I was talking with John Bennett the builder yesterday in our weekly phone hook up, (we are doing this renovation remotely, the project is about 700kms away from Sydney where we live) and he mentioned now that all the windows and floors were in the place was looking great. Nice bright, light and airy. Reflecting on this comment I thought about all the time we spent planning the little details with Harry Sprintz our architect. As there is an airport in Merimbula, there is also a weather station. This would be the start of our data collection to plan some of the finer details of the project. I logged onto the Weather Bureau website and found that they kept all of the records from thier weather stations, including Merimbula.

I managed to find weather data that went back 28 years for the Merimbula airport. From this data I compiled the following two tables. We used these as part of our design brief to Harry Sprintz .

•  Merimbula Weather 28 year averages
• Merimbula Wind Direction Number of days

Using this information we were able to orientate windows and place rooms to take advantage of the sun and ensure that we had great flow through ventilation.

We chose to use a number of louvre windows and vented skylights in the project. These were made by Breezway an Australian company based in Queensland. This would give us great flow through ventilation and eliminate any need for airconditioning. This helps with the green credentials of the project.

You can see the louvres in the above photo on the left and the way that the Fakro vented skylights open to let the breeze through.

So I guess that it is no accident that the rooms are nice and bright and comfortable. It all boils down to design.