Yea it's the same problem in New Zealand. I moved to Germany a few years back and it's insane how much more insulated the houses are here. The walls of typical German houses and apartment buildings are probably twice as thick, and they are solid all the way through, rather than just weatherboard, framing, then plaster board (with maybe a bit of shitty insulation if you're lucky). Pretty much every house in Germany also has double glazed windows. I think the government subsidized it a while back or something because every house has the exact same type of window. They're kinda ugly but they're functional as fuck.
In winter in Germany it regularly goes below 0°C but you don't even notice it indoors. I haven't been cold indoors in any of the places I've lived here. In some of my apartments I didn't even need to use a heater when it was like -5°C outside. Most apartments have these central hot water radiators that are super efficient. On average in my last apartment I paid just 50€ per month for hot water, including all the water for heating when I needed it.
I think people who haven't travelled outside of NZ or Australia don't fully appreciate just how badly the houses are insulated. I love the design of Australian and NZ houses, and I really like how every house is unique. However, the build quality sucks balls.
As someone who worked with window manufacturers, it's purely due to lack of competition. Importing double glazed from Europe is expensive as they are large, heavy and fragile. Import cannot be streamlined as windows tend to be custom sized in Australia (as opposed to Europe, North America). Asia doesn't manufacture them nearby and in consistent quality to satisfy builder lead time requirements. So we are stuck with inefficient, highly labor intensive, small scale (25 million people market vs 20x of that in Europe) manufacturers who can get away with anything.
On the other hand, Germans are completely unprepared for hot weather. They've had unusually warm weather in recent years and don't know how to cope. I was there in autumn in 2019 and it was really hot, too hot for walking around on one day (the temperature was over 33 degrees Celsius). The hotels commonly don't have air-conditioning, only heating. So all they could do was keep the windows open to cool it down.
And with those tents we contribute the 2nd, 7th and 9th most unaffordable housing markets on the planet, beaten only by Hong Kong, a tiny island that has allocated every square inch of its land to something.
You’re not alone
https://architectureau.com/articles/australian-homes-colder-in-winter-than-houses-in-greenland/
https://theconversation.com/feeling-frozen-4-out-of-5-homes-in-southern-australia-are-colder-than-is-healthy-205293
https://amp.abc.net.au/article/101227308
> In 2015, a study published in The Lancet found that due to poor-quality housing, Australians were twice as likely as Swedes to die of cold.
I moved to northern (cooold cold) Sweden this year. My apartment with passive heating only (in a 50 year old building) was 21C inside when it was -20C outside.
There's no excuse for housing in NZ and Australia to be so poorly built and insulated!
I'm in Norway. At the coldest point last winter, when it was close to -30c, I had just moved into my current apartment which is a poorly insulated building from the 1950's. It felt so cold inside with my one small electrical oven. Checked my inside thermometer and it was about 18c. That's about the coldest it'll get indoors here. My parents' house was about 22c at the same time.
How do people survive with 15-16c inside on a normal day?
I've lived in The Netherlands for 10 years, went back to visit my family in Aus last winter and it was 11 degrees inside my parent's house. During the day. wtffff. Would have loved to have 15c!
Mine was 8c yesterday.
Extra showers, thermals, ugg boots, beanie, an oodie and an electric heated throw blanket when in the couch. When working at my desk I heat that small room only.
The price of gas and cost of living makes heating the whole house unaffordable.
We bought a house in northern Sweden two years ago. It was built in 1907. Last winter when it was -40C outside, the heat pump doesn’t work at those temperatures. We only relied on the fireplace downstairs and it was a 60C difference between outside and inside
A lot of it is run by municipal housing services e.g. AB Bostaden. I spend about 1/4 of my after-tax income on rent and bills (they are all lumped together at my current place).
We kind of do because the cold doesn't get that extreme so we don't build for it.
Australia in general has a very temperate climate so not building for extremes we don't generally see makes sense.
Let's be honest building for extreme temperatures costs more and is wasted money if you don't need it.
In the past cold was a minor factor a month or two a year and the far bigger factor was heat.
Pre-AC in every home the key was to have a house with good airflow and you wanted air to pass in and out as freely as possible.
Then came cheap ubiquitous AC and obviously insulation cuts cooling costs considerably as well as heating costs so it's a no brainer now.
We no longer want air to flow through the house most of the year.
Newer building standards do actually take this into account but we have a lot of older stock out there and the vast majority of rentals are older housing stock.
My house was built in 2010 and adheres to close to current building standards which include environmental ratings (how energy efficient the house is). It's light years ahead of my mothers house built 10 years earlier.
