Legislative Assembly in hot water

Andrew Barr has been on about Hot water systems – First stage of hot water system phase out proposed to commence on 1 May 2010 for new and established houses in gas reticulated areas – he doesn’t mention whether it will be rebated or user pays.

If it is mandatory, and the user pays, i cannot see the populace getting behind this one.

there is also a crack at the greens – Greens Hot Water Bill may as well be renamed the Swiss Cheese Bill it is so full of holes.

No argument from me on that. As the large builders have taken there unsuitable shelf plans nation-wide, the stock of housing being built has become worse in many ways.
Only the increasing minimum standards have clawed back some of these losses.
Hence my support for such measures to force a largely unwilling industry to change.

Gungahlin Al said :

Good builders will educate their clients about these issues, and work to seel their clients a ‘better’ home rather than just a ‘bigger’ home. Just like they’ll work with a client to modify plans to make for better passive solar gain rather than taking the easy way of just jamming more insulation into an off-the-shelf plan until it trips over the EER line.

I remember being educated when looking at houses built twenty years ago (the names Seedab and Four Seasons come to mind). When we visited the display villages in Harrison and Forde we couldn’t get any information about what environmentally friendly features the houses had, apart from the flavour-of-the-month water tank, or any details of how the houses met the mandatory energy rating. Seems we’ve not only not made any progress in the last two decades, we’ve gone backwards.

The cat did it said :

ACT Government should have had mandated insulation and double glazing for new homes twenty years ago. And if you are worried by the cost, then cut back on some ‘aspirational feature’ of the McMansion.

I’ve got no problems with phasing out traditional electric hot water systems, but we’d have to be careful that the Greens, in a fit of righteous purity, don’t go too far, and seek to mandate leading edge technology- highly efficient but expensive systems. Just shifting to natural gas will give major benefits. And remember, solar systems need a booster for when the sun don’t shine, and usually this is (you guessed it) mains electricity.

Also, don’t get sucked in by the talk of hot water heat pumps. These use mains electricity too, and in Canberra they are significantly less efficient than claimed (Hugh Saddler in 666 last week).

Mostly agreed. I’ve found Caroline a pragmatic person, so cutting edge as you call it is unlikely to be mandated. And I have concerns about heat pumps from the noise aspect, having had a battle to get an a/c compressor relocated from outside our (naturally ventilated) bedroom window, in the Defence house next door.

No renewable HWS is cheap to buy, but they sure are cheap to run. And there’s the problem. Everyone building a house tries to get as much as they can within whatever their budget is. And people equate bigger with better rather than building what they need. So a 5th bedroom becomes more important than a tank and a solar HWS. Then the bedroom lies empty, while the energy and water bills keep rolling in…

Some call it ‘sticker shock’.

If an efficient HWS is not optional (like tanks, and qualified plumbing installations, and engineering assessments, and all those myriad of other things that are mandatory for any new house), then people will take that into account when seeing how much wriggle room their budget has for ‘extras’. And 3 months after moving in (and 6 months, 9 months, etc), they’ll be rapt at how low their bills are.

A mandatory requirement makes the sticker shock a non-issue. Good builders will educate their clients about these issues, and work to seel their clients a ‘better’ home rather than just a ‘bigger’ home. Just like they’ll work with a client to modify plans to make for better passive solar gain rather than taking the easy way of just jamming more insulation into an off-the-shelf plan until it trips over the EER line.

As a builder I know says: “None of this stuff is rocket science – it’s just ‘north is that way’.”

And Jivrashi: “So it’s a known fact that electric host water system is inefficient?”
Absolutely it is. Equivalent to running an urn in your house 24/7 instead of boiling a jug when you want a coffee.

If you take short warm showers, gas or electric you’re going to use less energy than if you take long hot showers or deep baths, regardless of the system. The Greens can be very lacking in thinking skills. When I had an energy audit done on my house, the tester turned on my shower full bore. Tsssk tssssk – 15+ litres a minute. When I tested it at the actual flow rate I use for a shower, it was pretty much the equivalent of a water-saving showerhead.

ACT Greens MLA Caroline Le Couteur says:
“The Liberal Party, in their 2008 Climate Change policy release, said they would require ‘Solar or other low energy hot water systems on all new dwellings’.

I love the term LOW ENERGY when applied to heating water…. Water only heats up at the rate at which you put energy into it….. The little water molecule doesn’t care whether it is being heated by Gas, Electricity, or The Sun…

Solar “assisted” systems do use less energy, granted, but ‘other options????” What other options (Gas/Electric)… We are simply not allowed to drill deep enough to get a good geo-thermal heater running in this territory.

If they were serious, then we could drill… Then we wouldn’t need to pay for electricity either.

Bah Humbug!

Oh – And – the Greens – I voted for them, cause the candidate was HOT!

It seems like the current housing market is supply-constrained – which means the price is set on the demand side, by what people are willing to pay. So mild increases in construction costs won’t be passed on, because they won’t change what people are willing to pay – they’ll have to be absorbed by the developers.

It’s being debated tomorrow.

Don’t ever be fooled – genuine reductions in energy use and emissions will not come cheap. But naturally the people howling for climate change solutions know this, and are happy to pay more for every aspect of their lives, from food to transport to electricity to holidays.

The environment is very important, but so is people being able to feed their kids. We need to take both sides into account when we make decisions.

/insert silly comment about there being no point feeding children if there’s no planet here…

ACT Government should have had mandated insulation and double glazing for new homes twenty years ago. And if you are worried by the cost, then cut back on some ‘aspirational feature’ of the McMansion.

I’ve got no problems with phasing out traditional electric hot water systems, but we’d have to be careful that the Greens, in a fit of righteous purity, don’t go too far, and seek to mandate leading edge technology- highly efficient but expensive systems. Just shifting to natural gas will give major benefits. And remember, solar systems need a booster for when the sun don’t shine, and usually this is (you guessed it) mains electricity.

Also, don’t get sucked in by the talk of hot water heat pumps. These use mains electricity too, and in Canberra they are significantly less efficient than claimed (Hugh Saddler in 666 last week).