PositiveFootprints

06/10/2025

If you are at the Melbourne Build Expo, please come join me.

19/06/2021

Popping the ceiling and adding in a clerestory window in a renovation, is a great way of introducing northern sunlight into the middle of the house. Rooms that were previously dark and cold, and with minimal natural light because of the their location in the middle of the building structure, are now airy, bright and warm.

14/06/2021

Nothing invites you outside more than a wide opening to a threshold free deck and a bountiful garden. The inclusion of raised garden beds growing food and herbs for the kitchen beyond was a real winner on this job, and definitely something to be considered if you like the idea of easy gardening and fresh produce.
The awning extends to cover the 4 x 7m deck, and not only gives total shading control to the house in the mid seasons when fixed awnings aren’t always right, but gives the perfect location for summer BBQ dining with family and friends.


20 years of Leading Edge Sustainable Design & Construction.

14/06/2021

https://www.facebook.com/PositiveFootprintsDesign

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We have 2 pages, and are currently in the process of amalgamation. If you can see this post it means you are currently on the page to be turned off in 1 weeks time. The link below is the page we will continue to operate. Please click across and subscribe there if you have not already done so. Sorry for the trouble.
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- Positive Footprints

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Positive Footprints specialise in Designing AND Building leading edge Sustainable Homes and Renovati

12/06/2021

For this renovation the north external wall was extended up to ‘grab’ northern sunlight from over the roof of the neighbouring home. In this way we were able to introduce new northern sunlight deep into the home which had previously been cramped and dingy.
Polished concrete was introduced to adsorb the winter sun, keeping the area warm well after the sun goes down.
Recycled timber cabinetry and organic textures add to the warm and welcoming feel in the now transformed home.

20 years of Leading Edge Sustainable Design & Construction.

05/06/2021

Building a home requires many parts. Whilst as builders and designers, we are in charged of putting it together, we also need the industry to innovate good and reliable products for us to utilize. We often speak with suppliers about what the big picture is, this helps them to help us as well. The article below is an interview we did with Thermotek windows, where we discussed how we use their products, as well as the bigger picture - how we can move our housing standard towards carbon zero, and how we have found similar ideals in a friendly group of sustainable builders, and the founding of Builders Declare.

https://www.thermotekwindows.com.au/news/positive-footprints/?fbclid=IwAR1YffszLX07m-Zw9W6j-9R9FdPucnT6_3k9Lxh1vB8CCr0dKE6WM2nPhUo

30/05/2021

We love polished concrete. It looks great, is extremely low maintenance, and allows for great thermal interaction with the indoor environment in a house that is designed to make use of it. With correctly placed windows it absorbs energy during the day in winter and radiates it at night keeping the room warm once the sun goes down. During summer, correctly sized eaves keep the direct sun beams out, but ambient light still comes through the windows. It does however take a lot of heat infiltration to change a slab by even 1 degree, so in effect, a well shaded slab keeps the interior of a house nice and cool for most of summer.
Clients often ask us, what are my choices in terms of polished concrete. What can I have? Really the sky’s the limit. You can have just about any colour concrete, and a large range of aggregate colours and sizes. You can put in anything hard. We have put in shells, fossils, coins, recycled glass bottles, gemstones, ballbearings, and glow in the dark stones. Imagination is the limiting factor! What will you choose?

23/05/2021

It saddens in my heart every time I fill another skip or empty another load of ‘rubbish’ into the local tip. Nationally Australia produces over 20M tonnes of construction waste each year. Anything we can do to reduce the amount going to the tip, not only minimises resource use, and lowers the energy embodied in the structure, but can also typically save money.
Here we have worked with a product called Easylap from James Hardie. This was selected for its high durability, relative low embodied energy per m2, and relatively benign resource use. We went one step further and worked all the windows and doors to sheet sizes to avoid cutting and offcuts, meaning very little left site in a bin. Not only does it leave a clean and thoughtful aesthetic, but it means less product to be ordered, potentially a cheaper build, and a slightly lighter conscience.

