Step inside this classic Australian home to learn all the tricks and tips to save money, stay warm, and cut emissions

  • 📰 abcnews
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 102 sec. here
  • 16 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 89%
  • Publisher: 83%

Cost Of Living News

Power Bills,Energy Bills,Energy

Australian homes are notoriously cold in winter — draughty, with poor insulation, thin glass and inadequate heating. But there's a growing movement of people retrofitting their homes to make them cheaper to run and more comfortable year-round, while also reducing emissions.

Step inside this classic Australian home to learn all the tricks and tips to save money, stay warm, and cut emissionsAustralian homes are notoriously cold in winter. Take a tour with an energy assessor to learn how a few tweaks can keep you warm, save money and reduce emissions.

She's part of a growing movement of Australians retrofitting older homes to make them more liveable and reduce emissions in our changing climate. To do that, he'll look inside the ceiling and walls and use a thermal imaging camera around the house.Dale gives Laine an overall assessment and talks her through some of the areas where she could improve her home's efficiency."You can see the dark colours of the windows compared to the light colour of the wall. the window is the thermal weak point," Dale explains.

Despite its poor thermal performance, Dale says this house is actually pretty typical of the standard house in Victoria and across Australia. If your house has fairly low-rated ceiling insulation, Dale recommends putting a second layer over the top.The ceiling on the back half of the house has poor insulation, the walls have no insulation, and neither does the floor.

Dale suggests retrofitting windows with double glazing, but because of its exxy price tag, it's not his highest recommendation."The best type of window covering today is a blind called the honeycomb blind … or they're also called cellular blinds," Dale says. Dale recommends focusing on areas around window architraves, external doors, vents, kitchen cupboards, exhaust fans and chimneys."We can see that this fireplace is actually open and open fireplaces are a really large point of heat loss," Dale says."Because an open fireplace is designed to draw heat, it's going to be sucking warmth out of your house and then out through the chimney.

Another cheap and easy way for renters and owners to cut down on heating bills is to clean air conditioner filters."Sometimes they get really, really clogged, and then it dramatically reduces the heat output of the air conditioner," Dale says. "If we put another two air conditioners in, they will need two circuit breakers. And an induction cooktop needs a circuit breaker," Dale says.

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.
We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 5. in PROPERTY

Property Property Latest News, Property Property Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

Why so many Australian homes are either too hot or too coldChances are the reason you’re cold right isn’t just because of a polar air mass – it’s because millions of Australian houses are poorly insulated
Source: GuardianAus - 🏆 1. / 98 Read more »