Renovator’s

84
delight
A Melbourne Californian
Bungalow is given a contemporary
sustainable makeover
 winter deck

balcony
study bed 2 study / retreat
living

pantry

kitchen
guest / bed 3
bed 1 bathroom dining
laundry summer deck

Ground level Upper level

The rammed earth

walls not only
provide thermal
mass in the home
but are a strong
aesthetic feature of
the house’s interior.

W hen Nash and Meaghan Popp bought a

Californian Bungalow in the inner Melbourne
suburb of Thornbury in 2001, it was a typical
renovator’s delight. “It was so dark in here, you had
to turn the lights on even in the middle of the day,”
Meaghan remembers. “There were holes in the
floor and flaking plaster and lathe on the walls.” In
2004, the Popps wanted to build an environmentally
sustainable extension to increase the building’s
light and reduce its operational energy use. They
encountered more difficulties than they had
anticipated.
“You must remember that four years ago, to
build sustainably was still a bit freaky,” recalls
Steffen Welsch, a local architect who the Popps
contacted after they had seen his advert in the local
newspaper. “There has been a significant shift in
the past four years, but at the time we faced many
hurdles and expenses due to the lack of experience
and resistance to new ideas among builders,
suppliers, installers and so forth.”
Steffen’s launching pad for planning the
extension was to maximise light by capturing as
much available sunlight as possible. The challenge
was that the backyard faced south (in other words,
received little direct sunlight) yet this was where the
extension had to go. To overcome this, Steffen built
an external courtyard between the existing house
and the new extension. Thanks to its northern
orientation, the courtyard receives sunlight all
day, which in turn enters the living area (in the
extension) through double-glazed windows. The
kitchen, which links the old house to the extension,
has a lower ceiling than the adjoining dining room.
A row of north-facing windows fills the wall space
between the two ceilings and these admit light into
the dining room even during the winter months
when the sun is lower in the sky.
In addition to a horizontal extension, the
Popps built a second storey. This created fresh
opportunities to reduce the building’s operational
energy use. Windows were put in at strategic

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 ... a good-looking building that doesn’t necessarily identify itself as a
sustainable building, because it doesn’t look low or hi-tech; it just looks good
locations in the stairwell and upstairs to facilitate
passive cooling: when nighttime creates cooler
air currents, the stairwell acts as a heat shaft by
drawing warm air from downstairs to upstairs,
where the warm air can escape through the
open windows.
As a consequence of building a second storey,
the Popps made an aesthetic decision to install
slanted loft-style ceilings in the upstairs rooms.
These turned out to have a practical benefit
because the north-facing roof is the perfect spot to
mount solar photovoltaic panels. Consequently, the
roof was built at a pitch to maximise solar access
for the panels. Nash says that merely having the
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one-kilowatt solar system has helped to make
the family more conscious of, and conservative in,
their energy consumption. “Even our two year old
son, Xavier, turns the lights off when he leaves the
room!”
Steffen observes that the house is “a good-looking
building that doesn’t necessarily identify itself as a
sustainable building, because it doesn’t look low
or hi-tech; it just looks good.” Perhaps no feature
of the house illustrates this more vividly than the
facade of the upstairs extension. Slender, elegant
timber battens run horizontally along the exterior
of the north-facing walls, which face the street. The
distance between each slat has been specifically
The stairwell acts
as a heat shaft as
the warm air from
downstairs is drawn
up and can escape
through the open
upstairs windows.
gauged in order to let winter sun through (to warm
the walls) and to keep summer sun out (to keep
the walls cool). The effect is visually arresting and,
simple as it is, puts a contemporary spin on this
Californian Bungalow while simultaneously helping
to regulate the internal temperature upstairs.
Rammed earth was used for the extension’s
central wall as well as the east-and west-facing
external walls. Rammed earth has a high thermal
mass, meaning it holds heat well, only releasing
it when the surrounding temperature drops. The
walls have been insulated on the outside to improve
their insulation value and aside from its excellent
thermal mass, the rammed earth is a strong
The elegant
timber battons are
designed to let the
sun through to warm
the walls in winter
and keep the walls
cool in summer.

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 Whenever we’ve been away, it’s always really nice to come back here. Even when
it’s pouring rain, you see it bouncing off the deck, but inside here, we’re cosy
aesthetic feature of the house’s interior. The walls
are a sandy colour, with traces of mica that glint
in the sunlight. There’s a textural quality to the
surface and it’s easy to see why Meaghan doesn’t
want to hang paintings on these walls.
Materials were sourced locally where possible
in order to reduce the level of embodied energy in
the house’s construction and lifecycle. To that end,
the Popps contracted a local artisan to make the
concrete benches in the kitchen and bathrooms.
The timber flooring, outside decking and the stairs
are made from sugar gum, a plantation-grown
native hardwood harvested in South Australia.
The rammed earth for the walls was sourced from
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Kyneton in regional Victoria. The external timber
battens are made from western red cedar that is
sustainably grown and harvested.
The ambient temperature of the central living
area is generally comfortable through the year.
In winter, the east-and north-facing windows
maximise the sun’s light. The rammed earth walls
capture the heat from the sun and slowly releases
it during the night. On cold mornings the Popps use
a hydronic heating system to prewarm the house
before daylight.
The gas water heater that supplies the hydronic
system is integrated with a heat pump.
The heat pump absorbs heat from the surrounding
Materials were sourced
locally for the house
including the concrete
benches in the kitchen
and bathrooms made
by a local artisan.
air (like a fridge working in reverse) and expels cold
air back into the atmosphere until the water in the
storage tank reaches the optimum temperature.
The experience of renovating their house to make
it more environmentally sustainable was often
challenging. “Builders today are starting to realise
they need to think outside the square and work with
different materials but at the time we were
renovating, they were resistant to new ideas,” says
Meaghan. Yet for the Popps it has been a rewarding
experience. “It’s a great place to be in. Whenever
we’ve been away, it’s always really nice to come back
here. Even when it’s pouring rain, you see it bouncing
off the deck, but inside here, we’re cosy.”
 The living room area is kept warm in winter
thanks to high levels of insulation, double-
glazed windows and the concrete benches
and rammed earth walls that absorb the sun’s
heat and slowly releases it back into the room.

Designer: Steffen Welsch Architects www.steffenwelsch.com.au
Location: Thornbury, VIC
Photographer: Rhiannon Slatter
Features: n 1kW Origin Energy grid-connected photovoltaic power system n Fixed and retractable external sunshades
n Greenheat integrated hot water and hydronic heating system n SilverScreen Verosol internal window blinds
n 340 litres Quantum Energy hot water heat pump n Rammed earth walls
and Rinnai instantaneous gas hot water n S  ustainably managed plantation
n Hydrotherm hydronic heating panels Sugar Gum flooring, stairs & decking,
n Auspoly batt wall and ceiling insulation and Western Red Cedar battens
n Recycled Styrofoam from old industrial fridges ceiling insulation n Asko four-star water rating dishwasher

n Concertina foil batts floor insulation n  Megaman compact fluorescent

n Protherm Reflecta Guard and foil-backed blanket roof insulation and LED downlights
n Moen double-glazed windows
n Optimal cross-ventilation
n External courtyard maximising sunlight

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