07/05/2021

What are Weather Resistant Barriers, (WRBs), and how can they be a game changer for your business and the longevity of your buildings — and be great for the environment at the same time?
Join us next Wednesday 12th May at 5pm for a webinar presented by Brian Guinan of ISMART Building Group, Perth’s premium Passive House builder and Builders Declare Australia member, for an in-depth discussion. All welcome! Click link here or in bio https://events.humanitix.com/weather-resistant-barriers for tickets, now available and only $5. And don’t worry, if you can’t make it on the day a recorded link will be sent to your ticket registered email address.
We’ll discuss:
🔨The basic ways heat and moisture can flow through a building envelope assembly
🔨The relevance to our current NCC (National Construction Code) requirements
🔨The essential barrier functions of the building envelope
🔨The most common types of WRB applications and dissect their full definition
🔨How getting the building watertight BEFORE the roof and cladding goes on helps speed up the building process
🔨How following building envelope science can ensure that WRBs are applied correctly and effectively
If you haven’t already, come and join us at an awesome and empowering group that has life changing ramifications, to make a real contribution to industry and environmental improvements.
Membership is free for like-minded builders, professional tradespeople, and suppliers and you can sign-up by going to https://au.buildersdeclare.com/ (link in bio) and learn more about the organisation.
We invite you to share some of your projects and ideas with us. Please send a DM if you’re interested. We’d love to hear from you!

03/05/2021

The average Melbourne house produces 8 tonnes CO2 every year, through it’s use of fossil fuels to supply it’s energy. A quality design with high performance construction can cut this by about 2-4 tonnes. (That's a quarter slice, to half the pie!)
Efficient appliance selection, (including heating, and hot water) can cut another 2 tonnes. (Another quarter slice. Yum.)

The last piece of the puzzle to creating a low carbon (and low bill) home, is to use PV's (Photovoltaic panels) to generate enough electricity to supply the remainder - essentially eating that last piece of the pie!

For a small family, in an average size home (~200m2), who choose major appliances with star labels in mind, a 3-4kW panel system is all that is required to start to break even. With a larger system you typically start to produce more over the year than you use. That's called becoming Carbon Positive. That's a good feeling.

A Good Design. High Performance Construction. Clever appliance selection. And PV on the Roof. - Job done!

21/04/2021

As part of the concept design process it is important to know from whence your summer breezes blow, so that you can make sure your floorplan incorporates the openings in such a way that these potentially cooling breezes are encouraged to blow through the structure. Local and historical knowledge of the area in summer is preferable, but failing that the Bureau of Metereology has created wind roses for its weather stations across Australia.

Click through to your local site on the following map (www.bom.gov.au/climate/map/climate_avgs/clim_avg1.shtml), download the 3pm summer wind rose, and use it to mark up on your block which way the prevailing breeze blows. Your floorplan and window layout should then, as much as possible, align to allow the prevailing breezes through the structure. The basic rule of thumb is that the exit window should be 20% bigger than the entrance window, and the flow should be as straight as possible without intricate passageways to negotiate. This works well in Melbourne that has regular summer sea breezes from the south, and where you want bigger windows to the north for thermal gain. Casement windows can be very useful, as not only do they open 100%, but they can also placed on the sides of the house, hinged towards the prevailing breeze to scoop it in as it goes past.

Moving air can also give an approximate 3 degrees of cooling effect as it goes across the skin evaporating off the moisture. So even if the breeze is the same air temperature outside and in, having good breeze paths through the house will be beneficial. This is why ceiling fans are also so useful.

It is also worth checking if there are any summer night time prevailing breezes, as opening windows and bringing in the night air, will passively cool the house over the course of a summers night, ready to close windows the next morning ready for the next hot day. This ability to purge the heat is particularly vital for houses with higher thermal mass.

And on those still nights, cooling airflows can still be induced by including clerestory or high windows, and popped ceilings.