As of 2020 Australia builds approximately 200,000 new homes per year. All of these must meet minimum energy efficiency performance requirements. One common assessment measure is the Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS), in which homes are typically required to meet a 6 Star minimum.
But what does that mean for you? It means that if you are building or buying a 6-Star home the builder is building a home that meets minimum standards under Australian law.
A 6-star home is the worst home they are allowed to build.
Through some clever marketing, many homeowners believe that a 6-star home is the best you can get. You may think it means your bills are going to be minimal, that your home is going to be comfortable in the cold of winter and the 40+ degree weeks in summer.
It's not hard to see why when many builders market a 6-star rating as the be all and end all of efficient living. However, current advertising practices of some volume home builders are unclear as to what consumers will actually receive in terms of energy efficiency in their new home.
You just have to go online to find a torrent of homeowners complaining about their 6-star homes being very uncomfortable without cranking the A/C or heater day after day, week after week. This adds to bill shock and financial pressure on the family living in the home.
The main issue here is that this is not going to get better. Current climate changes are leading towards more extreme temperature fluctuations and longer periods of experiencing those extremes.
So what’s the solution? The solution is empowering yourself with the knowledge you need before you purchase, build or even rent a home.
Let’s start with the fundamentals that can help you out:
1) There are between 1 and 10 stars when it comes to ratings
2) You can make a home rate better with the right design on the right site
3) There are real world benefits to having a better star rating
Let’s delve in a bit deeper.
So, there are a maximum of 10 stars for energy efficiency under the NatHERS regulation.
1 star is basically a tent, and 10 stars is a home that doesn’t require you to turn on mechanical heating or cooling (A/C,Heater, Fan etc) … ever.
1 to 5.9-star homes are not allowed to be built.
6 is the current minimum.
7 stars are easily achievable with some forethought and will become the new standard soon.
8 is a bit tricky.
9-10 are very expensive, labour intensive and niche, but achievable.
Let’s be real here though, no matter how well insulated or well designed your home is after 2 weeks of 10 degree’s your home will become uncomfortable without help.
On weeks of bushfires no matter how well sealed your home is you will need fresh air and when its hot you cannot stop the transfer of heat from outside your home to inside your home.
This is physics, linked to the fundamental laws of thermodynamics, and cannot be changed.
Now let’s look at your home. If it is a 6-star home, it means that your builder has done the absolute minimum needed to get your plans past the current regulations.
Why would a builder do this? Simple economics – it’s cheaper for the builder to only meet the minimum standards. Coupled with that, when the builders design doesn’t meet the minimum then they can upsell the upgrades to the client, and that becomes a conflict of interest. Is it really in the best interests of the builder to give you an over-complying home when they can make more money selling you upgrades to meet the minimum? That’s one for you to think over.
After an expensive, emotional and drawn-out design process, sometimes lasting 3 months or longer, which leads you to the point of signing a fixed price contract, would you really want to start the process all over again with another builder just to see if their quote is better? Or would you just fork out the cash to get it done?
And that’s what some builders rely on.
How common is this issue. Speaking to some industry experts in the field of energy efficiency, in one internal review, over 70% of all double stories and 40% of all single-story homes didn’t meet minimum requirements and required upgrades.
These may be eye opening numbers.
Let’s break that down. Up to 70% of homes that are going through the design process are not meeting minimum standards and need to be upgraded at the cost of the owner.
Trust In The System
Some thermal performance assessments are done by companies that send their work overseas to be done 'cheap and nasty' by unqualified employees who don’t understand the Australian climate or environment and frankly, 5000 km’s away, don’t really care. They are pressured by the builders, to “just make it work”. And so, there are very real consequences to the homeowner.
For example:
You may have all your glass facing the right way and you may have done a lot of other things right, but if there is a double story 4 meters off your fence line on the north side, it could block all those benefits. Your home could be left cold in winter, and your bills could skyrocket. And yet some assessors purposefully leave this off. They do so because it means they would have to spend more time to make the home comply, and they aren’t paid enough to do that.
Some builders are saying the comfort, liveability and efficiency of your $500,000+ home is only worth between $75-$150. Would you buy a car with $75- $150 dollars of comfort and safety designed into it?
The 'just make it work' and the ‘do it as cheap as possible’ attitude of some builders is leading to cutting corners and some existing ‘6-Star’ homes not actually complying when audited.
Various Assessor Accredited Organisation's (AAO’s) have been auditing their Thermal Performance Assessors (TPA’s) to stamp out the process, but the discrepancies and outright wrong practices that have been observed in some TPA's work, has shocked many who have come across the results. Now these cowboys may be exception, not the rule but it degrades peoples trust, and can mean some are spending large amounts of their hard earned money to have a non-compliant home built.
