Michael Green

Writer and producer

Green renters

In Environment, The Age on

Apartment renters can make the most of their limited eco-options.

WHEN Nina Bailey moved to her rented flat in Thornbury two years ago, the first thing she missed was her compost heap. “I suddenly had to throw food in my bin and I hate doing that – I’m very conscious that rubbish bins are generally half full of food,” she says.

The next glitch was greywater. “There are lots of ways to harvest and distribute grey water, but when you don’t have a garden, what can you do?” she says. “Most of the sustainability things I was doing seemed to be related to having a garden.”

Eco-wise renters may find the going tough in detached houses, but life can seem even browner in an apartment, according to Chris Ward, from the Green Renters blog and tenant education service.

As well as the usual struggle to communicate with landlords and avoid making structural changes, apartment renters are usually lumped with a lack of outdoor space and restrictions imposed by the body corporate. “Even something as simple as hanging your washing out on a balcony might not be allowed,” Ward says.

Nevertheless, he maintains there’s plenty of action to take. “As with the rental community as a whole, many of the things you can do are more related to your habits and where you spend your money, instead of big, conceptual changes.”

Standard retrofitting practices all apply: vigorous draught sealing, thorough light globe swapping and careful water-efficiency re-fitting. And when you sign up for electricity, be sure you choose 100 per cent GreenPower.

Flat dwellers can compensate for lack of a yard by employing extra tricks, such as flushing the toilet with greywater from the shower, and growing a lush balcony garden. “You can use all sorts of things as pots, from wheelbarrows and boxes to baskets and bags, and then take them with you when you move,” Ward says. “You can compost in an apartment as well – Bokashi Buckets are the best option and they work well indoors.”

When it comes to bigger changes, tenants can use scheduled maintenance or conked-out appliances as eco-pressure points: try requesting water- and energy-efficient upgrades. “A lot of renters are fearful, but often, if you just ask you’ll be surprised how many landlords will say yes,” he says.

“You have to be firm, friendly and confident. If you’ve been a tenant for several years you can use that as leverage.” It’s also wise to cultivate a good relationship with your real estate agent – sometimes they’ll be in a better position to push landlords on your behalf.

In Thornbury, Bailey decided to be upfront about her green ambitions – at work, she’s the sustainable living program manager at Environment Victoria. She got over her no-backyard blues by rigging up a funnel and pipe system to shift greywater from her shower to the shared garden.

It’s difficult for renters to join the body corporate, but there are other ways to influence decisions. “I talked to other residents about composting,” Bailey says, “and one of the owner-occupiers convinced the body corporate to buy compost bins.”

Environment Victoria has just updated its Victorian Green Renters’ Guide, which includes a comprehensive list of retrofitting advice and a summary of the rebates now available. For flat tenants, it suggests encouraging the body corporate to install low-energy globes and timers for external lighting.

Bailey has found an unexpected upside to apartment living: reducing her overall consumption. “I only have a small amount of space, so I have to reduce clutter. It makes me focus on not building up too much waste or junk, and on reusing as much as I can.”

Sustainable House Day 2010

In Greener Homes on

Learn from people who’ve shrunk their footprint.

IN the last three years, Alan Cuthbertson has halved his family’s consumption of electricity, water and gas. Next weekend, he’ll open his door to the public at large, and reveal the tips and tactics that have made all the difference.

The family’s Lower Plenty home will be part of Sustainable House Day on Sunday, September 12.

It will be one of about 180 houses on show throughout Australia for the free event, including 50 in Victoria and 12 in Melbourne. The homes will be open from 10 am to 4 pm.

The event’s coordinator, Judy Celmins, says the residences range from those with simple, low-cost alterations, right through to new dwellings complete with every imaginable innovation. Details of the homes are available on both the Sustainable House Day and shmeco websites.

Ms Celmins says visitors find it invaluable to see first hand the way people have altered their homes, and ask them how they did it. “Whatever stage you’re at, you can learn something,” she says. “It’s our ninth year and even the people who come every year say they always learn something new.”

Mr Cuthbertson and his family have been living in the same house for two decades, but only began retrofitting in the last few years – prompted by their daughter, who was then completing her engineering degree.

“We had lots of discussions about climate change and it convinced me that we should be doing something,” he says.

His message for visitors is that it’s not difficult to make improvements. “It’s not something you do overnight, but you just keep working on it.”

