Australian Passive Solar Home

I constantly read about the need for radical change in housing in Australia. People say that to achieve energy-efficient, comfortable and healthy housing we need new regulations, new exotic materials, new training of tradespeople, new approaches.

But all that is simply not true.

There is absolutely zero stopping an energy efficient, comfortable and healthily home being constructed using current Australian standards, approaches and trades. And furthermore, at the current average cost of an Australian home.

Nothing.

What is actually needed is for architects and energy advisors and other experts to get real – to acknowledge that suggesting ever-more expensive ways of achieving better housing is to simply make good housing the province of only the rich. For architects and energy advisors to get creative and smart, and to design homes that cost no more but perform better.

What is actually needed is for the public to be better educated, to be demanding of architects and energy advisers houses that are efficient, well thought-through and that perform better… at normal cost.

What is actually needed is for academics to stop suggesting ever more expensive approaches and to start with cost as the over-riding priority in making suggestions for improved housing.

The only change I’d really like to see, and it’s one that is inconsequentially cheap in the total cost of building a new home, is independent inspections during the build process, e.g. of the installation of insulation, checking that the correctly specified windows are being installed, ensuring gaps in the membrane through which pipes and wiring pass are sealed, ensuring specified ventilation behind cladding is implemented. Very simple stuff.

So the next time you read about all the radical changes that are needed to improve Australian housing, understand that it’s more about those suggesting the changes benefitting themselves than benefitting people building new houses in Australia.