Daylesford - Light Earth House

Amanda approached me wanting to build on her Daylesford property while keeping the magnificent old chestnut tree near its centre. She told me she had previously been advised that the tree would have to be removed. Instead, I proposed arranging two small dwellings around a shared courtyard, connected by an amenities wing, with the chestnut at its heart. Budget constraints meant that only the southern dwelling was built, but its position left open the possibility of completing the original arrangement later.

The design process

Before settling the layout, Amanda and I spent time on the property at different times of day, exploring what Christopher Alexander called living centres: the places that felt particularly alive and suggested how she might inhabit the site. She pictured herself sitting upstairs at her bedroom window, looking into the chestnut's upper canopy and the sky beyond. Directly below, the dining room doors would open to a shaded table beneath the tree. From an east-facing dining window, she could enjoy morning coffee while watching the sun rise over the gully. These experiences helped locate rooms, openings and outdoor places before we considered their energy performance in isolation.

The site lies on the southern slope of Wombat Hill, in a damp, vegetated gully near Smiths Creek, exposed to south-westerly winter winds and driving rain. The carport shelters the south-west corner, while bathroom and laundry spaces on the west buffer the living rooms from summer afternoon heat. North- and east-facing openings bring winter and morning sunshine into the main living areas. A raised timber floor on stumps, approximately 300 mm to 1 metre above the sloping ground, avoided extensive excavation and helped protect the roots of the chestnut and a smaller weeping cherry. Loft bedrooms make efficient use of the steep roof, creating a compact, economical form that also echoes the older cottages of Daylesford.

Why light earth?

One of Amanda's important questions was: what material should we build the house from? She was interested in biological health and natural building. My previous earth-building experience had largely been with load-bearing mudbrick, but Daylesford's cold climate and increasingly demanding energy-efficiency standards prompted me to look for a more insulating natural alternative.

A few weeks later I happened to meet builder James Henderson, who told me about light earth — straw coated with clay and used as infill within a timber frame. I asked him to show me how it worked. Our discussions turned to mixing, compaction, wall stability and whether such an unfamiliar system could obtain building approval.

Amanda was open to the experiment. The natural ingredients, vapour-permeable finishes and potential affordability of locally available straw and earth appealed to her. She had also said she wanted a home that felt “like a nest.” Building it largely from straw seemed particularly fitting.

James and I built a full-scale prototype wall in his garage to investigate the method and demonstrate it to the building surveyor. Initially sceptical, he tested its firmness with his steel-capped boot. The demonstration helped give him confidence in the system, and the subsequent building application was approved.

We adapted the timber framing to accommodate thicker infill walls without substantially increasing timber use. James developed a continuous-feed straw-clay mixer, and we established practical methods of filling and hand-compacting the walls before finishing them with earth render internally and lime-and-sand render externally. The house became an important early demonstration of our light-earth method and was later featured in Franz Volhard's Light Earth Building (2016).