Power prices are to rocket and new houses are breaking barriers in a quest for efficiency.

Last month, the federal government predicted an energy price hike. The Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, forecast that electricity prices could rise by 16% and gas prices by 9% when the government’s carbon trading scheme comes into force.

Surging power bills will have a big impact where the heart is: one third of the state’s energy is used in the home. With so much at stake, how will our new houses trim their expanding wastes?

In 2004, Victoria led the other states by phasing in 5 Star efficiency regulations for new homes. In May this year, the 5 Star rules were extended to cover renovations and alterations.

Yet even with the 5 Star regulations, residential power use is growing. Last year, consultants George Wilkenfeld and Associates concluded that the energy-related emissions from new Victorian houses were about 6% higher than in existing ones.

The Wilkenfeld Report blamed the extra emissions on our appetite for super-sized abodes. It estimated that 5 Star dwellings were almost one third larger than homes built before the regulations came into effect. A bigger house needs more lighting, heating and cooling, no matter how well insulated it is.

State building commissioner Tony Arnel agrees that hulking houses are still a major problem. “You have to insulate more and do things to deliver better thermal efficiency… but house sizes have actually grown substantially and household occupancy has fallen. It’s rather ironical,” he says.

Although McMansions normally take the blame, architect-designed houses are also at fault. Architect and sustainability consultant Chris Barnett, from Third Skin, says that they are often the biggest and most power-hungry of all. “As an individual design, they will only be better if you put it in your brief and you pay for it.”

Mr Arnel, who also chairs the Green Building Council, thinks that change is on the way. “Electricity prices have increased over the last couple of years and that is driving demand for energy efficiency in housing.” He predicts that further rates rises will fuel a downsizing trend. “I would expect a market correction as developers start to offer more energy-efficient and appropriately designed houses,” he says.

VicUrban, the state sustainable urban development agency, is heading the market correction. The agency is a commercial operation, albeit one that aims to be an eco-leader in residential construction. David Young, general manager of project planning and design at VicUrban, thinks that sustainability will soon be front-of-mind, via the hip pocket, as energy bills absorb more of people’s disposable income.

That’s where low-energy housing comes in. Aurora, VicUrban’s eco-development in Epping North, boasts only six-star homes. “At the moment, we estimate that six star can save residents up to $1700 a year compared to the standard 5 Star on the market,” Mr Young says.

As well as better insulation and passive solar design [see box], houses at Aurora are fitted with only high-efficiency appliances and lighting. According to Mr Young, they are also slightly smaller than average developments.

VicUrban is not the only developer building houses greener than the government demands. Every design in Henley Homes’ new range meets the six-star level. Managing Director Peter Hayes says Henley, Melbourne’s biggest builder, is working on making all its designs more efficient than 5 Star. “We expect the energy rate to keep on ratcheting up. We think that it’s quite reasonable for six stars to become standard.”

Mr Hayes says that the efficiency extras add about 1% to building costs for their smallest designs and up to 2.5% for double-storey homes. But he expects the benefits will extend to resale value. “A house that costs less to run is going to be worth more.”

Burbank also has a range of six star homes. Associate Director Paul Puhar estimates that about one in every three clients now chooses the more efficient design. “It’s an emerging sector for us and it’s a fast growing one.” He believes that while environmental awareness is improving, many people still don’t consider sustainability when they buy their house.

Mr Puhar supports education more than regulation to cut household resource use. “We build five-star homes, but the one-star family can annihilate that if their attitude and behaviour is not right. Culture-shifting is absolutely imperative.”

Internationally, governments are opting for more stringent regulations. In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has committed all new homes to be carbon neutral by 2016. Many other European countries also impose standards beyond ours, as do some US states, including California.

Victoria’s 5 Star regulations relate only to the building materials. They don’t demand low-energy lighting, heating, cooling or appliances. According to eco-consultant Mr Barnett, that’s like asking ‘how good is the eski?’

“Energy ratings only consider the thickness of the foam in your eski walls and the size of the glass holes punched through them. We need to look at the whole issue. What’s the overall resource use and environmental impact of the home? What services are going into it?” he asks.

