• Home office - A home office cuts transportation costs and time. Our principal worker doesn't not need a car and ocassionally uses the bus or electric bike.  The main disadvantage of the home office can be isolation.  This can be overcome by more people having home-offices and meeting together occassionally at a local shop/hall or in each other's office and working outdoors for a short time each day where passersby will see you and chat.
• Solar power 
• Natural airconditioning (it is cool in summer, designed for maximum air flow and has wood-fired heating in winter).  We grow and harvest all the wood we need.
  
• Solar passive design for heating, cooling and natural light
• Lighting is low volatage.  This is easier when most work is done during the day and by computers. No artificial lighting is needed even in winter. 
• Paperless office. Very little work is printed out or filed. we consume less than 3 reams of paper per year. This helps reduce mess too.  All sheets are reused on reverse side and when obselete are used either in the garden as sheet mulch or in the fire as starter material.
• Wood-fired heating system with wood from our surrounding garden (Zone 4).
• Recycled and Re-used furniture: the main office desk was made by hand from from recycled wood or is a recycled item
  eg. the kitchenette was formerly a communion table. The bookcases and cupboards are re-used. The library is shared with students and fellow permaculture designers.
• Low embodied energy: The floor is pretty special: it is an earth coupled slab (meaning it is a raft construction filled with soil and stays the temperature of the soil).  It was made with 90% recycled aggregate (waste from the steel works).  The concrete was supplied by Boral and the product is marketed as 'green' concrete. The floor also had recycled glass pieces floated on top and was polished back.  It required no further covering but we do wear slippers in winter. as it holds the temperature at about 18 deg C.
• Recycled and Re-used building materials: The windows, doors and archetraves are fully recycled and were restored by us. 
• Low Toxic: Walls were constructed of LOSP frames, colourbond externally, large old pieces of recycled hardwood, insulated with glareshield and wool batts (which gives additional insulation and draft proofing around openings) and lined internally with pine (a sustainable resource). Overhead Rafters were constructed by hand from sustainably farmed local eucalpytus.  Plumbing is HDPE.
• Office cleaning is minimised by: not walking shoes into the office (especially because our site is muddy and wet most of the year).
• The chemicals used to clean the office are: biodegradable rags, water, vinegar, biocarbonate of soda and surface spray we make containing 95% water, ecualyptus and lavender oils, a drop of biodegradable detergent and wood-based methylated spirits. Pests such as spiders and cockroaches are vacuumed up and released outdoors or killed with methylated spirits if they are poisonous and persistent.
• Insulation for maintaining temperature and minimising noise. 
• Fire resistance (preserving the building for future generations). by use of metal cladding, metal flyscreens (made by hand) and design.
• Durable construction (mostly hand built), use of screws instead of nails where possible to enable re-use of materials if necessary.
• Low toxic pest control: LOSP frames, mesh not chemical termite protection, natural oils for painting, no plastic except in the waterproofing membranes,
  ample ventilation to provide fresh air. Avoidance of  PVC where possible.
• Conserving existing features - It was built to blending with the old section of the house so that very little had to be re-clad or demonlished
• Preservation for conservation - use of natural oils to preserve timber.
• Water harvesting by filtering gutters.

Future directions for our office and ways to improve:

• to store solar energy by using daylight energy to pump roof-tank water to a high tank. then use a micro-power system to release the power at night as required. Alterntively we could add a wind-generator if necessary.
• Add a reflective shallow pond under the sun-side window to optimise light penetration if necessary.
• to start a bus-bike for our village.  The bus-bike system gets cyclers to ride together according to a time-table for safety. Our road is very dangerous: it is narrow and has trucks on its daily.  
• Campaign for a footpath and cycleway.  If you can help, please contact us.
  
• A small cool wind current runs under the house now which can be harvested for additional summer cooling and refrigeration.
• We could share the office space for other local projects on a time-share basis and this would reduce our impact further.  Seeing running costs are very low, there would little risk involved.