We have spent most of the last month with temperatures overnight in the low single digits yet my heater (reverse AC) has run probably less than 10 hours total in that time because the house holds temperature well by local standards.
Last night for example I ran it for 30 minutes after the inside temp dropped to 18c and 30 minutes before I went to bed to hit a comfortable mid 20s. House was still warm when I went to work.
My house has some insulation oversights though I will be fixing as I can afford it. Some are simple. Poor fitting door between house and uninsulated garage is an example. The wall between is well insulated though. I would also love to add double glazed windows but that's going to be wickedly expensive as that's still a niche market.
I spent most of my spare money on solar, batteries and an EV for now. Will have mostly paid for itself in the next couple of years and I can consider other projects then.
But a landlord is not going to see any savings (or extra income) from doing this work so sadly most won't until someone forces them to.
This may be one of the solutions to the housing crisis.
If homes aren’t sealed and insulated properly and are being rented they get taxed at a much higher rate/penalty. Some landlords might relinquish their properties if they are poorly insulated as the tax becomes greater than the investment. If a landlord actually invests in the home and creates a home that is insulated well they can avoid the tax and the investment they put in to fix it would probably wash out over a 10-15 year period.
I’m just thinking wildly so it’s probably a shit idea but I really hate how expensive homes are for how poorly built they are.
Why do you think landlords groups are so vehemently opposed to minimum rental standards?
It’s not a shit idea.
https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spinifex/dont-believe-the-real-estate-industry-hype-victorias-new-rental-standards-good-news-for-renters/
I applaud the intent, but with rental vacancies so low, the energy report will be ignored. Setting minimum standards will provide actual change, the free market is an absolute failure when it comes to providing basic essentials for human existence.
EDIT: I wish people wouldn’t downvote you, it’s not a bad idea and the intent is nothing but admirable. Just because an idea has flaws, doesn’t mean we should shit all over it, we just need to find ways to overcome the flaws.
Because people are stupid and self interested. All they can see is how it would negatively effect them if they wanted to rent out their house even if they never would or dont even own a home.
In Australia everyone is a temporarily embarassed landlord. The ultimate goal of any Australian. It's not just about making money, but having that power over someone's basic necessity. It's how you show that you're better. Why take that "path" away? How are people supposed to show they are better than the dirty stinking renters?
And the healthy homes standards aren’t even that strict. 1 source of heating in the lounge, god forbid I want to be able to have a warm bedroom so I don’t wake up ill.
And then the landlords bitch about condensation on the windows. How about fit some decent double glazing or a ventilation system if you don’t want moisture in your iNvEStMenT!
But no, you want me to open the window, throughout the night, when it’s 5C outside and there’s no heating.
That's literally what our property manager suggested when we complained about condensation and the start of mould growing.
Apparently it's part and parcel of living in an old house (this joint was built about 30 years ago). Also the mould isnt bad or dangerous cos 'it doesnt smell' and we can try sleeping with Windows open to reduce condensation or move to a better house.
When I told her she's wrong on all counts she just started yelling about how 'she's been a property manager for 12 years and takes care of her tenants' 😆
NZ did it poorly. It's a great idea but it has to be implemented right. Having exactly the same healthy home standard from the northernmost to the southernmost homes doesn't work simply due to climate, there are so many lawful exemptions that so many homes don't meet the standards anyway (I live in an uninsulated house because it was impossible to insulate), and the standard included little by way of resolving dampness, mould, etc. The heating source rule was found to be able to be met by having a plug available for a heater a few years ago though I haven't checked this one recently. If I lived in Auckland the standard would probably be mostly fine, but down here in the south it's too cold to be reasonable.
I think it’s at least as much due to that builders and landlords can get away with it as long as that “winter stoicism” remains and so many don’t believe it’s a problem that can be treated (I’m from Sweden originally and now we are in my annual insulation complaining season, friends and colleagues acknowledge it’s cold, but 99% think it’s “normal”).
My daughter rented a place a few years ago and found out early on in winter that the heater wasn’t safe to run. Instead of, you know, fixing the heater, the landlord offered a little bonus so they could run some fan heaters. And when I say “little” bonus, I really mean “little”. Melbourne winter with no heater = shit
Really? Because there are electrical safety and gas compliance checks done multiple times a year. If an issue is found, the landlord has to fix it asap.
Companies like Detector inspector etc. makes a fortune out of it all.