The Cuthbertsons have ticked off all the usual retrofitting measures, such as thorough ceiling insulation and draught sealing around windows and doors. They’ve also stopped the gaps left inside the kitchen cabinetry and around skylights.

By way of big-ticket technology, they’ve installed solar photovoltaic panels, a solar hot water system and a large water tank that fills from a collection point in the stormwater drain.

When their old central heating system needed to be replaced, they paid an extra $2000 for an efficient model that could heat in zones. “We only heat the core of the house and turn on the other rooms as we need them. That’s made a big difference,” he says.

Mr Cuthbertson is a computer programmer, and a tinkerer, so visitors will also be privy to a number of his nifty innovations, including a mirror that reflects sunlight inside during winter and a retractable blind over the clothesline that lets the washing dry on rainy days.

He’s also done some DIY double-glazing, and fitted cardboard pelmets that rest between the curtain rail and the architrave. “It’s a nice solution – they’re effective and a lot cheaper than putting on proper pelmets,” he says. “I’ve been concentrating on things that don’t cost a lot but give a reasonable return.”

A series of eight temperature sensors around the home feeds data into Mr Cuthbertson’s computer, informing him about the efficacy of the changes he’s made.

“I’ve put in a bit of effort and achieved a fifty per cent reduction in energy and water use, so I feel the politicians are selling us short on climate change,” he says. “There’s nothing special about what we’ve done. It’s all applicable to other homes.”

Changing the volume

In Blog on

THE cold weather slowed me down this month. I’ve been learning to bake sourdough bread. The house is small enough that the oven heats the whole place, so every fresh loaf warmed my insides and my outsides.

I’ve been pottering at odd jobs too. I have an old two-deck tape player I was given when I turned 13. Now it looks unaccountably bulky, but once I thought it sleek. It contained mysterious worlds. I remember listening to Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ and feeling entranced and uneasy.

For over a decade the volume control has been unreliable and the sound has rattled and risen like a coming train. No amount of adjustment could stop it.

Finally, I decided to find out why. I opened the shell of the tape player and cleaned the relevant parts with a cue-tip. That’s all. But now the radio glides quietly into the right station.

Confident of my newfound volume control expertise, I assured my friend Mischa that I could repair her over-loud alarm clock. I disassembled it and found a flimsy, broken plastic knob that could not be re-attached. Even so, I took pleasure in the discovery: at least we knew the problem. And the alarm clock still works. With a slender implement and a slice of dexterity, the volume can be adjusted. Right, Mischa?

Mischa and her alarm clock

Simple fixes. Maybe it’s beginner’s luck, but I’m convinced that adequate patches could be found for many malfunctioning gizmos just by taking a quick look inside.

A second small project:

Our house has a north-facing courtyard. On clear winter days, there is no better place to be than resting against the rear wall of the house, looking at the veggie patch, taking in the sun.

But the ground has a concrete lip that doesn’t suit a chair. So one afternoon I assembled a bench from reclaimed framing timber, according to a tried and tested Urban Bush Carpenter design: three parallel lengths to sit on, and x-crossed, reinforced legs below. I sawed the legs to match the awkward split-level concrete.

Maybe the bench accounts for my subsequent lack of practical work. I made my perfect sitting spot and then I sat there, reading, whenever the sun broke through the clouds.

And now I’ve left town. I’m on my way, slowly, to Cairns. I’ll be on the lookout for bush mechanics between here and there. 

Passive house

In Greener Homes on

Meet the eco-housing standard that demands attention to detail.

HOUSEHOLD energy use accounts for nearly one-fifth of the Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions. And while our residential efficiency standard will rise to six stars next year, we’re still lagging behind many parts of the US and Europe.

If you want your home to stand above the rest, you could take your cues from one of the most rigorous standards of all: passive house.

Founded in Germany and Sweden in the 1990s, passivhaus (in the original German) is a voluntary standard for building energy efficiency. It aims to create homes that don’t need any conventional heating – even in the bitterly cold winters of northern Europe.

Christoph Begert, from eco-consultancy Sustainable Built Environments, has studied the way passive house principles apply to Australian homes. He’s speaking this week at RMIT’s Green Building and Design Conference.

The concepts involved are nothing new: they include all the usual suspects of passive solar design, such as good orientation and shading. But they’re combined without compromise. “The rigor of the requirements is what makes passive houses successful,” he says. “They effectively decouple the internal climate from the external climate.”

