cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1232260
Rentals in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and ACT dropped below 18C more than 80% of the time, report finds
We don’t have to have double glazed windows in Australia. The energy rating is often sold as 5 star! But, the scale is out of 10 🙄.
We’re a dumb country when it comes to building houses. I’m not an architect, or an engineer, but, out summers reach 40°C+ in summer, yet our modern houses have dark grey roof’s made of colorbond steel. Too hot outside, let me crank my air con…there goes that 5 star rating of my barely energy efficient home
The star system for housing here is somewhat lacking. Input from vested interests from within industry has made it less than ideal from the consumer point of view. Although its not utterly useless like food star ratings.
We really should be looking to certified passive houses as the aspirational standard.
When I built 10 years ago 7 star was the standard they had to build to. This may vary with location, I’m in Perth.
My house will typically drop to 18-19 overnight in winter, but on really cold nights might get as low as 16.
My house gets below 16 in Winter. The bank owns it and we are barely hanging on so it will stay that way. It’s a full reno to undo the mistakes of the 90s (and dodgy building). Slab isn’t insulated, clay bricks aren’t insulated, louvres leak, no roof insulation. It’s not your standard house so it’s difficult to fix up as well.
Oh well. Such is life.
Roof insulation is one of the first items to fix. Get R5 or R6 earthwool from Bunnings. It costs a lot but fuck is it good. It’s actually very easy to install, just be careful around the downlights (you need a gap around them).
The other quick fix is all the drafts cracks and leaks. Get door snakes, door and window seals, blinds. Don’t worry about the floor heat won’t sap from that.
Cheers!
The way the roof space is built is different. It’s open to the outside world with rodent mesh along eave, open to peak down to other side. Which is then open through rodent mesh vents to the outside at peak. I guess it was built the Queenslander way, vent everything. Will applying insulation that is almost like it’s outside cause moisture issues against plaster?
The bricks are very cold to touch so I looked it up and you can buy insulated panels with plaster on one side. Too expensive for us though, we have no available cash.
Aluminum doors, windows, louvres could use a good fix. The louvres need replacing first, it’s a breeze when they are shut. No way to seal them. I think replacing the louvres with modern onesnis best as it’s probably the worst issue. The biggest doors have curtains with pelmets, curtains are light-ish, nearly medium.
I’ve had 6 before, which is also below 16 I suppose
Yikes. What type of house?
I’m in Brisbane.
The good thing about the uninsulated floor is that in Summer it stays cool till after midday and then the walls and roof heat up significantly.
an Australian house, lel.
yeah, I guess it just gets a little colder down in NSW
We hit 0 sometimes. Fire during the night. Super cold all day as it stays cold in the house due to the slab and brick.
What was the house made out of? Ours is like clay besser blocks.
Was it a rental?
Came home to our place in Melbourne from two weeks away and the indoor temp was 2c.
Living in Perth now, it’s early evening and the house is already 19c inside. It’ll drop to 16c by midnight. Both houses are brick/tile.
Yes, I can run the reverse-cycle in a few rooms, and they’ll be toasty. Yes, I have heaters for other rooms. We use those when necessary, but they’re too expensive to run all winter.
Is that with or without heating? Without heating we can wake up to 14 degrees in the morning, and our house is pretty new.
Apparently there are pretty easy tricks to improve your heat storage.
In the morning. We heat with a small combustion stove at night then it leaks out, cold bricks, floor, louvres.
It stays cold most of the day.
We don’t use aircon in Summer though, just fans in the arvo. Stays cool till about midday.
I work for a global company headquartered in Europe, and we regularly have visitors from the mothership come to Sydney. Every year, without fail, they will all regularly comment on how they’ve never been so cold indoors. They also come from countries where it snows regularly.
Yup. We’re living with the mistakes of the past and no one wants to fix it for the future.
Fucking moronic people who looked at the Queenslander and thought, “that’s PERFECT for a giant paddock of a Territory that regularly drops below freezing!”
And then 80 years of builders followed suit, but each iteration they stripped more of the charm out.
I’m not exactly shocked. Even here in Brisbane it can be freezing in winter. Australian housing is rubbish.
If you are poor and live in a shit house, get one of those wearable blanket things (preferably a thicker, more expensive one) and some ugg boots (again, the best quality you can afford). You won’t need heating with this combination.
I have the OG Oodie, but there’s some cheaper versions around.
A hot water bottle is also essential. Buy another for pre-heating the bed at night.
I have an OG one too - wearing it right now, in fact! You can get them very cheap now at Kmart and the like but they definitely feel a lot thinner than the original. They’re not always as long, either.
could the issue be that homes are built with lighter materials?
