The Home

We think of our homes mostly in terms of memory and emotion – a magnificent meal prepared in the kitchen, a child’s first steps and consequent faceplant on the livingroom floor, beers with mates out on the back verandah.  

The more we live in a home, however, the more the physical structure begins to fade into the background. Our lives unfold within it, but we tend to forget about all the ways we continue to interact with and depend on the services our homes provide (until we come to sell it or consider a renovation).

At its most basic level, a house is a tool for living, but most homes today are blunt, poorly designed tools. They waste energy and water, lack basic comfort, and are often made from construction materials whose production has huge environmental and social consequences.

Better homes are on the way and as household sustainability assessors we have the capacity to have a positive influence on this process.  There are also abundant opportunities to develop great revenue generating opportunities for ourselves in the process.

A combination of new technologies and approaches are beginning to allow us to create buildings with a whole new footprint: buildings that are light, airy, comfortable and stylish; buildings that sip water and can produce their own energy; buildings that are better for us, better for the environment and, over time, better for our wallets in the face of rising prices for electricity and water services.

These ‘greener’, more sustainable homes are emerging from the same design explosion and consumer demands that are putting greener, more sustainable products in stores and on supermarket shelves.

Because building a home, or renovating and retrofitting an existing house, demands so much more of an investment than buying a product off the shelf, the innovations and ideas are slower to arrive. But they are coming. And we’re going to see improved structures and performance of homes as a result.