Mr Begert, originally from Germany, says the criteria are such that the power of a hair dryer is sufficient to heat a 100-square-metre home. “The houses often end up not requiring any heating system at all, because a few people and electrical appliances produce more heat than a hair dryer does.”

There are three crucial elements of a passive house. Firstly, the homes are ‘super-insulated’ to two or three times the level required here. Windows are usually triple glazed.

Secondly, they’re sealed like a snap-lock bag. Gaps and cracks must be comprehensively stopped, to the point where the air change rate is less than 0.6 of the volume of the house per hour. That’s up to 30 times less than the rate in a typical Victorian home when a strong wind is blowing.

Finally, to make sure there’s plenty of fresh air inside, passive houses have mechanical ventilation systems. They often use a heat exchanger, which captures the heat from exhaust air to keep the temperature constant inside.

The result, according to Mr Begert, are homes that rate beyond nine stars.

He has examined the performance of passive houses in Spain and Italy and compared them to conditions here. “From our analysis, we found that Melbourne has a very good climate for passive houses,” he says.

Because of our warmer climate, the insulation need not be so extreme and windows only double-glazed. Good shading is compulsory to avoid baking in the hotter months. “Passive houses perform extremely well during winter, but you have to be sure you don’t make an oven during summer,” he says.

In Europe, homeowners have found that building a passive house costs between 10 and 15 per cent more than a standard home. But with little or no heating and cooling, ongoing expenses are low.

The theme of the RMIT conference is “Greening the Existing Building Stock”. Mr Begert argues that the passive house principles can be applied to renovations as well as new homes.

“You don’t renovate your house very often. When you go to that effort, it’s worthwhile getting it right. You’ll spend a bit more money, but you get really good value for it.”

House energy ratings

In Architecture and building, Environment on

IF you’re building, buying or renovating, there’s now more reason than ever to make your home as efficient as you can. Here’s a guide to house energy ratings and regulations, and the returns for going green.

House Energy ratings

House energy ratings are a measure of the thermal efficiency of a dwelling. Basically, the stars tell you how comfy the home will be throughout the year.

So how are they figured out?

Energy assessors plug the details of your plans, or existing building, into a software program such as FirstRate5, AccuRate or BERS Professional. The programs, accredited by the Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS), analyse the home’s layout and orientation, and the construction of the roof, floor, walls and windows.

This information is matched with the local climate to calculate how much heating and cooling you’ll need to stay comfortable every day of the year. Homes can score between zero and ten stars. At zero stars, the building does next to nothing to protect against the temperature outside; at ten, it will be nice and snug without any artificial heating or cooling. A five-star home is good, but far from outstanding.

The ratings are one way to comply with the minimum standards for new buildings set out in the Building Code of Australia. It’s up to the states and territories to apply those standards – and they tend to do it haphazardly, with their own variations.

The New South Wales government has sidestepped star ratings altogether. Its planning tool, BASIX, contains caps on energy and water use as well as environmentally sustainable design considerations such as location, materials and fittings.

Last year, state and federal governments agreed to lift the residential energy efficiency standards from five to six stars (or equivalent), and bring the changes into effect by May 2011.

Six star

Six-star homes need one quarter less energy than five-star homes to stay comfortable, says Wayne Floyd, president of the Association of Building Sustainability Assessors (ABSA). “And of course, that reduction translates into lower utility bills.”

Despite yelping from the building industry about price hikes, Floyd argues that the higher performance can be reached at little or no extra construction cost. “Orientation is the key factor. If the house is designed correctly for that block of land, it can be cost neutral,” he says.

“We’re starting to see houses with bedrooms to the rear and living areas to the front, because that gets the greatest solar access. I’ve looked at projects that achieve over six stars with standard insulation and no double glazing, because they’re oriented and designed correctly.”

Poorly oriented homes can still reach six stars, but they need top-quality windows and insulation. Even in those cases, Floyd says, “the expense is very minor relative to the total cost of the house.”

So the higher standards might not cost much, but will they make a big impact?

Because the new regulations don’t take into account house size, appliances and behaviour they won’t necessarily reduce our overall household energy consumption.

New houses are much larger than in decades past, which means they gobble more energy, materials and consumer items, and spit out more waste, all of which take energy. Likewise, our habits around the home have a drastic effect on the amount of energy we consume.

