Well – this cat has gone feral, and torn its way out of the bag of national consistency. If I hear another Queenslander talk about how they are different, how Qld can go its own way and doesn’t need to listen to those southerners, I may just scream (and I have Qld blood in my veins – however that is defined)!  We are Australians for heaven’s sake, the enemy does not lie across a state border! The enemy does not even lie across international borders – the enemy is within!

The enemy is our myopic befuddled and utterly self-indulgent frame of mind that prevents us seeing the reality of what lies ahead. The action by the Qld Government indicates that Campbell Newman’s view of the world is somewhat outdated – his retreating footprints can be added to the dinosaur trackways so valued by archeologists.

ABSA has also criticised the move, and other credible organisations are of the same mind – as reported in The Fifth Estate.

With winter fast approaching and electricity bills ever on the rise, it is with reluctance that you dust the little electric blow heater off from the top shelf of the hallway cupboard. In this Sydney Morning Herald article there are some very practical tips for your place.   on how to use the sun to gain as much heat as possible during the day as well as a few tricks to keep that heat inside, where it’s needed, at night.

http://smh.domain.com.au/blogs/talking-property/how-to-warm-your-home-20120515-1ynv1.html

This is an amendment to the previous post, below. “The six-star ratings will stay,” Mr Baillieu reaffirmed. It appears that either Fairfax’s sources got it wrong, or, more likely, the Premier’s advisers caught wind of the array of experts and industry leaders who were about to descend upon him like the proverbial, and quickly axed the axe before any announcement made it to air. Either way, another retrograde step averted, and we can push onwards and upwards.

PREVIOUS POST:

Vistoria’s Baillieu government is contemplating a backflip of unprecedented stupidity: removing the requirement for new homes to be 6 Star rated.

This may be consistent with the trend for Liberal Party thinkers in recent years to adopt the position that government’s should not intervene but rather let the market do whatever it thinks is a good idea at the time (which itself would make Menzies roll in his grave), but it is utterly inconsistent with logic, common sense, and a sustainable future.

The Victorian branch of the Master Builders Association suggested this idiotic move back in 2010, suggesting that the rating requirements did not necessarily lead to better environmental outcomes. Baillieu has sat quietly on this idea for at least that long, even though Victoria signed on the (almost) nationally consistent 6 Star code last year. What the MBA has conveniently ignored is poor outcomes in the final product are the result of poor work by their members, combined with a slack inspection and certification process during construction. This is consistent with other states too, most notably NSW, where the disconnect between what BASIX and councils approve, and what is ultimately built, has become a laughing stock.

The need for minimum performance standards is more urgent than ever, and the carbon price does not undermine that, as MBA and others argue. Buildings must use less energy, and have reliable construction standards regardless of what happens to energy prices.

Envirotecture, and me as Director, will stand up and stridently criticise any Premier, bureaucrat or technocrat who proposes winding back the standards we have laboured for the last 20 years to establish. Be prepared for a shellacking if you dare, Mr Baillieu.

News report here.

Anyone can fill in this very quick survey, which will assist us to give better feedback to suppliers, and to our fellow building designers across Australia.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/59Y5V8T

Everything is connected to everything else, as the guru once famously said. Not sure which guru, where or when – but it’s true, and we ignore at our peril. Especially with regard to insulation in increasingly air-tight buildings. This is a winter problem in cool climates but can also be a problem in the top end in the wet season, if the building is air conditioned.

We used to build uninsulated buildings which leaked every passing draught and breeze. We all know why we had to insulate them. When improved insulation started happening from about 15 years ago (and how embarrassingly recent that was! – even more so in the case of Section J), envelopes were still pretty leaky. Any condensation problems typically evapourated with the new morning, albeit at the cost of internal temperature.

Recent advances in door and window design, and improvements in the way they are installed, combined with more complete sarking, has made Australian buildings much more air-tight than they have ever been before. And now we are seeing a sharp increase in the number of major building faults caused by condensation, even to the point of making them uninhabitable.

It all hinges around the relative humidity of internal air compared to the temperature of the outside air. In the same way a cold beer will stream with condensation on a hot afternoon, any cold surface will condense water vapour if its below the dew point, which is commonly between 16-18.5°. Not hard for outside air to fall below that!

The key is to stop the first hard surface exposed to warm humid air from becoming cold, and to make it as vapor permeable as possible. This means putting the radiant heat barrier (sarking) on the INSIDE of the bulk insulation. In walls, that means a vapour/weather barrier on the outside of the wall frame, with bulk insulation inside that, and a reflective barrier inside that again, with a breather space between it and the wall linings.

But wait – there’s more. The sarking material must also be vapor permeable. Be aware that most sarking products, even the ones thought of as ‘breather foil’, are not sufficiently permeable to allow effective vapour transfer. Seek out materials you can breathe through – it’s a simple test, but it works.

