One house to rule them all

Suncorp has unveiled a prototype for a home built to cope with bushfires, floods and cyclones

By Bernice Han

The quest for a disaster-proof house has taken on greater urgency after the horror bushfire catastrophe last year and one-in-100-year flood in Townsville the year before.

It’s a mission that has resulted in Suncorp’s One House, a design achieved after months of collaboration with some of the country’s top minds in the fields of natural disaster home resilience, combined with environmental and architectural best practice.

One House was unveiled by Suncorp in April. It’s a prototype for what could easily be the most resilient home in the country.

It is capable of surviving the intense flames of bushfires, the brute force of powerful cyclones or rising water levels during a flood.

The prototype addresses five key areas: floor materials, door design, ceiling storage, construction materials, and electricity and appliances.

With floor materials, burnished concrete, tiles or pavers are used. These materials are waterproof, easy to clean and far less likely to be damaged than carpet and timber during an extreme weather event. They also should not need replacing following an inundation event.

For door design, all glazed doors are fitted using a top-hung rack system and flush threshold. This allows water to escape through the building openings and limits the possibility of doors becoming jammed by debris following a flood.

Hinges and solid-core fire doors also feature a similar installation approach, allowing water to escape from the interior and exterior.

Instead of using timber framing and plasterboard wall linings, steel stud framing is used to build One House, while water-resistant fibre cement sheet with vertical battens covering the joints are used internally.

Since the fibre cement sheets are removable, they can be unscrewed after a severe weather event for damage inspection or debris removal.

Electrical wiring is installed in the One House roof, as opposed to being typically arranged in wall cavities and the floor. The power points and switches are installed at least one metre above floor level to reduce the risk of electrical issues during flooding.

Suncorp says the project is part of its long-running push for actions to improve community resilience against natural disasters.

“There is much more that can be done to strengthen Australia’s resilience to natural disasters. We need to be smarter about where and how we build our homes. While the industry has been talking about resilience for a long time, our One House campaign aims to raise awareness and start a wider conversation on this important topic,” Chief Executive of Insurance Product & Portfolio Lisa Harrison tells Insurance News.

“One House is just another way Suncorp is proving how resilience not only saves Australians money, but also saves Australian communities from the physical and emotional impacts of natural disasters.”

She says the prototype demonstrates that stronger, more resilient homes are achievable.

The prototype is based in part on existing research on home resilience and scientific expertise from national science agency CSIRO, James Cook University and Room11 Architects, the three partners working with Suncorp on the project.

Let it rain: One House was subjected to a series of tests

Complementing the research that resulted in the prototype home is a shortlist of vital components that the team believes is necessary to make a home safe, liveable, easy to maintain and more resilient to damage caused by natural disasters.

The team then proceeded to test the prototype in dedicated facilities at the Cyclone Testing Station at the Townsville campus of James Cook University and the CSIROoperated Bushfire Burnover Facility in southern New South Wales.

The tests helped the team understand what aspects of the prototype house would fail or resist particular fire, cyclone and flood impacts.

In one of the tests to work out the building’s bushfire resilience, the team measured the fire impacts at different burnover levels using specialised simulated bushfire flame fronts.

“The results of this collaboration, research and testing enabled us to qualify specific design principles and demonstrate how clever use of design and material selection can dramatically increase the resilience of a home,” Suncorp says.

“This has led to a more robust and resilient house design that we can all learn from and one that can help to protect us against extreme weather.”

While not everyone can replicate One House, Suncorp says the prototype offers lots of ideas for Australians who are either looking to build a new house, planning a renovation or are interested in improving the resilience of their existing homes.

For new houses, they can consider the following:

• Installing electrical wiring in the roof to prevent loss of power during a flood event

• Installing power points and switches at least one metre above floor level to reduce the risk of electrical issues during flooding

• Using roof material that has a lower thermal conductivity than traditional roofing materials and will reduce the head load during a fire. Also consider an uncoated finish, as paint can blister and burn in a fire

• Utilising ceiling space to store services such as air conditioning, batteries and hot water

• Constructing external finishes from strong, non-combustible materials including corefilled block and aerated autoclaved concrete cladding

• Using waterproof internal wall linings.

For homeowners keen to strengthen the resilience of their existing homes, the following should be considered:

• Installing fixed and operable high-performance mesh screens to slow down flame spread during a bushfire

• Installing a dual tank system using galvanised water tanks. One tank is for firefighting, so that if the home is ever disconnected from its main water source occupants still could extinguish flames on site. The second tank is a dedicated back-up water supply, ensuring occupants always have drinkable water.

• Use PVC plastic gutter fixings. In the event of a fire, these fixings melt and the gutters become ‘sacrificial’ and safely fall away from the house. This helps protect the home from embers and also reduces the likelihood of embers entering the back-up water supply

• Consider cyclone-rated roof fixings, which are less likely to fail during extreme events with strong winds. The One House roof frame also utilises a tie-down system to the concrete slab that eliminates the risk of a ‘flying roof’ during a severe wind event.

Darrell Sard, whose home was severely damaged in the 2019 Townsville flood, says he would have taken up some of the ideas from One House had it been available at that time.

“Hindsight is always an easy teacher,” he tells Insurance News. “If there was anything I could have done prior, knowing what I know now, absolutely I would have done that.”