Damien Moyse, energy policy officer at the Alternative Technology Association, says that in an international context, the new regulations are far from ambitious. “There are many regions, particularly in Europe, which require the equivalent of seven stars or above,” he says. “The UK has a program for zero net carbon homes by 2016.”

According to Moyse, in order to reduce the carbon emissions from housing, we must target existing homes. “The real trouble with the star rating scheme is that it’s generally for new buildings,” he says, “and new buildings are a very small percentage of our housing stock.”

Mandatory disclosure

The good news is that state and federal governments have also agreed to a measure that could lift the energy efficiency of existing houses.

Under new ‘mandatory disclosure’ rules, homeowners and landlords will be required to declare the energy, water and greenhouse performance of a house when they put it up for sale or lease. That means buyers and renters will be able to compare the environmental impacts and ongoing costs of different homes before they sign on the dotted line. “It will be very good because it focuses on the built environment, not the ‘to-be-built’ environment,” says Wayne Floyd.

The rules were scheduled to be phased in from May 2011, beginning with energy efficiency, but so far no details have been finalised. “It’s up to the individual states to adopt it, and each state is working on its own version. I feel that it will be a two or three year process,” Floyd says.

Moyse argues that although the added transparency will encourage more people to retrofit their dwellings, the changes could have gone further. “Mandatory disclosure just provides information,” he says. “You also need minimum standards to force landlords or homeowners to upgrade their properties.”

The growing market for green homes

Buyers are already getting the message, especially in the ACT, where mandatory disclosure at the point of sale was introduced in 1999. A study for the federal government found that in 2005 and 2006, lifting the energy rating of a median-priced house in the ACT by just half a star added about $4,500 to its value.

The study shows that, depending on the specifications of house, the cost of adding stars can be far lower than the payoff when it comes to selling.

Danielle King has just founded Green Moves, a sustainable real estate listing website. She says estate agents are split on the importance of eco-friendly features. “Some think that greening up doesn’t make a difference. Others believe it’s becoming more and more significant.”

With tougher regulations coming in, King says it’s unwise for people not to focus on energy efficiency, especially if they’re considering a renovation. “Like it or not, sustainable homes are the future of the real estate industry.”

She points to ‘green belts’ in the inner suburbs of our cities, such as Brunswick in Melbourne, where “properties with sustainable features have been selling at between $80,000 to $100,000 more than equivalent properties without them”.

“My view is that homes with good energy performance and lower greenhouse gas emissions will enjoy a noticeable increase a market price. It’s already happening regardless of mandatory disclosure and six star being in place.”

Case study: Rate as you renovate

When Peter Nattrass and his family decided to renovate their 1920s bungalow in the Adelaide suburb Prospect, they decided to give energy efficiency pride of place.

In his job as a development assessment planner and sustainability advisor, Nattrass had observed that energy rating is usually an afterthought, used only for council compliance. “People think about energy efficiency too late and end up rushing to fix something that’s fundamentally broken,” he says.

The Building Code of Australia is a model code for new buildings. When it comes to extensions, each state and territory applies the rules differently – for details, you’ll need to contact your local authority. Generally speaking, the new portions of the dwelling must meet the code’s specifications, but it isn’t mandatory to lift the rating of the whole home.

“We wanted our extension to lift the performance of the rest of the house,” Nattrass says. “We instructed the architect from day one that we wanted a passive solar design and that we would be having it rated as we went.”

He estimates that his original house would have scored about two stars. Based on the architect’s extension plans, energy assessors Sustainability House rated the home at just below five stars.

“They thermally modelled the whole house and that picked up the weaknesses in our existing home. We then tweaked the specifications,” he says. The family was able to compare the costs and benefits of measures such as ceiling and cavity wall insulation, double-glazing and a planned reverse brick veneer wall.

The process reduced their projected energy needs by another quarter, for very little cost – under $500 for the initial assessment and advice. “We lifted the whole house up to six star and went for the best bang for our insulation bucks,” Nattrass says.

The experience has given the family extra comfort, both physically and financially. “One of the key drivers for us was avoiding the risk of underperforming compared to new homes built to the six star requirements. If you don’t bring the rest of the house up, you could end up disadvantaged in the market when you sell.”

Published in Sanctuary Magazine 12.