Project Showcase - Green/Eco Home in The Garden Route
This home recently completed by Knysna Timber Homes is situated near Wilderness in The Garden Route. It has been built from inception as an environmentally friendly building. Some features include: - The house was built under the supervision of professional environmental consultants.
It is completely ‘off the grid.’
Solar panels on the roof provide all electricity needed to run the house.
The battery bank installed can power the house for a full 4 days without sun.
Rainwater is harvested from the roof and stored in a 90 000 litre tank installed underneath the house.
Solar water heating in conjunction with an Esse Stove and fireplace are used to provide warm water.
The house was built using FSC certified Garapa Timber and SA Pine.
The house was built in a Milkwood thicket on the footprint of the previous structure to avoid clearing of protected vegetation.
12 Reasons to Choose a Timber Home
Timber is the only building material derived from a renewable resource.
It is considered an agricultural crop that is harvested and replanted in a continually regenerating cycle while nonrenewable resources such as iron ore are mined on a permanently depleting basis.
Knysna Timber Homes only uses timber sourced from sustainable forests.
Timber provides wide-ranging benefits such as carbon sequestration.
Since trees capture and store carbon they are currently the most cost effective and readily expandable means of drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere. Even if the tree is cut down, carbon dioxide is still kept out of the atmosphere if the wood is used to make long-life products, such as houses. Moreover, once they are cut, if the acreage is replanted with seedlings, those seedlings will grow much faster, and store more carbon dioxide per year, than the older trees that were cut down.
Sustainably harvested timber has a lower carbon footprint compared to other building materials such as concrete, brick, ceramic tiles, aluminium and steel.
Carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, are three times higher for steel than for a comparable quantity of wood.
Timber as a building material is energy efficient in that it needs less energy (usually sourced from finite fossil fuels) for its industrial production and transformation compared with other building materials.
Steel requires three times as much energy as its wood counterpart to extract, manufacture, transport, and construct.
While wood accounts for 46 percent of industrial raw materials (by weight) worldwide, it uses only 4 percent of the energy required to process raw materials into useful products.
Timber is biodegradable and easily recyclable.
Even the insulation Knysna Timber Homes uses is polymer from recycled PET bottles and is completely recyclable.
Timber is a healthy, non-toxic, natural building material.
Timber is light and therefore easy to transport.
Gram for gram, wood is the strongest structural material commonly used in building.
Timber homes are energy efficient.
Timber is the best insulator of all structural building materials and, when used together with fiber or foil insulation in a well designed building, minimal external energy is needed to heat and cool the home.
Timber construction is quick.
In the case of a fire, timber retains its mechanical properties. Moreover it transmits heat 10 times less quickly than the concrete, and 250 times less quickly than the steel.
Timber homes create a relaxing living environment.
It has been scientifically proven that a kind of terpene substance emitted by wood, which is used for protection against invaders, is effective in relaxing the mind and body. This is the so-called "forest bath" effect. This effect does not change once the tree has been harvested. It continues to provide us with a deeply relaxing environment.
Footnote: The same principals apply for a timber home as for any other home with regard to mortgage applications and insurance.
