Michael Green

Journalist, producer and oral historian

Star ratings on the ground

In Architecture and building, Environment, The Age on

HUNDREDS of thousands of new homes across the country are not performing at their promised energy efficiency rating, forcing residents to use up to double the predicted energy required for heating and cooling, experts say.

Research by air-tightness testing company Air Barrier Technologies has shown that air leakage in new homes is five to 10 times worse than expected under the star-rating scheme.

This means that an average five-star home is likely to perform only to a three-star level, potentially doubling energy bills for residents.

About 40,000 new homes are built in Victoria each year, and all must adhere to the five-star standard. This will rise to six stars from May.

But a group of industry players, including Henley Homes, who have been lobbying state and federal government and building regulators to crack down on the air leakage problem, say unless more action is taken, customers cannot be confident their homes meet the stated star rating.

“At the moment there’s an assumption that houses are built to a far tighter standard than what we believe they are in reality,” Adam Selvay, Henley Homes energy and sustainability specialist, told The Sunday Age last week.

The question of builder liability was raised in a meeting with the Federal Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and the Australian Building Codes Board in April last year.

Following that meeting, Terry Mahoney, president of the Air Infiltration and Ventilation Association of Australia, emailed other attendees, as well as federal government ministers and senior public servants, criticising officials for failing to respond to the issues discussed.

“It became apparent that no amount of scientific evidence, or global best practice comparisons or safety and health risk concerns raised by the visiting group, would engender any action or urgency from either the [Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency] or the [Australian Building Codes Board] at this time,” he wrote.

Mr Mahoney noted the attendees’ view that there is “overwhelming evidence” that the current star rating method “proves grossly inaccurate when constructed homes are performance tested”.

Bruce Rowse, from building efficiency consultants CarbonetiX, said air gaps are common around doors, light fixtures, window- and door-frames, and places where pipes or cables enter the home.

“Sealing is very important and to do it properly is really laborious. And there’s no inspection for it,” he said.

He also expressed concern that the regulatory regime doesn’t ensure insulation is adequately installed. “The building inspector has no idea of what insulation actually goes into the walls,” he said. “It’s also very difficult to validate exactly how well the ceiling is insulated.”

Victorian Building Commissioner Tony Arnel denied there was a systemic problem with air leakage standards or insulation in five-star homes. He maintained that an auditing process had consistently demonstrated that new homes complied with regulations.

“But building is not necessarily always a perfect science. We did some research two years ago with Air Barrier Technologies and that did tell us that there was potentially an issue with draughts and gaps that we needed to continue to work with industry to ensure that quality is met,” he said.

Mr Arnel said if testing proved a home did not meet its star rating due to building deficiencies, the owner could take legal action against the builder “because presumably it hasn’t been built to the right specification”.

Housing Industry Association building and environment director Kristin Brookfield said the association was not aware of any specific research on air leakage but acknowledged that a building’s energy efficiency is affected if it is not properly sealed.

“It’s important that this is seen as an issue about the rating tools,” she said. “This is not an issue about the actual construction of the homes.”

Lin Enright, from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, said that concerns had been raised with the Department of Climate Change about air infiltration, but no complaints or inquiries had been brought to the attention of the consumer watchdog.

The issue was privately championed last year by former Victorian Planning Minister, Justin Madden. In July, he wrote to the federal Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr, requesting that the Australian Building Codes Board consider testing for air leakage to ensure greater energy efficiency of housing and other properties.

Read this article at The Age online

Onsite wastewater treatment

In Greener Homes on

Homeowners in unsewered areas can choose greener systems than septics.

MANY years ago, John Eldridge decided to retrofit the septic tank on his Red Hill property with a worm farm treatment system. The system, made by A & A Worm Farm Waste Systems in Hastings, works the same way as the forest floor, he says. “In the forest you’ve got all sorts of things dropping out of the trees – twigs, bird poo, the odd dead bird – and the water that falls is filtered through it.

“At the top of the pile the material is coarse, but as it moves down it is broken down more finely.”

His worm farm mimics the natural composting process. “The material disintegrates in the liquid. We never need to pump it out and there is absolutely no smell at all,” he says. “We noticed a huge difference.”

Septic tanks are still the most common wastewater system in unsewered parts of Australia, but they don’t actively treat the wastewater to remove pathogens. The effluent must be disposed in trenches more than a foot deep, and the tanks regularly pumped out.

Like a septic tank, Mr Eldridge’s worm farm is classified as a primary treatment system.

