Staying Warm - and Cool

The kitchen/living area of our own home includes mud bricks and so do two of the bedrooms. We have a 12 metre rammed earth wall down the hallway, which is like the spine of the house. It’s the colour of dark chocolate and all our visitors want to touch it!

Walls made from the earth are not only visually attractive, but they have a very important function – i.e. to maximise thermal efficiency. This is measured through the walls’ thermal mass, which is the rating that is used to measure the heat transfer from the inside of the building to the outside, and the other way round. So the higher the thermal mass, the greater the efficiency of the building. 

In summer, most of us prefer to keep the heat out of the building; in winter, it’s about retaining the heat inside the building. This is what these earth walls are able to achieve. In our home, we have only one form of heating – a wood burning heater in our kitchen/living area. Thanks to good insulation and thick walls, that is all we need, even on the coldest Tasmanian day.

The studio uses the same principles, but with a pellet-burning heater. The pellets are made from recycled and compressed sawdust. Like our home, the studio is also positioned to capture the sun throughout the day and we also installed double-glazed windows to help retain the heat. For summer days, we chose an award-winning Haiku bamboo ceiling fan for its energy efficiency – and we love the way it looks as well!