And don’t forget the small air spaces between linings, claddings, and the sarking or membrane beneath. Refer to Weathertex’s new standard cavity fixing system. And there are some even more serious membranes in the wings, that combine reflective performance with permeability and water-proofing, such as Proctor group’s ‘Wrapshield Thermo’ – its a bit hard to get right now, but if we all start asking for it…

Think that’s OTT? Well – do you want to design a cheap import or a BMW? They both look ok on the outside, but which one do you want to be inside in a crash? Beauty and performance are both more than skin deep.

The current thermal performance minimum standard is approximately equal to 4.8 stars, yet the other states (except NT) have been at 6 stars since May last year. So BASIX’s position of leadership established in 2004 has been quietly eroded and overtaken, so even now the upgrade does not appear to put it out in front of the other states’ requirements.

But why worry about being in the lead? And what are star ratings worth anyway? These are two vitally important questions:

Leadership is always important while we are in the early stages of the journey toward real sustainability, wherever that destination may end up being – somewhere over the horizon. The point is that we need to raise the bar on thermal performance of houses, as even BASIX compliant or, in other states BCA (now the National Construction Code) compliant houses typically use way too much energy  controlling thermal comfort. The industry is showing true leadership in this area now, such as our Ecobode 8 star house range dating from 2005, Australian Living’s 9 star house at Rose Bay, even Mirvac have built a 9 star demonstration house – and there are now many dozens of 8 star plus houses around the country. Yet industry recalcitrants continue to scare governments into believing the industry is not ready. These are the people who predicted the sky would fall when NSW introduced 3.5 star in 1996, that cataclysm would descend when 5 star was introduced, that nothing short of utter catastrophe would engulf the entire industry if 6 star was mandated. I look out my window – and yes, the sky is still up there, and even more amazing, 6 star has been proven to be a doddle.

What is the urgency? Put simply – the issue of climate change may not be sexy any more, but it is no less true, and those of us in regular touch with the scientists (the REAL ones that is) are increasingly alarmed at the glacial rate of change towards sustainability in some quarters, notably at present government.

What are star ratings worth? This is a vexed question in design and building science circles. A star band is an arbitrary range of predicted energy consumption agreed by consultation and convention. the higher the star band, the narrower it is, so to move from 1 to 2 stars is a big drop in numbers, but is actually inanely easy to achieve. The law of diminishing returns dictates that as you strive to further reduce energy, it becomes progressively harder to do, so the star bands narrow as you move towards 10 stars. But star ratings are a combined measure of heating and cooling loads. You can have a very strong winter performer that leaks energy like a sieve in summer, and vice versa, yet have quite a good star rating. Thus star ratings are poor regulators of ultimate thermal comfort, and ergo peak energy demand.

BASIX does not use star ratings, it sets separate caps on heating and cooling loads – a much more rigorous and effective bar. So even though its draft upgrade does not yield consistent results above 6 stars, its 5.75-ish star standard is probably the effective equivalent of 6.5 stars. Add to this the other regulations on effective ventilation, lighting, swimming pools, and so on, and you have a situation where NSW will still have the most rigorous housing sustainability regulations in the country. In draft form at least.

Now it’s up to the government, and Planning Mister Brad Hazzard in particular (who copped a brick batt in my last blog) to see past the smoke screen of “lack of readiness and unaffordability” put up by some big power brokers in this industry, and follow through with gazzetting the new regulation as soon as possible.

The NSW Government is abandoning a leadership role in planning for Sydney’s growth (why do we assume Sydney is under some divine commandment to grow? – it’s just what keeps happening in the absence of any plan to the contrary). Premier O’Farrell and Planning Minister Hazzard have determined that developers should be able to plan the city’s ever-westward expansion, without regard to infrastructure, transport, or nearby employment, and bypass local planning and zoning processes. So what is currently potentially or actually productive farmland may become 10,000 houses, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Or, from the other perspective, land that you may have an option to buy now has a fast track to profit and there’s nothing those local reactionaries can do about it.

The problem with this is that Australia’s cities are already amongst the most spread-out and least dense in the world, which is a very inefficient way of making them function for transport, community cohesion, and employment. This dysfunction is a financial burden that the whole community pays for ad infinitum. For years the struggle has been to balance the demand for growth (as distinct from the need for growth), and the future demands of sustainability. This is a long running struggle which everybody who keeps half an eye on the news is aware of. In Sydney’s case, previous governments have established two growth corridors, with some form of mass transport at its core (although that is also an on-again off-again story), along and around which the sprawl of detached low density housing was to be clustered.

