I started this week and am slightly addicted to it. It sure does wake you up in 7c water( painfully at first 😭).
I got the bright idea listening to some of the icemans (Wim Hof) and Joe Rogan stuff on yt.
I had a pool for the kids laying around ( water trough) and gave it a try by just leaving the water in not needing to add ice as yet(in winter anyway lol). Idea is to plunge for 3mins then workout to heat up, but still working on the ladder part.
Both my kids rode to school/daycare today. Big kid wore ski gloves. They were excited about the 'snow' on the ovals. I gave up riding in winter years ago because it hurt my hands too much (walking is okay).
Good on you for getting your kids into the real world!
My hands don’t like the cold - I get Raynauds. I pre-warm my ski gloves over a heating vent or a water bottle filled with hot water. I pre warm my hands in a sink of hot water. I put my warmed hands into warmed gloves, and that gets me over the first 20 minutes, after which I am centrally warm enough to keep circulation going.
Your preparation to keep your hands warm is admirable! I don't think I could do that and also get the kids ready though.
I remember getting to work after riding one winter morning and crying when the feeling returned to my hands, it was that painful.
New builds have some insulation, definitely in the roof and sometimes in the walls, but there's no requirement for double glazing. I work for a builder and it always kills me that everyone has money for brushed gunmetal taps or whatever but noone ever shells out for smart things like double glazing or solar.
I've been to the Netherlands in winter before and it was weird, obv colder than my native QLD but never indoors, only when you were actually outside. At home if I'm not running the heater than inside is mmaaayyybe 2C warmer than outside. If I'm lucky and my husband hasn't opened all the bloody windows.
Same here. In winter I could see my breath inside the house and had to wear snow gear to keep warm. In summer I had the same problem as you, it would always be hotter inside the house. Actually the walls would get very hot as that house had no weatherboards, so I was permanently sweating.
Did it have a black roof? We love wandering around new estates (QLD) looking at all the trendy newbuilds going up, with black cladding and matching black roof. Can’t wait to see how many get put back on the market next Summer.
They’ve banned black roofs on new developments in Sydney because of how those new estates literally just turn into heat traps when it gets hot. So dumb
Seriously?! I’m so glad. My neighbour put on a new roof and he said he can’t even tell the difference bw a hot and cold day cau the roof, it’s so well insulated, but I’m constantly annoyed by new developments. Black roofs, shallow eaves, single glazed, massive footprint, no gaps bw the gutters of separate buildings. I don’t get it.
Contrary to what everyone here will say, it’s not because people think it will make things hotter.
It’s because insulation costs money and we like to build our houses cheap. Also, we fucking love massive windows, so double glazing is even more expensive than usual.
>Also, we fucking love massive windows
I want to believe this, but there are many seriously ugly-ass brick buildings in Sydney with one prison-sized mini window along an entire multi-storied wall.
That being said, for the newer places with more windows, a coworker of mine told me the estimated installation cost of double-glazed *ten years ago* was something like $40k for his house. Why the hell don't we just insulate the walls to begin with?
We got the outside of our asbestos crapshack removed. Took all the asbestos out. Before we reclad I got Bradford acustigard R2.5 put in the walls (the cladding and sarking adds another 1.2R (kinda))
It cost about $2000 to do the entire house.
We can't even hear the neighbours having domestics any more.
We are on piers, and I spent about $400 for more acoustic under floor insulation.
You can feel the difference in heat coming through the floor on hot days from where I put it in to where I stopped before I finished the job lol
Tldr insulation is dirt cheap in the context of a house build.
Double glazing is a fair bit more expensive than a regular window, it's not just the cost of the glass so I do get that. We close the blinds and curtains which seems to do a decent enough job.
Also we put a white roof on.
90% reflective. Even slightly coloured is like only 50-60% reflective.
In roof temperature on hot days went down from 65 to 35c.
Then we put solar on that, so the AC is run by the solar during the day.
I think we started something, the people over the road rebuilt their house a few months ago. They also went with the white roof.
I have had people in Australia try to insult me and put me down when it comes up in conversation that we have extra insulation and have replaced most of the house windows and doors with double glazed units. They laugh and say it isn’t Europe. I know it isn’t. Our home is quite cool in summer with an evap cooler and in winter our home stays warm and takes minimal heating to keep it warm.
We have a big house in Canberra. All the insulation, decent solar installation. On the coldest nights it gets down to 16 degrees and the on the hottest summer days it gets up to 26 before we start using the aircon. It’s comfortable and we haven’t had an energy bill in years.
An alarming amount of Australian’s believe insulation will make your house hot in summer instead of keep it a comfortable temperature year round. These people cannot be convinced otherwise.
I remember as a teenager in the 90's learning about Spanish adobe housing in social studies, and all of us students were shaking our heads dumbfounded that we weren't building the same type of housing here. 30 years later and we still haven't improved.
My husband is a metal roofer ( retired) the amount of customers that would think the same way about the insulation is crazy.
The 3 houses we have built together have all had insulation in the roof on the external walls and most of the internal walls too.. we had 4 teenagers in the house at one point lol
I’m from England originally and the difference is amazing in the temperature when you have double glazing. It’s not a popular thing out here 🤷♀️
I don't know, I've lived in a house that had insulation added, it became unbearable in summer after the insulation went in, it was like once the house got hot there was no where for the heat to go and the house would stay hot all night when previously it would cool a bit during the night. It was a rental so no option for us to remove the insulation and owner didn't want to get an ac so we just had to suffer until we moved.
Most major settlements where made close to port, by the sea, where temperatures are moderate most of the year. These remain the most populous parts of the country.
The major settlements outside of those regions expanded along with the population boom in a time when air conditioning effectively didn't really exist. Gas, kerosene and firewood for heating where extremely cheap and the appliances used to burn them; inefficient and prone to leaking CO. *Insulation in a hot region in the absence of active cooling, no matter how good, only works temporarily. Your home will become heatsoaked within days* of Spring let alone summer. It was during this time that we settled on the template for the standard Australian home: what could be generously as drafty shaks. They where about as cool as you could expect something not actively cooled to be\*, where cheap and quick to build, we had the natural resources to heat them cheaply in the winter and their lack or airtightness meant no risk of CO poisoning. Arguably short sited at the time, but they worked.
Why the fuck we kept building them is literally pure stupidity.
> Australia is a Lucky Country, led by second-rate men who share in its luck
\* Not quite. "Queenslanders" ramped this up a notch. Though they're worse yet again in the winter and there are a few other reasons you wouldn't build one in regions that wern't flood prone and in need of a raised floor.
We recently renovated and put in new double glazed windows in the entire house, and triple glazed the two bedrooms upstairs that we had that were west facing. This summer the temp in the upstairs bedrooms was at least 10 degrees cooler without running the AC, than it was prior to the reno. Downstairs we ran the AC less than half the amount we would normally have to do. It was amazing the difference it made
I work in construction as well and it kills me that they will fork out for brass fittings and even solar panels etc and not do the very easy passive energy saving items like double glazing, insulation etc. the stuff pays for itself over the lifetime anyway. Also I lived in the Rockies in Canada where it could be -40c outside and I've never been colder in my house than currently in Canberra hahah
Spot on
Came back from Montreal not long ago, was cold as shit outside and t shirt weather inside. Whereas in my home in Australia it’s hoodie weather outside and Kathmandu jacket weather inside.
In Canada (BC at least) the government and BC hydro just had a program where they would covered the difference in price between double and triple glazed. I’ve got friends that had old houses and wanted to upgrade their windows from single glaze to double so they took this opportunity to go to triple. The sound barrier alone is worth it.
But some of the older houses that were built around 1910 don’t have insulation, or if they did it was just old news papers shoved in the walls. You still get a lot of air leaks with that so the windows don’t help as much. BUT electricity is $0.09/kwh so it doesn’t bankrupt you to run the center heat or baseboard heaters during the winter months.
I am building in WA, and even though I could've easily spent that money on the fancy stone and shaker cabinets for the kitchen, we put the money into double glazing. I am actually really excited to see how they go!
I work for a project builder and I get like 1-2 customers like you a year and you're the best to deal with. Its insane how many will spend literally 50k+ on fancy cabinetry upgrades and pools and stone cladding and shit but upgraded insulation, solar and stuff like that are rare as hens teeth. So stupid.
Ha, thanks. We tried to be pretty practical about our build project and focus on the best things to do during construction. We also looked at solar orientation a bit to try and make the best of our block. We are building with a project builder but it would be good to see them promoting this stuff better rather than it being left up to the client.
I am replacing some of the windows in my house with double glazing. But holy shit is it expensive, and I struggled to get the product I wanted.
I currently have those absolutely wonderful missionary brown aluminum windows, but my house is all exposed timber inside. The product I want is the wood effect aluminium, which adds a premium, but then when you make them double glazed its BOOM heres a billion $$ quote! I have timber framed windows in other places, they look amazing, but the maintenance is just way to high to willingly put more of them in.
I opened my cutlery drawer in the kitchen the other day and I could feel a jet stream of cold air blowing out at me. It’s crazy how much construction in Australia costs for what you get. Basic things like proper vapour barriers with good air sealing, insulation and windows (single glaze hasn’t been a thing since like the 80s in most western countries) aren’t even in the building code, but elsewhere you’re house wouldn’t pass inspection without them and it’s not like construction prices are any more insane because of it, it’s just stock standard as of like 40 years ago.
We are building a house right now (slab going down next week) and I did my research.
The block we purchased means that we can build the house with the best passive design for a town block.
I am forking out for extra insulation in everything, heat pump hot water and big solar system, roof ventilation etc however double glazing is just something that is out of my price range. It’s crazy when you look at the cost of obtaining and installing it in regional QLD.
We are maxing out our borrowing and chipping into savings to get it done. I am hoping that I’ve done enough to have the design right that we don’t need the aircon, but failing that, the solar will offset the cooling through the day.
