Darwin Houses

This hot period of the year really brings out the best in people - NOT. They complain about the hot weather, humidity and burning sun, and generally get VERY short tempered. The month of the falling mango!

The usual action DEMANDED by the recently arrived family [read southern, temperate, pale skinned wife and kids] is to air condition EVERYTHING, EVERYDAY, ALL DAY!! That is expensive, and probably unnecessary. Do not get me wrong......I do have an airconditioned office [so do most people] and we opted to have the bedrooms airconditioned, many years ago. A good nights sleep, in lowered humidity, at around 25C [usually close to outside air temperature overnight] makes for a happy chappy the next day. As it does for school kids, uni students and most others.

And on those awful nights of 28C minimum, with still air, at 65 - 75% relative humidity it does ensure a decent nights sleep.

BUT......the trend is to aircondition the whole house all the time. BUT......before we examine the current house designs and issues, lets first go back 50 years or more.

The Burnett House

Designed around the late 1930s and built before and after World War 2 in Darwin these elevated houses focussed on flow through ventilation, with plenty of louvres and walls that often allowed airflow over the top internally [ ie went nearly, but not quite to the ceiling], a house orientation to allow prevailing breezes to flow through the house, and some even had ventilation in the roof space. Built with low thermal mass materials they were considered easy to live in. More details here - http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/ahdb/search.pl?mode=place_detail;place_id=16285

Commonwealth Housing 1950s - 1970s

A range of fantastic and simple designs, in predominantly elevated or split level houses built by the Federal Government to house public servants. They took many of the features of the Burnett houses, and developed them further.

Many were simple linear designs with living at one end, and 2-4, mostly three, bedrooms in a row adjoining the living room / kitchen, with a single bathroom and toilet. Low thermal mass building materials to allow easy heat up - cool down, with again a predominant east - west orientation, allowing a breeze through the louvres which were along the side of the house. They had generous roof overhangs for shading and direction of the rain away from walls and windows.

I must admit though that there were quite a few ocassions when the rain blew hard and did blow in on the floor...but that was easy to mop up. And surprise surprise.....from about the mid 1960s they had SOLAR HOT WATER SYSTEMS on all houses. Think about that ......a giant act of faith by someone who recommended they be installed on all new houses, in around 1965!

Our family lived in one [a different model to that above, but see the solar hot water unit on the roof] and although we did insulate the roof space and aircondition the bedrooms, the rest was not airconditioned and was comfortable. Even the bedrooms were open windowed during the day.

Oh, I forgot.........all had large, 56 inch overhead ceiling fans in bedrooms and the living room, but not the bathroom and toilet [ THAT was rectified in our present home - and it is great!].

Car parking and outdoor entertaining was downstairs, and the house lot was mostly in the 800 - 1100 square metre range, with 850 - 1000 most common.

Then came Cyclone Tracy.....................a category 4/5 beast and many many homes just blew away. To be truthful though, designing to withstand that level of cyclonic force is difficult, VERY difficult.

The housing changed after that. More to follow - but this is a good read too -

ACCLIMATISATION: ARCHITECTURE AT THE TOP END OF AUSTRALIA
David Bridgman. Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 2003. $38.50.