Challenge yourself to go greener at home

IT can be tricky to equate day-to-day energy use with quarterly bills. Christopher Zinn, from Choice, says people often get confused by terms such as kilojoules or kilowatt-hours. It’s far easier to understand the dollars and cents.

For that reason, the consumer advocate has teamed with environmental group Do Something to launch The 10% Challenge, a campaign urging householders and businesses to cut their energy and fuel bills by one-tenth.

“It’s very straightforward to think of your energy use terms of the amount it costs – and then aim to save 10 per cent,” Mr Zinn says. “But before you can save anything, you need to measure it first.”

The Challenge’s website includes a household savings calculator, where you can type in your electricity and gas consumption, as well as your car’s make, model and yearly mileage. The calculator will tally your annual costs, and display the money you’d save if you cut back by 10, 20 or 30 per cent. If you’re not sure where to start, you can find dozens of basic tips on the site, such as switching off your wireless internet connection at night.

“Historically we’ve had fairly low electricity and petrol prices in comparison other countries, so we haven’t been focussed on efficiency,” Mr Zinn says.

Now, however, with “electricity prices going north very quickly”, there’s all the more reason to look at the simplest ways to economise. “It’s very easy to achieve,” he says. “And it’s something you can build on. Once you’ve met the challenge, you can go after other savings.”

For clues about how to make bigger cuts in your greenhouse gas emissions, tour the eco-friendly homes open on Sustainable House Day, next Sunday, September 11.

This year, over 200 householders around the country (including about 70 in Victoria) will open their homes to the public, most of them for the first time.

One of those is Ken Self’s renovated brick veneer home in Rosanna, in Melbourne’s north. The design for its eco-makeover, undertaken by NOWarchitecture, included sensible measures, such as extra insulation and natural lighting, as well as a few striking innovations.

The family’s in-ground pool has become a huge water tank and reservoir for a passive cooling system that keeps the home comfortable in summer. “We discovered that running the pool filter and chlorinator accounted for half our electricity bill,” Mr Self says. “That made our decision easy.”

They also added a large solar photovoltaic array, including panels set into a new glass wall on the home’s northern side. The glass acts as both a sunroom and a thermal chimney: in winter, it warms the rest of the house; in summer, its vents help draw cooler air from beneath the home to the south.

Another key decision was to build a self-contained granny flat. “We designed for multiple occupancy – having more people live together reduces our energy requirements overall,” he says.

While the retrofit has been expensive, Mr Self considers the project a 30-year investment. “We lived in the UK for several years and noted how much more comfortable the houses were there.

“And we’ve became aware of rising energy prices and issues like global warming and peak oil. We think things have to change in the world and the best way is to show other people what can be done.”

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Get to know the flora and fauna of the city

Powerful owls roost high in Melbourne’s central parks, striped legless lizards slither in grassland near Craigieburn, leafy seadragons plunge through Port Phillip Bay and, in the suburb that gave them their name, Eltham copper butterflies flutter.

Australia is home to hundreds of thousands of species of plants and animals, bugs, beetles and bacteria – many of which share our city backyards, with or without our knowledge.

Some species, such as the Eltham copper butterfly, are threatened. Most of Melbourne’s native vegetation has been cleared.

“Our biodiversity is our living wealth,” says Kate Phillips, from Museum Victoria. “The plants and animals particular to our area have value because they’re found nowhere else, but they also supply eco-services that relate directly to human life, such as stopping erosion and keeping the water clean and the air breathable.”

If you want to help local species thrive, Ms Phillips says, the first step is to “be aware of what’s special in your area and learn to recognise it”.

You can begin by browsing one of Museum Victoria’s field guides – it has released a book and a free iPhone/iPad application – or its Biodiversity Snapshots website, which includes identification tools and recordings of bird calls.

The site was sponsored by the Atlas of Living Australia, a national biodiversity database – and another way to participate in ‘citizen science’.

The director of the Atlas, Donald Hobern, has a particular interest in moths. In his backyard in Canberra, he’s identified over 700 species. But you don’t have to do all the research yourself: using the website’s Explore your area function, you can learn about the critters that have already been reported around your neighbourhood.

“Here in Australia there is an enormous and largely unknown fauna and flora,” Mr Hobern says. “We’re interested in connecting with people to find out what’s in their local areas.”

By engaging with the living world within our cities and towns, Ms Phillips says, we learn to appreciate our connection with natural systems. “What’s the consequence of pouring the rest of my paint down the street drain? It’s going to spoil the water for platypuses.”