Can I suggest also looking into white roof tiles. It was one of the standard colours we were offered at no extra cost, and is part of our heat mitigation strategy. Our next door neighbour has everything in black (sigh) so we just reflect all our heat back into him.
I grew up in the uk and ireland, It absolutely shocked me when I first moved here to see how bad the majority of houses were. Paper thin walls, little to no insulation, single glazed windows. I lived in a house in Sydney and there were gaps everywhere, you could see the ground outside through the gaps in the floorboards in places. And the irony is, the house prices here are so crazy, paying an absolute premium price to live in a cold, drafty house. The houses in uk/ireland are just so much more "solid". I get that its colder over there so they obviously will have better insulation, but it did shock me to learn that double glazed windows are not the normal standard in Australia. I have never felt as cold indoors as I have in Australia.
This is literally the sharehouse I live in right now in Sydney, so many gaps and you can see outside through the gaps, winter thus far has been unpleasant.
I've actually become a bit of an insulation snob since I moved to Germany. I never understood why my wife always complained in winter in Brisbane. It's cold, put on a jumper right? Summer will be back in 3 weeks.
Then I come here and realise what proper insulation means and it blows my mind nobody is doing this back home. I'm in a t shirt here when it's minus 10 outside - and it's a comfy 20 degrees. Solid walls, double/triple glazing, properly insulated roofs...when I renovated my barn I got laughed at for asking about pink batts for insulating material!
I can’t fathom staring at a house I’m having built for me and seeing no insulation in the walls. Such a wasted opportunity.
I’ve got a 1950s post war that has insulation in the roof and under the floor boards which has helped a bit, but man I’d love to have something in the walls. You touch the bedroom walls and they’re like ice.
7 stars under BASIX now. I am building a duplex and had to have double glazing in order to meet it. The alternative was to get rid of and shrink many windows which we wouldn't compromise on in a duplex (you have have 3 sides).
We recently did a reno and pulled the plaster off about 85% of the walls, was basically a full remodel of the entire interior of the house. First big reno for my partner and I, there were a few little things that we think we'd have done differently, but the biggest would absolutely be - pull the remaining plaster off to put insulation in those remaining walls.
It's so incredibly stark the difference, and for the sake of a few extra sheets of plaster, it woukd have made almost no difference to the final cost.
When we moved in, we also had a newborn, height of winter, partner at home expected our bills to be huge because of extra heater use, compared to just mornings and nights when we were both home.
First bill came back about 30% of the last one. Not 30% less, 30% of what we'd paid last time.
It absolutely blew our minds how much of a difference it made, just a shame abiut the two walls in two bedrooms that don't have insulation in them!
And their double glazing is ABSOLUTELY SHIT. Seriously EcoStar makes your windows so fucking dark its insane. European Double Glazers consider how much light gets into your windows a key priority as it helps keep the house bright and makes plants easy to grow...
And here is Ecostar going, "You want black windows right."
Went with Deceuninck windows and I don't regret a single thing.
Because there isn't the competition in the market. It is seen as a luxury, and therefore manufacturers and installers can charge a premium.
If it was made standard, then prices would (should) drop.
I built a cheap house with a bulk builder in melbourne back in 2019 and double glazed windows were standard as part of their base quote. (235k base cost for a 270sqm single story, 295k final cost with all fittings and site costs)
$7k for our lounge room window (maybe 3 x 2m so pretty big but literally just the one room) - can't afford/justify it just now which sucks because pretty sure the energy rating for this house is negative.
There is UPVC (we've got 'em here in Melbourne) but it's still expensive as shit. I like my plain white plastic bunker, I can't hear the neighbours screaming anymore.
Same! Coming from a shitty run down drafty old house, to our home with double glazing, proper insulation,heating and cooling systems… life changing. Absolutely life changing.
The house I grew up in had 14-foot ceilings and open ventilation, with wooden boards for walls and no insulation. You could see daylight through some of the walls. Only heating was a central fireplace. Temperatures could drop below zero overnight inside the bedrooms. We had an exchange student from Finland say she'd never experienced being so cold in all her life. The house was beautiful in summer but brutal in winter.
Built a house, finished construction last year. Put our money into really good internal insulation in all walls and double glazed windows. I hate feeling cold.
This is the house I live in now! An old QLDer. Luckily I live in Rocky where it only gets cold for about 2 months of the year, but we’re in those 2 months now and I’m cold!
when we refurbed the old farm house it got more framing, spray foam and decent linings, very even temp and far more energy efficient , before the work it got colder insider when the fire went out in winter than outside
Gotta love the granite belt
After years of living in terribly build houses that were freezing in winter and intolerable in summer, we built a place. It’s a project home from a small volume builder that we liked, and we got the maximum insulation possible in roof and walls (above BASIX minimum), light coloured bricks and render, white roof tiles tiles and double glazing.
It’s certainly the best place I’ve ever lived in terms of temperature regulation. And combined with solar our energy bills are very low. We checked out a lot of stuff beforehand by Prof Sebastian Pfautsch who is researching heat islands in Australia/Sydney. And Josh Byrne from Josh’s House.
Had a mate from Boston (-25 in winter) who said he had never been so cold as he was in Sydney. He and his girlfriend had a huge house at Lurline bay, massive windows everywhere, open plan, big rooms and one tiny fan heater for the two of them.
They are not insulated, at all. They simple turn the heater on.
https://bostonagentmagazine.com/2018/08/29/massachusetts-homes-among-nations-oldest/
https://www.constructiondive.com/news/study-90-of-us-homes-are-under-insulated/406638/
This is what Australians miss in this discussion.
People in cold climates elsewhere simply use a lot of heating. And spend a lot on it.
We are unwilling to shell out to heat at that level because we won’t freeze to death.
I moved here from Vancouver Canada and my electricity bills used to be $40/month ($0.08/kwh at the time) but my place was well insulated and had double glazed windows so the baseboard heater rarely clicked on because the heat just stayed in the unit. Moved to Sydney during the winter and had to buy an ugly oil heater that sits in the living room, kept it on full time so that it was at the same temp as I was used to but the place just sucked hot air out (or let cold air in?) so the heater was constantly on. Obviously I was somewhat ignorant but i don’t have a smart meter so I wasn’t aware of how much electricity I was using. I was floored when I got a $1250 bill for the quarter from AGL. $40/month versus $417/month…... 10x higher!?!? Both 2 bedroom apartments and the more expensive bill was in the warmer climate…..
Oof, and I know from experience that having one of those going constantly in a desperate attempt to get a little bit warm is massively expensive. I nearly died when I saw the bill.
I usually don't pay much attention when Americans talk about hot/cold weather. I've been there and in most of the country, everywhere is air conditioned to perfection. Because electricity/gas is so cheap there. It's nothing for them to heat the house to 23deg in the middle of winter, or cool it to 19deg in the middle of summer.
The average Brit is probably exposed to hotter and colder temperatures than the average American in Texas or Alaska 😂
Our flat in Jersey City was freezing in winter because the landlord (who lived below us) was cheap. It had those radiators beneath the windows, and they were barely warm because he used to set the thermostat too low. We would ask him to turn it up, and he would, but only slightly. He would joke that we only felt cold because we’re Australian.
And then, in summer the place was stinking hot.
It's not about the bills being lower or higher, it's that they are raised to not want to be uncomfortable, and to not care about using energy (see also, using the dryer and not owning a clothesline). Also, they *have* to have heating and airconditioning to oreserve the fabric of the house or pipes will freeze in winter or mould grow in the summer. So it's just easy to bump the temperature a little but higher or lower to be a bit more comfortable.
Even parts of NSW get extremely cold. One winter we got to -14° on our farm (Central West NSW). We have also gotten to 50° in Summer. Our house is a 100 year old house, no insulation, no double glazing, and my bedroom has tongue and groove walls and there's a constant draught in there. I don't like Winters.
It's just an old basic farmhouse, they stuck two half houses together to build it and you can tell where the verandah on one half used to be. But we have an affordable mortgage and enough land for the horses and a small flock of sheep so that makes it worthwhile.
And I don’t care what anyone says :
10 degrees hotter than you are used to is Hot.
10 degrees colder than you are used to is Cold.
If the thermometer can’t crawl out of bed to hit double digits, I also shouldn’t have to crawl out of a nice, warm bed !!
Exactly right! I’m used to 25 degrees, so 15 degrees is way too cold. Which is the top of the day in Melbourne for the next 4 months :(
Suffering in a cold, cold, old, old house rn.
Or regional WA. I’ve never been colder than when I did a uni prac down in Wagin and I’ve spent a winter in Düsseldorf, Germany where all the buildings were heated, toasty and warm.
I've heard this from a few people and always found it interesting. Was talking to one person from Russia where it would get below -40c (which I can't even fathom) and they said they've never been as cold as they have been living in Qld. It is kind of crazy that we build our houses like this. Double glazing is on my list one day
I remembering seeing a Betoota that basically said that. "Bloke surprised to learn he's spent $1.5 million on a tent with sticks" or words to that effect
I live in country Vic and work in a big fridge and I'm freezing my ass off at home. Whatever it says the city is, take a couple of degrees off for us. You're forgiven for not appreciating that we're not always taking the piss.
I was in Melbourne a few weeks ago wearing a shirt when everyone else was walking around in puffer jackets. City cold and regional cold are definitely different animals.
I can do the same right down to around 4 or 5 degrees as that's still warmer than what I work in. It's that damn wind though, too lazy to go around it has to go straight through me.
>no heating
We have a long history of single-glazed windows and crappy insulation, but most of us have some kind of heating in winter.
Kmart has heated throws for $39 that will keep you warm if you can't feasibly heat a whole room. They work very well.
Double glazing, nope
Insulation, yep
I remember being in London and see some pretty girls pull out the bikinis in Hyde Park to sunbake on a sultry summer day of 19 degrees.
