The design process was a collaboration between building and design company Wilson Homes and University of Tasmania (UTas) researchers:

• The developer Wilson Homes was responsible for the design of the buildings, their configuration on site, their construction and financial management of the project

• The UTas team was responsible for ensuring the houses met the desired performance requirements, accommodated the required monitoring and sensing equipment, and identifying suitable high performance construction and services.

Wilson Homes staff provided the existing floor plans of the subdivision and passed them to UTas researchers for assessment with the AccuRate building simulation package.

When using the AccuRate package, the size of the house is taken into consideration and the star rating is adjusted according to area. This means that achieving a particular Star rating can be difficult in larger houses with more floor and living space compared to external walls. Adapting the elements such as windows, insulation level and vents has less effect against the ratio of the overall building size.

However with small houses, such as the test buildings in this project, it is far easier to adjust features to achieve Star ratings. To compensate for this, all Star ratings in the project are non-area adjusted.

Very few changes were required as the thermal performance of the houses was modelled. Increased insulation was required for the wall between the garage and the house. In addition, to achieve the non-area adjusted 5 Star ratings, two of the buildings required increased insulation in walls and floor, the inclusion of caps above the down lights in the living area to ensure a full cover of insulation and double glazing in the living and bedroom areas.