She says householders should reduce stormwater runoff by choosing permeable paving or soft landscaping rather than hard surfaces, such as concrete.

And make sure you control your pets. “Don’t let cats out at night, so they don’t eat native birds, and keep dogs on leashes at the beach or in nature reserves, because beach-nesting birds are very sensitive to disturbance,” she says.

To boost native habitats, Ms Phillips suggests visiting the Victorian Indigenous Nursery Co-operative in Fairfield for advice about the plants that suit your suburb.

Mr Hobern sees both practical and existential reasons for taking biodiversity seriously. “There’s an awful lot we don’t understand about the complex systems around us. But we do know there are many cases where human intervention has destroyed parts of the ecosystem and led to a pest species taking over everything.

“There’s evidence that richer systems, with many species interacting, create more balance. If we mess up too much, we don’t know the point at which things go horribly bad,” he says.

“And then, on another level, the sheer wonder and complexity of things just amaze me. I find it so depressing to think about a place where that riotous life is missing.”

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It pays to be on guard against condensation

WHEN you’re insulating your home, you must be wary of causing condensation problems, says Steve King, from the built environment faculty at University of New South Wales.

“We have very little choice about adopting energy efficiency – we have to use a lot less on heating and cooling than we currently do,” he says. “But one of the consequences of improved insulation standards is that, unless you’re very careful, you can cause significant moisture damage.”

Condensation occurs where humid air hits a cooler surface, like the way droplets appear on the outside of a chilled glass of beer.

In cool climates – which include most of Victoria – your roof or wall cavity can become wet when air from inside the home meets the building wrap, or foil sarking, which is commonly attached outside the frame or under the tiles.

Mr King says Australian homes haven’t been built very airtight or with much insulation – until recently. “Traditionally, while there may have been condensation in homes, it dried out very easily because of the ventilation, so there weren’t any cumulative effects.”

In recent years, he says, New Zealand, Canada and the UK have witnessed widespread condensation troubles after ramping up insulation standards.

“We have to be cautious in making a comparison, because they’re colder climates than most of Australia. But even so, based on their experience, we could be looking at disastrous consequences here,” he says.

Last month, the Australian Building Codes Board released a handbook on condensation in buildings, as a detailed guide for designers and builders.

Andy Russell, from Proctor Group Australia (which sells insulation and breathable building wrap) was one of the contributors to the handbook.

He says that where condensation forms regularly and doesn’t dry out, it not only causes mould, but can also decay the framing and lining of the house. In some cases, residents will experience the symptoms of “sick building syndrome”, including asthma, itchy eyes and nasal allergies.

Mr Russell advises householders to watch for water stains or mould spots around cornices or skirting boards.

“Stick your head up in the loft first thing on a cold morning,” he says. “That way you’ll see whether it’s a leak in the roof, or if it’s condensation forming on the underside of the sarking.”

To reduce the risk of damp, the condensation handbook suggests using breathable building wraps in cooler climates, rather than the impermeable products now used by the industry. Another smart move, Mr Russell says, is to make sure roof spaces have adequate ventilation that draws replacement air through vents in your eaves or gables, rather than up through the ceiling.

The best strategies for avoiding too much moisture will depend on your climate zone, building materials and the construction method. Whatever the situation, condensation is much easier to avoid upfront than solve afterwards, especially in your walls – it’s very expensive to remove plasterboard or cladding if you think there’s a problem.

Mr King’s key advice is to be aware that condensation is a potential issue in your renovation or building project.

“Don’t be shy,” he says. “Ask your builder quite specifically whether or not there’s a condensation risk with the particular method of insulation being proposed. Ask separately about the systems for the ceiling, walls and the floor.”

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Household taps run cheaper and greener than store water

IF you buy a bottle of water at a service station, you’ll pay about $3 for 600 ml. For the same cost – at Melbourne’s water rates (excluding fixed charges) – you could refill that bottle with tap water once a day, every day, for nearly nine years.

Environmentalist Jon Dee, from Do Something, says our growing thirst for packaged water simply doesn’t make sense, either financially or environmentally.

He has owned the same reusable bottle for a decade. “Often when I refill it, I think about all the money I’ve saved,” he says. “Australians are spending more than half a billion dollars a year on bottled water, even though we have some of the best quality tap water in the world.”