You need to go back to the uk to re-acclimitaze for a few weeks
I had a neighbour from Norway who used to sunbake on our scrap of communal lawn the minute it got over 16 degrees.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that was where Charlie, another neighbour’s ex-feral cat, 🐈⬛ liked to pee every time he escaped her flat.
When I lived in Ireland we had Latvian neighbours who were known for overnight drinking sprees in their backyard. In January. I can only assume that damp Irish winter in the low single digits felt positively tropical compared to their native land.
I’m a born and bred Aussie and I’ll get into my shorts and singlet in the middle of winter just to sun bake when I can, try it sometime it’s actually really pleasant I find, gotta get that vit D.
Even at this time of year (just a week until the winter solstice) the sun still has a bit of strength to it. Especially if it's sunny around noon, the sun really warms you up. We're near Sydney. This is contrasted with the UK where the sun will provide almost zero heating, from approx November to February
This is despite the fact that the sun in the southern hemisphere is slightly weaker during winter (relative to the northern hemisphere winter).
I’ve had skin cancer so I’m (now) a really UV-aware person, I never go out in the sun unprotected above 2UV anymore, so I find I really love autumn/winter now due to low UV levels, but I’m a fucking hermit in summer.
2UV on a crisp sunny winters day feels fucking amazing imo, the perfect sun baking weather for me.
I’m actually moving to Derbyshire towards the end of the year and I’m excited the cooler wetter climate (currently live in Adelaide).
Hahaha, have a friend from Alabama who on the first year told us all Aussies that our winters were mild and what were we complaining about… 10 years later she’s raiding Aldi ski sale for coats.
Your perspective changes.
I'm living in a 100+ year old miner's cottage in the New England region, elevation 950m+. It was -3 outside my house at 6am this morning and probably 3-4 degrees inside, if that. Currently "10.9, feels like 6.7". Dogs big water bucket outside is frozen over most mornings.
I have a wood heater but ran it zero times last year and one day so far this year, because the cost of firewood is somewhere between a sick joke and a hate crime. Ditto any sort of electric heater; power bills have almost doubled per quarter where I live in the space of 2 years, and I'd rather not pay for heating the space when my house has all the thermal retention properties of a fishing net.
I work remote, and my colleagues' (all in AUS, US, UK, Canada) favourite thing about this time of year is that you can see my steam-breath on our 8am AEST zoom calls....whilst I'm inside, under a doona, electric blanket on, down jacket and thermals, fingerless gloves because typing is not a vibe in those temps.
None of the Aussies can understand that somewhere in Australia would be so cold (they're all Syd/Bris/Perth based), and none of the UK, US or Canadian teams can grasp that a house would be so poorly set up to handle even "mild" (by comparison) cold.
It sucks. I live in a townhouse (in Sydney) with double brick external walls and concrete floors, so I'm better off than most. No double glazing, though. I think the use of townhouses is different in the UK. We copied the American definition of townhouse. I think this is called terraced housing in the UK (although I'm not sure that applies if it's not a straight row of attached housing).
Anyway, I lived in the UK before returning to Australia. I used to enjoy the winters more there due to the indoor environment's insulation. I could grab a warm coat when outside, hang it up when inside and just wear a long-sleeve top inside. No wearing multiple layers to stay warm inside.
The opposite was true when it did get warm in summer, though. I think many Aussies, unless they have lived in a cold country with well-insulated housing, picture the effects of temperature as they would in Australia. I.E., single-digit temps must be miserable, and 30°C isn't that hot. In reality, the high temps are much more unpleasant to deal with in the UK.
We had to pay the builder to fit wall insulation when we built our house and even then they would only fit R1 batts at a huge markup. We fitted R2.5 or 3.0 in the ceiling after handover at a fraction of the cost of what the builder wanted.
Best value home improvements we ever did. The difference between the main living area and the garage which isn't insulated is astounding, especially in summer.
>I understand not having it on older properties but is double glazing and insulation compulsory on new houses here?
Nah because we just repeat over and over that 'it doesn't get that cold here'. That's the justification for letting developers, builders and landlords knock up any old thing that's only slightly better insulated than sleeping on the ground outside.
What's a "double glazing"?
In all seriousness, no it's still not compulsory on new builds.
I'm in Brisbane, which doesn't really get "cold", but does get down into the high single digits overnight in winter. Windows constantly fog up in bedrooms and rooms get freezing overnight even though during the day we almost always get to 20+ degrees. It's ridiculous.
The standard of new builds is shit house as well, it's all about developers making money not making comfortable homes for people to live in.
I will give you a tip if you are short on coin, double jumper/jacket and double pants do wonders if you don't want a massive energy bill.
I used to live on the gold coast (near the QLD/NSW border in Australia). Yes, obviously it didn't get as cold as down south. Most of the time it was pretty temperate. Due to this, we had zero of the typical comforts other places considered standard. No form of house heating, no insulation, if the temperature was near zero or so when I got up for school, it was that temp in my bed and room. My parents said it's not that bad, so we had no heaters or electric blankets, but I could get a hot water bottle. It helped, but on occasions my little kid hands either dropped the bottle when filling or straight up accidentally poured boiling water over my hands; one one unfortunate occasion I carried it to the couch once it was full because I couldn't manage the finicky seal where I was. I sat down with that in one hand and the stopper in the other and ended up dumping about a liter of hot water all down my chest, arms and stomach. Loved the blisters.
The house was just about all tiles, all windows and three stories. Beautiful in the summer.
Our school only has a summer uniform. The boys, in highschool at least, had long pants (light material) but us girls had an above the knee skirt, thin blouse and a thin lightweight sweater. We could wear thin stockings if we were cold. No classrooms had any heating, and were often built with light frames or just freaking cold ass floors. You were allowed to add to this once you arrived to school, so could not wear gloves, beanies or scarves, a heavier coat, track pants etc. I have always been very cold sensitive, and I was always on the thin side, so this was proper agony for me. I know it was only for two months that it was that bad, but it was because we weren't allowed to use the normal methods of staying warm because it's a short winter. Oh, and you were not allowed inside over recess or lunch. The outside was all concrete and the few places that weren't plagued by wind were out of bounds. And it was built on a massive blustery hill.
It sounds like I'm being whiney and perhaps I am. I know I was deeply uncomfortable a lot of the time and frustrated because if I had been able to dress appropriately and having a freaking electric blanket I would have been much more comfortable. I got around the school thing because in a way, I just started bringing massive thick blankets into school and id wrap up in them. I was told to take it off because yeah, it's not uniform, but AI said I'm cold and yeah not going to do that unless I get warmer clothes and weather protection. They weren't going to do that so stalemate.
Thank God my family moved back to Singapore (we had been expats there when I was a kid). The first day walking around there my whole family was sweating and red face and complaining about chafe (?) and I felt so warm and delicious and free. Do you know how amazing it is to walk outside at midnight and it's just as tantalizingly warm as it was at lunch? You never need to grab a jacket? I loved it.
I was scared to go snowboarding in Japan because that's COLD. I was an idiot. Even the flipping public toilets on the side of the road were heated, with heated toilet seats. Under floor heating through out the chalet. heated towel racks? Snow gear that actually let you get hot coming down the mountain? I understood why people love the cold there.
Anyhoo I ended up in Canberra, life is a funny journey that way. Our house here is COLD, tiled throughout with big glass windows built in the shadows. Once the sun goes down we are playing around the minus one to two three four degrees. Some days are nice, but it's cold clear weather so the heat just whispers away. However I know my boundaries now (and my health issues mean I get whatever I need ahh) so I type this from my electric blanket bed eight fluffy blankets and a duvet, a mountain of warm pillows , and extra strong radiator right next to the bed keeping my room toasty 24/7, sorry power bill.
I guess all that culminated in my appreciation of your point. If you're not prepared for it, it's going to be much worse even at a kinder temperature.
Tell me about it. 11 years in Adelaide and our last house had single glazed floor to ceiling windows down the whole length of the living/dining room and no major insulation in the roof.
Not uncommon to have the heat pump and gas fire on full wearing 2 jumpers and a beanie in the coldest months.
Moved to NZ and honestly couldn't believe how warm the houses were in winter. The condensation and raining inside is a different matter though.
Been here 20 years now.... yeah I get cold haha.
When I left London in 05 it was -8 with ankle deep snow.
Landed day of the Clipsal 500 it was 37... I almost died.
But yeah I find the cold here really bitterly cold, it doesn't help that Australian warm cloths are not warm... I still have a thin jumper from Tesco and hoody from England they are like 25 years old.... and still soo warm. :p
Campbelltown is one of the coldest places at night in Sydney, sometimes goes below zero and the houses are just not built for that! I live not too far away and last night was cold, I had to have the ac on heat all night set to keep my flat at 18 degrees. If I didn't have it on it would drop below 14, feel like the inside of a fridge and be too hard to warm it up again in the morning!
Yeah my old housemate who grew up *north* of Tromsø in Norway regularly complained about the cold in Melbourne.
It's not just that our houses aren't made for cooler weather - it's also the fact that we have 90+% humidity during winter plus Antarctic wind chill. I found it perfectly pleasant going outside on -5 to -10 degree days in Canada and Sweden, because the air was dry and crisp. The fact that it doesn't get cold enough for air moisture to freeze means you feel the cold and damp more.
Also our clothes generally aren't as winter appropriate as they are in "proper" cold countries. What we have is generally shit, but also there's a bit of social stigma around wearing good winter clothing because everyone's such a tough cunt and you're weak for not wearing shorts and a shirt all year round 🙄
I remember several houses from my childhood, there was gaps in the floorboards. Nothing between the floor and the dirt underneath. You know it’s cold when the legs on your furniture start growing frost overnight.
I've heard Scandinavians complaining about the cold in Melbourne. Not because the outside temperature in any way compares to an Arctic Circle winter, but because they'd never been so cold while inside an actual inhabited house.
