Michael Green

Writer and producer

Mandatory disclosure

In Greener Homes on

The eco-standard of houses will be made public at sale or lease

IF you buy a car, you can easily find out its fuel efficiency. But what about a house? The ongoing costs and eco-impacts of existing buildings vary widely, but it’s hard for would-be buyers or renters to know what we’re in for.

In early 2009, state and federal governments agreed that a dwelling’s energy, greenhouse and water performance should be publicised at the point of sale and lease. Since then, however, not much has happened.

The policy is known as “residential building mandatory disclosure”. The name may be uninspiring, but if the reform is handled well, it could prompt a big change in household energy and water consumption.

While the details haven’t been set, the approach will be broader than the current star ratings. As well as the building fabric, it is likely to cover heating, cooling and hot water systems, together with lighting, clothes drying, rainwater tanks and water fittings, and a list of recommended upgrades.

Tim Adams, president of the Building Designers Association Victoria, says the scheme shouldn’t be compared to fuel efficiency in cars; rather, he likens it to a roadworthy certificate.

“We have consumer protection measures in place for all sorts of products. Mandatory disclosure should be seen as a kind of roadworthy check – and in this case we’re talking about protecting investments of several hundred thousand dollars,” he says.

“Unfortunately, we have a large quantity of building stock that was built before any energy efficiency provisions began. This is a way of informing us what the costs will be in our next house.”

Mr Adams argues that it will help people better judge the worth of the homes they’re inspecting.

“We’ve been lazy due to the cheapness of coal-fired electricity and natural gas,” he says. “In the future, when energy isn’t as abundant or cheap, we’ll need to be increasingly aware of these issues so we can value houses properly before we buy or rent.”

So how will it work?

In July, the federal government released a regulatory impact statement and sought feedback on different designs for the scheme. It detailed six proposals, ranging from a comprehensive, independent assessment, to an optional, self-assessed checklist.

The scheme’s success will depend on the quality of information required. The more rigorous options would be the most useful for buyers, but cost more upfront.

Some environment groups have criticised the report’s modelling, arguing it failed to factor in the health benefits of higher standards, or the avoided expense of new electricity infrastructure.

In its submission, the Association of Building Sustainability Assessors proposed a hybrid option, in which householders could choose among three tiers. Only people who opt for the most comprehensive version would be eligible to receive the highest rating.

Mr Adams’ association, which also accredits sustainability assessors, supports a system of compulsory self-assessment, at a minimum. The weaker proposals, such as an optional tick list, would be a waste of time. “The information needs to be consistent and people should be obliged to provide it,” he says.

“It’s in nobody’s interests to end up with the status quo. We need to do something about climate change and energy efficiency, so we need to start making some progress.”

Once the various governments agree on the scheme’s design, it will be up to the states and territories to enact the rules.

Read this article at The Age online

Retrofitting to six stars

In Architecture and building on

HOUSE energy ratings are on the rise again. From May, the regulations in the national building code were lifted from five to six stars. Within a year, the new rules will be in place throughout the country (except New South Wales, which uses BASIX instead).

The rating system is based on predicted heating and cooling requirements for your home. Depending on your location, a six-star rating means you’ll need up to a quarter less energy to stay comfortable than you would under the old five-star rules. With utility prices on the march, that equates to a hefty saving on your bills.

So how much does it cost to convert five-star plans to six stars?

New homes

In a recent study, Timothy O’Leary and Dr Martin Belusko from the University of South Australia analysed a dozen house designs offered by volume builders. Using standard materials and without any major redesigns, they found it would cost an average of $3900 to lift the plans to the new standard (PDF).

But Alison Carmichael, CEO of the Association of Building Sustainability Assessors, says it’s possible to build to six stars at no extra cost, so long as you include passive solar design techniques such as good orientation and cross-ventilation.

“You need to involve someone who understands thermal comfort right from the beginning,” she says.

If you wait until you’ve settled on the design, moving to a higher rating can get expensive. “By then, there’s usually been so much blood, sweat and tears put into the plan that you’re loathe to change anything,” Carmichael says. “To get it up to six stars, the building sustainability assessor is left with little option than to recommend expensive inclusions such double glazing.”

Retrofitting existing homes

Although the timing and details are still unclear, the federal and state governments have agreed that a dwelling’s energy efficiency should be disclosed when it is put up for sale or lease. That’s sure to provide a big incentive for homeowners to lift their green game. But is possible for every home to hit six stars?

The Moreland Energy Foundation (MEFL) and Sustainability Victoria have analysed the efficiency potential of dozens of existing houses.

The researchers surveyed each dwelling and calculated its energy rating. Then they modelled a series of upgrades to the building fabric: ceiling, wall and floor insulation, draught proofing, drapes and pelmets, external shading and double-glazed windows.

