How We Tapped Into the Thermal Comfort Potential of Our Home

Elvira shares how you can improve the energy efficiency of your home.

By taking the step-by-step home retrofit approach to achieve ultimate thermal comfort, you can stay comfortable across all seasons in an environmentally friendly way.

Her family now enjoys an environmentally friendly home that is naturally warm in winter and stays cool and comfortable in summer.

There is no reason for houses in Australia to have such high heating and cooling bills … we are just squandering the resources available to us and it is not necessary, the technology is here.”

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

“I knew when I walked in here that this house had amazing potential and was going to be a really cosy haven for us one day and it was frustrating that it wasn’t, and when I was able to really look at the amazing potential that was here and that all of the work could be done by this one company, I was really really happy because I knew that quite quickly we would be warm again and that the next winter would not be anything like the previous one.

We didn’t want to be just installing more heaters and using more energy, particularly when we knew we were losing so much of it.

There’s no reason for houses in Australia to have such high heating and cooling bills. We spend way too much on our power bills, we are burning way too many fossil fuels both in the form of electricity and also burning natural gas. Also, in this region, burning wood, a lot of people wood fires for heating. We are just squandering the resources that are available to us and it is not necessary.

The technology is here, it exists, every house in Australia should be able to be comfortable with minimal heating and minimal cooling.

We engaged ecoMaster first of all for a whole home assessment, we didn’t really know where to start, we knew there were a number of things you could do to retrofit older houses and bring them up to speed but we really didn’t know where to begin and who to engage and ecoMaster just seemed like the perfect solution because they provided a range of services and also could advise on what to do in what order.

We couldn’t afford to fully do everything that we wanted to begin with, we knew that we’d have to improve our house in stages so we wanted to spend our money where it was going to be most effective. And so having that initial consultation really allowed us to work out what our priorities were and what our budget would be and have a savings plan for the future so that we could do all of the things we wanted to do to our house.

Your house is a system, it’s not just a series of individual parts of the ceiling, the walls, the windows… ecoMaster can look at the eco-system of your house and really give you advice on what can be fixed and how you can really make even a very very difficult house work extremely well and very efficiently.

The assessor who came around was so knowledgeable he really understood how it was that a house works, how air flows in and out, how heat flows in and out, and he understood what we valued about our house, he could look at it and sort of say “yep, I can see why you’ve picked this house and what the potential is of this place and here’s how we’re really gonna make this work”. We felt that the assessor shared similar ethics with us and was very much about not just improving the efficiency of our home but doing it in a very green way.

We went from having a house where in the morning you could see your breath, and we ha d to rug up all the time, sit under blankets to watch the TV to one we are comfortable year round, and we haven’t had to spend that much money to do it, we’ve spent a few thousand more on what’s we’ve paid for the house and it’s like living in a new home, it really is cosy now.

Before ecoMaster came around, the outside temperature was the inside temperature. So we’ve had a difference of more than 10 degrees that our house can store overnight and that has just been wonderful.”

Secure Your Comfort, Reduce Your Energy Cost

Like Elvira, you can tread the same path to energy efficiency beginning TODAY. Start off with an assessment of the energy efficiency performance of your home.

Boost your thermal comfort by draught proofing your doors and  windows, investing in energy-saving solutions, and by insulating your ceiling, floors, and walls. Not only does an all-home retrofit improve your comfort in summer and winter, it lowers your energy cost for the long term as well.