Mr Barnett believes the state government should introduce a more comprehensive building sustainability index like BASIX, used in NSW, or STEPS, used by some Victorian councils. Both tools assess the eco-impact of dwellings based on information like site location and fittings, as well as building materials.

A spokesperson for the Victorian Government says it is “committed to improving the environmental efficiency of new homes”, but would not comment on the prospect of stricter regulations. Mr Arnel, the state building commissioner, believes tighter rules are inevitable. The timing is uncertain, he says, “but the high jump bar will rise, there’s no doubt about that.”

How to manage the meter

From next year, electricity companies will begin to install smart meters in Victorian homes and businesses. The meters, which will be fully rolled out within five years, allow energy retail suppliers to read your meter remotely and vary prices during the day. But that’s not all.

According to Peter Clements, from the state Department of Primary Industries, smart meters will tell us a lot more about our power consumption. If you choose, an in-home screen will show your real-time electricity costs. Knowing your budget bottom-line is a big incentive to switch off the air conditioning – energy use has fallen by up to 4% in other places with similar technology.

“It turns the world of energy usage on its head,” Mr Clements says. “It’s a tool that helps you better manage the inevitable energy cost increases due to climate change.”

Powering down: golden rules

The smaller the better

Big houses use more of everything, including electricity.

Face north

Plan living areas for the north side of the house, to make the most of winter sun.

Reflect on your windows

Go for double-glazing to cut down heat loss. North-facing windows are best, but you should shade them in summer with wide eaves and deciduous trees. Keep east- and west-facing windows small—the lower sun is tricky to shade. Minimise windows on the sunless south.

Insulate

Good insulation can cut heat loss by up to 70%. Put it in ceilings, walls and floors. Internal and external blinds act as extra insulation for your windows.

Ventilate

Cross-ventilation is power-free cooling for summer nights. Open windows and let fresh breeze blow in from the south and out from the north. Fans are also a cheap way to chill.

Thermal mass

Heavy building materials like concrete, brick and stone absorb and store heat, curbing the extremes of winter and summer. A concrete slab floor is a good way to go.

Close the gaps

Be sure to seal all external doors, windows and exhausts.

Use efficient appliances and lights

Choosing one extra star rating on appliances and fittings can mean savings of 10–30% on running costs. Buy low-energy globes and avoid power-hungry halogens. 

As the five-star energy ratings take root, how will residents of exiting apartment blocks negotiate green changes?

Chris Palethorpe looks on with satisfaction as his new external blind hums downward over the balcony, slowly sheltering all his west-facing windows.

Last year, the 30-year-old photographer and his fiancé, Emma Fulu, moved into a fourth-floor apartment in Footscray. They delight in the view across the western suburbs, but during summer their floor-to-ceiling windows had a stifling drawback. “It was probably 10 degrees hotter in here than it was outside, even on a 40 degree day,” Mr Palethorpe says.

The couple have just invested about $8000 on internal and external blinds to improve the flat’s natural heating and cooling. Now, in mid-winter, they rarely need heating. “It wasn’t cheap, but we did it to be more comfortable here,” Mr Palethorpe says.

Efficient housing makeovers like this have become standard dinner party talk. Yet even though one-in-ten Melbourne households lives in a flat, unit or apartment, high-density dwellings are often left out of the debate. Strata title ownership, complicated by common spaces and facilities, can leave wannabe-green residents confused about what changes they are allowed to make.

Recent changes to state legislation mean that a building’s body corporate is now known as its ‘owners corporation’. Unfortunately, the name change hasn’t made group decision-making any easier. “You can count on one hand the number of properties that have ever achieved a unanimous resolution,” laughs Julie McLean, from Owners Corporations Victoria (OCV, formerly Institute of Body Corporate Managers Victoria). OCV represents owners corporation managers, the businesses that implement residents’ instructions.

According to Ms McLean, retrofitting residential apartment blocks to make them more sustainable “is the next big thing to tackle. The reason why it wasn’t tackled is because it’s been too hard.”

