5 ms·

I live in Victoria, Australia. Energy bills are through the roof - almost literally as "insulation" is a thing just about no-one here has any competence with. W

I live in Victoria, Australia. Energy bills are through the roof - almost literally as "insulation" is a thing just about no-one here has any competence with. Whatsoever. I'm talking about builders and building code designers specifically. Ironically (see the top and bottom positions of the chart), I spent the first 40% of my life in Norway where things do get proper cold as opposed to in Australia where it's accepted to just have a heater pumping hot air through literal slits in the building (e.g. 0.5cm gaps under the external doors, that sort of nonsense), resulting in houses that are never properly comfortable at horrific expense. Yet in Norway the houses are actually insulated for deep, real winters and don't even need active heating at the temperatures costing Australians a fortune (eg 5-15c). I'm pretty sure it's impossible to get single glaced windows in Norway (because it's actually illegal to use), yet here it's a "luxury" item which is priced as you'd expect when not a standard. This gets my blood boiling (hey, free heating). On a side note, I just started ETH mining on a Pascal GPU, and can still turn a profit. If I still lived in Norway I'd buy a lot of GPUs..

viraptor 9y ago
> I'm talking about builders and building code designers specifically. Noone is a bad generalisation here. There are designers and builders who do know and do care - you just pay extra for the design and extra for materials. If you get a project house on a new estate (like lots of people do)... you're basically getting cheap and simple result that's cheap and simple. Source: talking to a designer about just that.
- sundvor 9y ago
  I actually wrote _just about noone_, to cover that, as it's just not common knowledge. Of course you can source specialists, but it's the exception and not the rule. Most investment properties are done on the cheap, shifting the cost asymmetrically to the renters - cross ref the whole negative gearing debate and all. Minimum standards need to be increased dramatically, yet very little is happening. When some of the earlier Energy Star "standards" were released a few years back, they were just a bad joke - eg door gaps still came part and parcel, however you'd get like a "solar water heating" checkbox.
  - cassowary 9y ago
    Try sending an email to your local Labor MLA (state lower house) if you have one, or MLC (state upper house) if you don't. They're real people who care, you just need to make them care about this stuff. Which needs lots of people caring at them. It will probably feel useless because it won't make a difference right away, but it's got a better chance of a good outcome eventually than a rant on HN. I know I froze to death one year in a very cold flat which I couldn't heat with a 1 or 2 cm gap under the doors. Every time I'd cook I'd cut myself because my hands were too numb to control the knife. (The rest of the time it was okay because I'd just wrap up under my doona on the couch or wherever.) Now I live over a bakery in an old building so there's lots of old heat and heavier construction keeping it tolerably warm.
jmcelhinney 9y ago
I've had a very similar experience myself, lived most of my life in Victoria, Australia but spent 12 months in Sweden and experienced the depths of winter there. My family back home couldn't believe I'd walk around my apartment in shorts and a t-shirt with bare feet on floorboards and tiles in Sweden during winter. Turning on the heater in my apartment made you sweat when it was around -15 degrees celsius outside. Australian's have a similar complex about wearing appropriate clothing during winter. Everyone complains about how cold it is, while wearing a light jumper or t-shirt in winter, even though it's no where near as cold as other countries.
taneq 9y ago
How old is this building you're describing? There's been some pretty huge changes in the past 20-30 years, older houses are shocking for insulation but modern ones are often pretty good.
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  The building codes evolved at lot up until roughtly 10 years ago. Houses from before the 90ies is not that well insulated with lots of cold bridges. They have mostly been eliminated from new buildings, but it does make building quite a bit more complex.
dav43 9y ago
Ditto this in Sydney. Literally holes in the walls to outside. I have to tape them up during the colder months. Such poor building quality.
- awjr 9y ago
  I'd grab some expanding foam and seal them.
gravelld 9y ago
What you describe is the rule in most Western countries. The only countries I know that have their shit together on this are Germany, Sweden and Ireland. The truth is that fixing these problems is going to be expensive. Governments are just kicking the can down the road because they don't want to be the ones that raise taxes to pay for it (fixing existing houses I mean). But it will have to be done. Maybe the biggest tragedy is that we are still building NEW houses that will have to be fixed in the future (except in the above countries and some others I no doubt missed). Not mandating higher standards is, however, just loading future generations with more debt, because they will be the ones that have to fix the quality of the housing stock.
- Nursie 9y ago
  Having lived in the UK and Australia - the UK may not have its shit together compared to Germany, Sweden or Ireland, but it's streets ahead of Aus.
  - gravelld 9y ago
    I'm a UK resident. Either way, the UK will have to fix its houses. There's a trope that new houses are energy efficient... it's not really true; there's going to be a big scandal when everyone realises how the targets (which are pretty poor anyway) are circumvented by developers that are able to employ their own regs assessors, or just send a design SAP and expect that to be ticked off, or go around after an air permeability test removing all the sealing they just added to scrape through the already lenient test. Whether insulation is actually installed? Who cares about that - quarterly dividend payments all round.
    - ptaipale 9y ago
      Sorry, this one I don't get. Why would you go and remove sealing after air permeability test? To have air circulation and avoid mold? Normally, doing that would be additional work and additional cost, so if they do it, there must be a real reason.
      - 9y ago
shirro 9y ago
I live across the border in SA. I don't think insulation is the whole story. If it is cold I just put more clothes on. We spend nothing on heating the house. I don't know that I would want to pay more for houses to get them better insulated in a country where housing affordability is getting beyond most people and the weather is mild most of the year. We do spend a bit on air conditioning (we sometimes get several days in a row over 40C) but the difference between winter and summer bills is not that great. Our bills are still very high. We have just replaced our fridge and water heater and I am hoping newer, more efficient appliances will help.