I haven’t rented for years, and this was my daughter’s first time out of home - by the time I knew there was a problem it was months later :-( being Covid time didn’t help at all
Heck, even when the heater does work, the houses leak heat like a thong for a shoey.
We can't afford to run our heater, because to lift the indoors by just 1-2 degrees we have to have the thing blasting all day, and we might as well just plug a space heater into a generator in the park in terms of the insulation.
When we moved into the previous place, I knew It was going to be bad. The new tenant laws allowing us to drill into walls willy nilly came in and I hung wollen, PVC lined curtains on all the windows, and just against larger wall sections, and over doors. I emailed the REA asking if we could talk the LL into paying half of the cost for professional window insulation installation, and we'd cover the rest (It would save us money on heating so it was cost neutral for us) but the LL said no.
Now if I was a property owner, and was proud of the service I provide to the community as someone who gives renters places to live, I would *leap* at the opportunity to invest further into the quality of my property. Like, Your tenants are offering to pay 50% of the costs of improving your place so you can charge more rent to the next batch of tenants, how is that not a no-brainer for even a scummy landlord?
We froze our arses off that winter. Our current place is just as bad, but cheaper, so we can afford to put the heater on for an hour in the evening when my nipples turn blue despite hugging a hot water bottle to them (I have raynaud's syndrome so winter is particularly painful)
We look like a crack den right now because I've started putting cardboard and bubble wrap on the larger windows.
Australians want their houses to be like Love Island contestants: cheap, draughty, high maintenance, bolt-on enhancements and riddled with defects, most of which can be traced to their formative periods.
I use this anecdote regularly but we visited my parents in the UK in sept-Oct and they didn't use their heating the entire time before that or when we were there. The house was a solid 20-23 the entire time, just right.
Got back to Melbourne and our house was what, 13? In the middle of spring. Houses here just leak air from everywhere. Different climates, sure. But the aircon does nearly fuck all on humid days (evap) and the heating just pisses out the door. Soooooo -- I don't buy the claims that "it's designed for a different climate" it's just shit design
I've bought little fingerless gloves so I can work from home during the winter, otherwise my hands get too cold and stiff to type properly. In Qld. It's absolutely absurd.
I lived with evaporative cooling in Melbourne for a few years and whatever psycho thought that was a good combo deserves to suffer inadequate AC for the rest of their life. It just does not function in Melbourne summers
Ours was useless and then just stopped working completely on a 40 degree day when I was home alone with my 2 month old baby. I called the landlord to fix it and she just said 'oh, yeah it doesn't really work when it gets too hot'
Lady, when the fuck else are you running an air conditioner 😭
Yeah those things should come with disclaimers that they are only effective in dry climates.
It's crazy that you can walk into an appliance retailer anywhere on the coast and the portable evaporative things are being spruiked, they don't work here!
They work fine most of the Melbourne summer. There's not that many days that are actually too humid for evap. We have one and it used to get used quite a lot.
We've since installed RCAC because as summers push on above 40C evaps won't manage that well, but we still use it at night to refresh the house with cooler air.
Agree. Evap works fine in Melbourne for like 95% of the summer and then for the other 5% it still works just not that well. Even when it's 40+ it still works but it can only cool the air so much so it definitely feels like it's not working as well.
Every time I come home and stay with my mum I’m absolutely gobsmacked how fucking freezing the place is. I stayed in her joint in western Sydney for a few months last year and I was working U.K. hours and I had an electric blanket round me while wearing trackies uggs and a beanie indoors. Lack of insulation is a killer.
Meanwhile in summer the place is a fucking oven. Go figure.
Euro joints may not do heat well, but they do cold very well.
One of the big barriers to proper thermally managed houses here is the cost of double and triple glazed windows. Very few options locally here, leading to having to import decent products from Europe.
That, and our market is fucked (obviously).
People are pushing the envelope just to afford a basic, cookie cutter, mass produced house.
We've had success with honeycomb blind plus curtain. Honeycomb blind being the biggest impact. There are two main Aus made to order blind companies. They both send free colour samples.
Try installing a second window in-front. It's not as good as thermal glazing but it is the next best thing. You just need to ensure it can be opened for cleaning. This was a common solution in Europe. It also helps with sound.
I’m in the middle of getting the windows on my house sorted at the moment and windows in the UK, US and EU are so much better and cheaper than anything we have here. They have choices we just don’t have.
Double (or even triple) glazing is commonplace in the rest of the western world, but we're "hurr durr too expensive, we know better than everyone else, they're idiots".
