Earthworks at Salt Torquay full steam ahead

With weather being kind to contractors, works at the Salt Torquay residential project have been going ahead at full steam with civils expected to be finished sometime in November.

Barwon Water’s former water basin site at 85 Grossmans Road Torquay was no longer needed for operational purposes so is being redeveloped for residential use with a focus on best practice urban development.

The 5.4 hectare Salt Torquay estate is intended to accommodate 81 diverse dwellings, with 45 house lots and 36 townhouses and units (subject to planning approval) within seven super lots.

To cater for a broad range of accommodation needs within a community, a diverse range of housing types from villas, townhouses and units are on offer with lot sizes ranging from 300sqm to 830sqm.

Affordability and accessibility has been front of mind in design, focusing on housing diversity as a key to catering to a broad market and creating a community with diverse demographics providing opportunity for stay-at home retirees to compliment working families and first home buyers.

Salt Torquay will be the first estate in Australia to require all houses include universal access with a silver rating.

Consistent with the Victorian Government’s Water for Victoria plan, the project has a focus on water services that are affordable and sustainable.

The estate development is proposed to have the following key features:

• The estate will consist of minimum 7.5 star (NatHER) housing
• All houses will harvest rainwater for use within the home, reducing mains supply requirements by around 30 per cent
• Integrated Water Cycle Management has been incorporated in the design of the estate, with swales, raingardens, integrated landscaping and children’s nature-play elements included in the stormwater retention system
• Permeable driveways will be incorporated to reduce short-term, high impact runoff into local creeks and mitigate urban heat
• A solar energy collection and storage initiative will see almost all energy generated locally with zero emissions, this will be achieved through household solar and battery storage plus a 250kW solar array on Barwon Water’s land opposite the estate, this will allow residents within a future micro-grid to generate and trade energy and generally avoid drawing from the wider electricity grid
• No gas is provided to the estate and residents will be encouraged to live free of fossil fuels
• Garages and carports will be electric-car ready with a requirement to provide 32A wiring to the garage for electric car charging
• The estate has been designed to prioritise walking and cycling. Prioritisation of neighbourhood walking and cycling via dedicated pathways and proposed rear-loaded super lots (i.e. garage access via rear laneway to create vehicle-free front pathways especially to local primary schools)
• Indigenous streetscape and private household planting will create an urban habitat that supports native fauna as well as reduce water demand. Street names are based on traditional owner (Wadawurrung) plant names
• A Design Review Committee has been established and Estate Design Guidelines have been developed to control the sustainability credentials of the development and achieve a high standard of housing design
• Barwon Water intends to be the first water company in Australia to trial smart water meters using IoT technology at Salt Torquay. An IoT comms aerial will be installed on a tower opposite the estate. This will allow residents to monitor water consumption in the same way they monitor electricity consumption via a smart phone app and also potentially monitor and control other smart appliances (such as a security system or oven) via IoT technology

The Salt Torquay development will boost local employment and regional prosperity as Barwon Water targets local contractors and stimulates over $50 million of development.

Torquay SALT is designed to deliver key outcomes for the community including connection to quality local recreation facilities, improved health opportunities, a light environmental footprint and low living costs whilst delivering a high standard of living.

Salt Torquay is a tangible example of how Barwon Water’s Strategy 2030 is helping to reduce costs to its customers through smarter asset management and achieving better environmental outcomes.

For more information or to register your interest in Salt Torquay, phone Josie Currell on 0420 314 608 or Leigh Hall-Sullivan on 0413 158 175.