Hi Georgina, We have a tv in the bedroom of the little home we're living in whilst building and we have made allowance for it again in the new home and in the bathroom!!! It definitely saves on heating and lighting in winter as you simply go to bed early and the only light on is the tv glowing. We're installing a spa bath, really just a huge bathtub with jets in our bathroom and I"m going to watch Better Homes & Gardens in my bath if it kills me ha-ha Hubby hates the show and I can never watch it when he's in early, so some candles a cruiser and I'm laughing, literally ha-ha Love it and I say yes go for it!!!

the whole house needs attention, Me and my youngest daughter with her Three Boys, live together in a Three bedroom one lounge and one toilet / bathroom, yes we are renting, through housing department, yes the rent is convenient as we pay a minimum of a quarter of our income, just need a better laid out house design with the toilet being a separate room with an extra toilet thrown in, in the laundry area, yes we are blessed to have a roof over our heads, we live in NSW, Australia.

As an architect, I have previously been taught that creating a sustainable home is about designing it so that living in it lowers energy and water use. This is achieved through designing for orientation, using thermal mass and specifying fixtures and finishes that are low impact, reuse water on site, etc. However, the latest research is showing that this is not enough to impact the rate of climate change. And that what we build from needs to be considered in order to make a dent. This is because the timeframe required to see the benefits of sustainable living in a home, is a longer play than the upfront construction from low tox, low energy, minimal footprint materials and methodologies. It has to be a two-pronged approach. Choose materials and products, and constructing efficiently with low energy and low waste. Having carbon neutral homes. And designing homes that over the long term, are low in energy and water consumption, and support the health and well-being of the occupants. A project was established in mid 2017, called “The Building Code Energy Performance Trajectory Project”. It involved the Sustainable Built Environment Council and ClimateWorks Australia, and is described as an industry-led initiative seeking improvements to energy requirements in the National Construction Code. The report was released recently, and what was amazing in this report was to read that 58% of Australia’s buildings in 2050, will be built after 2019 … which means that there’s huge potential to impact their performance and the environment through better energy requirements. And these energy requirements have not been rigorously updated since 2010, despite electricity prices having doubled over that time. Detached housing will comprise 64% of the new construction between 2019 and 2050. So every homeowner has the opportunity to seriously change the landscape of energy use and efficiency in our country. There’s some sectors of the industry really pushing back against this … largely because they believe it will dramatically dent their profit margins to have to build houses with higher star ratings. Australian homes, on average, perform very poorly, and our expectations are super low. Steve Baczek, an American architect, said something about American houses that I think sums it up for Australia as well ... “It’s not that High-Performance Houses cost too much; it’s that our idea of a fairly priced home is based on a history of building houses to meet embarrassingly low performance benchmarks. Clients don’t realise the difference between built to code vs built to last”.

I have a relatively small but very well designed house of 160M2 on a block of 1000M2. We get lots of northern light in all the right places. Garden views and connection from every room and plenty of borrowed views. Outdoors we have space for produce gardens, fruit trees, outdoor patio and BBQ area, a fire pit, play space and a native garden. We also have a large, private courtyard off the master bedroom and a small one off the en-suite bathroom. And utility spaces to the south (washing line, hot water, outdoor compressors for air con, garden sheds etc). Internally we have 3 bedrooms, a study and open plan kitchen/dining/kitchen plus small activity area for the kids. None of the rooms, other than the activity area are poky. Because it is well designed there is no wasted space, and it flows really well, accomodating two adults and 2 teens while providing a good balance between connection and privacy. Ample ceiling heights, 2.4m high windows and sight lines that connect with the outdoors means it feels spacious despite its relatively compact size. It’s such a joy to live in this house. It feels like the goldilocks house. Not too big, not too small. Just right.