Improving the thermal performance in Australian homes is an urgent priority to ease cost of living pressures, improve wellbeing and reduce energy consumption and emissions, experts say.

An RMIT University-led report, commissioned by RACE for 2030, assessed current challenges related to home thermal efficiency improvements.

The report recommends several priorities to help Australia reach its goal of net zero by 2050, such as improving how we build new homes and how households prioritise and undertake thermal upgrading of their homes.

While the introduction of the new seven-star energy efficiency building standards is a necessary step to improve new homes, Rajagopalan said more needs to be done during the design and construction stage of building to ensure each home is thermally efficient.

A potential solution was creating a “One-stop shop” on how to embark on retrofitting your home and the benefits of a thermally efficient home from verified sources.

  • 2CatsOneBowlEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    We moved into a relatively new house in Jan, we didn’t think anything needed doing. We’ve found out terribly thermally inefficient. Since moving in we’ve installed roof heat extractor, ceiling insulation, garage door insulation and we’re thinking about getting the windows tinted before summer.

    • alpaca_math@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’m intrigued about insulating garage door, I didn’t know that was possible. Did it make the temperature more stable in winter & summer in the garage? Did it have an impact to temperature inside your house?

      • youngalfred
        1·
        1 year ago

        We’ve done it to a double wide panel door facing west, the garage was sweltering in summer and lost a lot of heat in winter. The laundry was in there, so it got used a fair bit.

        The insulation was styrofoam panels that wedged into each of the panels of the door. Seemed to help a bit in summer, but I also should’ve added brushes to the sides to close the gap on either side.

    • Treevan 🇦🇺OPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Does the tint cut the heat coming through?

      Our old place we put 5 extractors on with closable vents in each room because the roof was a skillion and couldn’t clear it with 1 or 2. Made a big difference in Summer.

      • 2CatsOneBowlEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Depending on the type of tinting, yeah it can cut quote a lot of heat coming in. You have to balance how much heat to cut vs how dark the tinting will be though.