Reality Check for ACT Energy Efficiency Ratings

Well I support the scheme. I don’t think it is perfect, but I think it is better than nothing. Some of the categories are quite hard to determine, so I think you can get slightley different results on the same house. But Ithink a house that gets 0 is always going to be worse than a house that gets 4 or 5.

There are two points here.

One is that a vendor sponsored report is largely worthless to a buyer. They who pay the piper call the tune.

The second is that a $100 a year energy saving is a very minor cost in the average property purchase.

If (and I cite this as an extreme case) a $100,000 increase in the cost of building the property yeilded a $1000 reduction in energy costs then it would take 100 years to pay it back. And most people don’t expect to be in a house for 10 years let alone 100.

i note that the new 600k palaces going up in nth mckellar have no insulation built into their single brick veneer walls.

It could be a conspiracy to get you to spend more money on improvements to home and grounds, but I haven’t reviewed the full list of criteria they apply so I couldn’t say.

It would be good rant material, but I’m feeling to lazy today.

I reckon it’s a pretty good rort for anyone to get into.

Get yourself a laptop with Excel, plug in a couple of formulae, then hang out your shingle as a home energy efficiency expert.

A couple of hundred bucks a throw for wandering around a home for 10 minutes noting the number of windows.

Hit “enter” and the magic number apears (pity it’s often got stuff all to do with reality).

The best thing – Stanhope’s forcing everyone who wants to sell their home to employ you and your laptop.

Or, a Labour Government is looking to take a swipe at a successful Liberal Government program.

… I can’t believe I said that.