7 ways to save with passive home design

7 ways to save with passive home design

Whilst eco-designers will tell you passive design is extremely important for living in comfort, few home owners know what it is.

Passive design is about utilising the current climate to ensure your home maintains a comfortable temperature range. By understanding the basic measures of good passive home design, your home is likely remain comfortable in both the winter and summer.

A good passive home design is essential in maintaining a thermal comfort, low greenhouse emissions and of course, low energy bills! So here are seven ways you can optimise your passive home design:

The colour of your home can massively impact the comfort of your home. Using lighter colours on your roof and walls will reflect the heat from sunlight. Darker colours instead absorb the heat. Something as simple as changing the colour of your roof tiles can have a significant impact on the internal comfort of your home.

2. Plant some trees. Having bushy trees planted on the western side of your house will reduce the direct heat coming in from the western afternoon sun. Before you start to worry about what happens in the cooler months – make sure you plant deciduous trees and they’ll let the lovely warm sun through when they drop their leaves in Autumn/Winter.

3. Use awnings. Awnings are a great way to stop the heat that comes from outside. According to research done by the US Department of Energy, awnings can reduce the amount temperature rises by in your home from sunshine by up to 77 percent on windows with western exposures. Other alternatives include roof overhangs or pergolas.

4. Get your windows right. Heat rises right? So having high windows open will vent out the hot air. Now here’s something a little bit more technical for you. The Bernoulli Effect. To understand this effect you need to know that wind is sucked towards areas of lower air pressure. The Bernoulli effect basically causes the air on the downwind side of your house to be lower in pressure than air on the upwind side of your house. This is where double hung windows come in. With double hung windows you can open the bottom section of the window in the upwind side of the house, and open the upper section in the downwind side of the house, to let the low pressure suck the air through your house, keeping it cooler.

5. Fans should always be centrally located. Air speed decreases with increased distance, so position your fans where your family spends most of their time i.e. centre of the bed, centre of the living room.

6. Think twice about skylights. Skylights have their pros and cons. On positive side they are a great source of natural light and can significantly improve natural ventilation (as long as they open). But on the negative side the increased sunlight can become uncomfortable in summer, and in winter they could lead to heat loss. So, if you’re thinking about getting a skylight, you need to consider its size and location in the context of what you’re looking to get from it.

Of course if you’re looking to make your home more comfortable or more cost effective in terms of its energy usage, we’d be thrilled to talk to you. You can call us on 1300 045 103.

The environmental house of the future

The environmental house of the future

What your place could look like within the next several decades

Okay, so maybe it doesn’t quite look like the picture, but as we all start becoming more environmentally conscious, technology is adapting to create environmentally sustainable innovations that could significantly affect the way your home looks like right now. So let’s take a look into the environmental house of the future.Maximum natural lightCurrently there are new glass embedded paints being developed that will ensure your house is optimised for the entry of natural light. This will not only allow for your home to not be so dark and gloomy throughout the day, but it also means that you will consume less energy that would have otherwise been used for lighting in the home.SensorsAlthough sensors are already used in many taps to turn on when movement is detected nearby, the sensors of the future will be quite different. Water taps will be equipped with sensors that not only detects movement, but will also automatically turn off when it detects all dirt has been removed. Sensors will also be used in the home to detect when no one is present, which will communicate to interconnected appliances to use less energy, for example by turning down/off your heating when no one is in your home.Waste sortersRecycling will become a whole lot more complex in the future. But don’t worry; technology will do all the dirty work for you. Recycling products will go through a treatment that breaks matter down according to their size, physical and chemical properties. This will be done by microscopic nanobots that will allow for the materials to be recycled endlessly.Plants in the wallsRecently researchers at Purdue University have created an innovative Biowall that actually lives inside a home’s air conditioning, ventilation and heating system. So how does it work? The plants are stacked so that they can filter out airborne toxins. The researchers say that the Biowall will effectively help reduce energy costs as well.Smart plugsElectricity is constantly wasted on appliances being accidentally left on. Well currently there is a smart plug prototype that allows for socket-by-socket monitoring of its energy consumption. It also allows you to check remotely if you have accidentally left your TV on for example. You can then remotely shut it off.Trains as energyAnother innovative project in the making is focusing on the power of trains. We could be harnessing the power of the wind caused by passing trains to charge our appliances. Once again this is an ecologically sustainable innovation that will significantly cut down energy consumption.Biomorphic window skinsThis developing technology can be used to react the weather outside to insulate and absorb heat on the inside. It also has the capability to turn tinting up thus preventing too much light from entering on warmer days. And on the days when your home isn’t receiving enough light, it can turn clear.Collecting data on your refrigeratorHome energy servers are likely be installed in the homes of the future to collect data from appliances like your refrigerator. What this means is that the home energy server can make adjustments to the coolness level of your fridge, based on the data collected. Data collected could be based on your consumption, the usage of your other appliances and even on a broader scale, the usage of appliances by your neighbours. This means that it will be working on a larger scale to cut energy usage by collating information about energy use across your neighbourhood.In the meantime, if you’re after a team of electricians who can help you reduce your environmental footprint in a way that’s also likely to improve your electricity bills, we’d be delighted to talk. You can reach us on 1300 045 103 or drop us a note here.