Sarah West, from Environment Protection Authority Victoria, says secondary treatment systems are best for recycling the nutrients found in wastewater, by way of sub-surface irrigation. There are many kinds available, including aeration systems, reed beds, sand filters and trickle filters and some worm farms.

“With any of those higher quality secondary treatment systems, you are permitted to irrigate the effluent through the garden in the topsoil layer, where plants reuse the nutrients in the water,” Ms West says.

“Those nutrients are a resource, but septic tank trenches are too deep in the soil for most plants to access them.”

If you are planning a wastewater system in an unsewered area, Ms West suggests you first consider how you’d like to reuse the treated effluent. “Do you want to irrigate the garden, or use it in the home for toilet flushing?” she asks. “To recycle it back into the house, you need to choose a greywater treatment system approved for toilet flushing.”

But if you just want the treated water to irrigate the garden, you can use an all-waste method such as those listed above. Be aware that you must only use an EPA-approved onsite treatment system, and must obtain a permit from your local council.

The various technologies have very different ongoing costs. “Find out how often the system has to be serviced and how much electricity it consumes,” Ms West recommends. “Ask about the cost of spare parts and consumables – some need chlorine tablets or a new UV lamp every year.”

In Red Hill, Mr Eldridge opted for the worm farm system because it requires minimal ongoing maintenance and no chemical additives, and uses little power. “We have a small pump at the bottom of the tank, but it doesn’t run for very long,” he says. “The other advantage for us is that we can put any other organic matter in there, so it is an easy way to reduce our waste to landfill.”

The worms chomp through black and greywater, together with organic material such as vegie scraps, paper, cardboard and garden clippings. For a typical three-bedroom house, a new system costs about $8000 to $9000, including installation.

Read this article at The Age online

Martin Schoeller: Close-Up

In Culture, The Big Issue on

Photographer Martin Schoeller gets up close and personal with some familiar faces.

BEFORE he takes portraits, photographer Martin Schoeller thoroughly researches his subjects. If they are actors, he watches their movies. If they are writers, he reads their books.

“A lot goes into each shoot,” the photographer told the Artinfo website in 2008. He brainstorms concepts, scouts locations and sources props. All of which seems curious, as each of his photographs looks much the same: a passport-style close-up, enlarged to epic proportions, with shallow depth of focus – the eyes and mouth are sharp, the tip of the nose and the lobes of the ears are not.

Close-Up, an exhibition of Schoeller’s portraits, is now on show at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. The gallery’s walls are lined with his large images, some the size of muscle-car bonnets. Almost every square inch within the frames bulge with the (mostly) famous faces they contain, from a grizzled Jack Nicholson and an alien Paris Hilton, to a waxy Christopher Walken and a crinkly Helen Mirren.

The Schoeller exhibition raises an intriguing question: is celebrity, blown up and unretouched, still just celebrity? Or does it convey something more substantial? Michael Desmond, senior curator with the gallery, admits to some initial trepidation as to how the exhibition would be received, before it opened in November. “I was a bit cautious,” he says. “I thought people were over celebrity. They’re so familiar with Brad Pitt’s face that they might not come and see this show. Interestingly, they’ve responded really well. Most people come in as fans. Some come in slightly cynically – as I did – and are then converted.”

Schoeller was born in Munich, Germany, in 1968, and studied photography in Berlin at Lette-Verein – a training more technical than artistic. At 25, he moved to New York to be an assistant to Annie Liebovitz, the renowned celebrity photographer. He has since described that time as very challenging.

“My English was not that good when I first came [to New York], and she’s extremely demanding,” he has recalled. “She doesn’t have that much patience. I got along with her very well after about a year, but the first year was very intense and not very pleasant.”

After three years, Schoeller became a freelance photographer and later began contributing to The New Yorker and other prominent magazines, including Rolling Stone, GQ and Vogue. Dissatisfied with the glamour and commercialism of conventional celebrity portraits, he devised his trademark technique. “They allow me to walk away with something for myself – a very honest, simple portrait that no publicist can say anything about. You can’t see what they’re wearing and they’re not having to do anything, so no red flags go up. Only three or four times have people refused to have a picture taken that close,” he told Artinfo.

Schoeller, who is still based in New York, uses a long lens and simple lighting in his portrait sessions. He takes about 200 frames, talking incessantly to put the sitter at ease while he seeks an expression between expressions: a moment when the subject is temporarily not posing.

His headshots are often praised for their ‘democratic’ approach. By presenting every subject the same way, regardless of their status, the photographs can invite reflection and debate on the nature of celebrity.