viraptor 9y ago

> I'm talking about builders and building code designers specifically. Noone is a bad generalisation here. There are designers and builders who do know and do care - you just pay extra for the design and extra for materials. If you get a project house on a new estate (like lots of people do)... you're basically getting cheap and simple result that's cheap and simple. Source: talking to a designer about just that.

sundvor 9y ago
I actually wrote _just about noone_, to cover that, as it's just not common knowledge. Of course you can source specialists, but it's the exception and not the rule. Most investment properties are done on the cheap, shifting the cost asymmetrically to the renters - cross ref the whole negative gearing debate and all. Minimum standards need to be increased dramatically, yet very little is happening. When some of the earlier Energy Star "standards" were released a few years back, they were just a bad joke - eg door gaps still came part and parcel, however you'd get like a "solar water heating" checkbox.
- cassowary 9y ago
  Try sending an email to your local Labor MLA (state lower house) if you have one, or MLC (state upper house) if you don't. They're real people who care, you just need to make them care about this stuff. Which needs lots of people caring at them. It will probably feel useless because it won't make a difference right away, but it's got a better chance of a good outcome eventually than a rant on HN. I know I froze to death one year in a very cold flat which I couldn't heat with a 1 or 2 cm gap under the doors. Every time I'd cook I'd cut myself because my hands were too numb to control the knife. (The rest of the time it was okay because I'd just wrap up under my doona on the couch or wherever.) Now I live over a bakery in an old building so there's lots of old heat and heavier construction keeping it tolerably warm.

jmcelhinney 9y ago

I've had a very similar experience myself, lived most of my life in Victoria, Australia but spent 12 months in Sweden and experienced the depths of winter there. My family back home couldn't believe I'd walk around my apartment in shorts and a t-shirt with bare feet on floorboards and tiles in Sweden during winter. Turning on the heater in my apartment made you sweat when it was around -15 degrees celsius outside. Australian's have a similar complex about wearing appropriate clothing during winter. Everyone complains about how cold it is, while wearing a light jumper or t-shirt in winter, even though it's no where near as cold as other countries.

taneq 9y ago

How old is this building you're describing? There's been some pretty huge changes in the past 20-30 years, older houses are shocking for insulation but modern ones are often pretty good.

hvidgaard 9y ago
The building codes evolved at lot up until roughtly 10 years ago. Houses from before the 90ies is not that well insulated with lots of cold bridges. They have mostly been eliminated from new buildings, but it does make building quite a bit more complex.

dav43 9y ago

Ditto this in Sydney. Literally holes in the walls to outside. I have to tape them up during the colder months. Such poor building quality.

awjr 9y ago
I'd grab some expanding foam and seal them.

gravelld 9y ago

What you describe is the rule in most Western countries. The only countries I know that have their shit together on this are Germany, Sweden and Ireland. The truth is that fixing these problems is going to be expensive. Governments are just kicking the can down the road because they don't want to be the ones that raise taxes to pay for it (fixing existing houses I mean). But it will have to be done. Maybe the biggest tragedy is that we are still building NEW houses that will have to be fixed in the future (except in the above countries and some others I no doubt missed). Not mandating higher standards is, however, just loading future generations with more debt, because they will be the ones that have to fix the quality of the housing stock.

Nursie 9y ago
Having lived in the UK and Australia - the UK may not have its shit together compared to Germany, Sweden or Ireland, but it's streets ahead of Aus.
- gravelld 9y ago
  I'm a UK resident. Either way, the UK will have to fix its houses. There's a trope that new houses are energy efficient... it's not really true; there's going to be a big scandal when everyone realises how the targets (which are pretty poor anyway) are circumvented by developers that are able to employ their own regs assessors, or just send a design SAP and expect that to be ticked off, or go around after an air permeability test removing all the sealing they just added to scrape through the already lenient test. Whether insulation is actually installed? Who cares about that - quarterly dividend payments all round.
  - ptaipale 9y ago
    Sorry, this one I don't get. Why would you go and remove sealing after air permeability test? To have air circulation and avoid mold? Normally, doing that would be additional work and additional cost, so if they do it, there must be a real reason.
    - 9y ago

shirro 9y ago

I live across the border in SA. I don't think insulation is the whole story. If it is cold I just put more clothes on. We spend nothing on heating the house. I don't know that I would want to pay more for houses to get them better insulated in a country where housing affordability is getting beyond most people and the weather is mild most of the year. We do spend a bit on air conditioning (we sometimes get several days in a row over 40C) but the difference between winter and summer bills is not that great. Our bills are still very high. We have just replaced our fridge and water heater and I am hoping newer, more efficient appliances will help.