Any change to the outward appearance of an apartment building needs the approval of the owners corporation, but that’s not the only complication. Exactly who owns the water collected from a common roof? To get the solar panel rebate, how do you means test an owners corporation?

Despite the difficulties, Ms McLean says that apartment owners want to make their properties more efficient. “People are starting to say to me, ‘What can we do?’” She argues that like everyone else, high-rise residents need information and incentives to invest in sustainable retrofitting. She would like government departments to develop an information kit setting out the do’s and don’ts, including the likely costs and savings and the resolutions needed for specific changes.

Roger Kluske, Manager of Built Environments at Sustainability Victoria, agrees that strata title often clouds residents’ motivation to make sustainable changes. But he also sees owners corporation meetings as a possible driver for change. “I think body corporates need to get together and talk about these issues.”

“People who live in apartments just tend to take one bag of rubbish downstairs and chuck it in any bin that’s empty,” Mr Kluske says. Owners corporations could help solve this problem by educating residents. “Maybe the body corporate needs to have some sort of sustainability commitment, or people could sign agreements to do the right thing?”

He says an agreement could help with simple changes like sorting rubbish, allowing washing to dry on balconies (instead of using the dryer), or putting efficient lighting in public areas.

Four city apartment blocks have already begun to change their habits. The Melbourne City Council has just finished its Sustainable Living in the City (SLIC) program, which aimed to cut waste, water and energy use at Madison Apartments, Southbank Towers, Spring Street Towers and The Sovereign, in Southbank.

First, each building was audited, including interviews with residents, to work out how best to cut its carbon footprint. People then fitted efficient showerheads and light globes and some also added energy-smart gadgets like remote-controlled switches (to cut stand-by power use) and ‘Cent-a-meters’ (to show residents the cost of their electricity use at any time).

In common spaces, each building reduced lighting energy by swapping to lower wattage globes, removing unnecessary lights and installing timers where possible. They also put in rainwater tanks to care for shared gardens.

In the buildings with centralised hot water systems, plumbers added insulation and rebalanced the pressure system in the pipes – to dramatic effect. In some cases, householders had been waiting as long as ten minutes for hot water, all the while wasting cold water down the drain. After the maintenance, their hot water arrived almost instantaneously, leading to significant water and gas savings.

Dorothy LeClaire, manager of the owners corporation department at MCIM Property, says that while the full results of the trial haven’t yet come out, she expects big efficiency gains. MCIM manages three of the four buildings in the council trial.

In relation to lighting changes alone, “according to what the electricians say, it should eventually mean savings of anywhere to 30 per cent,” she says. At the Spring Street Towers, lighting savings are expected to save up to $13 000 per year, and retrofitting costs will be paid back in less than 14 months.

Lord Mayor John So is pleased with results of the SLIC program and hopes that it will continue under the new council to be elected in November. “We know that it was quite successful. The four buildings that were involved in this program reported significant decreases in energy and water consumption,” he says. “There is a lot of interest and support at the moment for rolling these programs further.”

The scheme has already rolled into other MCIM buildings, according to Ms LeClaire. Last year, the company held an energy forum for its properties based on the SLIC trial and is promoting audits for each block. “I would say all of our buildings are now participating in some way with sustainability,” she says.

But despite enthusiasm at council and management level, a sustainable retrofit hasn’t yet translated to higher property values. Dannie Corr, director of St Kilda real estate agents Whiting and Co, says that when it comes to old apartment buildings, buyers don’t ask about sustainability. “It doesn’t seem to be top of mind at all.”

Matthew Morley, Sales Manager at Morleys Real Estate in Elwood, agrees that eco-features are not yet impacting on sale prices. But he does believe that they attract buyer interest. When a flat comes with green benefits “people get pretty excited, which is a good sign that people do want those things,” he says. “I think that right through the bayside area it will become a very important factor when selling.”

In his Footscray flat, Mr Palethorpe wasn’t motivated by the prospect of better real estate returns. As well as expensive purchases like their indoor and outdoor blinds, the couple have spruced up their apartment with an assortment of simple eco-friendly measures. They’ve put in a water-saving showerhead, compact fluorescent globes and a Bokashi Bucket composting system.