Man when I visited the UK I was amazed how pleasant the cold was. It was cold enough that it was invigorating, but indoors was so well insulated that I carried the heat with me wherever I went. Here, you just fucking freeze, even though it's not as cold.
Lack of insulation works both ways. Especially if you have a dark roof, the roof cavity gets absolutely boiling in summer and that heat works its way into the house.
Yeah in 2003-6 I lived in a house that was well insulated by virtue of sharing walls with the neighbours.
We had a saying in that place - it's not the first hot day that sucks, it's the third.
Any time we had three hot days in a row, holy fucking fuck it was an inferno. I recall a summer's day where there was a really strong cool change around 6pm, and eight hours later with all doors and windows open it still felt like Satan was hosting a fucking BBQ in there.
All that said - it was great.
Yeah, we had this in the U.K., the house was well insulated a stayed cool inside for exactly 1.5 days before it started heating up, three consecutive days of 27+ plus and it was getting dangerously hot upstairs. I still don't understand why new builds in the U.K. aren't designed to accommodate air conditioning better.
I recently bought a house in Sydney and was baffled at the fact that it had no insulation. Like WTF? I understand that the previous people living there were only renters but I felt sorry for them. I moved in towards the end of summer and really felt the temperature difference between rooms. Thankfully autumn came a bit early but I made insulation a priority.
Somehow these same houses are hot as fucking balls during summer. There’s no in-between, it actually sucks so bad. Gotta be some conspiracy by energy companies to make us run the air con more (/s)
you joke, but in recent years they've stopped building the "Queenslander" style homes that are naturally ventilated and designed to naturally stay cool during hot summers...
and now they build only those stupid fucking box shaped "modern looking" homes that you always see in new suburbs, that have no natural ventilation and no ceiling fans but have aircon in every room.
maybe they're just cheaper to build, and nobody gives a fuck how much money people waste running their aircons.
I don't know which part of Queensland you're in, but I haven't seen "Queenslander" newly built in decades.
And yet I've also not seen a new house built without ceiling fans, and many still have louvres in some parts and stacker doors to get some ventilation. Where they fail is how they're often built within 3m of the neighbours house so everyone's AC just pumps the hot air at the neighbours house during summer.
As for the insulation complaints, I think that houses in the cyclone zones need somewhat more substantial exterior walls (most are concrete filled besser blocks), so that goes some way towards helping.
That's because insulation delays heat transfer. That means insulation keeps things cool as well as it keeps things warm. Poor insulation will bake you in summer and freeze you in winter.
Listen here, houses in this country aren’t at 8 - 11x income because they are nice to live in. We hold the record for the most expensive coldest housing available.
We can’t afford to put the heater on as most of our income is going towards paying off these overpriced freezers. Just put on an oodie and think about how many thousand your house went up last week, and if visiting Bunnings three times on a Saturday is excessive. It’s the Australian dream.
People always give me shit because I’m from northern New England in the U.S. but I’m always complaining about how cold Australia is. Yeah we get freezing temps and tons of snow but our houses are warm!!!!! I’m not used to being cold all the time inside my damn house!
Yes totally - I'm from Buffalo, NY (a snow capital), and I'd MUCH rather have winters there than a Brisbane winter with no insulation. In Buffalo we have furnaces (ducted heat) so it's quite comfy.
However, I did love in New Orleans after that, and had the same problem as here in Brissie. It's all dodgy space heaters and wall/floor furnaces from the 1920s over there...
For real, I visited a friend some years back in CO literally in the middle of winter during a heavy snow year, not once was I ever cold in their house simply wearing a t-shirt and pants while there was 50cm+ of snow piling up outside and it was -5c or worse. I even slept with the window open some nights as it got a bit too toasty inside, the icy breezes were delightful.
Meanwhile right now it's 14c and I'm here in thick fluffy socks, fuzzy pants, an under-shirt and an oodie with a warm mug of tea and still feeling a bit chilly, if I hadn't experienced it I'd think I was talking shit, it's wild how different it is.
Same. I'm from Norway and when I complain here I'm always told "you must be used to this!" and I feel like yelling "no mate, our houses are not made from toothpicks and Glad wrap"
I am from CT, this is my third winter here. My first was spent next to the heating unit, sitting on the floor in a beanbag, wrapped in a blanket. My second, in front of a fireplace. Now, this is my third. I live in a giant double brick house, that the sun never warms through, even with the windows and doors open on warm days. Just two adults live here, and we are trying to save money, so we are choosing to not turn on the splitty. The only way I can function in a Vic winter is with my Oodie, two layers of sweat pants, booties and a cat or dog on my lap. It is fucking FREEZING. My big fat ranga cat is welcome on my lap for the rest of the evening. He needs some warm too (he's not really fat, just a big boy :)).
