H for heating
Brenton Hoskins-Murphy is on a mission to make Australian homes more energy efficient and more comfortable to live in. We caught up with Brenton to talk about some simple steps you can take that will save money and keep you warmer this winter.
It was while working as a property and asset manager for Housing Plus that Brenton first became interested in better house design. So many of the properties he dealt with, and indeed millions of homes Australia-wide, are simply not well suited to keeping people warm in winter or cool in summer.
Brenton’s interest led him to complete a Certificate IV in thermal performance and home energy assessment and now, through his business ATMOS1, he advises people on home improvements that can greatly improve energy efficiency.
“Retrofitting and coming up with smart ways to make existing houses work better is what I’m quite interested in,” said Brenton.
“I turn up and an assessment of a property and make a list of improvements starting at the very simple and reasonably cheap to the somewhat more expensive. Although, I tend to avoid recommending people pull walls out and redo their entire house, that is a rare thing to be doing.”
But there are so many simple and relatively cheap changes you can make that will greatly improve the comfort of your home and save you money.
“It’s simple things like shading western walls and on the northern side putting up pergolas that shade in summer and let the winter sun, looking at little ways to upgrade insulation just simple stuff that doesn't cost the earth but actually has some significant impacts on the property,” he said.
But there is one improvement in particular that nearly every home in Orange would benefit from.
“Draft sealing; I can't bang on about it enough,” said Brenton. “Particularly older houses, just sealing around windows and doors has a huge effect, sealing around electrical outlets has a huge effect — you'd be surprised how leaky our houses are!
“I 've got a thermal imaging camera and on a crisp morning, when people have their heaters on, you can step outside and show them all the hotspots, where the heat is leaking out of their house and where the cold is leaking in — you can end up having the equivalent of a one-and-a-half square metre window open in your house all the time, just the amount of air flow through the place.”
And that lost heat is lost dollars.
“I don't think people realise how big a difference it makes. Draft sealing can easily knock 10, 15, 20 percent off your heating bill, which is fairly significant, and you have cut it off your bill forever,” said Brenton.
Bathroom exhausts are another common culprit for heat loss that can be easily fixed.
“I know most of the older houses just vent straight into the ceiling void so you have a huge gap in your insulation, but simply running a duct outside and having a one-way duffel on that prevents a lot of air movement,” he said.
Heavy drapes topped with pelmets are also an effective measure to limit air convection across windows, reducing heat loss and greatly improving comfort inside.
“And take advantage of solar passive heating. If you have sun coming in a window, having something solid that the sun can shine onto makes a huge difference, if you have concrete or tiled floors that's one thing but if you haven't, maybe moving your furniture around so the sun gets onto it so it absorb energy and then radiates energy. That radiant energy is actually more comfortable than heating the air,” said Brenton.
“And your gas heater… I walk into so many places where they have ducted heating and it hasn’t been serviced in ten years and the filters haven’t been cleaned in ten years. It is just simple little things that can make a huge difference.”