Family of 3

This being our first year here, I'm shocked (in spite of the warnings) about how cold it gets inside the house and was pretty shocked by the size of our power bills when we were cooling down just a few weeks ago.

I read an article in the Sunday Times about new green standards for new houses, but ours is 2 years old.

Anyone know of any one-stop shop advice type places that can talk me through the viability/costs of things like cavity wall insulation, double glazing, soolar power etc? Or if there are only suppliers of above (as opposed to advice agencies), are there any recommendations?

(Never though I'd see the day I'd be wearing a fleece inside the house.......)

GarryP

No one stop shop that I know of.

However, in general you go in this type of order:

• start by closing gaps, since the building tolerances are usually poor. Doors, windows, and look out for electricity sockets. A trick is to turn on all the extractor fans in the house on a cold day, then go hunting for draughts coming in with a smoking jostick, or wet finger.
• then look towards insulation. If you are in a single storey dwelling, look to the roof (you'll be disgusted with the lack of insulation coming from the UK). Double storey and the roof has less of an effect (though still high).
• proper double glazing seems to be missing from Oz, but you can look towards secondary double glazing as a DIY option
• if you have ducted heating, check how insulated those ducts aren't. Also make sure you've balanced it so the heat goes where its needed, and in the correct amounts.
• Solar HW can be useful, but Solar PV just doesn't make sense in the way its implemented in Oz.

Oh, and check the relative costs of gas fired hot air heating, and a reverse cycle air con working in heat pump mode. Its not always obvious.

In short, your knowledge from the UK will make a big difference about the efficiency of an Oz house. Their idea of insulation is a single layer of foil backed bubble wrap for a '5 Star' house!

spuddyo

I agree with Garry, generally Aussie houses are not well built and would blow away if built up on a Yorkshire Moor. Pole houses with no insulation under the floor boards, window and door frames that are not sealed to the walls, non existant double glazing and where there's DG glass, the sliding/opening frames are not sealed. It's crazy.

I would just do the basics, wall and roof insulation, try to find good doors and windows ( not easy here ) and cost-effective heating. It amazes me that even in the colder areas of Vic and Tas there's hardly any central heating - how hard can it be ? Trying to heat a 4 bedroom house with 3kw electric heaters is not a good solution, but thats's what most Aussies seem to do.

On the up-side up here on the Central Coast, Autumn and Spring are usually OK, windows and doors open and a perfect temperature. It's just Summer and Winter where the costs can blow out with heating and cooling.

Solar electric is a waste of money. By the time you have broken even on the initial outlay it's time to replace the panels, batteries etc and start all over again.

Here's a funny story - there's a bloke at work that brings in a 3Kva UPS power supply every day from home and charges it up in the Office. He then takes it home and runs his TV from it in the evenings. At most he is saving a couple of dollars a day. there's a whole new 'stealing from work' concept there just waiting to happen.

mulben

The Australian had a write up about insulating cavity walls in last Saturdays paper about installing in existing homes- for WA try AGI Insulation.

Easy to get a quote for double glazing - seems to be a few doing it now.

Solar PV is still more cost effective in WA than solar hot water if you have gas hot water . A basic good quality system (1.5kWh) will fully pay for itself in 4 years - a 3kWh could give you zero power bills.

ozhappy981

For double-glazing, I recommend "Perth Double Glazing": www.perthdoubleglazing.com.au

The factory is actually in Rockingham, but they do installations as far north as Geraldton. We had ours put in when we built the house and it's the best thing . I am not wearing a fleece as I type it, just a sleeveless summer dress. Our house is toasty warm in winter - last winter we only had the heating on on two days - and in the summer it is less hot than our rental was.

We had cavity wall insulation put in when we built the house - therefore can't recommend anyone.

As for solar power: If you mean photovoltaic tiles, i.e. a system that provides some of the electricity, I recommend you go to the "Choice" website and read what they say about it. Last time I looked, they didn;t think it was cost effective at present (lack of government rebates in WA).

If you mean solar hot water (with gas boost in winter), then I recommend Apricus. I'll PM you the email address of the WA distributor. Our systems is great and there were no problems with the installation and with getting the "green credits" back (forgotten what the credits are called, I thinks it's RECs).

Family of 3

Thanks guys. The more we can do to insulate etc then the less cost there is to save by solar etc.