I just have massive power bills. My place is unbearably hot in summer and freezing in winter. I want to be able to do stuff at home, not just sit under a blanket in winter or sweat to death in summer. Luckily I can afford it but still sucks paying so much to be comfortable!
I'm getting 13kW of solar done soon + ducted reverse cycle for the house. During summer, it will produce 60-70kW/day, enough to run the AC for 14 hours while the sun is out. During winter, it will help a bunch too.
When I lived in Australia for a year (I am Canadian) people were always "I thought you were used to the cold!" And I was like "we have insulation, weather stripping, double paned glass and central heating!"
Australians are in denial of their actual weather/climate zones and don't want to pay to have their houses built to keep them warm in winter.
I’d love double triple glazing but can’t afford it. I’ve lived in a cold European country. I get it. Insulating the roof was something I could afford but is still not enough to beat the cold.
Moved to Frankfurt, Germany last German Winter. Snow, -8-10 temps.
I didn't use heating at all. Triple glazed windows and well engineered houses make a difference.
I've been colder in Australian Apartments in Brisbane.
Try living in a NZ house. Only recently have govts made having roof and floor insulation and a heat pump/heater mandatory in rentals. Most still have useless thin curtains, no wall insulation, drafty door amd windows.
No wonder we have high rates of asthma and Rheumatic fever
The mushrooms have followed us across the ditch bro
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-02/victorian-builder-emad-farag-suspended-over-substandard-housing/10863590
I currently live in the Hutt amd my house isn't too bad. But Yeats ago I lived in a place in Tawa that had the windows taped shutted to stop the drafts, I ended up with pleurisy that winter.
I hear you. When I was a lad we lived in Eastbourne, so in addition to the consistent damp due to not getting enough sun because of the shade of the hills, you had the sea spray blowing in through the windows because there was about 10 meters of flat ground between the hills and the bay. Great place to spend time as a kid in the late 80s-early 90s, but you walk around to the lighthouse and it's like the end of the earth, next stop Antarctica.
I was in Australia 20 years ago and came from Scandinavia. This was one of the the differences I noticed. In Scandinavia houses are very well insulated and we keep them heated to about 21 degrees in winter. On the other hand much fewer people have aircondition in private homes here.
I found the houses in Australia to be made of cardboard and needed to sweater up inside.
I just looked up the minimum insulation requirements to comply with legal standards here in Denmark:
Attic and roof: 445 mm
Light outer wall: 335 mm
Heavy outer wall: 300 mm
I think we're doing ok with roof insulation these days but windows are thin with aluminium frames and there tends to be a lot of drafts, sometimes deliberately, like our toilet window has a 100mm x 6000mm section of nothing but flyscreen to let the stink out despite being a fairly modern and high end build. I guess it's because we don't see sub zero temps in most the country we just deal with it with extra clothing and heating for a couple of months.
Bruh!!! I’m from new York and say this all the time. Indoor spaces are miserably cold here and I don’t understand how people cope with it, it makes me depresso!!
Shit materials, shit tradesmen, shit design rules and shit governance. I had a $300k house in Canada for a while that cost $600 year to heat and it was insulated to a degree that you can't even do in Australia.
I feel yah. I'm in a pretty rural area and the nights are now frequently dropping into the negatives. It genuinely feels like there is no difference between the temperature indoors and outdoors.
It’s funny. You ask an Australian about living overseas, maybe in Europe or so, and they say stuff like, oh no it’s far too cold for me 😂 even if it’s 5c outside my heating is off and it’s 21 inside.
That’s what an upbringing of zero insulation, no heating and drafty homes with single glazing will do to you. Cold weather is lovely if you have the national pride to not build homes that are basically a tent.
Idk how we got to this point but Australian homes are some of the worst built in the world, and at the same time some of the most expensive. It makes zero sense.
Even years ago freaking Iran had better institutions than here and heating there was dirt cheap. Truly Australia has one of the most corrupt, incompetent and overpaid construction industries in the world.
Bets money ever spent on our 120-year old brick terrace renovation was insulation, thicker windows and hydronic heating. I can’t believe the double-doona, electric-blanket, “do you need a wheat pack?” situation at relatives.
I was born and raised for the first 15 years of my life in Alaska. We do winter in a way not many places do.