A positive outcome has been that the auditing system works. It helps to identify issues and is delivering results that are more accurate to home owners while building trust in the system.
For instance:
This is an excerpt from a honest accredited NatHERS assessor who decided to show how the auditing process works in picking up errors:
“The nine page report I received back provided a comprehensive list of all the technical errors I had made in my house energy rating. The following summarising paragraph covers the important bits:”
“‘This rating for a complex small house was poorly done and... is not to an acceptable standard due to the number of errors and omissions found.
Errors were found with floor height above ground, zone partitioning, zoning, floor areas, zone volumes, floor type, floor coverings, roof type, roof construction, air gap emissivities to roofs and walls, roof colour, wall type, wall dimensions, eave offsets, shading screen dimensions, window dimensions, window opening style, window openability, window headheight, window system type and window group type.
Several wing walls were omitted. Several relevant plan pages were not provided. The floor type was not clear from the plan pages provided.
No insulation requirements or building sealing requirements were shown on the plans. Insulation Contact downlights were noted in the NATHERS Certificate but not specified anywhere on the plans.’”
Now this is from an accredited assessor who may have just been having a bad day. We're not going to criticize this assessor for sharing this feedback, but it shows that they have been since been mentored and has improved after the lesson learned. The system has worked in this case.
But there are many assessors that are not NatHERS accredited and are not audited. Imagine what these unaccredited low-cost assessors are forgetting, leaving off or intentionally manipulating!
And who suffers for that? 99% of the time it’s you, the occupant of that home.
Getting a cheap energy rating is like buying a cheap knockoff watch overseas, it may look correct, but it is fundamentally flawed.
Rather than delivering a bad outcome, builders who use accredited, Australian based local experts, can provide accurate results and build your trust in the system, knowing what you get is what you have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in.
Going beyond minimum compliance will make your home more comfortable, more liveable and cheaper to live in. A Climate Council of Australia report, Tents to Castles, says Australians would make significant savings– in addition to helping the environment – if home energy efficiency standards were improved.
The report’s findings suggest that living in a 7-Star, all-electric house in Central Sydney would have occupants saving $225 per year compared to those living in homes built to the current standard of 6-Stars. Further into Sydney’s west, where temperatures are higher in the summer, residents’ savings would increase to $400.
The report also found that updating the National Construction Code to ensure that all new buildings in Australia are built to minimum 7-Star standards would save 46,000 tonnes of CO2 from being released each year.
The reason you save money is that your home gains and loses heat slower. This means you maintain your comfort for longer, needing to put the heater or cooler on less often. If you have energy efficient appliances then you can save even more. Couple all of that with adding or using a solar PV system and you have the recipe for being the envy of your friends and neighbours as your bills are a fraction of theirs.
There are savings to be made but also benefits that you not have even thought about.
Being more comfortable leads to better health, both mental and physical. We spend 90% of our day indoors, and much of that is at home, so you’d think we should improve the standards of where we spend the most time.
1) Save on bills every year
2) A more comfortable home
3) A healthier home
4) Helps save the the planet you’re living on
If your bills are high, and you’re not that comfortable in your home, don’t immediately assume your rating is wrong.
6-Star homes are the minimum standard remember.
But if you are concerned that your home is not up to this minimum standard, you have every right to have your home independently assessed, and many have with very lets say, 'interesting' results. If you’ve paid for a 6-Star home, you should be getting at least a 6-Star home.
You can use a reputable Australian based Thermal Performance Assessor (TPA) from AAO's such as Design Matters National ASBA, Education In Building and get them to verify that your home energy rating is correct. Then you have a couple courses of action:
You feel that your rating incorrect - Pre Build. There’s still time to get expert advice and help to improve your home. A qualified TPA can offer Environmentally Sustainable Design (ESD) mentoring and site specific, tailored help for your project.
You find out that your rating was incorrect - Post Build / Buy. If you have built or bought, then you can go back to the builder and get some answers, possibly receiving compensation for your non-complying home. After all you are paying more to run that home than you should be.
Empowering people like yourself with knowledge such as this is the solution we need to bring the industry to a place where they put your wellbeing above their bottom line.
A note from Your Best Home:
This editorial has been prepared with carefully researched source material by experts in the field. Where sources can be revealed they will be on request. Some sources wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitiviy of the data provided.
This article represents the views of the author but doesn't necessarily represent the views of other contributers to Your Best Home.
