Sustainable Homes Melbourne

Sustainable Homes Melbourne Transforming rundown old homes into beautiful, comfortable sustainable homes we can all be truly pro

01/09/2026

Good view here of our full uncoupled slab build-up on the Greensborough project. Starting from the bottom: 100mm XPS insulation, then a 150mm suspended slab on top. The slab is rebated at the sliding door opening so when the door is installed we get a completely flush transition from inside to out. No lip, no step, no compromise.

The detail that matters most here is at the slab edge. You can see 50mm XPS running around the outside, and the bottom plate of the frame is actually hanging over that insulation. That is not a mistake. That is what gives us a continuous layer of insulation around the full perimeter of the slab with no gap and no thermal bridging. Cold cannot find a path through.

While the carpenter has been framing, they have also been installing the wall wrap underneath the bottom plate. The wrap on this project is Protec Wrap SV, which is adhesive backed, so it bonds directly onto the termite barrier sitting beneath it. The wrap tucks under the plate and ties the whole building envelope together from the slab up.

Every layer has a job. None of them work without the others.

The exterior gives nothing away. Dark charcoal cladding, a strong gable form, one small window catching the evening ligh...
30/08/2026

The exterior gives nothing away. Dark charcoal cladding, a strong gable form, one small window catching the evening light. From the street it reads quiet and resolved.

Inside is a different story. Warm Australian hardwood floors, a glass stair balustrade that keeps the sightlines open, doors that push out to the garden and pull light deep into the dining space. The palette is soft and natural. The feeling is calm.

That contrast between a bold exterior and a warm interior is not accidental. The dark cladding does its job of grounding the form and standing up to the streetscape. The interior does its job of making the people inside feel at home. Neither one undermines the other because both decisions came from the same thinking about how this home should perform from the outside in.

27/08/2026

EVERYTHING you touch today was designed by someone.

Petrina Turner () makes this point simply. The table. The building. The pen. The equipment sitting between two people recording a podcast. Every one of them required a creative mind to take information and translate it into something that gives people an experience, or a feeling. The world is entirely designed. We just move through it without noticing.

That invisibility is not a failure of design. It is the goal. When something is easy to use, when a room feels right, when you are comfortable without knowing why, that is the work doing exactly what it was supposed to do. Nobody picks up a well-designed object and thinks about the person who made it. They just think: this works.

To Petrina, that is the job. Not to be noticed. To make people feel something without having to explain it.

This is House of Meaning. Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.

25/08/2026

Before a slab goes down, before a frame goes up, before anything looks like a home, there is this. Trenches cut, reinforcement laid, plumbing rough-in underway.

The green pipe stubs coming up through the prep are the plumbing penetrations that get locked into the slab before the concrete is poured. Everything underground has to be confirmed and in position before a single truck arrives. There is no fixing it after.

This is the stage most people never see. The finished home gives no indication it ever looked like this. But every decision made here determines how everything above it performs for the next hundred years.

Get the foundations right. Everything else follows.

The details in this home are worth slowing down for.The study nook sits under louvre windows that control ventilation an...
23/08/2026

The details in this home are worth slowing down for.

The study nook sits under louvre windows that control ventilation and light without losing the garden view. Below the sill, a hydronic panel radiator. It heats the space from the floor up, quietly, without the noise or air movement of a ducted system, and it sits exactly where you want warmth on a cold morning.

Then the stair. The perforated metal balustrade panel is doing structural work and visual work at the same time. It keeps the stairwell open and light while the bookshelf runs the full length of the wall beneath. No dead space. Every square metre has a purpose.
The dark timber carries through the window frames, the handrail, the chair, the stair treads. Nothing is trying to stand out. Everything belongs.

That level of coherence does not happen by accident. It is the result of decisions made early and held to throughout the build.

20/08/2026

The most revealing question in a design consultation is not what you love. It is what you do not want.

Petrina Turner () asks this deliberately. A negative reaction to a colour is almost always instinctual, and instinct tells her something real. It is rarely about the colour itself. It is about how the client has seen it used before, in a space that did not feel like them.

So she files it away. Then at the right moment, she reintroduces it in a different context. One that speaks to who they actually are rather than what they think they want. Sometimes it becomes the thing they love most about the finished room.

The sweet spot between preference and identity is where good design lives.

This is House of Meaning. Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.

18/08/2026

First look at Alexandra, Greensborough moving through its early stages. First image is the slab. Bare concrete, retaining wall up, dirt everywhere. Looks like not much. It never does at this point.

Then the frame goes up. Suspended timber floor first, then the wall framing, then the roof structure with the steel beam spanning across. From slab to fully framed in a matter of weeks. This is the stage most people never see because it moves quickly and it does not photograph as well as a finished kitchen. But it is where a build is won or lost.

Every decision made in the design phase is tested here. The setouts, the structural connections, the wall thicknesses that will determine how the insulation performs and how the finished rooms feel. Getting the frame right is not exciting content. It is the most important thing we do.

The bones have to be right. Everything else is just finishing.

Getting warmth into a home without making it feel dark or heavy is harder than it looks.The answer here is in the layeri...
16/08/2026

Getting warmth into a home without making it feel dark or heavy is harder than it looks.
The answer here is in the layering. Timber floors that read warm but stay light. Floating shelves in a timber that echoes the floor without matching it exactly. Cabinetry in a soft cream that does not compete with the natural light coming through on two sides. A raked ceiling in the living space that lifts the volume without adding any visual noise.

None of these decisions are accidental. Each one was made in relation to the others, and in relation to how the sun moves through these rooms across the day. The result is a home that feels considered without feeling decorated.

That is what good design looks like when it is working.

13/08/2026

I asked Petrina Turner () what she wants people to feel when they walk into a room she has designed.

Her answer: whatever they want to feel.

Not a mood she has engineered. Not her aesthetic imposed on a space. Her job is to find the DNA in who a client is and translate that into the room they live in.

That is where this conversation goes.

Full episode out now wherever you get your podcasts.

11/08/2026

The boundary trap is the connection point between your property's sewer and the council's main asset. It sits on the outer perimeter of your property, usually somewhere between 1.5 and 4.5 metres deep depending on the site.

On this project our plumber flagged something I had not come across before. Not every house actually has one. We still refer to that connection point as a boundary trap regardless, but it was a good reminder that you cannot assume what is underground until someone has actually looked.

That divide matters more than most people realise. Everything on your side is your responsibility. Everything beyond it belongs to the council. Knowing exactly where that line sits before you start any works near the boundary is not optional.

Know what is underground before you dig.

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