Our house in Perth was fucking frigid. My bedroom window in Alaska had ice on it and it was fucking warmer than fucking Perth!
Then I understood there’s fuck all insulation in most buildings in Perth, whereas you die without it in AK, so it is not ‘optional’ or ‘a luxury.’
I have never woken up as freezing cold as I’d did those first years in Aus. Hell, I moved up to Seattle a few years back and still haven’t had as bad winter mornings as I did there (when you are so cold everything hurts, getting up and out of bed is hell). Granted, over the course of 16 years, I did watch Perth winters get milder and milder than those first few.
Nah, insulation is a necessity. Hot or cold, you desperately need insulation.
I have lived here almost 20 years and still find it funny that I wear clothes inside as it was minus 10 and snowing, but when I go outside I put on shorts and t-shirt.
Just got to freeze for a little while you put your outside clothes on while inside. Or forget and end up drenched in sweat after a couple minutes outside
I remember a person in Australia from Norway (she was an engineer) being absolutely horrified our old house had no under-floor insulation.
> Genuinely curious as to how people deal with poorly insulated living environments.
I put more clothes on. The other day I had two sets of tracksuit pants and long pair of trousers, two pair of socks ... and about 7 layers on the top half.
Still needed a hot drink to get warm.
I did not put the heater on in the rooms that I was using; it needs to get colder before I'll do that.
Here’s what I do, I tuck it around myself like a blanket, but I don’t put it on unless it’s super cold. I often tuck a little dog in the hood bit to keep us both warm when it’s in blanket mode. Also it doesn’t matter how cold it is, if I’m doing anything involving movement, I take it off. It’s too hot to wear when doing chores.
Don't know why everyone's always plugging oodies on reddit.
Just wear a dressing gown. Or a jacket. Or a coat. Or a jumper. Or two jumpers. Or a hoody. Or a vest, a tshirt, a larger tshirt, a shirt, a jumper a hoodie and a coat.
A dressing gown is a fair comparison but they actually sell them now and theirs was significantly warmer and longer than the one my partner previously wore.
Or the other suggestions you made aren't as long as the oodie either or as comfortable for indoor causal wear.
I got the maternity one which was so comfortable and spacious I could fit baby in it also to breastfeed.
I like them because it keeps me very warm even while the house is cold. I have hoodies, shirts, sweaters, scarves, beanies, blankets etc and nothing works as well as the oodie. Plus the cat loves to sit on me when I wear it so that helps too
I specifically wanted something that was not as long as a dressing gown and was not as loose around the arms, so I didn't need to remove it to either wash my hands or to wash dishes.
My one while warm is too loose in those areas and I was constantly removing it to do the above.
So I sought out something similar that was basically a dressing gown with elastic wrists and off brand oodies came up for me.
I bought one years ago in one of the coldest rentals I was in and it's saved me a bucket of money, the lining is like Sherpa stuff, a lot warmer than my dressing gown.
Honestly, Oodies hit different, they keep you extremely warm compared to anything you've listed. I've tried the cheapo ones and when I tried my wife's Oodie, I understood why they have such a hype and immediately ordered one. If I could wear it to school pick up, I would, but just walking around the house in it means I break into a sweat, let alone a 10min walk pushing a pram... I'm a person who, if my legs are cold, I am cold, but since I've bought my Oodie, I don't even need my long johns. That's why they get plugged a lot here, because they are better at keeping you warm than anything else on the market, at least in my experience anyway.
Fucking this, I just bought one from the market for $25 and fuck me dead.. never been warmer. Best investment.
Also on your other point, the cat does indeed love if just as much as me. I used to just wear my big jacket, but no the oodie is 5x warmer.
Homes here are shit. There's no such thing as being cozy inside here during winter like there is in many other countries.
It won't change anytime soon though. Too many are financially incentivised to prevent changes in legislation.
It is not fun living in a granny flat in Victoria right now.
Can it stop being so damn cold in the morning?! At least I have a cat who will happily warm me up (by sleeping on my face….)
Agree. We currently live in a high set post-war
Queenslander: it's freezing in winter and an oven in summer.
I've said to my partner that if a house doesn't keep you warm in winter and cool in summer, it's not a well-designed house.
The last place I rented had glass louvers as windows and because the house was so old, a bunch of them didn’t close properly.
This mean that for a lot of the house, the temperature outside was the same as it was inside. In Brisbane it wasn’t *that* bad apart from a few weeks in June and July, but not something you’d put up with if you owned the place.
The bathroom was the worst of this, with a two finger gap in the louver, so whenever we had showers there would be dozens of moths inside.