Mr Dee founded the Go Tap campaign, which aims to make people stop and think before they buy bottled water – not only because of the needless expense, but also because of the hidden costs, all the way from the source to the sea.

“When the water is extracted from groundwater or springs, there can be real concerns about the impact on the local water table,” Mr Dee says. “For every litre of bottled water sold, the industry uses between 1.3 and 3 litres of water.”

And although the containers are recyclable, Australians only recycle one in every three PET bottles we use – the rest end up as litter or landfill. “A lot of us drink bottled water down by the beach and leave them there. When the tide comes in, it takes all those empty bottles out into the pacific,” Mr Dee says.

“Also, from a greenhouse emissions point of view, bottled water uses up an enormous amount of energy.”

The Pacific Institute, a US-based environmental research group, estimates that it can take up to 250 ml of oil to make a litre of bottled water. The energy is consumed in producing and transporting the packaging, as well as trucking the water to and from the factories, and keeping it refrigerated night and day.

Mr Dee says importing expensive water from overseas is particularly absurd. “It’s total nonsense to be shipping water from Europe all the way to Australia, when we have such great water here.”

A blind taste test (PDF) conducted by Choice in 2005 found that participants weren’t able to tell the difference between Sydney tap water and two brands of bottled water. “Once you take away the logo and all the marketing that goes with it, you’re just left with water and most people cannot tell the difference,” Mr Dee says.

“If you’re not confident about the pipes in your area, or you’re in a house with very old pipes, the simple solution is to buy a filter,” he says. “You can get a filter jug or an under-sink filter and the cost will range between 3 and 6 cents per litre.”

As part of the Go Tap campaign, the New South Wales town of Bundanoon banned the sale of bottled water, but Mr Dee says that’s not necessary throughout the country.

“We’re trying to encourage an appropriate level of use,” he says. “Even if you’ve got a refillable bottle, sometimes on a long journey you may need to buy water. But be informed about what you’re buying and make sure you go tap whenever possible.”

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Householders and planners want to fill the urban food bowl

MORE and more city-dwellers are asking where our grub comes from, how it’s grown and how we fit into the chain, says Trevor Budge, associate professor of planning at Latrobe University.

“There’s a groundswell of people who are trying to rediscover their connection with fruit and vegies as something you produce yourself,” he says. “It’s partly a reaction to prices and security of supply, but also a rediscovery of the importance of food more generally.”

Last month, in a keynote speech at Melbourne’s State of Design Festival, British architect and writer Carolyn Steel argued that food has always been a critical influence on our cities and our daily lives, whether we noticed or not.

The author of Hungry City: how food shapes our lives, Ms Steel says pre-industrial cities were laid out according to the way the food arrived. “Initially, cities were fed largely from their surrounding hinterlands. If you wanted to eat meat, the animals walked in. So there were old slaughterhouses, fisheries and wholesale markets organised by the city.

“In the post-industrial world we’ve had a big transition to supermarkets controlling the food supply chain,” she says.

As cities grow larger, she says, we get further and further away from the sources of our sustenance, which makes it hard to account for the true costs of production.

“Food and agriculture together account for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions currently, so if you’re talking about the environment, you have to talk about food.

“It has to be part of everything, from how we design houses to how we design cities. We don’t need to grow all our food in cities, but what is the right balance between urbanity and rurality?”

She says householders should try to establish networks with local producers through initiatives such as farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture, as well as grow their own greens.

“Low-density suburbia is just fertile land that has houses on it. So there’s capacity for people to do fairly serious home food production in their gardens,” she says.

“We live in a world shaped by food; we just don’t realise it, so Coles and Woolworths do it all for us. We have monopolistic control of the food system and you can’t create a democratic society with a non-democratic food system.

“If we want to confront issues such as climate change, peak oil, resource depletion and population growth, we need to ask ourselves, what is a good life through food? Food is an incredibly powerful way of questioning how we should live – there’s only so much to go around.”

These questions are also preoccupying local planners. Recently, Mr Budge contributed to a significant report on food-sensitive planning and urban design commissioned by the Heart Foundation.

Like Ms Steel, the report argues that an equitable, sustainable food supply must become a priority in the way our cities run. That could mean everything from easing by-laws on keeping chickens or bees and planting edible nature strips, to guaranteeing a mix of fresh food retailers close to all housing developments.

“With food, a whole lot of issues come together – around quality, security, the price of energy, climate change and health,” Mr Budge says. “It hits so many buttons and if you look around the world, these concerns aren’t going away.”