But today we learn that the O’Farrell mob can’t even stick to this simple discipline – they want anyone with an interest in any parcel of land in any location to be able to nominate it for rezoning directly by the government, bypassing council entirely. Viewed in one way, this can be seen as a policy created by a government absolutely bankrupt of creativity and design discipline. Their excuse is that the current policy “has not worked”. Really? By what definition? I suspect it is more to do with the free market ideology espoused by lobby groups like the Urban Development Institute of Australia, and Urban Taskforce has since joined the chorus. I cannot help wondering if their ultimate vision is for urban sprawl to cover the whole continent: they never speak of limits, they have no long term constraints. Their rhetoric is very strong on “solving the short term problems”. (I note with wry amusement that in pursuit of this goal they will soon run headlong into the jaws on the Minerals Council, who want the whole state – every square meter of it – to be available for mining.)

It is clear to any informed observer that rezoning land based on its profit potential is an extremely poor way to plan a city, and I think that is being kind. The old saying ‘markets make wonderful slaves but poor masters’ is as true as ever.

In world news today we also read of a 90% decline in Southern Ocean jack mackerel stocks over the last 20 years. Fishing companies, often with significant government support and subsidy, have plundered – there really can be no other word – this fishery to the point of collapse in the next year or two. Getting international agreement on such things is like herding cats, similar to the difficult progress on climate change. In climate change, all humanity has a stake and the vested interests fight to hold sway, but in fishery management, vested interests are more dominating and insidious. Direct commercial interference is rife. Governments seem to be mesmerised, in the sway of big fishing companies like PacAndes and Thai Union Group. Never heard of them? They sell a large proportion of the world’s seafood through brands like John West. Companies like these have undue influence on various governments, and thus have stymied efforts to limit fish takes, leading directly to the collapse of the whole food chain. The economic hurt they will suffer through their own short-sighted stupidity has not affected their decision making.

Why is it so hard for governments to adhere to good policy design in the face of pressure from vested interest groups? We see that the same principle is at work in both cases – Sydney’s ‘planning’ (loose use of the term), and protecting the world’s food security. That is a question we should be asking our elected representatives. Claiming a mandate is well and good, but they must remember – or be reminded – that the mandate is from the people, not corporations. We design buildings for the people who will occupy them, governments must also design cities for the people who live and work in them, not for the profits of land owner developers.

Good city planning takes guts as much as anything – once the design, with all its myriad inputs, is in place, you need guts to hold your nerve and say “this is where it will happen, not there.” It seems that the new boss is just the same as the old boss: beholden to the interests of the developer lobby. And Sydney, the Great Unplanned City, suffers onwards and outwards.

We can design the most energy efficient, water-sustainable buildings on earth, but they will never be sustainable unless the urban context that supports them is sustainable too. Is anybody in Macquarie Street currently aware of this? Hullo?

Or, if you prefer…

BUSHFIRE: A DEMON OF OUR OWN MAKING - APPLYING NEW RESEARCH TO LAND MANAGEMENT AND BUILDING DESIGN

Australia used to be one big farm. Before the days of when our wealth grew like sheaves of wheat, before the days of our wealth riding the sheep’s back, the country grew enough to create a varied diet of various vegetables, and a variety of sweet and savoury meats. Large destructive bushfires were unknown. These emerging facts must pique our interest, demand a closer look. It has major implications for the way we design buildings, and manage the whole land. In fact, it challenges all common notions of what is ‘natural’, ‘wilderness’, and ‘landscape’. And, how we plan city edges and design buildings.

Europeans used ploughs to tend the land, but these have never been suited to our soils or climate. Asians used water and terracing to bring forth their crops, but our land never had enough consistent rain to allow this. Here, the plough was made of flame, the terracing made of soil types and natural landform. Here, deliberate decisions were made about what to grow where, and why, all with a careful plan as to when to harvest. Fire was the implement, from Tasmania to the Kimberley. And these were not monocultures such as Europeans planted over thousands of acres, here was multiple cropping, sometimes rotational, with dozens of varieties, with a general focus on pasture.

Who could have made such sophisticated decisions? Well, it appears now that with the exception of Kangaroo Island and the far South-West of Tasmania, the whole of Australia up until 1788 was a managed landscape, a bloody great big farm. There were many ‘owners’, who variously cooperated and squabbled (just like the rest of the world), but all understood the farming method. According to newly published mammoth and all-encompassing research by the ANU’s Prof Bill Gammage, the traditional view of Australia’s vegetation cover is off the mark. The notion that Aboriginal people used to fire to simply flush out wallabies so they could be speared or clubbed, and to make the country easier to pass through, are about as accurate as thinking that buildings design themselves. This is a shocking notion, once sunk in. It means that not only was Terra Nulius wrong in law (aka Mabo, Wik, and the vibe of the thing), but also patently wrong to the eye of the observer, had they only known what they were looking at.