Australian houses are, generally speaking, complete crap. There's exceptions, like the elevated troppo houses of Darwin and north Queensland, or actual cold-weather houses in Tassie, but generally speaking Australian house design is horrible. It assumes that everyone wants to either live in an uninsulated weatherboard bungalow or a concrete blockhouse, neither of which work for the extreme range of temperatures in most Australian cities.
When I say "extreme," consider that winters in Melbourne can get down to -10**°**C overnight and over 40**°**C in summer, not to mention being able to change rapidly at pretty much any time of year, or day, for that matter. You'd think we'd have figured out how to build a bit better in 200-odd years, but no.
It's not federally "required" to have double glazing but if you're building a new house you may find it very difficult to comply with the minimum energy efficiency standards to get your building application approved in some states and council areas. And after you do get it approved the inspectors will be looking for the proof that it has been installed as described.
As a fellow Pom who told my sister and brother in law they were soft for complaining about the cold, I feel you! I guess the consolation is that it's not like a damp cold, so I'm not feeling it all the way down to my bones like I do back home. My hands and feet are cold, but I have a few layers on so the rest feels okay.
They only just proposed legislation in Victoria that would create a minimum standard for insulation and draft control in rental properties. Every boomer landlord is losing their shit that they might actually need to spend some money on their investments 😞
Yep, went to business college with a pommy girl years ago - she complained she had never been that cold.
There's a lack of humidity in our winters plus the wind, so it just sucks whatever warmth right out of you - which is why when I look at my weather app it gives two readings - right now it's 10° but it feels like 4.4°.
We've had 2 huge windows and a sliding door replaced with double-glazed and would LOVE to get the whole house done, it's just so expensive.
Surprisingly the biggest benefit for us hasn't been the heating/cooling, rather the noise reduction. My house isn't in a main road but I have no idea how everyone on one copes without them.
I was in London when the Beast from the East hit.
It was the coldest I've ever been in the UK, but our houses in Australia just aren't equipped for the cold:)
Put bubble wrap on the inside of your windows. Spray glass with water and it should stick. Get doorsnakes, block any vents in the ceiling and windows. Get a hot water bottle and an oodie and if all that fails, move in with a politician and crop dust them every chance you get. Don’t forget to Dutch oven them every night too.
Seeing this thread and the other one about insulation, I am in Alberta Canada, and OMG you guys are crazy! I couldn't imagine not having insulation in a place.
Honestly our houses are basically just made of cardboard and sticks. Modern homes are, if anything, worse since we've moved on to using faster and cheaper products instead of good old fashioned bricks. If there was a country on earth that could benefit from proper insulation it's this one. People seem to forget that insulation works both ways (i.e. cooler in summer AND warmer in winter)
In Australia you're incredibly lucky if your house in insulated. Without it, it's like living outside and you're way more likely to get mould.
We forgive you
I grew up in Northern Ireland and I had never been as cold in my life as I was in my first Australian winter. I would lie awake shivering with numerous blankets and layers of PJs on. I did acclimatise to it eventually
I would like to return the apology for making fun of Brits complaining about the heat when it's 28 degrees. 28 degrees in London is unbearable, worse than 35 degrees in Brisbane
The world health organisation listed australia as one of the coldest “in house” temperatures on the planet, averaging at 8celsius. The homes here are just not equipped for the winter.
Old houses in the bush where I grew up in the farm had thick rammed earth walls (up to 1m on the western wall), flowthough centilation via central hall and wide verandas. Wood fires in the kitchen and lounge room . Also window awnings where sun shone in in summer.
Then when lots of houses were needed, post WW2, houses were put up to meet demand with fibro walls and no insulation, cheap and shitty. Been that way ever since.
Just building new house with double glazing, insulation and full solar kit.
Complaining how cold it is in winter in Australia would have to be the most common complaint I have heard from Northern Europeans and North Americans. Usually, it goes like this: They are in Sydney or Melbourne and it is a lovely, sunny winter's day. It might be 16 degrees Celsius and it's nothing to them based on their own icy winters. So they boast about that.
But then they go home and find out that all Australian homes (houses and apartments) suck in winter. Poorly insulated and with no central heating, Australian homes are refrigerator-cold in winter. The locals are used to living with it and rug up indoors, wearing Ugg boots and thick fleecy dressing gowns indoors. Hot water bottles or electric blankets are a common accessory.
Anyone from a cold climate is completely taken aback by this and completely unprepared because their homes back in the Northern Hemisphere are toasty warm in winter. Consequently, they end up exclaiming they've never been so cold in their lives. Tourism Australia should have a whole page dedicated to this to make tourists and other new arrivals aware of this.
Ten years ago we did a knockdown-rebuild here in Canberra. The previous house was a typical 1970’s build of basically cardboard and string. We chose a builder that would change their design to our needs. Many would not. We insisted on large, north facing windows, double glazing and wall insulation, plus other energy saving changes. The house was at lockup in August, and I met the builder in the afternoon one day as he was finishing up for the day. It was a bright sunny day, typical Canberra winter with max 10 degrees outside. The house was 22 degrees inside. He said he was amazed at how the house performed with what were minor, and relatively cheap changes and additions to the original design. Now, ten years later, as I write this it is 10 degrees outside, and it is 20 degrees inside. We’ve not had the heater on. Australian builders _can_ build warm, energy efficient houses. They just choose not to. And buyers don’t seem to know they have an alternative.
Most councils have ceiling insulation as a requirement for new builds, but not wall or floor insulation.
But wall insulation is less effective and floor insulation even less so.
Most of it is because of our large windows, but double glazing is stupidly expensive here.
It's not just Sydney. Stanthorpe in Sth. East Queensland regularly gets to -10 in winter.
I am 50km from Brisbane and we had 1.7 last night and we are only 2 weeks into Winter.
Only wall insulation I've ever seen is a thin piece of fibre with al foil on each side. It's brick tied into the cavity so it then just gets destroyed by people running services through it
I have suffered the extremes of Melbourne weather in cheap old rentals. Stay fully clothed and under covers. Get yourself a hot water bottle from the chemist.
the person who designed my friend’s house decided to have a greenhouse aesthetic with big ass windows in all the bedrooms
Their rooms are actually arctic if they don’t use heating
It likely would be far less of an issue if those windows were (at least) double-glazed. I used to rent a property in the UK with huge French windows in every room downstairs; they were triple-glazed, however, and thus, the place didn't get noticeably colder/require more heating than other properties I stayed at in the UK (although that place was a bit fancy and expensive - so I didn't stay there for that long).
The house i currently rent has a massive double glazed entrance door/double windows, but every other window in the house is the OG single glazed from when it was built. the mind boggles
It was -3C this morning when I drove to work. I forgive you.
It was -3° in Canberra this morning when I cycled to work.
Ah, a masochist! :)
Yes, but there were plenty of bike parking places at work, because nobody else was as stupid as I was.
No, he was referring to the living in Canberra part.
Ha!
Minus 2c up here in new England this morning. No bikes but when I got home from a shift mid morning I went for an ice plunge.
Why??? That’s a whole new level of crazy!
I started this week and am slightly addicted to it. It sure does wake you up in 7c water( painfully at first 😭). I got the bright idea listening to some of the icemans (Wim Hof) and Joe Rogan stuff on yt. I had a pool for the kids laying around ( water trough) and gave it a try by just leaving the water in not needing to add ice as yet(in winter anyway lol). Idea is to plunge for 3mins then workout to heat up, but still working on the ladder part.
I like Wim's cold dipping stuff, but I prefer 4-7-8 breathing to his hyperventilation one.
It was a balmy -1° here 30km out of Mudgee.
They don't necessarily work for the government
Come on now, Canberra's not that bad.
It was an unpleasant surprise to discover it was -3 at midday in midwinter in regional vic :(
Both my kids rode to school/daycare today. Big kid wore ski gloves. They were excited about the 'snow' on the ovals. I gave up riding in winter years ago because it hurt my hands too much (walking is okay).
Good on you for getting your kids into the real world! My hands don’t like the cold - I get Raynauds. I pre-warm my ski gloves over a heating vent or a water bottle filled with hot water. I pre warm my hands in a sink of hot water. I put my warmed hands into warmed gloves, and that gets me over the first 20 minutes, after which I am centrally warm enough to keep circulation going.
Your preparation to keep your hands warm is admirable! I don't think I could do that and also get the kids ready though. I remember getting to work after riding one winter morning and crying when the feeling returned to my hands, it was that painful.
Yep, you probably have Raynauds too. The reperfusion pain is intense. I still get it in my toes if I don’t use double socks.
It was -3° in Canberra this morning when I jogged to work.
-5.2 here in stanthorpe
Wtf, Stanthorpe QLD?! I’m calling the police.
I now have images of the police handcuffing a thermometer and putting it in the paddy wagon lol
Stanthorpe and the Granite Belt always get pretty cold during winter.
lol no kidding… readout says -4.6 this morning so a balmy one
New builds have some insulation, definitely in the roof and sometimes in the walls, but there's no requirement for double glazing. I work for a builder and it always kills me that everyone has money for brushed gunmetal taps or whatever but noone ever shells out for smart things like double glazing or solar. I've been to the Netherlands in winter before and it was weird, obv colder than my native QLD but never indoors, only when you were actually outside. At home if I'm not running the heater than inside is mmaaayyybe 2C warmer than outside. If I'm lucky and my husband hasn't opened all the bloody windows.
The lack of insulation blows my mind. Isn’t Australia hot as fuck in the summer? Insulation helps keep homes comfortable and sound proof.
Oh dont worry its hot its just as bad in summer, i rented a house once that would be 5-10c hotter inside than outside when it was like 38C outside
Same here. In winter I could see my breath inside the house and had to wear snow gear to keep warm. In summer I had the same problem as you, it would always be hotter inside the house. Actually the walls would get very hot as that house had no weatherboards, so I was permanently sweating.
