Case Study/Blogs

Greening The Existing Housing Stock

While new buildings are becoming  increasingly energy and water efficient, most dwellings in Victoria were built before the 5 star requirement became mandatory. Most existing houses have poor or no insulation and an energy rating between 0 and 3 stars.  For instance, a 3-star home needs about twice as much energy for heating and cooling than a 5-star home and a 6-star home even just requires a third compared to the 3-star home.

Many people may ask themselves: is it worth making the house more energy efficiency? And how would I do such thing without spending a fortune?

The answer is a definite YES.

It is worth updating and retrofitting your home and it is not as difficult and expensive as many people may think.

At the moment I’m putting together the documentation for a case study to proof how easy it is to make an existing dwelling more energy efficient and more sustainable.
It’s an existing house/unit from the 70th. Absolutely no insulation, no energy saving measurements etc. In summary: the typical Australian housing stock.
The idea is to redo the whole house, using non toxic paints and oils, putting as much insulation in is as possible, use solar energy for electricity and hot water, put in hyronic heating, change some windows, energy efficient lighting and appliances, a veggie garden and so on.

You can follow us on our journey and see what funding or grants are available to make your home more energy efficient, learn some simple design principles and also what problems or issues we might encounter on our way.
We will try document everything: internal temperatures, electricity, gas and water usage before all the changes are done and after. We also plan to open up the house later for the public, to show how you can make an existing home more energy efficient and to experience the difference.

So if you have any questions or further ideas, please don’t hesitate to contact us.