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Simple steps at home will offset the cost of the carbon tax

AS a householder, there’s one key feature of the federal government’s carbon tax that you mustn’t overlook: you can avoid paying it.

And that’s what you’re meant to do. Ian Porter, CEO of the Alternative Technology Association, observes that the tax is intended to encourage households and businesses to use less energy, and therefore, produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

“Anyone who is energy-wise is likely to experience very little impact at all,” he says.

The government predicts a price rise of about $10 per week for an average household (offset by the average compensation, which is just over $10 per week). Of that amount, the electricity portion comprises $3.30 per week.

But these numbers are based on average usage. They don’t take into account the way we can change our habits. You can offset the rising prices by becoming more energy efficient around the home.

“The normal rule of thumb is that around 10 per cent – if not more – of your energy bill can be reduced by simple, cheap or free measures, such as avoiding standby power, switching lights off and installing draught excluders under your doors to keep your rooms warmer,” Mr Porter says.

So for a savvy householder, the deal is good news: you can reduce your energy consumption and carbon emissions, avoid the tax and pocket the compensation.

Damian Sullivan, from the Brotherhood of St Laurence, agrees that we shouldn’t worry that the tax will cause a big jump in our cost of living. The charity operates a social enterprise, Brotherhood Green, which conducts energy audits and retrofits of existing homes for low-income earners.

“Electricity prices are already rising dramatically, with or without a carbon price,” he says. “The compensation will cover the added impact, but the scheme also provides an incentive for people to implement energy efficiency around their homes.”

As part of the plan, the government has promised to set up a national energy savings initiative, which would oblige energy retailers to help customers to reduce their electricity demand.

“There are a whole lot of measures you can take, from everyday actions and home maintenance, to purchasing efficient appliances when you need new ones,” he says.

Mr Sullivan says it pays to regularly re-assess your habits. The dollars quickly add up, with even the most innocuous changes in household behaviour. By washing your clothes in cold water, avoiding using a dryer, sealing draughts and installing an efficient showerhead, the savings for a family of four could total over $300 per year, he says.

For his part, Mr Porter looks coolly upon the custom of running a second fridge. “So often when we replace a refrigerator, we keep the old one. People like to leave it in their garage and store beer in it, but it’s an energy guzzler if you do that,” he says. “Consider the type and the number of appliances you choose to have.”

If the opportunity arises, you can hardwire cheaper bills and fewer greenhouse gas emissions by designing and building as efficiently as you can.

“If you’re lucky enough to be at the point where you’re designing, buying or renovating a house, that’s when passive solar design comes to the fore – initiatives such as orientation, glazing and thermal mass,” Mr Porter says. “That’s where you’ll make some of your biggest savings.”

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Repairing old things creates something new

A few years ago, Scott Mitchell began accepting busted iPods from all-comers, offering to open them up and tinker with their bits. He dubbed the experiment the iPod Social Outreach Project.

“I fixed over half of them without access to any spare parts, just by taking them apart, cleaning them, seeing if the connections were still ok,” he says. “At the start I had no experience – and that was the point.”

Mr Mitchell is one of the expert fixers involved in The Repair Workshops, which are open to the public on July 30 and 31, as part of the State of Design Festival.

Coordinated by design consultancy Eco Innovators and jewellery-repair project The Treasury, the event comprises two parts. First, a group of artists and technicians will create new artworks from broken items that had been donated to charities; and second, the team of fixers will repair or repurpose goods brought in by the public. (Numbers are limited, so you must pre-register on the website to be involved.)

For his PhD research, Mr Mitchell has studied the way people modify mass-produced goods. Over the last decade, he says, products have become increasingly sealed up and un-repairable – designed for the dump, not for longevity.

“But because of this restriction in consumer access, there’s been a parallel movement to reclaim those rights,” he says.

One example is The Repair Manifesto, which was one of the inspirations for the upcoming workshops. Conceived by Dutch collective Platform 21, the manifesto’s tagline is “Stop Recycling. Start Repairing.”

“The idea is that we’ll save a lot more energy and consumer waste if products are designed for repair before recycling,” Mr Mitchell says. “The manifesto contends that repair is a productive and positive way to engage with the world – and it’s a lot of fun.”

Wil Campbell, an industrial designer and another of the collaborators in The Repair Workshops, agrees. He says the need to save virgin resources will only grow more pressing as oil becomes more scarce and expensive.