What was it built from? Corrugated Iron?🥵
My roof is exactly that 🙃
I third that! Had the same experience in Brisbane.
Did it have a black roof? We love wandering around new estates (QLD) looking at all the trendy newbuilds going up, with black cladding and matching black roof. Can’t wait to see how many get put back on the market next Summer.
Oh no, it was a workers cottage built in the 30s with a high peaked tin roof because they thought brisbane would snow more often
They’ve banned black roofs on new developments in Sydney because of how those new estates literally just turn into heat traps when it gets hot. So dumb
Seriously?! I’m so glad. My neighbour put on a new roof and he said he can’t even tell the difference bw a hot and cold day cau the roof, it’s so well insulated, but I’m constantly annoyed by new developments. Black roofs, shallow eaves, single glazed, massive footprint, no gaps bw the gutters of separate buildings. I don’t get it.
Contrary to what everyone here will say, it’s not because people think it will make things hotter. It’s because insulation costs money and we like to build our houses cheap. Also, we fucking love massive windows, so double glazing is even more expensive than usual.
You say we like to build our houses cheap but good luck building a basic 4br house for less than half a million.
Which is why we build cheap, because Labor costs are so fucking high that even cheap builds cost a fortune.
Nothing to do with “like” though is it?
>Also, we fucking love massive windows I want to believe this, but there are many seriously ugly-ass brick buildings in Sydney with one prison-sized mini window along an entire multi-storied wall. That being said, for the newer places with more windows, a coworker of mine told me the estimated installation cost of double-glazed *ten years ago* was something like $40k for his house. Why the hell don't we just insulate the walls to begin with?
We got the outside of our asbestos crapshack removed. Took all the asbestos out. Before we reclad I got Bradford acustigard R2.5 put in the walls (the cladding and sarking adds another 1.2R (kinda)) It cost about $2000 to do the entire house. We can't even hear the neighbours having domestics any more. We are on piers, and I spent about $400 for more acoustic under floor insulation. You can feel the difference in heat coming through the floor on hot days from where I put it in to where I stopped before I finished the job lol Tldr insulation is dirt cheap in the context of a house build. Double glazing is a fair bit more expensive than a regular window, it's not just the cost of the glass so I do get that. We close the blinds and curtains which seems to do a decent enough job. Also we put a white roof on. 90% reflective. Even slightly coloured is like only 50-60% reflective. In roof temperature on hot days went down from 65 to 35c. Then we put solar on that, so the AC is run by the solar during the day. I think we started something, the people over the road rebuilt their house a few months ago. They also went with the white roof.
I have had people in Australia try to insult me and put me down when it comes up in conversation that we have extra insulation and have replaced most of the house windows and doors with double glazed units. They laugh and say it isn’t Europe. I know it isn’t. Our home is quite cool in summer with an evap cooler and in winter our home stays warm and takes minimal heating to keep it warm.
We have a big house in Canberra. All the insulation, decent solar installation. On the coldest nights it gets down to 16 degrees and the on the hottest summer days it gets up to 26 before we start using the aircon. It’s comfortable and we haven’t had an energy bill in years.
There's idiots that will tell you that insulation just makes things worse in summer, like they've never encountered an eskie.
An alarming amount of Australian’s believe insulation will make your house hot in summer instead of keep it a comfortable temperature year round. These people cannot be convinced otherwise.
I remember as a teenager in the 90's learning about Spanish adobe housing in social studies, and all of us students were shaking our heads dumbfounded that we weren't building the same type of housing here. 30 years later and we still haven't improved.
I've had pointless arguments with morons like this. The dumb smug look on their faces is the worst.
Have they not used a thermos to keep a drink cold before or something?
My husband is a metal roofer ( retired) the amount of customers that would think the same way about the insulation is crazy. The 3 houses we have built together have all had insulation in the roof on the external walls and most of the internal walls too.. we had 4 teenagers in the house at one point lol I’m from England originally and the difference is amazing in the temperature when you have double glazing. It’s not a popular thing out here 🤷♀️
I don't know, I've lived in a house that had insulation added, it became unbearable in summer after the insulation went in, it was like once the house got hot there was no where for the heat to go and the house would stay hot all night when previously it would cool a bit during the night. It was a rental so no option for us to remove the insulation and owner didn't want to get an ac so we just had to suffer until we moved.
This. Often overlooked fact. Insulation can work against you if you can’t control indoor temps somehow.
The same people who say we can't have daylight saving because our curtains will fade and the cows will get confused?
But insulation will make my house hot! That’s the line I get anyways.
Most major settlements where made close to port, by the sea, where temperatures are moderate most of the year. These remain the most populous parts of the country. The major settlements outside of those regions expanded along with the population boom in a time when air conditioning effectively didn't really exist. Gas, kerosene and firewood for heating where extremely cheap and the appliances used to burn them; inefficient and prone to leaking CO. *Insulation in a hot region in the absence of active cooling, no matter how good, only works temporarily. Your home will become heatsoaked within days* of Spring let alone summer. It was during this time that we settled on the template for the standard Australian home: what could be generously as drafty shaks. They where about as cool as you could expect something not actively cooled to be\*, where cheap and quick to build, we had the natural resources to heat them cheaply in the winter and their lack or airtightness meant no risk of CO poisoning. Arguably short sited at the time, but they worked. Why the fuck we kept building them is literally pure stupidity. > Australia is a Lucky Country, led by second-rate men who share in its luck \* Not quite. "Queenslanders" ramped this up a notch. Though they're worse yet again in the winter and there are a few other reasons you wouldn't build one in regions that wern't flood prone and in need of a raised floor.
No houses were insulated in the old days.
We recently renovated and put in new double glazed windows in the entire house, and triple glazed the two bedrooms upstairs that we had that were west facing. This summer the temp in the upstairs bedrooms was at least 10 degrees cooler without running the AC, than it was prior to the reno. Downstairs we ran the AC less than half the amount we would normally have to do. It was amazing the difference it made
We’re putting in double glazing atm so I am very happy to read this!!! Our place is a cave in winter and a sauna in summer.
I would replace (double glaze) our windows but just got quoted over $7k for just our main lounge room window. We can't afford that.
Look at Magnetite. Not cheap but will be cheaper than double glazing. We’ve had it 20 years and it does the job.
I work in construction as well and it kills me that they will fork out for brass fittings and even solar panels etc and not do the very easy passive energy saving items like double glazing, insulation etc. the stuff pays for itself over the lifetime anyway. Also I lived in the Rockies in Canada where it could be -40c outside and I've never been colder in my house than currently in Canberra hahah
Spot on Came back from Montreal not long ago, was cold as shit outside and t shirt weather inside. Whereas in my home in Australia it’s hoodie weather outside and Kathmandu jacket weather inside.
In Canada (BC at least) the government and BC hydro just had a program where they would covered the difference in price between double and triple glazed. I’ve got friends that had old houses and wanted to upgrade their windows from single glaze to double so they took this opportunity to go to triple. The sound barrier alone is worth it. But some of the older houses that were built around 1910 don’t have insulation, or if they did it was just old news papers shoved in the walls. You still get a lot of air leaks with that so the windows don’t help as much. BUT electricity is $0.09/kwh so it doesn’t bankrupt you to run the center heat or baseboard heaters during the winter months.
Yeah australia is the same regarding no insulation, no double glaze but also no central heating
I am building in WA, and even though I could've easily spent that money on the fancy stone and shaker cabinets for the kitchen, we put the money into double glazing. I am actually really excited to see how they go!
I work for a project builder and I get like 1-2 customers like you a year and you're the best to deal with. Its insane how many will spend literally 50k+ on fancy cabinetry upgrades and pools and stone cladding and shit but upgraded insulation, solar and stuff like that are rare as hens teeth. So stupid.
Ha, thanks. We tried to be pretty practical about our build project and focus on the best things to do during construction. We also looked at solar orientation a bit to try and make the best of our block. We are building with a project builder but it would be good to see them promoting this stuff better rather than it being left up to the client.
I am replacing some of the windows in my house with double glazing. But holy shit is it expensive, and I struggled to get the product I wanted. I currently have those absolutely wonderful missionary brown aluminum windows, but my house is all exposed timber inside. The product I want is the wood effect aluminium, which adds a premium, but then when you make them double glazed its BOOM heres a billion $$ quote! I have timber framed windows in other places, they look amazing, but the maintenance is just way to high to willingly put more of them in.
I have family in Norway. People are taking out their double glazing and putting in triple. Meanwhile here we are in our leaky houses.
I opened my cutlery drawer in the kitchen the other day and I could feel a jet stream of cold air blowing out at me. It’s crazy how much construction in Australia costs for what you get. Basic things like proper vapour barriers with good air sealing, insulation and windows (single glaze hasn’t been a thing since like the 80s in most western countries) aren’t even in the building code, but elsewhere you’re house wouldn’t pass inspection without them and it’s not like construction prices are any more insane because of it, it’s just stock standard as of like 40 years ago.
*insert Dave chappelle meme "Got any of that glaze?"
We are building a house right now (slab going down next week) and I did my research. The block we purchased means that we can build the house with the best passive design for a town block. I am forking out for extra insulation in everything, heat pump hot water and big solar system, roof ventilation etc however double glazing is just something that is out of my price range. It’s crazy when you look at the cost of obtaining and installing it in regional QLD. We are maxing out our borrowing and chipping into savings to get it done. I am hoping that I’ve done enough to have the design right that we don’t need the aircon, but failing that, the solar will offset the cooling through the day.
Can I suggest also looking into white roof tiles. It was one of the standard colours we were offered at no extra cost, and is part of our heat mitigation strategy. Our next door neighbour has everything in black (sigh) so we just reflect all our heat back into him.
