Elmwood Award Winning 10 Star Home

Elmwood is a high density housing estate in central Wodonga. Brendon Collins developed the estate and built all the townhouses over the last decade. But above all else Brendon has built a community.

The concept was building a house showcasing not what the future of urban living looked like but what is possible now in low energy living. And will become more common throughout new builds and renovations moving forward.

The 10 star home was assessed under the Victorian Government’s new rating Scheme called Victorian Residential Efficiency Scorecard Star Rating. We are proud to see that this townhouse was the first in the State of Victoria to be completed under the new rating scheme.

It attracted  an 8.5 star rating on the NATHERS assessment, which is very energy efficient. The 2 ratings systems assesses different aspects of a building – one on materials used and the other on energy used once built. It performed excellent in both categories.

The home features inclusions such as solar PV, EV charge points, heat-recovery ventilation, electric-boosted solar hot water, and a verified air exchange of 2.9 air changes per hour (the average house is 4.16).

We wired the whole house, much of which was new technology. The power points were in special containers so as to not break the building envelope seal.Illume solar powered LED lights were used as well.

Brendon also decided that he would hold an open day and a grand opening to celebrate the house and the estate. The home was officially opened by Indi’s Federal MP Dr Helen Haines.

Over 300 people attended the day, which was part of the Albury Wodonga Sustainable Living Festival . People were able to tour the house, experience a waste free home, hear talks about energy efficiency from experts in their fields and talk to some of the suppliers involved in the construction.

We installed a 6.6kw hybrid system using 370W LG Solar panels with a Solar Edge hybrid inverter paired with a 10kWh LG RESU10 battery. We also pre wired the garage ready for an electric vehicle charge station in the future.

Overall the project demonstrated that one does not have to sacrifice comfort, but can see the fossil fuel energy footprint being reduced significantly.