Govind Maksay, from MEFL, says that without major renovations, six stars will be very difficult to achieve in most homes.

The average upfront rating of the houses they examined was just 1.7 stars. With a full suite of retrofitting measures in place, the average jumped to 5 stars. But out of the 45 dwellings studied, only half a dozen were able to reach or exceed six stars.

In Maksay’s initial study, the full retrofitting package landed at an average cost of over $22,000. However, the changes weren’t all equal, in either impact or cost.

“On average, over 80 per cent of the rating improvement came from the insulation and comprehensive draught proofing,” he says, “but that constituted just 20 per cent of the total upgrade cost.”

In contrast, double-glazing proved highly expensive for more limited benefit.

Although these findings vary according to the dwelling and the modelling undertaken, Maksay says householders can learn important lessons from the study: focus on the fundamentals before going for trendy upgrades – seal gaps and insulate walls and ceilings.

“To really improve your star rating you have to tackle wall insulation, whether that’s with blow-in granulated mineral wool, or by removing the weatherboards or plasterboard and inserting batts.

“Insulating your ceiling and ignoring your walls is like trying to stay warm wearing a beanie, but no clothes,” he says. “The other message is that there’s a difference between wimpy and comprehensive draught sealing. You need more than just door snakes.”

Maksay adds another important caveat: all-out blitzing your home’s star rating probably isn’t the smartest way to spend your money, or save energy, because it only takes into account the building fabric. “You can reduce your energy costs cheaply in other ways, with efficient lighting, appliances and hot water systems, and by reducing standby power,” he says.

“Also, if you’re renovating, think about how you can more effectively heat and cool your house – for example, you could put a super-efficient reverse-cycle air conditioner into your living room and limit the total area you need to keep at the right temperature.”

RETROFITTING CASE STUDIES

From Sustainability Victoria’s On-Ground Assessment of the Energy Efficiency Potential of Victorian Homes.

Vermont House

Construction type: 1970s single-storey, detached brick veneer, 175 m2. Suspended timber flooring.

Rating before upgrade: 1.5 stars

Rating after full upgrade: 5.3 stars

Cost for full upgrade: $45,724 (including double glazing worth $26,288, which added 0.4 stars to the rating, after drapes and pelmets)

Comments: “This home was orientated well,” Maksay says. “The long axis of the block is east-west, so it has a long northerly aspect and the living areas are situated to the north. All the utility areas are on the southern side, with a small amount of glazing. It had very good sub-floor access so it would be possible to insulate the ceiling, walls and floor to a high level.”

Coburg House

Construction type: 1930s single-storey, detached weatherboard, 108 m2. Flooring partially suspended timber and partially concrete slab on ground.

Rating before upgrade: 1.2 stars

Rating after full upgrade: 3.7 stars

Cost for full upgrade: $18,376 (including double glazing worth $11,455 which added only 0.2 stars to the rating, after drapes and pelmets)

Comments: “This house is not oriented very well,” Maksay says. “It only has a couple of windows to the north and one of them is in a bedroom. Wall insulation made a significant impact here – more than doubling the star rating of the house – but there wasn’t sufficient access to install floor insulation.

“But this house is ideally suited to using an efficient gas heater in the kitchen and living space only, because that area is thermally isolated. The Vermont house is centrally heated, so even though it reached a higher star rating, it would have a much larger overall annual heating and cooling bill.”

This article was published in Sanctuary Magazine

Backyard ponds

In Greener Homes on

Living ponds or pools are good for your garden

WITH the cost of electricity and water rising, conventional swimming pools are becoming more resource-sapping than refreshing.

But landscape designer Phillip Johnson believes there are several smart ways to keep water bodies in our gardens – from natural pools to seasonal ponds and billabongs – if only we think a little differently.

“If you have water in your front or backyard, you’re bringing back habitat and biodiversity. And it helps cool down that space as well,” he says.

The first thing to do, he argues, is to think of stormwater as a valuable resource. Because of climate change, south-east Australia is expected to receive less rainfall overall, but more severe storms.

“Every property and road has been designed to drain water as fast as possible, and that contaminated water gets into our creeks and rivers,” Mr Johnson says. “If you can slow the stormwater, catch it and clean it, whatever leaves your place will be in much better condition.”

To help do that, he designs dry creek beds or swales running from rainwater tank overflows or downpipes. “When it rains, the dry creek bed comes alive and feeds into a billabong, water feature, or natural pool, which works as a reservoir for flood mitigation,” he says.

“In a natural system, billabongs exist on the edge of a creek. When it floods, it fills up this little wetland to the side. They’re really rich in biodiversity and create great habitats for frogs.”