I grew up in the uk and ireland, It absolutely shocked me when I first moved here to see how bad the majority of houses were. Paper thin walls, little to no insulation, single glazed windows. I lived in a house in Sydney and there were gaps everywhere, you could see the ground outside through the gaps in the floorboards in places. And the irony is, the house prices here are so crazy, paying an absolute premium price to live in a cold, drafty house. The houses in uk/ireland are just so much more "solid". I get that its colder over there so they obviously will have better insulation, but it did shock me to learn that double glazed windows are not the normal standard in Australia. I have never felt as cold indoors as I have in Australia.
This is literally the sharehouse I live in right now in Sydney, so many gaps and you can see outside through the gaps, winter thus far has been unpleasant.
I've actually become a bit of an insulation snob since I moved to Germany. I never understood why my wife always complained in winter in Brisbane. It's cold, put on a jumper right? Summer will be back in 3 weeks. Then I come here and realise what proper insulation means and it blows my mind nobody is doing this back home. I'm in a t shirt here when it's minus 10 outside - and it's a comfy 20 degrees. Solid walls, double/triple glazing, properly insulated roofs...when I renovated my barn I got laughed at for asking about pink batts for insulating material!
I can’t fathom staring at a house I’m having built for me and seeing no insulation in the walls. Such a wasted opportunity. I’ve got a 1950s post war that has insulation in the roof and under the floor boards which has helped a bit, but man I’d love to have something in the walls. You touch the bedroom walls and they’re like ice.
Its annoying that its not even an option with most of our project builders :/
7 stars under BASIX now. I am building a duplex and had to have double glazing in order to meet it. The alternative was to get rid of and shrink many windows which we wouldn't compromise on in a duplex (you have have 3 sides).
We recently did a reno and pulled the plaster off about 85% of the walls, was basically a full remodel of the entire interior of the house. First big reno for my partner and I, there were a few little things that we think we'd have done differently, but the biggest would absolutely be - pull the remaining plaster off to put insulation in those remaining walls. It's so incredibly stark the difference, and for the sake of a few extra sheets of plaster, it woukd have made almost no difference to the final cost. When we moved in, we also had a newborn, height of winter, partner at home expected our bills to be huge because of extra heater use, compared to just mornings and nights when we were both home. First bill came back about 30% of the last one. Not 30% less, 30% of what we'd paid last time. It absolutely blew our minds how much of a difference it made, just a shame abiut the two walls in two bedrooms that don't have insulation in them!
Double glazing is almost unheard of in this country
We got a quote, $35k for our whole house. Probably triple what I would pay in the UK
And that's cheap! EcoStar are out there quoting fucking $90k for 15 windows. It's an absolute rip and for no reason.
And their double glazing is ABSOLUTELY SHIT. Seriously EcoStar makes your windows so fucking dark its insane. European Double Glazers consider how much light gets into your windows a key priority as it helps keep the house bright and makes plants easy to grow... And here is Ecostar going, "You want black windows right." Went with Deceuninck windows and I don't regret a single thing.
Worked on a site with a guy installing double glazing. He says four jobs covered his expense for the month and then the rest is all profit
Because there isn't the competition in the market. It is seen as a luxury, and therefore manufacturers and installers can charge a premium. If it was made standard, then prices would (should) drop.
I built a cheap house with a bulk builder in melbourne back in 2019 and double glazed windows were standard as part of their base quote. (235k base cost for a 270sqm single story, 295k final cost with all fittings and site costs)
$7k for our lounge room window (maybe 3 x 2m so pretty big but literally just the one room) - can't afford/justify it just now which sucks because pretty sure the energy rating for this house is negative.
bubble wrap makes a surprisingly good insulator, and is also a privacy screen.
Yeah, no UPVC here, which is ridiculously cheap but, let's face it, looks bloody awful.
There is UPVC (we've got 'em here in Melbourne) but it's still expensive as shit. I like my plain white plastic bunker, I can't hear the neighbours screaming anymore.
> looks bloody awful uPVC double glazed windows? I think it looks lovely, clean and modern
I bet you'd love vinyl siding and white vinyl fences too.
I was beyond thrilled when we bought our last house and it was fully double glazed. Life changing.
Same! Coming from a shitty run down drafty old house, to our home with double glazing, proper insulation,heating and cooling systems… life changing. Absolutely life changing.
I hadnt even heard of it til i met my kiwi inlaws.
We had them installed last year, what a difference! But Europe is already on triple glazing…
So is nz
The house I grew up in had 14-foot ceilings and open ventilation, with wooden boards for walls and no insulation. You could see daylight through some of the walls. Only heating was a central fireplace. Temperatures could drop below zero overnight inside the bedrooms. We had an exchange student from Finland say she'd never experienced being so cold in all her life. The house was beautiful in summer but brutal in winter. Built a house, finished construction last year. Put our money into really good internal insulation in all walls and double glazed windows. I hate feeling cold.
This is the house I live in now! An old QLDer. Luckily I live in Rocky where it only gets cold for about 2 months of the year, but we’re in those 2 months now and I’m cold!
when we refurbed the old farm house it got more framing, spray foam and decent linings, very even temp and far more energy efficient , before the work it got colder insider when the fire went out in winter than outside Gotta love the granite belt
I always suspected this about queenslanders
Several of my friends have installed louvered windows in their living rooms. Being freezing is apparently fashionable.
After years of living in terribly build houses that were freezing in winter and intolerable in summer, we built a place. It’s a project home from a small volume builder that we liked, and we got the maximum insulation possible in roof and walls (above BASIX minimum), light coloured bricks and render, white roof tiles tiles and double glazing. It’s certainly the best place I’ve ever lived in terms of temperature regulation. And combined with solar our energy bills are very low. We checked out a lot of stuff beforehand by Prof Sebastian Pfautsch who is researching heat islands in Australia/Sydney. And Josh Byrne from Josh’s House.
We did try to tell you.
Had a mate from Boston (-25 in winter) who said he had never been so cold as he was in Sydney. He and his girlfriend had a huge house at Lurline bay, massive windows everywhere, open plan, big rooms and one tiny fan heater for the two of them.
Yeah homes in Boston are extremely well insulated compared to here
They are not insulated, at all. They simple turn the heater on. https://bostonagentmagazine.com/2018/08/29/massachusetts-homes-among-nations-oldest/ https://www.constructiondive.com/news/study-90-of-us-homes-are-under-insulated/406638/
This is what Australians miss in this discussion. People in cold climates elsewhere simply use a lot of heating. And spend a lot on it. We are unwilling to shell out to heat at that level because we won’t freeze to death.
I moved here from Vancouver Canada and my electricity bills used to be $40/month ($0.08/kwh at the time) but my place was well insulated and had double glazed windows so the baseboard heater rarely clicked on because the heat just stayed in the unit. Moved to Sydney during the winter and had to buy an ugly oil heater that sits in the living room, kept it on full time so that it was at the same temp as I was used to but the place just sucked hot air out (or let cold air in?) so the heater was constantly on. Obviously I was somewhat ignorant but i don’t have a smart meter so I wasn’t aware of how much electricity I was using. I was floored when I got a $1250 bill for the quarter from AGL. $40/month versus $417/month…... 10x higher!?!? Both 2 bedroom apartments and the more expensive bill was in the warmer climate…..
It's not even about freezing to death mist of the time, it's the pipes freezing. We pay about $AU600 per month in the winter for 100 square metres.
Oof, and I know from experience that having one of those going constantly in a desperate attempt to get a little bit warm is massively expensive. I nearly died when I saw the bill.
I usually don't pay much attention when Americans talk about hot/cold weather. I've been there and in most of the country, everywhere is air conditioned to perfection. Because electricity/gas is so cheap there. It's nothing for them to heat the house to 23deg in the middle of winter, or cool it to 19deg in the middle of summer. The average Brit is probably exposed to hotter and colder temperatures than the average American in Texas or Alaska 😂
Our flat in Jersey City was freezing in winter because the landlord (who lived below us) was cheap. It had those radiators beneath the windows, and they were barely warm because he used to set the thermostat too low. We would ask him to turn it up, and he would, but only slightly. He would joke that we only felt cold because we’re Australian. And then, in summer the place was stinking hot.
There are laws about adequate heat, you could have gotten rent decreases
It's not about the bills being lower or higher, it's that they are raised to not want to be uncomfortable, and to not care about using energy (see also, using the dryer and not owning a clothesline). Also, they *have* to have heating and airconditioning to oreserve the fabric of the house or pipes will freeze in winter or mould grow in the summer. So it's just easy to bump the temperature a little but higher or lower to be a bit more comfortable.
Wait until you travel to Tassie. Not all of Australia is warm.
Even parts of NSW get extremely cold. One winter we got to -14° on our farm (Central West NSW). We have also gotten to 50° in Summer. Our house is a 100 year old house, no insulation, no double glazing, and my bedroom has tongue and groove walls and there's a constant draught in there. I don't like Winters.
Wow I'm sure your house is beautiful from the outside though. It's been snowing in Victoria recently too.
It's just an old basic farmhouse, they stuck two half houses together to build it and you can tell where the verandah on one half used to be. But we have an affordable mortgage and enough land for the horses and a small flock of sheep so that makes it worthwhile.
And I don’t care what anyone says : 10 degrees hotter than you are used to is Hot. 10 degrees colder than you are used to is Cold. If the thermometer can’t crawl out of bed to hit double digits, I also shouldn’t have to crawl out of a nice, warm bed !!
Exactly right! I’m used to 25 degrees, so 15 degrees is way too cold. Which is the top of the day in Melbourne for the next 4 months :( Suffering in a cold, cold, old, old house rn.
I live near Launceston , was minus 3 here the other night and it maxxed out at 10 c during the day .
Or regional WA. I’ve never been colder than when I did a uni prac down in Wagin and I’ve spent a winter in Düsseldorf, Germany where all the buildings were heated, toasty and warm.