I’m from Europe, and we get really cold winters. My apartment never drops below 17°C even without heating on. Even individual homes, I know are insulated so it never is too cold.
The issue is this.
Old houses predate modern AC. So they’re designed to be leaky and let hot air out for summer reasons.
New houses only care about profits over people and are made from cardboard and glue by shitty developers and lazy tradies.
We don’t double glaze, we don’t seal up drafts, we barely fucking insulate and that was a national scandal trying to get the country to do so.
They are also built with the expectation that heating is cheap - just whack in a gas ducted heating unit and run it 24/7 over winter! For a long time it was cheaper to use more energy to heat the house than to pay for the materials to make it more efficient.
I think you over estimate the thinking. Old houses are leaky because they are leaky. You could always open a window for ventilation in summer.
Oh I feel that in my bones. 10 minutes after turning off a heater the heats already escaping my over priced rental from the 70s.
Doesn’t help when people can’t afford to turn their heaters on either
Just bring a 200 ltr barrel fire inside. Make sure to use the unmarked pallet wood too and it will keep you warm for the rest of your life.
Great idea. We can start a new class, the middle class bum!
Yeah old houses suck. I did full underfloor insulation of my place which is raised floorboards. Feels like no difference.
Also doesn’t help that it’s a weatherboard house, even a single brick veneer would probably make a world of difference.
I’ll get home from work and it’ll be colder inside than it is outside, but it’s like that in both summer and winter so, good with the bad
Some possibilities for windows. The windows in my place are wafer thin, and I suspect one of the main ways weather is getting in and out.
- Magnetic double glazing. A way to add removable double glazing to windows
- Bubble wrap is a good insulator! Spray water and it sticks to the window!
Now, I’ve just done an experiment with bubble wrap. I had 2 rooms basically facing the same way that got morning sun from about 7am to noon, and measured temperature differences between them.
It does help with reducing temperature movement. That’s on the way up as well as on the way down. From 10am to 5pm it’s colder in the insulated room as it doesn’t heat up as fast. Then from 6pm to 10am the insulated room is warmer, as it doesn’t cool down as fast. The difference wasn’t huge; only about 1C max.
This was without any active heating/cooling. I suspect insulating would be a much better advantage if you were pumping warm/cool air into the room and maintaining it.
External temperature ranges over a 3 day period were from a 17.8C max to a 5C min. Wider/faster temperature fluctuations would also see a benefit to insulation. The biggest difference (advantage bubble wrap!) was on the coldest day when external temperatures were always below the internal temperatures. It stayed warmer than the non insulated room.
I’ll give it a go in summer to see what will happen as well…
Need to fill up all the cracks and block off all of gaps, not letting my expensive hot air escape my place! 🌡️
Just wondering, but is there a maximum temperature standard?
From quick research the answer seems to vary depending on region but over 32 is considered hazardous to health for prolonged periods, for healthy adults
IIRC it depends a lot on humidity. If humidity is low, you can be fairly comfortable at higher temperatures with just a fan on.
If I could afford to, my house would be colder than 18 C or 64.5 F. I have my thermostat set at 68 and is still hot AF in my bedroom and living room.
Edit: I live in a place where the absolute lowest the temperature gets is 18-25 C, I used to live where the lowest it got was -51 C. Not everyone is acclimatized to that kind of cold, but I like it, especially when I’m sleeping.
Edit 2: my most controversial comment is expressing my opinion to a bunch of freezing Aussies that I prefer to be cold. Make sure you waste more of your effort downvoting me, and less effort figuring out how to use space heaters, put plastic up on the outside and inside of your windows, and hang up blankets to keep warmth in your critical areas. Y’all wouldn’t have survived a Minnesota winter. Just be grateful they didn’t sentence your ancestors to exile in Canada I guess 🤷♂️
Isn’t it winter in Australia right now? In the winter I do keep the thermostat at 65 and it drops to 55 at night…
I’m not Australian, but yes, winter in June July August, summer for Christmas.
Then you would be warmer than most homes here. On average the homes they studied were over 18 degrees (64.4 F) for less than 5 hours a day (or closer to 2 hours in Tasmania) and dropped down to minimums of 7.4 (45 F).
Internal at 45F? That’s too cold even for me to be comfortable inside… And I rarely ever utter the words, “it’s too cold”.
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Several places get pretty cold. I wouldn’t say it’s a European cold, but most people here assume it’ll be a decent temperature so when it drops you really notice it
Hey I’m Aussie and with you, I like what we call cold in Brisbane, middle of winter and I only wear shorts and t shirt, everyone else here is rugged up like it’s the Arctic, I would be happy if my place sat at 18 all day!
There’s literally MULTIPLE of us! /s
Thanks for chiming in, I was beginning to think I was just a yeti in disguise or something 🥸
