Talking about these sort. Not sure if they are the houses you mean or not - saw lots like this? Seemed suburban, but not new build, to me but may be classed differently in Melbourne?

http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&s...92.25,,0,-1.82

I guess the basic point I was badly making, to answer the OP's question, is that houses, clothing, habits etc adjust to cope with the predominantly difficult local weather - so Brisbane would not cope well with prolonged Melbourne cold winter and Melbourne wouldn't cope well with Qld sweaty summer.

Blimey about 2k's from my Gaffe.... Plenty of those around, this area basically used to be the outer suburbs of 1950's Melbourne. These houses were built around the end of the 2nd world war... through to the early 60's Plenty of older weatherboard houses as well, in fact mine is Victorian, not built high of the ground though, so not good for cooling in the summer, although it does have very high ceilings.

A lot of those places are on big blocks, so the Weatherboards that were built around that time, have been knocked down and turned into units, or in some cases fairly large blocks of flats.

I guess these days, they rely on insulation and air conditioning.

Thats another thing, does anyone have evaporated air con up in Queensland, because from the people here that own them, you may as well not bother if it's humid.

.



...

No, no evaporative aircon in the humid parts of Qld.

Our house is OK but it is quite small. At a pinch, we could do without ac and infact use it for a day after a series of hot ones - 35+ plus. If we have people over we might run it when we might otherwise deal with it. There is no need to run it day in, day out. I shudder at the waste in houses with no eaves - in fact we have quite large eaves.

In London, summer days over 27 or thereabouts were awful at home.
Gives some credence to the fact that there was a method in the Aussie madness..!

In winter, a wood burner keeps the house bearable - heating for me is supposed to keep the edge off. I have never been one for a stuffy house - infact I think it is character-building to deal with some degree of 'cold' - I don't want my kids growing up pressing a button when they can put on a jumper.

I totally dislike the humidity of Darwin i find it so oppressive. Yet when we holidayed in Cairns i coped so much better with the humidity it felt fresher than the Darwin air. If that makes sense.
Mandy

When we had air con, I'd have it on 25°C just to keep the temp down a bit, especially since the house could get up to 35°C on a bad day and it took days to cool down. That house had only windows on the north side so no chance of any air going through.

With heating (no aircon in the new house, just windows this time ), I had the automatic program on 18°C during the day and 16°C at night most of the winter. That meant that if the house temp went below those temperatures, it would kick it, but I hardly ever put it up to 21° or 22°C like some people I know. They have their heating on that temp at all times in the winter. Makes the house way to hot for me. Like you said, nothing wrong with a jumper

We got two air con units that have an evaporative setting which works a treat. The amount of water they drag out is excellent but we don't use it often, We're using our dehumidifier at the moment and last week when it was throwing it down I was getting 3 litres a day out of our bedroom/robe/bath.

I have given up with ours this week, my tiles are lethal with it on! Just had the fan part on to waft the damp around. There is no way you would have this form of cooling in QLD, unless you are mental

Any ordinary person would simply fan themselves with their dole form.