In economic terms, when a company is taken over, the buyer wants to see the books – to see the assets and liabilities, to understand what the sales and turnover are. In short, to get a complete picture of the business’s position. In its takeover of Australia, the British never undertook such an audit of their take-over target, they never understood how the business operated. Based on assumptions and ignorance, they started running the farm they way they had run farms in England. And that’s precisely where it all started to go wrong. There was never any real wilderness in Australia any time in the last 30,000 years at least, all the landscape was made, managed, effectively farmed, then as white settlers like my farming forebears spread across the continent, the land fell into disrepair. Drought hurt more than before, fire damaged where it had not before, water ran off quickly and floods wreaked havoc as never before. Landcare, Peter Andrews and others, have been trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again ever since.

What we see now, as we travel from the suburbs, through the peri-urban fringes, and beyond through national parks to the farmlands beyond (and beyond that to the desert if we make time!), is a land that is dramatically changed since 1788. Then, the most common description of the unsettled country was that “it resembled a gentleman’s park” back in England. This comment, and variations upon those exact words, are recorded thousands of times in contemporaneous documents. The “impenetrable scrub” of Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson came much later. How can that be? Hundreds of these descriptions are referenced in Gammage’s book, each by trusted observers: explorers, surveyors, even Governor Macquarie. Paintings and drawings, painstakingly detailed in their representations of country – for these were the photographers of the times – show large tracts cleared or semi-cleared, in definite patterns, according to the various purposes of food gathering. No tractors, no ploughs, just flame. Suffice to say that fire was used little and often – here not there, now not then – as a way of encouraging some food types, discouraging others, and maintaining a generally safe livable environment on a continent with significant climate variability. Had they allowed mega-fires to occur, large scale population extinctions would have occurred with it, and there is no record in either archeological or in the dreaming stories.

The hot potato of this knowledge for us in the wider building industry, is that ‘bushfire’ is a demon of our own making. Megafires such as 2009’s Black Saturday, and others like it back through the 20^th century, were unheard of prior to the mid 1800s, when the well-treed grasslands had been either cleared totally, or allowed to regrow with dense “under wood” (archaic term). Yet now, we are expected to provide safe shelter in these changed landscapes, now severely fire-prone. This is a double whammy”, with climate change bringing increased extremes and variability with a general increase in baseline temperature, and changed bush management that encourages wild fires.

What concerns me is that the hot potato will become a big grey elephant which just sits in the lounge room, because the change in how we manage the wider landscape has escaped the attention of governments at all levels (to date). I have little confidence that any of them will react to this new and more complete intelligence with any kind of speed or alacrity.

For building designers, design and construction to the bushfire code AS3959-2009 is no guarantee of survival, and may lead to a false sense of security. It adds cost to construction perhaps for no better outcome, and encourages acceptance of the status quo of the likelihood of fires, assuming a sense of resignation, powerlessness. That cannot be allowed to continue, and we must challenge that lazy defeatist attitude.

Governments are representative of the people, and peak industry bodies such as BDA, AIA, and PIA have a responsibility to lead government from places of technical ignorance into the light of better technical understanding. We are the custodians of technical knowledge, governments acquire it from us. But we first must develop that technical knowledge, and Gammage’s research is a huge leap forward in that area. Now we must build on that, and get serious about how we manage this country, before we allow it to just burn up. Apathy and resignation to the status quo is as fatal as any bushfire.

[The Biggest Estate on Earth by Bill Gammage, published by Allen & Unwin, 2011.]

The new facilities are architecturally refreshing, low maintenance, and sustainable for a number of reasons. They look after their own water demand, harvesting roofwater for toilet flushing, and where tree cover permits, harvest solar energy for lighting and pumping. They are use precast concrete wall panels made from 95% recycled concrete (even the mix water is recycled), created in a joint venture between Fairfield Council’s Sustainable Resource Centre and Metromix Smithfield. The roof structure uses lightweight foam sandwich steel panels, which have flat top and bottom surfaces, enabling easy cleaning below, and a thin-film photovoltaic panel to be adhered on top.

The flushing mechanism is electronic, ensuring perfect flushing volumes without the need for a cistern, thus reducing vandalism repairs. Each facility has a male and female, and one lockable accessible toilet. The male and female cubicles are only large enough for one person, with outward opening doors, thus dramatically improving personal safety, especially after dark. Privacy has been provided by obscured metal screens.

Some Dutch politician may have declared multiculturalism dead, but he has never been to Fairfield! There are 159 identifiable cultural groups happily coexisting within the Fairfield LGA, and many have particular sensitivities around personal hygiene activities, all of which had to be considered in the design.

The design team at Envirotecture, coordinated by Tracy Graham, also included the structural engineer Damian Ienco at NB Consulting Engineers, and all details of the design are incorporated into one set of working drawings. The construction is undertaken by Fairfield’s own building team, under the overall direction of Mick Raby, Manager City Works, and on-site direction of Frank Meola. Frank produces the precast panels in house, as well as carrying out all site works with his Delta Team of council tradies.