Every six weeks or so, Mr Palethorpe takes his compost to a community garden in Braybrook and a local gardener has begun rewarding his effort. “The guy now gives us food in return for our waste; he gives us cauliflower or whatever he’s got.”

“It’s up to the individual to put some time and effort into it,” he says. “Maybe these things are saving us money down the track, I don’t know. But it’s helping the environment.”

Five easy ways to green up your apartment and save energy and money

Efficient fittings

Change to low-flow showerheads and tap fittings, dual-flush toilets and low-energy lighting. If you have halogen downlights, you can switch from 50-watt to 20-watt globes.

Efficient appliances

If your fridge, dishwasher or washing machine dies, choose high-efficiency replacements. Dry your clothes on your balcony, if you have one.

Be wise about waste

Remember to recycle, even if the bins are far away in the basement. Flat-friendly compost systems, like the Bokashi Bucket, are also available.

Insulation

Add external blinds to block the hot summer sun on west-facing windows, and internal blinds to trap heat inside during winter. If you renovate, put in double-glazed windows and extra insulation.

Common spaces

Why not use your owners corporation to make an eco-agreement with your neighbours? A building audit can help you cut your carbon footprint. You can make common light fittings more efficient. If you have centralised hot water (ring mains), get a plumber to make sure the system is balanced – it could save water and gas.

Always remember that any changes to the common space or external appearance of your building need owners corporation (body corporate) approval. Ask your owners corporation manager if you aren’t sure about something. 

Meeting the state’s new five-star energy rating costs renovators very little but saves the environment heaps.

Owning an old house is no longer an excuse for inefficient design. Extensions, like new houses, must now comply with the 5 Star energy standard.

The new regulations, introduced by the state government on 1 May this year, bring Victoria into line with the national standard in the Building Code of Australia. With about 40 000 Victorian homes done up every year, the changes could make a big difference to our greenhouse gas emissions.

Research by the state building regulator, the Building Commission, shows that in new homes the efficiency requirements already in place cut heating and cooling energy bills in half. “That’s likely to be achieved as well, in relation to alterations and additions,” says Victoria’s Building Commissioner, Tony Arnel.

He says that meeting the efficiency standard is mainly about smart design. “It is really careful use of materials and making sure that you get good orientation. People can actually achieve the 5 Star standard without any significant increase in cost.” In any case, he believes that reduced bills will quickly outweigh any higher outlays.

The 5 Star regulations apply only to work that requires a building permit and they vary depending on the size of your extension. For larger additions the whole house must comply, while for smaller changes only the new construction must adhere to the rules [see box]. Arnel doesn’t believe the requirements are onerous. “It’s a minimum standard… people can go a long way further if they want to,” he says.

The Building Commission, in conjunction with a number of state departments, has just launched the ‘Make Your Home Green’ website. It gives information on how to increase energy efficiency at home in every way, including detailed explanations of the new renovation rules. The site is proving very popular: in its first month, it received over 400 000 hits. “People want to do the right thing by the environment. They want to get the answers,” Arnel says.

On building sites though, not everything is running smoothly. Robert Ring, owner of Melbourne Extensions and Designs, agrees that the new regulations will be successful in the long run. For now though, his business is battling complications brought on by the rules. “We are trying to come to grips with the [software] package that’s been put out to calculate the ratings,” he says. “At the present it’s probably taking three or four hours to work out the figures.”

Ring has found that for his clients living in older, solid brick homes around Camberwell and Glen Iris, it can be hard to meet the energy standard. “You’ve got to design with the existing house in mind so it’s not as easy to get your ratings as people think,” he says. Under the regulations, building surveyors have discretion to allow only partial compliance if it would be too costly or technically difficult to reach the stars. With the rules just in, Ring isn’t sure how often these exemptions will be granted.

He estimates that on average, the regulations will only increase costs by about 1%. Often though, he finds that clients decide to spend even more and green up their home beyond the requirements by putting double-glazed windows throughout their house.

