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Early to Bed Sleep Cycles Cuts Energy Use in Australian Beach Home

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This curious looking facade – the children’s bedrooms – gives no clue as to the wide and expansive spaces around the corner.

Dock4 Architecture designed the family home with careful attention to maximising passive solar from passage of the sun with high value double glazing and insulation.

The super efficient home overlooks the endless Pacific Ocean from Bull Bay on North Bruny Island, in Tasmania.

The house is built on a steep site with sweeping views to the open ocean, making the most of its spectacular surroundings.

The master bedroom suite is to one wing, with the children’s bedrooms in the other.

The challenge was how to design for energy efficiency when the views across the South Pacific Ocean are all to the south and east, but the sun is to the north.

Noon sun is allowed in through clerestory windows surrounding three sides of the kitchen work area.

But light also plays a key part of the home’s energy efficiency in a novel way.

Human sleep cycles are altered by the siting.

These sleepers would be roused by the very first rays of morning sun as it ascends over the distant horizon.

The earlier householders are up, the earlier they tend to go to bed.

So less electricity is consumed after dark, simply by getting up with the earliest rays of the sun.