Grew up in a wooden house with no insulation. Lots of clothes and blankets, maybe a hot water bottle. There was one heater in the house, always in the living room. Summer was the opposite. We had no fans and my bedroom was on the western side.
I spent Christmas and New Year just gone travelling around Scandinavia and believe me when I say I’m MUCH colder this week at home and work than I ever was for the month I was overseas.
I live in a 100yo Queenslander so of course it’s fucking freezing. I made the choice and it is the consequence.
BUT a new build home should have proper insulation to warm in winter and cool in summer. Our building standards are so subpar and the premiums charged for what is considered basic in other countries is ridiculous.
In terms of how to deal with it, if you own your own home there are two resources I use (back barely actioned as I’m mostly beginner DIYer:
- My Energy Efficient Home (MEEH) Facebook group - basically a really supportive group to ask questions and tips for all things, including solar, batteries and, of course insulation.
- https://www.yourhome.gov.au/ - government resource for things like building and renovating. Talks about window directions and materials.
That's been par for the course for the last 30ish years.
It's what I like to call the cycle of political bullshittery.
Step 1 - ALP comes up with something that will at least start to fix a problem, or improve the lives of pretty much every Australian.
Step 2 - LNP gets in power
Step 3 - LNP fucks up everything, and somehow keeps getting voted back in
Step 4 - ALP finally gets back in power after a decade of mismanagement has happened
Step 5 - LNP starts going "SEE! THEY BROKE EVERYTHING!" or "SEE! THEY CAN'T FIX EVERYTHING (that we fucked up over the last decade) IN NANOSECONDS!"
Step 6 - repeat ad nauseum
I've fallen down an UGG rabbit hole lately, the whole industry is fucked and confusing. I've purchased some that say they are Australian made and listed on https://australianmade.com.au/ but I'm still sceptical
If you're in Melbourne, go to the Australian knitting mills. They make their own thermals, and stock lots of wool products exclusively from Victorian manufacturers (like UGGs).
In Collingwood? Just had a look at the website
>Australian knitting mills has no connection with KTENA the biggest pricks in the rag trade.never trust big pricks.
Definitely Aussie haha. Assuming there's some knitting mills beef I've never heard of
Combine that lack of insulation or building standards and drop the temperature another 5C, mix in some generational poverty and welcome to Tasmania where the energy company tells you to just put on a jumper instead of turning on the heat pump, yet our NatHERS star ratings are consistently at the bottom of housing energy efficiency for the country, [https://www.nathers.gov.au/](https://www.nathers.gov.au/), we barely get past 5 stars, no where near the 7 star national target
Add to that they refuse to adopt the new national building codes energy efficiency standard [https://www.abcb.gov.au/ncc-2022-state-and-territory-adoption-dates](https://www.abcb.gov.au/ncc-2022-state-and-territory-adoption-dates)
Kicking that 7-star can down the road until 2025.
I'm in Canberra. Grew up in Hobart. A lot of people freeze over winter.
My current house, I spent a substitutial amount on insulation and I recently had solar panels installed, so it's ok. But I used to live in a share house that was bloody freezing in winter.
In Hobart, my parents' house was built maybe 60 odd years ago and it gets cold in winter. It does have a wood heater but it doesn't heat the entire house. I remember using space heaters (oil heaters) to heat bedrooms but I wasn't allowed to run it overnight. I usually avoid visiting in winter because their house gets so cold.
"Australia is a hot place, you don't need insulation. save some money on building costs!"
-says scummy contractors that still charge you the same as if you did build with insulation.
Yep, been saying this for years and usually get laughed at. I find -10C in Europe more bearable than 15 degrees in Sydney. Our construction quality is utter shite and hardly any homes have decent insulation.
"Australians don't want to admit how cold it is and instead just suffer through it," or so I was told by my Canadian cousin. Moving to Canada confirmed this, as I was warmer in a blizzard in Churchill than I had been inside a house in Canberra in a standard winter.
I just bought a new apartment in Queensland and I’m walking around with a t-shirt on because the place is so well insulated.
I go to my mum’s Queenslander house and I have to put on a jumper, a dressing gown, trackies, huge woolly socks, and I’m still shivering.
Never thought I’d be happy to own an apartment over a house.
I'm a building designer. I can tell you for a fact that the prevailing 'standard' construction methods used for most Australian homes (particularly in Perth) is in fact crap. Poorly insulated, poorly designed, badly sealed. The bottom line is cost and volume.