Unlike conventional pools, Mr Johnson’s natural pools don’t rely on chlorine or salt to keep the water clean, but rather, use biological filters to aerate the water. An energy-efficient pump moves the water through a “regeneration” zone. “We learn from nature, where water often passes through river gravels and plants that absorb nutrients,” he explains.

Installing natural pools, and converting existing ones, has become a significant part of his business, but he maintains that you don’t have to spend big bucks or install a complex system. “You can do this yourself, but you’ve got to do your research.”

At her house in Northcote, permaculturalist Kat Lavers took the straightforward approach. She simply dug a hole and dropped in an old bathtub with the plughole blocked.

“We filled it with water from our tank and put rocks in there to create niches and different microclimates for plants that need a shallower depth,” she says.

“We also collected water from a nearby freshwater dam, which contained lots of critters like small shellfish, freshwater snails and maybe even dragonfly larvae. It added a diversity of life into our pond – and that means mosquito larvae don’t breed in large numbers.”

The plants in the pond also help inhibit mosquitoes by aerating the water and reducing the nutrient level. You can grow edible plants there, such as land cress and some kinds of mint. Water chestnuts will thrive in a boggy spot at the edge of a pond.

“The most obvious benefit of having a pond is beauty, but it goes beyond that,” Ms Lavers says. “It provides a reliable water source for lots of critters – some of them slugs and snails, but also really helpful ones like dragonflies, hoverflies, honeybees and lots of creatures that help to minimise the work you need to do in the vegie garden.”

Overshadowing

In Architecture and building, Environment, The Age on

Solar initiatives in built-up areas may be left struggling to see the light of day

THE eco-friendly Australian cities of the future will combine dense housing with savvy, energy-smart design. Or will they? Is there a conflict looming between the twin green goals of urban densification and widespread harvesting of the sun’s rays?

More and more people are installing solar panels and solar hot water systems, growing their own vegies and adapting their houses for passive solar gain. But as they do so, they may find their desire for direct sunlight overshadowed by bigger buildings next door.

Professor Kim Dovey, chair of architecture and urban design at the University of Melbourne, says the right to sunlight is a growing issue.

“Since the 1990s, there’s been a strong push for higher densities, often based on green arguments, such as getting more people living closer to train stations and so on. But at the same time, the solar access issue has been forgotten,” he says.

He says planning rules treat sunlight as a matter of amenity, not sustainability.

“To me, the deeper issue is that the ownership of a block of land seems to imply some kind of right to access the solar energy that comes with it,” Professor Dovey says. “And we also have a public imperative for distributed energy systems – the idea that we should generate electricity everywhere, not only in one place.”

Currently, although every level of government offers subsidies or incentives for solar panels and hot water units, there’s been no equivalent attempt to safeguard those investments against overshadowing.

Similarly, the Victorian planning controls don’t shield householders’ access to direct sunlight in the winter, the time of year when it’s needed most for passive heating.

Despite this criticism, the Victorian Department of Planning and Community Development maintains that its regulations adequately protect existing north-facing windows and backyards.

Under the rules, shadow diagrams are drawn at the spring equinox, not the winter solstice – which means they don’t take account of the six months when the sun is lowest in the sky.

Seamus Haugh, a spokesperson for the department, says the current practice represents “a sensible balance”.

“In Melbourne, [using] the winter solstice would unreasonably restrict redevelopment opportunities and would significantly impact on homeowner rights to modernise existing housing,” he says.

A review of the state planning scheme is underway, and is scheduled to report its preliminary findings to the minister at the end of November.

Angela Meinke, manager of planning and building at the City of Melbourne, acknowledges that sustainability isn’t a key consideration under the rules, as they stand. “The planning scheme doesn’t address the impact you could have on green initiatives on neighbouring properties,” she says.

“The challenge we have in planning is to weigh up the rights of property owners to develop and the rights of neighbours not to be affected by development. We try to strike a balance.”

But as the risks of climate change and energy scarcity grow more pressing, it is becoming increasingly apparent that householders everywhere must adopt low-consumption, low-impact lifestyles. The notion of “balance” may need to favour sunlight over development – especially where the plans in question are only for larger houses, not more dwellings.

Professor Dovey contends that the government must “take some responsibility for a sustainable future” by planning actively, rather than prolonging the market-led approach of recent decades.

“In the middle of winter it’s very hard to avoid the blocking of sun, so there have to be compromises. I think that will mean that in any given area, the height limits ought to be reasonably flat,” he says.

“You could have a law that says properties cannot differ by more than a couple of storeys from one property to another. And that would improve the city, because it won’t be pockmarked with large towers.”

In the case of solar photovoltaic panels, Stephen Ingrouille, from Going Solar, believes overshadowing concerns can usually be solved by careful planning or by negotiation between landowners.