“Each product existed as resources before it was turned into a product and, in most cases, it’s going to continue to exist for many thousands of years after you’ve finished with it. It’s good to make the brief window of usefulness as long as possible.”

And you don’t need to be an engineer to try; mending household items is well within reach of the average person.

“You can go online and find out how to fix almost anything – so many people are willing to give it a go and post instructions on forums, or videos on YouTube and websites like ifixit.com. You can skill yourself up on a situation by situation basis,” he says.

Mr Campbell argues there’s a deeper benefit to the practice. The beauty of repair, he says, is that it not only saves money and resources, but also shifts the way we think about products, the way they work and the effort involved in their creation.

“Repairing forces people to engage with the stuff of their life. When you fix something, you develop a relationship with it,” he says. “It gives you a story to tell. People like telling stories about products – about the way they use their grandmother’s old cookware – and it’s that type of thing that is so rewarding.”

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Professor Ralph Horne, from RMIT’s Centre for Design, has a warning for new homebuyers: don’t rely on the sticker price.

For the last four years, he’s been working on a project called Lifetime Affordable Housing in Australia. The research was spurred by controversy over the way minimum energy ratings influence the price of housing.

“Some people argue that the regulations make houses more expensive to build and therefore, less affordable – and that they exacerbate an already serious problem in Australian cities,” Professor Horne says.

“So we set out to discover what impact energy bills have on housing affordability. From a household’s perspective, is it better to buy an eight-star house than a five-star house?”

His team analysed over 80 designs from volume builders, modelling changes that raised the ratings as much as possible. Rather than making major alterations to the plans, the researchers upped the standard of the materials, insulation and glazing.

They calculated the cost of stepping each home up from five to six stars, then to seven and eight. Next, they compared those upfront costs with predicted energy savings over time frames ranging from five to 40 years.

“We think the optimal star rating for a house in Melbourne is somewhere between seven and eight stars,” Professor Horne says. “Below that level, householders are worse off: over its lifetime the house will be more unaffordable than if it were built to a higher standard.”

There is a catch, however. The best returns accrue to householders who stay put for the long haul. But while a new house has a lifespan measured in several decades, many people move on within years.

Professor Horne found that when costs are measured over a 40-year time frame, houses that reach eight stars become the most affordable. Based on these results, he argues the case for standards much more stringent than the current six stars.

“When you buy a house, you don’t know how long you’re going to be there. The energy efficiency regulations provide a ‘social payback’ over the lifetime of the building, because they give you the comfort of knowing that if you move, it will be into another eight-star house,” he says.

“We can confidently improve the standards in building regulations without Victorian families being out of pocket. In fact, it would improve the resilience and the ability of those households to pay their bills in the future because those bills will be much smaller.”

Even in the absence of tougher rules, he argues that householders should go beyond the minimum requirements. “For a Victorian family buying a new house they intend to live in, I think a seven-star home is a good place to start. If you go above that, you’ll need to stay there quite a while if you want a private return.”

Professor Horne and his team found that the most flexible designs achieve higher standards most cheaply. Shifting the orientation of a home – to make sure living areas face north – can boost five-star plans by up to a star.

“If you’re building a new dwelling, it is worthwhile pushing your builder to deliver a more energy efficient home. You will save money in the short term and you’ll save even more money in the long term.”

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To slow climate change we must know our own impact

IF you want to deflate your household’s black balloons, you should first pinpoint exactly how many there are, says energy efficiency expert Alan Pears.

Last month, the Environment Protection Authority Victoria launched the latest version of its free online Greenhouse Calculator.

The tool, developed by Mr Pears, RMIT’s Centre for Design and Education Services Australia, connects our household habits with their greenhouse repercussions. It covers car use, public transport, flights, heating and cooling, hot water, lighting, appliances, cooking, shopping and waste.

“One of the crucial messages is that there are lots of ways to cut your carbon footprint,” Mr Pears says. “For example, if you can cut your food waste by not letting it go off in the fridge, it would reduce your expenditure on food – and that by itself would make a big difference.

“The idea behind the calculator is that instead of people throwing rocks at each other or feeling disempowered, they can get a sense of what the issues are, with enough sophistication to look at different ways to solve them.”

In a matter of minutes, the calculator’s “quick mode” will give you a good idea of your greenhouse emission profile. It graphs the results against both a typical and a green household, by way of comparison.

