Making a New Estate Home Sustainable
we bought the house that we were renting. We were not sure about buying it, as it was not our ‘dream’ sustainable home. You know the sort, I mean designed by an architect, or built by someone whose skills in sustainability seem endless. Our home is only 4 years old and there was no insulation above the ceiling, so on a hot day it was as hot inside as out. We like the basic layout and house design but given that no real sustainability was built into the house, we asked an engineering friend to give us an assessment
Since then we have shaded the western side of the house, insulated the ceiling, insulated western and eastern windows. The change in comfort has been dramatic. The house is much less influenced by outside temperatures. The air conditioner is rarely on and when it is it is more efficient (it is shaded now in summer) and of course our energy bills are coming down
Our electricity use has been fully audited and our usage patterns were fairly sustainable but there were many items that we could change. We have changed most of the light bulbs, and installed solar hot water (it should have been mandatory 5 years ago!). We haven’t used any electricity to heat the water since, which has given us a reduction of power of around 30%. Expenditure so far $7,000
The next item we have looked at was water. If we are going to grow food, we need a water tank. So a 4,000 litre tank has been installed. This allows us to save on food and car washing fees. $3,500 for tank, pump etc.
And now the big one, photo voltaic cell power. We have decided to install a 1.5kW system that will cover about 70% of our needs. After rebates this will cost around $9,000. Apart from being the right thing to do, this was a hard one to justify. However the Qld Government has just announced a feed-in tariff of 44c. This is roughly paying us three times for the excess electricity that we feed into the system, than we have to pay to draw off the system
For Barbara and I, we have made investments in sustainability which will lower our long term costs and make us more immune to the inevitable escalating prices. There are also hidden savings in less carbon produced
Paul Costin
