on the first level of the house, satisfying the client's concerns about the cost of the project and its sustainability. Scyon Axon is a lightweight, vertically grooved cladding panel that is pre- primed, easy to install and comes in 2,450 mm x 1,200 mm x 9 mm, 2,750 mm x 1,200 mm x 9 mm and 3,000 mm x 1,200 mm x 9 mm sizes.
“The reason we went with a light weight cladding in the first place was because there was just no room to perform heavy construction and do deep foundations that would support that,” Riddle says. “Being lightweight, Axon is really site-sympathetic. You have a lot less invasion on the site.”
The product was nailed with a stainless steel brad nail — a gun applied nail. As it is a sheet product, it was installed on-site, most of it off scaffolds. “It also has the Air-Cell breathable wrap behind it, and we just installed it sheet-by-sheet to James Hardies’ specifications — it was really easy and quick.”
James Hardie's Scyon range is low in embodied energy relative to other building products like masonry and concrete, low in volatic organic compounds and is able to create energy efficient and thermally comfortable buildings low in lifetime energy consumption.
The sustainability of the cladding suited the client's request for a house that was not only cheaper to build, but cost-effective in the long term. “Scyon products are some of the greenest around because the material is primarily made up from sand, water, renewable wood pulp and a small amount of cement,” Riddle says.
“The house ended up being a much more cost-effective and environmentally-friendly solution than a heavyweight constrution alternative due to its lighter physical weight and the green credentials of the materials used in its construction.
“It's quite a responsive home — being lightweight. Our history and research shows that a full heavy or masonry home is slow to react. Once they heat up you just can't get them to dissipate the heat, so lightweight construction is a bit like the clothing you wear each day. It's just more flexible and quick to react to the conditions.”
Axon cladding's speedy installa tion process also helped to keep the cost of construction down. The stepped shiplap on the long edges of the cladding means sheets can be put up quickly. Paint application is fast because the pre-primed sheets mean less paint and time is needed. The sheets are also sized to fit com mon wall frame sizes, resulting in less waste and cutting.
“All the work’s done. You pick up a sheet and you’ve covered on aver age 3 sqm within a few minutes,” Riddle says.
Axon's vertical grooves give it a uniform look and provide an alterna tive to typical horizontal features, with the option of brad nailing minimising visual interruption.
The project's architect, Ross Howard from Howard Phillips Design Partners, says the best thing about Axon cladding is the fact it can be used as both a bracing and finishing item, once again saving time and costs on-site.
“The building needs to be braced for wind load,” he says. “So with the correct nail pattern you can use that sheet as a bracing panel so you don't have to put the plywood bracing on first and then go over that with a fin ishing material.
“The whole idea is to save labour, save waste of materials and therefore bring down the cost of the home.”