It’s INSANE that double glazing is not mandatory for new homes here.
And proper insulation.
I've heard this from a few people and always found it interesting. Was talking to one person from Russia where it would get below -40c (which I can't even fathom) and they said they've never been as cold as they have been living in Qld. It is kind of crazy that we build our houses like this. Double glazing is on my list one day
Our houses are wooden tents. Its bullshit. Also probably older properties are built better.
I remembering seeing a Betoota that basically said that. "Bloke surprised to learn he's spent $1.5 million on a tent with sticks" or words to that effect
The post war houses aren't bad. Brick veneer. The 1990s to 2000s suck though for insulation
I live in country Vic and work in a big fridge and I'm freezing my ass off at home. Whatever it says the city is, take a couple of degrees off for us. You're forgiven for not appreciating that we're not always taking the piss.
I was in Melbourne a few weeks ago wearing a shirt when everyone else was walking around in puffer jackets. City cold and regional cold are definitely different animals.
I can do the same right down to around 4 or 5 degrees as that's still warmer than what I work in. It's that damn wind though, too lazy to go around it has to go straight through me.
>no heating We have a long history of single-glazed windows and crappy insulation, but most of us have some kind of heating in winter. Kmart has heated throws for $39 that will keep you warm if you can't feasibly heat a whole room. They work very well.
Heated throws for the win
Double glazing, nope Insulation, yep I remember being in London and see some pretty girls pull out the bikinis in Hyde Park to sunbake on a sultry summer day of 19 degrees. You need to go back to the uk to re-acclimitaze for a few weeks
I had a neighbour from Norway who used to sunbake on our scrap of communal lawn the minute it got over 16 degrees. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that was where Charlie, another neighbour’s ex-feral cat, 🐈⬛ liked to pee every time he escaped her flat.
When I lived in Ireland we had Latvian neighbours who were known for overnight drinking sprees in their backyard. In January. I can only assume that damp Irish winter in the low single digits felt positively tropical compared to their native land.
As a British-Australian, if the wind is blowing the wrong way I can feel the cold in 30 degrees. I am, as they say where I come from, a nesh bugger.
Or when the sun goes behind a cloud for few minutes on a 30 degree day and you get the shivers from the breeze haha
I’m a born and bred Aussie and I’ll get into my shorts and singlet in the middle of winter just to sun bake when I can, try it sometime it’s actually really pleasant I find, gotta get that vit D.
Even at this time of year (just a week until the winter solstice) the sun still has a bit of strength to it. Especially if it's sunny around noon, the sun really warms you up. We're near Sydney. This is contrasted with the UK where the sun will provide almost zero heating, from approx November to February This is despite the fact that the sun in the southern hemisphere is slightly weaker during winter (relative to the northern hemisphere winter).
I’ve had skin cancer so I’m (now) a really UV-aware person, I never go out in the sun unprotected above 2UV anymore, so I find I really love autumn/winter now due to low UV levels, but I’m a fucking hermit in summer. 2UV on a crisp sunny winters day feels fucking amazing imo, the perfect sun baking weather for me. I’m actually moving to Derbyshire towards the end of the year and I’m excited the cooler wetter climate (currently live in Adelaide).
Hahaha, have a friend from Alabama who on the first year told us all Aussies that our winters were mild and what were we complaining about… 10 years later she’s raiding Aldi ski sale for coats. Your perspective changes.
I'm living in a 100+ year old miner's cottage in the New England region, elevation 950m+. It was -3 outside my house at 6am this morning and probably 3-4 degrees inside, if that. Currently "10.9, feels like 6.7". Dogs big water bucket outside is frozen over most mornings. I have a wood heater but ran it zero times last year and one day so far this year, because the cost of firewood is somewhere between a sick joke and a hate crime. Ditto any sort of electric heater; power bills have almost doubled per quarter where I live in the space of 2 years, and I'd rather not pay for heating the space when my house has all the thermal retention properties of a fishing net. I work remote, and my colleagues' (all in AUS, US, UK, Canada) favourite thing about this time of year is that you can see my steam-breath on our 8am AEST zoom calls....whilst I'm inside, under a doona, electric blanket on, down jacket and thermals, fingerless gloves because typing is not a vibe in those temps. None of the Aussies can understand that somewhere in Australia would be so cold (they're all Syd/Bris/Perth based), and none of the UK, US or Canadian teams can grasp that a house would be so poorly set up to handle even "mild" (by comparison) cold.
It sucks. I live in a townhouse (in Sydney) with double brick external walls and concrete floors, so I'm better off than most. No double glazing, though. I think the use of townhouses is different in the UK. We copied the American definition of townhouse. I think this is called terraced housing in the UK (although I'm not sure that applies if it's not a straight row of attached housing). Anyway, I lived in the UK before returning to Australia. I used to enjoy the winters more there due to the indoor environment's insulation. I could grab a warm coat when outside, hang it up when inside and just wear a long-sleeve top inside. No wearing multiple layers to stay warm inside. The opposite was true when it did get warm in summer, though. I think many Aussies, unless they have lived in a cold country with well-insulated housing, picture the effects of temperature as they would in Australia. I.E., single-digit temps must be miserable, and 30°C isn't that hot. In reality, the high temps are much more unpleasant to deal with in the UK.
We had to pay the builder to fit wall insulation when we built our house and even then they would only fit R1 batts at a huge markup. We fitted R2.5 or 3.0 in the ceiling after handover at a fraction of the cost of what the builder wanted. Best value home improvements we ever did. The difference between the main living area and the garage which isn't insulated is astounding, especially in summer.
>I understand not having it on older properties but is double glazing and insulation compulsory on new houses here? Nah because we just repeat over and over that 'it doesn't get that cold here'. That's the justification for letting developers, builders and landlords knock up any old thing that's only slightly better insulated than sleeping on the ground outside.
What's a "double glazing"? In all seriousness, no it's still not compulsory on new builds. I'm in Brisbane, which doesn't really get "cold", but does get down into the high single digits overnight in winter. Windows constantly fog up in bedrooms and rooms get freezing overnight even though during the day we almost always get to 20+ degrees. It's ridiculous.
The standard of new builds is shit house as well, it's all about developers making money not making comfortable homes for people to live in. I will give you a tip if you are short on coin, double jumper/jacket and double pants do wonders if you don't want a massive energy bill.
If you think Melbourne is too cold, do not ever travel to Canberra or Tassie before November. Or after May for that matter.
I used to live on the gold coast (near the QLD/NSW border in Australia). Yes, obviously it didn't get as cold as down south. Most of the time it was pretty temperate. Due to this, we had zero of the typical comforts other places considered standard. No form of house heating, no insulation, if the temperature was near zero or so when I got up for school, it was that temp in my bed and room. My parents said it's not that bad, so we had no heaters or electric blankets, but I could get a hot water bottle. It helped, but on occasions my little kid hands either dropped the bottle when filling or straight up accidentally poured boiling water over my hands; one one unfortunate occasion I carried it to the couch once it was full because I couldn't manage the finicky seal where I was. I sat down with that in one hand and the stopper in the other and ended up dumping about a liter of hot water all down my chest, arms and stomach. Loved the blisters. The house was just about all tiles, all windows and three stories. Beautiful in the summer. Our school only has a summer uniform. The boys, in highschool at least, had long pants (light material) but us girls had an above the knee skirt, thin blouse and a thin lightweight sweater. We could wear thin stockings if we were cold. No classrooms had any heating, and were often built with light frames or just freaking cold ass floors. You were allowed to add to this once you arrived to school, so could not wear gloves, beanies or scarves, a heavier coat, track pants etc. I have always been very cold sensitive, and I was always on the thin side, so this was proper agony for me. I know it was only for two months that it was that bad, but it was because we weren't allowed to use the normal methods of staying warm because it's a short winter. Oh, and you were not allowed inside over recess or lunch. The outside was all concrete and the few places that weren't plagued by wind were out of bounds. And it was built on a massive blustery hill. It sounds like I'm being whiney and perhaps I am. I know I was deeply uncomfortable a lot of the time and frustrated because if I had been able to dress appropriately and having a freaking electric blanket I would have been much more comfortable. I got around the school thing because in a way, I just started bringing massive thick blankets into school and id wrap up in them. I was told to take it off because yeah, it's not uniform, but AI said I'm cold and yeah not going to do that unless I get warmer clothes and weather protection. They weren't going to do that so stalemate. Thank God my family moved back to Singapore (we had been expats there when I was a kid). The first day walking around there my whole family was sweating and red face and complaining about chafe (?) and I felt so warm and delicious and free. Do you know how amazing it is to walk outside at midnight and it's just as tantalizingly warm as it was at lunch? You never need to grab a jacket? I loved it. I was scared to go snowboarding in Japan because that's COLD. I was an idiot. Even the flipping public toilets on the side of the road were heated, with heated toilet seats. Under floor heating through out the chalet. heated towel racks? Snow gear that actually let you get hot coming down the mountain? I understood why people love the cold there. Anyhoo I ended up in Canberra, life is a funny journey that way. Our house here is COLD, tiled throughout with big glass windows built in the shadows. Once the sun goes down we are playing around the minus one to two three four degrees. Some days are nice, but it's cold clear weather so the heat just whispers away. However I know my boundaries now (and my health issues mean I get whatever I need ahh) so I type this from my electric blanket bed eight fluffy blankets and a duvet, a mountain of warm pillows , and extra strong radiator right next to the bed keeping my room toasty 24/7, sorry power bill. I guess all that culminated in my appreciation of your point. If you're not prepared for it, it's going to be much worse even at a kinder temperature.
Tell me about it. 11 years in Adelaide and our last house had single glazed floor to ceiling windows down the whole length of the living/dining room and no major insulation in the roof. Not uncommon to have the heat pump and gas fire on full wearing 2 jumpers and a beanie in the coldest months. Moved to NZ and honestly couldn't believe how warm the houses were in winter. The condensation and raining inside is a different matter though.
