One-of-a-kind enviro-cottage’s market premiere

By Evie Drinnan

From the street, what has come to be known as the Spring Hill Enviro-Cottage looks like an unassuming historical Queenslander.

Once entering the doorway, though, it’s clear this home is one-of-a-kind.

The four-bedroom home features patterned metal screening, polished concrete floors, reclaimed hardwood timber, clever design to maximise heating, cooling and ventilation, a greywater and rainwater capturing and filtering system, and a secluded pool.

Owner Phil Angus said: “We had lived through the Millenium Drought, the worst in 100 years, and witnessed how perilous our water supply actually is. We also had climate change messaging, from climate scientists and governments, struggling to cut through.”

“So we decided to do something practical and renovate our old worker’s cottage in a way that put sustainability at the very core of all decision making, to show how we could all do things differently,” Mr Angus said.

The Enviro-Cottage Project soon attracted public interest, featuring in the Grand Designs Australia and House magazines, winning building and plumbing awards and being the subject of multiple school visits and private tours.

Mr Angus said: “This is a demonstration of how far you can go, but you don’t have to go this far. It could be as simple as planting a tree to control the western sun, or putting solar panels in. Everyone can do something.”

After around eighteen years of calling the Enviro-Cottage home, Mr Angus is moving onto new adventures.

This is the first time the Enviro-Cottage has been on the market, and is for sale with Ray White New Farm (more details can be found on page 56-57).

Mr Angus shared some tips for anyone wanting to embark on a sustainable housing project:

• The easiest and most effective way to ensure a sustainable (and cheaper) build, is to build smaller – simple.  We all want everything, and think bigger is better, but compact and functional is often the best of all from a sustainability perspective
• You have to work really hard to sort the products and processes with genuine enviro-values from all the green-washing, and you don’t always get it right.  Shipping a genuinely sustainable product halfway across the planet, does not necessarily add up to a good environmental outcome once it gets here.
• Some processes are best carried out at scale by the city or the state. Individual households in the city for instance, processing and re-using greywater in their own home, is not necessarily the best use of your funds put aside to deliver sustainable outcomes. You may be able to get better environmental outcomes elsewhere.
• Design homes with householder flexibility and future needs in mind to avoid having to move house or knock down walls. In our case, a smaller household at one point, allowed us to take advantage of one area of the house to run a short-term accommodation service. The front of the house is also designed to be reasonably wheelchair friendly, so future needs are catered to as well.