You can then delve into the detailed sections to better understand the areas that interest you, or those in which you fare the worst.

The options are astonishingly comprehensive. You can factor in the withered seals on your fridge or the lack of ventilation space behind it, and watch the emissions rise up accordingly. You can examine the effect on your car’s fuel efficiency when you inflate the tyres, schedule regular services or install roof racks.

“It’s very empowering,” Mr Pears says. “You can explore a much wider range of options for cutting your carbon footprint than you can with any other calculator in the world.

“Some behavioural things have much bigger effect than you realise. For example, changing your heating and cooling thermostat by one degree in Melbourne really does make a big difference to your energy use,” he says.

Among other findings likely to surprise, Mr Pears identifies the super-low emissions of public transport and the dazzling inefficiency of halogen downlights. Likewise, a large flat-screen TV might gobble more electricity than the family fridge (unless it’s one of the “amazingly efficient” new 8-star screens).

And although our shopping habits are often overlooked, they account for over one-third of the average household’s carbon footprint. “I think a lot of people will be surprised by how significant food and consumer items are,” he says.

The calculator’s “weekly shopping” section allows users to compare different kinds of meat and all the food groups, as well as drinks, processed goods and other supermarket products.

Mr Pears says there’s a benefit to the online tool beyond its potential to spotlight excess carbon emissions. “In most households people become fixated on certain things. Someone will say, ‘It’s the kids’ computers’, or, ‘My wife does this’, or, ‘My husband does that’.

“But with the calculator you can specify how many showers you have, long they last and the flow rate of the showerhead. It’s a big opportunity to resolve longstanding arguments,” he laughs. “In that way, it’s potentially a household conflict-resolution tool.”

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Over a building’s life, greener is also cheaper

IN the construction industry, the accepted wisdom is that eco-friendly translates as hip-pocket hostile.

Perth-based engineer Richard Haynes disagrees. Last month, he launched eTool – web-based software that figures out the full greenhouse impact of your new home or renovation.

Both he and his collaborator, Alex Bruce, were surprised by the results when they tallied the long-term costs and impacts of different building materials.

“The most interesting thing we’ve discovered using eTool is that there’s a good relationship between sustainability and prices. Now, even if I was making purely economic decisions, I’d choose many things that are very sustainable, just to save on the costs,” he says.

The reason green products are often cheaper over their life cycle, Mr Haynes says, is because of the higher replacement and maintenance expenses of many conventional products. But those costs normally remain hidden.

Internal fittings and finishes, such as floor coverings, paint and plaster can eat up a hefty portion of a home’s carbon pie, over its lifetime. “When you build, the embodied energy of the carpet might only be five per cent of the carbon emissions, but if you re-carpet every ten or fifteen years, it becomes significant – and in a cost sense as well,” he says.

Similarly, a low-embodied energy rammed-earth wall that doesn’t need painting could prove cheaper than double-brick and plaster, even if it costs more to begin with.

The eTool software is free for householders. It uses life cycle assessment to provide an estimate of the building’s carbon footprint and its likely costs, both upfront and ongoing.

It takes into account the energy that goes into manufacturing the materials, as well as transportation, assembly and maintenance. The program also considers the energy required to run the home once construction is complete, by combining the building’s star rating with extra factors, including the lighting, hot water and heating systems, and the number of occupants.

“We’re engineers, so we’re all about quantifying,” Mr Haynes says. “But our motto is to be vaguely right, not precisely wrong. Any life cycle assessment could be out by a third, due to the differences in the way people operate the same house.”

Based on his research for eTool, however, he has clear advice for anyone considering a building project.

“The best thing you can do is to increase the design life of the home,” he says. “It’s an unfortunate reality in Australia that the vast majority of buildings get demolished for fashion or economic reasons, rather than the building envelope wearing out.”

So how can you prolong your home’s longevity?

Mr Haynes suggests investing in top-notch design, opting for higher density, or renovating instead of rebuilding.

“Better design means the home has a more timeless quality. It will be appealing well into the future,” he says. “And if you can surpass the average density for your suburb then it’s likely your building will be a lower priority for redevelopment.”

Renovating extends the lifespan of the existing home, but for long-term energy savings, you have to do it with passive solar design and energy efficiency measures in mind.

“By preserving the structure, you’re preserving that embodied energy,” Mr Haynes says. “You can make an enormous difference to the aesthetic value and liveability of your house by renovating.”

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