According to Enzo Raimondo, CEO of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV), the extra outlay is not only worthy, but also financially worthwhile. “It’s going to cost a little more to begin with but if the cost of energy and water keeps going up, then a 5 Star energy rating is going to be a wise investment,” he says.

In a survey conducted by REIV last year, 93% of people said that water and energy efficiency were important for them when buying a home. Raimondo believes that investing in a 5 Star renovation will add value to a property and appeal for potential buyers. “Economically it makes sense and for resale it makes sense.”

So what is the best way to bring home the stars and boost your property value? Mark Sanders, Director of Geelong firm Third Ecology Architects, says that passive solar design is the key. “If people are thinking about doing a renovation, they should try to make sure their living area is facing north and allow the sun to come in during winter and exclude it in summer.” Cross ventilation and thermal mass, like concrete floors, also help even out the temperature in hot and cold weather.

Sanders recommends you find out how your home performs as it stands. “People will need to do an energy rating of their existing home before the renovation.”

In the old part of your house, he says insulating walls and ceilings is the best way to improve efficiency. “In my own home, we had to replace some plasterboard… so that gave us the opportunity to insulate. Likewise, if you had to replace weatherboards you could insulate the external walls.”

Adding carpet or insulation under floors also cuts heat loss, as does sealing draughts under doors, windows, chimneys and exhaust fans. “Most front doors in older houses tend to have big gaps under the front of them,” he says. “So put in simple draught excluders.”

Simple steps to harness the elements

Barbara and Graeme Davidson are sitting in the new, bright back room of their 1930s Surrey Hills home. It is a cold, grey day but the room is light and comfortable, without artificial lighting or heating. They are thrilled with the environmental performance of their north-facing extension. “I just find every morning I come in here and it’s a delight. It’s airy, it’s spacious,” Graeme says, leaning back on the couch in satisfaction.

The Davidsons finished their revamp almost two years ago. Now, renovations like theirs are set to become the norm. On 1 May, the state government introduced new regulations forcing additions and alterations, like new homes, to comply with the 5 Star energy standard.

The couple’s contemporary-styled extension added both a study and a large open room, with a kitchen, lounge and informal dining space. They also installed solar hot water and a rainwater tank that collects from the roof of their new garage.

Andrew Wilson, the architect on the Surrey Hills home, is pleased with the results. He called his clients during a long summer hot spell and found, to his satisfaction, that they had barely used their air-conditioner.

According to Wilson, environmental efficiency is just about good design. “This is not rocket science, at all,” he says, leaning forward keenly. “The sun is higher in summer and lower in winter. It’s as basic as that.”

In the hotter months, wide eaves shade the large north-facing windows. Between each pane of glass, thick supports jut out to protect against the westerly afternoon sun. “In mid-summer you get no direct light into the building,” Graeme confirms. But in mid-winter, he says, the sun stretches right across the room.

Other eco-touches in the renovation include insulation beyond the 5 Star requirements and effective cross ventilation – airflow through the house to help natural cooling. Equally, in winter, the warm lounge room can be shut off from the rest of the home to keep the heat in. The garden too, has a role to play. The Davidsons planted deciduous trees that will offer summer shade and allow winter sun.

The renovation may be finished, but Barbara’s plans continue. Keen to make the house even more efficient, she wants to put in a grey water system and solar panels. “I just feel we come from the generation that have used the resources, and I include myself in that,” she says. “I’ve got grandchildren and I’m worried about what sort of world I’m going to leave them.”

The new rules at a glance

The 5 Star energy rating now applies to home additions, alterations and relocations, as well as new homes. The rules are flexible, depending on the size of the job.

If your renovation is more than 50% of your house’s original volume, the whole building should be converted to 5 Star.

If your extension is between 25 and 50% of your floor area, the only the new space must stick to the eco-standard.

If your alteration is less than 25% of your floor area, the new space should meet the rules but in some cases, your building surveyor can ok only partial compliance. According to Building Commissioner Tony Arnel, this applies “in the very few instances where it’s not feasible to get to 5 Star.”

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