In the first instalment of an ongoing series, we ask Metricon’s brightest minds to reveal their top tips for the year ahead. Here, Metricon’s National Sustainability Manager Adam Selvay shares his hacks for an easier and more cost-effective home life – and important things to consider before the slab gets poured.
A keen skier, Adam has a personal interest in how climate change affects our day-to-day lives. “Nature and the snow are dear to my heart,” he says. “Over the last 30 or so years, I’ve seen the alpine regions become more and more affected by lack of snow and unpredictable conditions.”
That’s one of the many reasons why he’s committed to helping everyday Aussies make the most of their homes, suggesting easily achievable sustainable choices that can benefit you and your hip pocket. “It’s not about having less,” Adam says. “It’s just about being smarter and getting more natural comfort and a healthier living environment from our homes.” More benefits from less bucks (and emissions!). Here are Adam’s tips to creating a high-performance home for your family on your site:
Orientation
If you’re living in Melbourne, you’ll have a high heating load in winter. If you’re in Brisbane, you’ve got a high cooling load in summer. But you can help reduce those bills by taking a good look at your family’s needs in terms of bedrooms, living and entertainment areas as well as getting the layout right before you start the build. You’re aiming to create a home that naturally delivers the best comfort without the need for too much mechanical heating and cooling.
Ultimately, the sun can provide substantial energy and we can be smart about the way we orientate our home to make the best use of that natural resource. You want naturally well-lit daytime living zones facing north that capture the sun, creating thermal comfort in winter and summer. Aim to avoid bedrooms that face west as they can be hot when going to bed. Metricon floorplans are thoroughly considered and are all about creating six-star energy homes as well as looking to the future and beyond.
Roofing
You may have seen a lot of discussion lately around the benefits of light over dark-coloured roofs. If you’re in Queensland or NSW, a lighter coloured roof will help keep your home naturally cooler year round. However further south, say in Melbourne, where homes use more heating than cooling over the year, darker colours will keep your home warmer year-round. However, if you are not installing air conditioning and you wish to avoid a first floor that heats up in summer, go for light colours which contributes to a reduction in the urban heat island effect surrounding suburbs in summertime.
Glazing
One thing that Australian homes haven’t always gotten right is investing in good glazing to keep out the worst of the sun’s glare in summer and preserve heat during winter. Improving your glazing is a big opportunity. Double glazing is a simple way you can make a huge difference.
If you’ve got single glazing and approach your windows on a hot or cold day, you can feel that cold or heat before touching the glass. So, you end up with zones around these windows where you might not want to sit or eat at. If you invest in double glazing, you’ll achieve greater thermal comfort and reduce those hot and cold spaces around the home.
Solar
Whether you’re on the Gold Coast or down south in Bendigo, the reality is Australia has an abundant energy source going free: solar power. I think everyone should get in on that.
It might look like a significant outlay upfront, but if you add solar to your build during the Studio M process, it might only increase your mortgage repayments by a small amount but your monthly energy savings could be more than cover the outlay.^
Plus, if you install at the build stage, solar will be integrated into your home neatly, with fewer cables tacked on to the side of an external wall or extra holes punched through.
Concrete
Sometimes little decisions go a long way. If light streaming through north-facing windows into a living zone hits light weight timber floors, that will not have much ability to capture energy as heavy thermal mass is needed to act as a thermal battery. Whereas if you’ve got a tiled concrete slab, it works well in two ways.
If it’s wintertime, the concrete stores the suns heat and then at night, it gets re-released into the home, providing free heat. Then in summer, when heat then finds it way inside the home, it will be absorbed into the slab, cooling the air within the home. Then overnight open up your house to let it breathe and release the heat in the evening. Awning windows are a great way to do that safely and securely overnight.
Electric
Adding solar goes hand-in-hand with another easy option to make your home more sustainable affordably: going all-electric. You can opt for induction cooktops, which are more powerful, responsive and safer than gas, plus reverse-cycle air conditioning, which is actually very energy efficient. You can also get a heat pump hot water system, which is both energy-efficient and saves space on the rooftop for solar panels. Then you can ditch gas altogether, dropping the daily connection charges, clearing your home of burnt gas fumes, add solar to your mortgage affordably and almost certainly save loads on your utility bills.
Watch this space for more tip tips from experts across every part of the Metricon business.
If you’d like to speak to a Metricon expert about which energy-efficient options might be available to you, contact us here. Or for more hot tips for a greener home, check out our practical guide to energy efficient house designs, how to save on energy bills and six tips for styling your home with sustainability in mind.
^ Based on normal usage of the home. Consumer behaviour will vary and Metricon makes no guarantees on cost savings on this basis.
