An eco-sensitive research station in Cape Tribulation will be open to the public this weekend as part of national Sustainable House Day.

The building is one of nine in the Far North that will be open to the public between 10am and 4pm on Sunday, hosted locally in a joint venture between Cairns and Far North Environment Centre Inc. (CAFNEC) and the Tropical Green Building Network to promote sustainable design principles and sustainable living practices.

The research station is home to staff and volunteers who live on the property and consists of four separate cabins (each with two rooms) and two residences, plus communal buildings – a laundry/shower/toilet block, two laboratories and a workshop.

All buildings are constructed with as high a proportion of re-used materials as possible (cabins 100%, labs and workshop about 30%).  Power is supplied largely from a 30 panel PV array supplemented by a generator, while water for showers is supplied by a pumped solar hot water system.

Water is shared with the neighbours and is provided by a spring for most of the year, and by a solar bore pump for the dry periods.

The toilet is a composting system, with the kitchen’s grey water processed by a high-surface-area digester, which removes fats and produces a water-based curd that flows in to an absorption pit.

The research station’s laboratories, designed by the owners, feature a sealed cool room panel construction with dehumidified filtered air, using passive counter-current air-to-air humidity exchangers to recover about 50% of the dehumidification energy.

A permaculture garden is being developed with an emphasis on Fijian food items such as taro, manioc and tropical greens suited to the tropical climate. There are also chickens on the property, which eat food scraps and produce eggs.

Other houses will be open in Cairns, Mareeba, Kuranda and Tully as part of 300 homes open to the public nationally.

The homes demonstrate a range of sustainability measures including passive solar design, solar PV, rainwater tanks, edible gardens, high energy efficiency, aquaponics systems for backyard fish production, low impact building materials and other innovative sustainable living measures.

To view the houses that will be on display in our region, visit www.cafnec.org.au to download the house list.

For more information on this national event, visit www.sustainablehouseday.com.