“You could get people to set back a little, or bevel the corners of buildings,” he suggests. “Potentially you can move solar panels to another spot, but who pays for that? What is reasonable?”

He notes that in the UK, residents have defended their solar access under the common law doctrine of Ancient lights, which gives owners of long-standing buildings a right to maintain their established level of illumination. In Australia, the courts have heard very few cases about solar access for sustainability.

As a general rule, Mr Ingrouille advises would-be customers to consider the likelihood of “overdevelopment” on the property immediately to their north. “Be mindful that might happen and try to plan for it,” he says.

There goes the sun

IN the mid-1990s, the Walsh family extended their Kensington home. With the help of their next door neighbour at the time – an architect – they designed a living area with glass doors and high windows to capture the sun.

“In winter time, it’s like a sun room in here,” says Wally Walsh. “We’ve got a grape vine to provide shade in summer, but in winter it loses all its leaves, the sun streams in and you don’t need to heat the room.”

The architect has since moved on, and the family’s new neighbours have extended twice. The most recent addition was a second storey, erected earlier this year.

The length of the block runs east to west, so the home’s northern windows look out onto the house next door. But where once they saw sky, the family now see rows of cream weatherboards.

“I came home one evening and the frame was up and I thought: ‘My God’,” Mr Walsh says. “I contacted the Melbourne City Council immediately, who told me that we had no grounds to appeal other than on the basis of heritage.”

Angela Meinke, the council’s planning and building manager, confirmed that in this case, heritage concerns were the only matter the council could consider in determining its planning permit.

The building surveyor, however, was required to assess the shadows cast on their existing north-facing windows. Unfortunately for the Walsh family, the demands of the regulations aren’t stringent enough to safeguard their winter sun.

By Mr Walsh’s reckoning, the rules favour development over energy-efficient design. “It’s going to be colder and darker in here. We’ll need to have the heating and lights on more often,” he says.

“They’re doing what they’re entitled to do, apparently. But it’s sad. You’re supposed to design your house so you get sunshine in winter and shade in the summer, aren’t you? For us, ultimately, it was a waste of time.”

Read this article at The Age online

Climate change in Victoria

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Climate change heralds an uncomfortable future for Victorians

It’s easy to think of climate change as a far-flung concern, well away from our daily lives. But what are the predictions for Melbourne and Victoria? How will they affect our cities and houses?

Dr Penny Whetton, principle research scientist at CSIRO, says we can expect the average temperature to be 1 degree warmer by 2030, compared to the start of this century. It could get much hotter as the decades go on.

“If we continue the growing trend in global emissions, we’re looking at between two and four degrees warmer by 2070. And then warmer again later in the century,” she says.

Among the most uncomfortable consequences will be heatwaves. “If you think about the severe hot spell in Melbourne in February 2009,” Dr Whetton says, “that type of weather is going to become more frequent.”

Under a high emissions scenario, days over 40 degrees could be three to six times more common by 2070.

Such extremes not only damage infrastructure, such as electricity and rail networks, but also human health. The heatwave preceding the Black Saturday bushfires caused 374 deaths in Melbourne. To limit the consequences, we’ll need to design our buildings for low-energy summertime cooling, not only winter warmth.

Temperature rise is just one part of the change. On rainfall, Dr Whetton says most of the science suggests we can expect less. “But as temperatures increase, when conditions are right for a thunderstorm or a downpour, the atmosphere holds more moisture,” she says.

“We’re looking at longer dry spells and less rainfall, but when rain comes, we’ll have heavier downpours. That’s the pattern for Victoria and most of southern Australia as well.”

Drier conditions overall will make farming more difficult and probably lead to higher prices for fresh fruit and vegies. Bigger storms will cause more flash floods, unless we upgrade our drains and culverts.

Then there’s sea level rise: the predictions for the end of the century vary from about 30 centimetres to around one metre.

“The increase in sea level is due both to oceans becoming warmer and expanding, and to ice on land melting,” Dr Whetton says. “The largest ice sheets that concern us are in parts of Antarctica and Greenland. We don’t know a lot about how rapidly the ice can melt, but sea level rise is likely to continue for many hundreds of years.”

Under its Future Coasts program, the Victorian government is planning for a rise of “not less than 0.8 metres by 2100”. That’ll mean protecting beaches and properties against erosion and storm tides, as well as restricting new development in low-lying places.

But Dr Whetton says we still don’t know what the biggest impacts on cities will be. “We might feel it most through the impact on the hinterland – the climate change predictions are quite a worry for food production in the Murray-Darling basin,” she says.

“It’s likely we will find ways to adapt to a 1- or 2-degree warming, although we don’t know for sure. A 3- or 4-degree warming is going to be significantly more challenging. If we want to avoid the bigger climate change, then it’s not about adaptation. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally.”