“The images are commissioned by high circulation magazines, so in that sense, they’re reinforcing the cult of celebrity,” Desmond observes. “But, on the other hand, the way they’re photographed undermines it. They’re not necessarily flattering. When you are confronted with the images you think about what makes these people famous. Why this person? What are the things you actually see? The size is a bait to make you question the notion of fame.

“The large scale creates a sort of false intimacy,” Desmond says. “You’re forced to make an emotional connection. There’s a feeling that the faces are really close to you. Normally people only get that close when they’re either in love with you or you’re having a fight.”

Close-Up also includes a number of portraits of Indigenous people from South Africa and Brazil, shot and presented in the same way. But given the bias towards celebrities, is ‘democratic’ really the right word for Schoeller’s approach? Arguably, it’s only democracy in the most corrupt form: a means of placating the many, while reinforcing the power of the few.

But Desmond argues: “Maybe it’s an Australian version of democracy, where we bring the rich and famous down to our level,” he says. “They’re imperfect. Barack Obama is one of the most powerful men in the world, but when you see his face in the exhibition you’re conscious of how misshapen it is. He doesn’t look particularly powerful. Even the rich and famous are mortal.”

Desmond also believes the portraits transcend notions of celebrity. “In the end, you’re conscious less of the fame and more of the physiognomy: eyes, noses, mouths. Some are beautiful, some are engaging, some are quite freaky. You see so many faces that you leave with a feeling of the breadth of humanity, which is not something you expect when you walk in.”

Close-Up is at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, until 13 February. See the article in The Big Issue for photos.

Container cladding and Lebanese coffee

In Blog on

FOR the Urban Bush-Carpenters’ first job of the year, I arranged to meet Houda at 10 am on Saturday at the South Melbourne Park Towers community garden.

We were late, predictably. But Houda didn’t seem to mind – she was waiting patiently on a bench in the shade, with a trolley and a thermos of coffee. The garden allotments were lush and pretty at the base of the imposing public housing block.

Cultivating Community – a not-for-profit group that supports community gardening – had asked us to clad two huge steel basins with timber and build a slim, wheelchair-accessible, raised garden bed. And to do it at short notice, in time for the garden open day on Saturday 5 February.

We began at our customary slow pace by sitting for a fine while and devouring Danish pastries. Houda poured us a small cup of Lebanese coffee – the first of many treats she brought for us throughout the day.

“It’s strong and sweet,” said Ste, who looked tired from the night before. “The ideal qualities of an Urban Bush-Carpenter.”

Houda told us she used to grow lots of food on her land in Lebanon, but had left nearly 30 years ago because of the Israel-Lebanon war. The community garden at South Melbourne Park Towers opened three years ago, and it was the first chance she’d had to grow veggies since arriving in Australia. She has become the garden’s caretaker.

We had a simple job, and once Houda gently suggested that it was time we begin work, we hopped to it. Geoff and Andrew measured and cut the lengths while Ste and I bought the long ‘bugle head batten’ screws (which have an internal hex drive, the kind an Allen key fits into). They’re good heavy-duty fasteners for timber joins because they give a no-fuss countersunk finish – they don’t stick out, like a chunky-headed coach screw would.

We made rectangular collars, stacked them together and slotted the sinks in. The containers will host a nectarine and an avocado tree – may they fruit abundantly. We didn’t have enough timber for the wheelchair-friendly raised garden bed, so we’ll return one night this week to finish it off. All in all, Houda was pleased. 

Houda

Houda, Andrew, Ste and Michael.

Heritage eco-renos

In Blog on

Wanted: Heritage homeowners who’ve done an eco renovation.

This is a slightly unusual post for me, but I received this enquiry from Paula Judson, who is studying the eco-chops of heritage buildings. She’s looking for people to participate in her research. 

“As part of a research study on heritage buildings and environmental performance, I am seeking to interview households (in Victoria) that live in a heritage dwelling about: the issues experience/d in upgrading a heritage dwelling to higher standards of environmental performance; their values and priorities; and how conflicts between protecting heritage and interventions to improve energy performance are dealt with.”

“I would like to hear from home owners who have recently undertaken renovations (within the last 2 years), are currently renovating, or about to commence renovations to improve the environmental performance of their heritage dwelling (this may include modifying the existing building, upgrading the services, or extending the existing dwelling), either using professionals in the construction sector or ‘do-it-yourself’.”

Does that sound like you? Contact Paula: paula.judson@student.rmit.edu.au