Reply With QuoteAgreed, but any house built now seems to be built to combat winter, not summer. Here in our area (Mildura) where we get extreme summer temperatures and frosts in the winter, the onus for all these fancy energy rating credits seems to be on keeping houses warm. Houses here now are mostly brick, have little or no eaves, and are heavily insulated. They might be ok for the first day or two of 38C plus degrees, but after that they are hot boxes and rely heavily on air conditioning.Originally Posted by gofish
I agree. When I tell people that I don't have A/C @ home they are horrifiedQuite often they are my age or older & I ask them if they had A/C when they were kids. ALL say "no" yet still survived. The world is becoming too soft. Make sure the fridge is loaded with cold ones & roll with it.
We built our house almost thirty years ago and built it to combat summer and based it to some degree on a mates house on a sheep station near Tilpa. Double brick, ten foot ceilings, ten foot verandahs, decent double doors on all four sides so that there is a breezeway through the place, plus ceiling fans. We didn't need air conditioning, and only fitted it after five years, as I worked shiftwork and my wife decided she didn't feel safe sleeping with only screen doors. So we fitted ducted reverse cycle AC and it hardly has to put in any effort to keep the house cool.
Older houses nearly all had open fireplaces in them and they create a draw on a hot day. When we were building our house it was late in the year and our old cattle dog would head straight for the open fireplace and lay in there where natural convection caused a draught of cool air.
Very easy to see why today we have such a high energy demand in hot weather, once houses weren't air conditioned, then along came Swampies (evaporatives) that were not heavy on power, then the reverse cycle AC which has a far higher power usage.
If I fronted up at Council today with the plans to build a house a house like ours they would probably throw me out the door.
I see on the news a week or so back after the last spike of summer temperatures that the building codes for are going to be reviewed.
On another note, in 2000 the GST (Goods and Services Tax) was introduced by JH and Co, and after the power stations were sold off, the government started getting money for absolutely nothing from electricity customers. If they were serious about reducing power prices, drop the GST on them for households. They must have pulled in megabucks from GST on electricity accounts by now.
Currently 46.1 under our verandah, 4.10 pm.
Cheers, Mick.
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