Welcome to Silvergreen Ecovillage

 

Overview

Silvergreen is a new, modern ecovillage to be located near Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, Australia.  The goal for this development is to introduce a high-tech style of ecovillage, and show that sustainable living can be affordable, comfortable and fashionable.  We hope that by setting an example, this style of development will become the rule rather than the exception in South East Queensland, and ultimately the world.

The project is currently in the concept/planning stage, and as yet no land has been purchased.  We are currently building up a group of interested people and potential residents in order to refine the design of the community and to create momentum for the project.

Simultaneously, we are developing documents to describe our process, principles, and vision; process being the current main priority.

Although some design details are described on this website, this has really only been done as a starting point.  We are in the very early stages of this project and nothing is carved in stone.

In general, we agree that the site should support at least 100 households, and should be within one hour's drive of Brisbane.

 

Features

The site will ideally be self-sufficient in energy, water and food.  Energy may be generated approximately 50% from solar power and 50% from wind, in a grid-connected system.  Water will be produced from rainwater harvesting and purification, and will be recycled on site.  Food is likely to be produced from a combination of permaculture, aquaculture and poultry farming.

The homes will be highly sustainable and durable, constructed from solid steel frames and sustainably produced plantation timber.  The designs incorporate passive cooling and heating in order to reduce energy costs, and may have a style similar to the traditional Queenslander, with open spaces and wide decks.  They will incorporate a range of water and energy saving features, along with a computer to track usage of these resources.

The community centre may include features such as food storage facilities, a commercial kitchen, a cafe/restaurant that will double as a meeting place, an office, games room, reading room/library, and swimming pool.  Other community facilities will include farm buildings, a workshop and a recycling centre.

Wireless networking and internet will be integrated seamlessly into all homes and the community centre.  One goal for the site is to minimize paper use as much as possible, and most of the documentation used by this project will remain in electronic format.

The homes, community centre and other buildings may possibly all be built by the same builder, in order to maintain a consistent aesthetic theme across the ecovillage, to reduce costs, and to improve systems integration.