![]() Don’t neglect the small stuffĪsk your plumber to install your new hot water service as close to taps as possible. It will also save you money and make your home quieter, as they block outside noise. Retrofitting your house with double or triple-glazed windows and doors will make your house far more comfortable in extreme weather. We lose 10-35 per cent of heat gains or losses through single glazed windows and doors. While you have builders on-site you can also ask them to install ceiling or underfloor insulation or top it up if your existing insulation has compressed over time. You might only be renovating the kitchen, but if the plaster comes off those walls, it might be a once-in-a-decade opportunity to install some insulation. Wherever you have removed the plasterboard or wall cladding, remember to install insulation. ![]() You can also install chimney dampers, replace exhaust fans with self-closing fans, seal up old wall vents and install covers on your evaporative cooling vents during winter. Hardware shops can tell you what you need to do. You can install window and door seals easily in most older houses, by yourself. We waste a lot of energy cooling air in summer (or warming it in winter) only to let it all escape outside. Seal, glaze and insulateĪustralian homes are notoriously leaky. Heavy drapes or external blinds can be one of the most cost-effective ways to keep your home warm in winter and cool in summer. If you don't have a green thumb, don't worry! Blinds, curtains, drapes and external awnings all help to keep heat out of your home in summer. If you plant deciduous species, they’ll shade your house in summer, and allow sunlight in to warm your house when their leaves have dropped off in winter. Plants can shade windows and cool your house. Homes rated at eight stars and above can often generate all their own power from a standard six-kilowatt solar array over a year, and you can sell anything extra back to the grid. As panels become cheaper, more Australians are choosing to install them and reduce their bills and carbon emissions. ![]() More than two million Australian homes now have solar panels on their roofs. A ceiling or pedestal fan can use just 10 per cent of the energy of an air conditioning unit for the same room. Fans are less energy-intensive and expensive. Try turning on a fan to work with (or instead of) your air con, to provide a cooling breeze. You can search for highly-rated appliances and find out how much you’ll save on power bills. The ‘star rating’ lets you know how energy-efficient the appliance is. You’ve probably seen the energy rating stickers on fridges, washing machines and other appliances. Here's how: Choose and use your appliances wiselyīuying energy-efficient appliances is a good place to start. You can retrofit your house, and get results, with minimal cost. Your house doesn’t need to be new to be energy efficient. Back to the future: Retrofitting your home We asked the Research Lead of our Building Simulation, Assessment and Communication team, Anthony Wright, for tips on energy-efficient home improvements. So how do we get there? And what can we gain from renovating or retrofitting? And just like Darryl Kerrigan, we want our homes to be comfortable, healthy, sustainable, inviting and inexpensive to run. However, the research also shows that each of these technologies is a viable option and should always be considered when retrofitting an existing facility.A person’s home is their castle. Data from three different Air Force bases and values from three different Air Force Civil Engineer Operations Flight Chiefs were used to evaluate these fifteen technologies, and the results show that the energy efficient window technologies have the highest potential for energy savings at each location. ![]() Value Focused Thinking (VFT) was the methodology used to objectively compare these new technologies and capture what Air Force decision makers value in regards to retrofitting older facilities with these new building envelope technologies. This research investigated fifteen different building envelope technologies and found that many of them are feasible alternatives for DoD facilities. There are hundreds of various new building envelope technologies available to retrofit an existing building envelope, including window, roof, and wall technologies. While new military construction works towards energy efficiency, the majority of DoD facilities were built over forty years ago with little regard to energy efficiency, and it is these facilities that have the greatest potential for energy efficient building envelope retrofits. Much of that energy is used to heat and cool the facility, and a great deal of this energy is lost through the building envelope. The Department of Defense (DoD) has hundreds of thousands of facilities in its inventory, which consume billions of BTUSs of energy per year.
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