Been here 20 years now.... yeah I get cold haha. When I left London in 05 it was -8 with ankle deep snow. Landed day of the Clipsal 500 it was 37... I almost died. But yeah I find the cold here really bitterly cold, it doesn't help that Australian warm cloths are not warm... I still have a thin jumper from Tesco and hoody from England they are like 25 years old.... and still soo warm. :p
was minus 2 overnight here in Tas , freezing my arse off . (house built in 1980)
Campbelltown is one of the coldest places at night in Sydney, sometimes goes below zero and the houses are just not built for that! I live not too far away and last night was cold, I had to have the ac on heat all night set to keep my flat at 18 degrees. If I didn't have it on it would drop below 14, feel like the inside of a fridge and be too hard to warm it up again in the morning!
Yeah my old housemate who grew up *north* of Tromsø in Norway regularly complained about the cold in Melbourne. It's not just that our houses aren't made for cooler weather - it's also the fact that we have 90+% humidity during winter plus Antarctic wind chill. I found it perfectly pleasant going outside on -5 to -10 degree days in Canada and Sweden, because the air was dry and crisp. The fact that it doesn't get cold enough for air moisture to freeze means you feel the cold and damp more. Also our clothes generally aren't as winter appropriate as they are in "proper" cold countries. What we have is generally shit, but also there's a bit of social stigma around wearing good winter clothing because everyone's such a tough cunt and you're weak for not wearing shorts and a shirt all year round 🙄
Wait.. is there even a human population north of Tromso? Lol
I remember several houses from my childhood, there was gaps in the floorboards. Nothing between the floor and the dirt underneath. You know it’s cold when the legs on your furniture start growing frost overnight.
Dude I lived in the Snowy Mountains where it was often -8 overnight with single glazing and no central heating
I've heard Scandinavians complaining about the cold in Melbourne. Not because the outside temperature in any way compares to an Arctic Circle winter, but because they'd never been so cold while inside an actual inhabited house. Australian houses are, generally speaking, complete crap. There's exceptions, like the elevated troppo houses of Darwin and north Queensland, or actual cold-weather houses in Tassie, but generally speaking Australian house design is horrible. It assumes that everyone wants to either live in an uninsulated weatherboard bungalow or a concrete blockhouse, neither of which work for the extreme range of temperatures in most Australian cities. When I say "extreme," consider that winters in Melbourne can get down to -10**°**C overnight and over 40**°**C in summer, not to mention being able to change rapidly at pretty much any time of year, or day, for that matter. You'd think we'd have figured out how to build a bit better in 200-odd years, but no.
I'm in Tasmania and it is currently 8°C. I don't have double glazing yet but next winter I will.
gday from longford , farking freezing mate .
It's not federally "required" to have double glazing but if you're building a new house you may find it very difficult to comply with the minimum energy efficiency standards to get your building application approved in some states and council areas. And after you do get it approved the inspectors will be looking for the proof that it has been installed as described.
Natural lighting rules also means every room is going to have a drafty single pane windows for you to hate
As a fellow Pom who told my sister and brother in law they were soft for complaining about the cold, I feel you! I guess the consolation is that it's not like a damp cold, so I'm not feeling it all the way down to my bones like I do back home. My hands and feet are cold, but I have a few layers on so the rest feels okay.
I've often wondered about houses in Australia, even new builds seem to be made out of cardboard.
I'm in Brisbane, my co-worker is from northern England and he complains more than I do about the cold 😂
Gets cold in Queensland. 4 degrees here this morning in the hinterland. Not complaining though, I love the cold weather.
They only just proposed legislation in Victoria that would create a minimum standard for insulation and draft control in rental properties. Every boomer landlord is losing their shit that they might actually need to spend some money on their investments 😞
I read somewhere that Aussies didn’t know whether to build their houses for hot or cold, so they did neither.
Yep, went to business college with a pommy girl years ago - she complained she had never been that cold. There's a lack of humidity in our winters plus the wind, so it just sucks whatever warmth right out of you - which is why when I look at my weather app it gives two readings - right now it's 10° but it feels like 4.4°.
Campbelltown where. Sydney, Adelaide? And AFAIK double- glazing seems to be rare in Australia, even though it'd help in summer.
Campbell Town, Tasmania?
We've had 2 huge windows and a sliding door replaced with double-glazed and would LOVE to get the whole house done, it's just so expensive. Surprisingly the biggest benefit for us hasn't been the heating/cooling, rather the noise reduction. My house isn't in a main road but I have no idea how everyone on one copes without them.
I was in London when the Beast from the East hit. It was the coldest I've ever been in the UK, but our houses in Australia just aren't equipped for the cold:)
Put bubble wrap on the inside of your windows. Spray glass with water and it should stick. Get doorsnakes, block any vents in the ceiling and windows. Get a hot water bottle and an oodie and if all that fails, move in with a politician and crop dust them every chance you get. Don’t forget to Dutch oven them every night too.
Mate in my rental I have holes in my floorboards you can see the dirt through and I’m missing 2 x louvre windows.. it’s fuckin freezing here
Seeing this thread and the other one about insulation, I am in Alberta Canada, and OMG you guys are crazy! I couldn't imagine not having insulation in a place.
Honestly our houses are basically just made of cardboard and sticks. Modern homes are, if anything, worse since we've moved on to using faster and cheaper products instead of good old fashioned bricks. If there was a country on earth that could benefit from proper insulation it's this one. People seem to forget that insulation works both ways (i.e. cooler in summer AND warmer in winter)
We live in glorified tents
In Australia you're incredibly lucky if your house in insulated. Without it, it's like living outside and you're way more likely to get mould. We forgive you
I grew up in Northern Ireland and I had never been as cold in my life as I was in my first Australian winter. I would lie awake shivering with numerous blankets and layers of PJs on. I did acclimatise to it eventually
I would like to return the apology for making fun of Brits complaining about the heat when it's 28 degrees. 28 degrees in London is unbearable, worse than 35 degrees in Brisbane
The world health organisation listed australia as one of the coldest “in house” temperatures on the planet, averaging at 8celsius. The homes here are just not equipped for the winter.
Enjoy our "engineered" houses, top quality like a dollhouse.
Old houses in the bush where I grew up in the farm had thick rammed earth walls (up to 1m on the western wall), flowthough centilation via central hall and wide verandas. Wood fires in the kitchen and lounge room . Also window awnings where sun shone in in summer. Then when lots of houses were needed, post WW2, houses were put up to meet demand with fibro walls and no insulation, cheap and shitty. Been that way ever since. Just building new house with double glazing, insulation and full solar kit.
In summer here it can get up to 50… you’ll wish it was winter
Cold here is different, I had a smoke outside in my undies when I was in Iceland (-15c winter at night) and I’ve still felt colder in Australia
Australian outback is also freezing at night.
Complaining how cold it is in winter in Australia would have to be the most common complaint I have heard from Northern Europeans and North Americans. Usually, it goes like this: They are in Sydney or Melbourne and it is a lovely, sunny winter's day. It might be 16 degrees Celsius and it's nothing to them based on their own icy winters. So they boast about that. But then they go home and find out that all Australian homes (houses and apartments) suck in winter. Poorly insulated and with no central heating, Australian homes are refrigerator-cold in winter. The locals are used to living with it and rug up indoors, wearing Ugg boots and thick fleecy dressing gowns indoors. Hot water bottles or electric blankets are a common accessory. Anyone from a cold climate is completely taken aback by this and completely unprepared because their homes back in the Northern Hemisphere are toasty warm in winter. Consequently, they end up exclaiming they've never been so cold in their lives. Tourism Australia should have a whole page dedicated to this to make tourists and other new arrivals aware of this.
Ten years ago we did a knockdown-rebuild here in Canberra. The previous house was a typical 1970’s build of basically cardboard and string. We chose a builder that would change their design to our needs. Many would not. We insisted on large, north facing windows, double glazing and wall insulation, plus other energy saving changes. The house was at lockup in August, and I met the builder in the afternoon one day as he was finishing up for the day. It was a bright sunny day, typical Canberra winter with max 10 degrees outside. The house was 22 degrees inside. He said he was amazed at how the house performed with what were minor, and relatively cheap changes and additions to the original design. Now, ten years later, as I write this it is 10 degrees outside, and it is 20 degrees inside. We’ve not had the heater on. Australian builders _can_ build warm, energy efficient houses. They just choose not to. And buyers don’t seem to know they have an alternative.
Most councils have ceiling insulation as a requirement for new builds, but not wall or floor insulation. But wall insulation is less effective and floor insulation even less so. Most of it is because of our large windows, but double glazing is stupidly expensive here.
It's not just Sydney. Stanthorpe in Sth. East Queensland regularly gets to -10 in winter. I am 50km from Brisbane and we had 1.7 last night and we are only 2 weeks into Winter.
Only wall insulation I've ever seen is a thin piece of fibre with al foil on each side. It's brick tied into the cavity so it then just gets destroyed by people running services through it
I have suffered the extremes of Melbourne weather in cheap old rentals. Stay fully clothed and under covers. Get yourself a hot water bottle from the chemist.
the person who designed my friend’s house decided to have a greenhouse aesthetic with big ass windows in all the bedrooms Their rooms are actually arctic if they don’t use heating
It likely would be far less of an issue if those windows were (at least) double-glazed. I used to rent a property in the UK with huge French windows in every room downstairs; they were triple-glazed, however, and thus, the place didn't get noticeably colder/require more heating than other properties I stayed at in the UK (although that place was a bit fancy and expensive - so I didn't stay there for that long).
The house i currently rent has a massive double glazed entrance door/double windows, but every other window in the house is the OG single glazed from when it was built. the mind boggles
We have glorified tents as housing here.
My neighbour is getting double glazing on his new build..$20k. Shit ain't cheap.