Turns out it wasn’t such a straightforward decision.
We had no less than three architects known for their sustainable designs and one self proclaimed but not really sustainable architect (and there are certainly growing numbers of these around) traipse through our place. They gave their views on how we could improve our living and bedroom space and make the house more sustainable.
We’re all for mainstream architects proclaiming their interest and skill in sustainable housing. But did we want our place to be their practice ground?
The challenge was that for an 80 year old bungalow, the retrofit was incredibly fiddly and we know what that means – $$$$. Added to this was the revamped and slightly (only slightly) extended living and bedroom space – the costs were getting up to half a million dollars – without actually adding an extra room.
So principle no 2 of the three R‘s (reuse) goes out the window. Off we go to bid on a nearby house, a fantastically ugly brown brick place from untouched from the 1970s. Perfectly liveable for a number of years until we can afford to rebuild.
Sorry to hear your difficulties J&J.
ReplyDeleteAs a builder who's trying to encourage sustainability, I'm worried your dilemma is one that will occur more and more in the future.
The basic fact of the matter is you SHOULDN'T spend half a million dollars making the house more sustainable. It HAS to be affordable if we as a society are to embrace it.
So don't rebuild the house on those grounds. If you're going to spend $485k on a massive extension/renovation anyway, then fine yes do it as you go. But you obviously don't want to do that.
My advice would be to do the cheap retrofits as established by priority in your energy audit and then look at creative ways to limit your environmental impacts. Home heating and cooling is very important but it's not EVERYTHING, and I'm saying that as someone pushing for zero-carbon homes.
You can address the source of your electricity - make it 100% accredited green power from a wind and/or solar source (these are better than Hydro as they drive investment into these new sources rather than coming from existing hydro schemes). You can make sure you have the most efficient appliances as possible (a new 5 star fridge will use FAR less energy than an old one, and only have ONE fridge). You can shift all you investments/superannuation away from traditional resource-heavy portfolios to ethical and renewable energy companies. You can do a LOT of improvements with transport choices. You can install active solar systems such as hot water and PV (although wait on these until after the proposed RET legislation goes through as it's VERY crap right now - perhaps wait until after the federal election). You can do a LOT of good by growing as much food as you can. You can almost do more than anything by simple day-to-day purchasing decisions on everything from food to clothes to holidays, etc. And finally perhaps the best thing you can do is to add your voice by not only voting for the environment, but to join the community action movement and be seen at rallies, etc.
And together these things will contribute to be perhaps more actual environmental gains than spending huge amounts of money to improve the thermal efficiency of the house.
Getting back to the house, if the orientation is really bad and it’s on stumps (which yours is), a very creative way to fix it it to lift the house up and spin it around! It sounds bizarre and your council may not let you, but I’ve seen it done very successfully and is extremely cost effective against totally gutting the house!
Anyway all the best with it and well done so far. I'm very interested to see how you get on.