We lived in Singapore for 14 years so the cold is coming as a bit of a shock, and we're a bit out of touch on how to manage it.

mulben

Just to clarify the above , WA through Synergy pays 47c /kWh Nett
You’re only paid a higher rate for surplus electricity fed into the grid after domestic use is subtracted.
It could get less cost effective after June when the REC multiplier reduces from 5X down to 4X
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/143

lesleys

Even if you can't afford to double glaze you can improve things just by changing the glass.
http://www.wers.net/howtoselectsustainablewindows
We used Pilkington ComfortPlus laminated glass when we built our house, but they have now changed their name to Viridian
http://www.viridianglass.com/residen...s/default.aspx

HelenTD

For a one-stop shop, try the Australian Institute of Architects http://www.archicentre.com.au/green-...sion-statement - see link under Green Living.

There are also lots of resources on the web, eg:
http://www.istp.murdoch.edu.au/ISTP/...fit/index.html
http://www.yourhome.gov.au/technical/fs31.html.
http://www.sustainablehouseday.com/w...-australia.php
http://www.nhc.edu.au/downloads/2005...aceB_Paper.pdf

The key search term to use is "passive solar", a very important aspect when buying a block, building a house, or buying an established house. Unfortunately it sounds like you did not buy a house with good (or any) passive solar qualities.

I have seen people in older, Federation-type houses wearing jackets during the day, with heaters on, but I am surprised that you are doing that in Perth in an almost-new house, especially when there have been no cold days yet (you might still be acclimatising, though). We are in a house 4 years old, and we designed this, and a previous house, on passive solar principles. We never use heating during the day and only have a heater on in the lounge room at night. I never need to wear a jumper/jacket during the day, just a short-sleeved T-shirt and trousers. We have gas-boosted solar HWS, so our hot water costs are tiny over the year. We don't have air-con and hope for a sea breeze to cool us down. We did use fans a lot this summer, but they didn't cost much. The pool saved us.

It is possible to retro-fit passive solar features and there are specialist house designers who could advise on this - try searching something like "passive solar house designers Perth".

If you do need to put in insulation, I would not recommend the spray-in, recycled newspaper version - bits of it can come down through vents or extractor fans. The last 2 times we installed insulation, we used the plastic pillow-type batts filled with re-cycled paper but sealed in http://www.thermosealedbatts.com.au/index.htm.

Wol

Be wary of double glazing. For all the talk you'd imagine you install it and that's the end of it. But sealed units are not cheap, and don't last forever.

We had to spend several thousand pounds before selling our house in the UK replacing sealed units 15 odd years old: the supplier said we'd done quite well.

Most of the breakdown comes on the sunward side with the heating/cooling cycle. Australia must be worse than the UK....

We are in the process now of replacing our first Australian unit - 3 years old.

If you factor in the replacement costs double glazing is significantly more expensive than the extra heating you use - although the house is more cosy and very quiet. Your choice!

lesleys

I completely agree - that's exactly what we have done. And we manage without a pool

An instant fix for a cold lounge room is to get some well-insulated curtains and draw them when it goes dark, not just when you want to go in there.

I love the sun streaming into the rooms in winter, but the rooms are totally shaded in summer.

BadgeIsBack

Very interesting! Noone has ever mentioned this.

Normally it is very high on the wishlist.

Our house is not warm - but the woodburner is adequate!

Family of 3

Hmmn, we built the house ourselves and it supposedly DOES comply with (some) passive solar principles - the builder said so (!) plus it had to meet the estate planning regulations. It did seem to work quite well in the summer; it didn't get too hot except on the hottest days.

I think I'm feeling it more because of coming from a hot climate and having lost a lot of weight rapidly -I was actually cold in Singapore towards the end! Certainly my husband's not feeling it as much as me.

I'm exaggerating a bit about the fleece, but I'm just worried how bad it's going to get come winter..........

HelenTD

I've found that there's usually only a couple of cold days in winter, where the daytime maximum reaches 12-14 degrees, such as when there's a cold front in and the wind is coming from the south. There are lots of sunny and warm winter days when the temp is in the low-mid 20s, but then there might be 3-5 days of heavy rain, clouds and strong winds and temps 15-20. The overnight lows can get to zero in the hills, a bit warmer on the coast. After a couple of hours of sun, it's pleasantly warm.

When I moved to Perth it was late June, coming from a British summer to a Perth winter and I really felt the cold. Our old house had no heating apart from a pot belly stove that used wood and I never did manage to chop kindling and get the fire going. I found that it was really important to get outside and go for a walk to warm up, as long as it wasn't blowing a gale. I was a very happy woman the day the old house got demolished - it was was boiling in summer and freezing in winter (no passive solar benefits whatsoever). Your weight loss could very well have affected you, hope you get used to the weather here soon.

Family of 3

Thanks. I think a lot of it is mental - the last two days when I've gone down to the beach to watch the sunset it hasn't seemed as bad!