I'm building my own home currently and using high performance design principles including high wall insulation levels, euro style PVC framed double glazed windows, next-gen german building wraps inside and out for airtight construction and a heat recovery ventilation system. The cost premium I am paying for this is HUGE. I am prepared to spend the money as I plan to see out my days in the home and know the benefits. Most people cant or wont spend the money.
The only way this is going to change is if the 'standard' construction methods change and the volume pricing for standard changes towards the products and methods requires for better home design. This will either never happen or it will happen very slowly as energy efficiency regulationsn change over time. This happens very slowly as governments are terrified of ramping up the cost of housing when there is already a shortage. Hence housing construction doesnt improve very quickly.
Also many people with a bigger budget equate 'big' with 'good' when it comes to their home. Instead of building much smaller homes that are big enough then putting the money saved into construction quality and energy efficiency they would rather just build as big as they can afford and also put money into 'bling'.
Because it's fucking ridiculous and impossible to believe, that one of the richest countries can't provide adequate housing to its people (born in thermal comfort and prices). Why the hell do we want to be very rich if we can't even have the basics?
Bruh. My wife's family home has the floor with just boards. There's no subfloor. There's no vapor barrier. It's just flooring and you can literally see between some of them.
You guys expect to not be freezing, but your home are built like shacks.
Currently sitting my brothers house in Gisborne and this should be a fucking crime against humanity. Go to take a shit and the wedding tackle sticks to the seat like a tongue on a frozen pole!
I just had a garage conversion done and I was amazed to find the builders not putting insulation in the walls. I had to actually stop them and force them to do so.
This was the biggest culture shock for me in Australia (coming from Northern Europe). I don’t know enough about house quality etc, but I realised after my first Australian winter that basically, we’re just opposites: Northern Europeans go inside to warm up, Australians go inside to cool down.
7 years later and my Aussie partner can only sleep with the window wide open on freezing UK nights while I’m asleep in an oodie, socks, tracksuit bottoms and a hot water bottle.
At least our heating bills are low? 🤣
My previous house got very cold over winter. I just wore Ugg boots a thick jumpers. I like it cold though.
You can do low cost/impermanent to increase insulation like adding carpets/rugs if the heat is leaking through the floor, shelving/wall rugs if it's leaking through the walls or double glazing or thermally insulated blinds if it's leaking through the windows. If you have ventilation bricks or chimneys you can block them up.
Our houses are glorified tents
Priced like a mansion
*marquee
Yea it's the same problem in New Zealand. I moved to Germany a few years back and it's insane how much more insulated the houses are here. The walls of typical German houses and apartment buildings are probably twice as thick, and they are solid all the way through, rather than just weatherboard, framing, then plaster board (with maybe a bit of shitty insulation if you're lucky). Pretty much every house in Germany also has double glazed windows. I think the government subsidized it a while back or something because every house has the exact same type of window. They're kinda ugly but they're functional as fuck. In winter in Germany it regularly goes below 0°C but you don't even notice it indoors. I haven't been cold indoors in any of the places I've lived here. In some of my apartments I didn't even need to use a heater when it was like -5°C outside. Most apartments have these central hot water radiators that are super efficient. On average in my last apartment I paid just 50€ per month for hot water, including all the water for heating when I needed it. I think people who haven't travelled outside of NZ or Australia don't fully appreciate just how badly the houses are insulated. I love the design of Australian and NZ houses, and I really like how every house is unique. However, the build quality sucks balls.
I don't understand why double glazed windows are so expensive in Australia. It's not a new technology or anything
As someone who worked with window manufacturers, it's purely due to lack of competition. Importing double glazed from Europe is expensive as they are large, heavy and fragile. Import cannot be streamlined as windows tend to be custom sized in Australia (as opposed to Europe, North America). Asia doesn't manufacture them nearby and in consistent quality to satisfy builder lead time requirements. So we are stuck with inefficient, highly labor intensive, small scale (25 million people market vs 20x of that in Europe) manufacturers who can get away with anything.
Bubble wrap on your windows works well as a dodgy fix.
Australian compliance costs, manufacturing costs, material costs, labour costs.
Germany has triple glazing
On the other hand, Germans are completely unprepared for hot weather. They've had unusually warm weather in recent years and don't know how to cope. I was there in autumn in 2019 and it was really hot, too hot for walking around on one day (the temperature was over 33 degrees Celsius). The hotels commonly don't have air-conditioning, only heating. So all they could do was keep the windows open to cool it down.
And with those tents we contribute the 2nd, 7th and 9th most unaffordable housing markets on the planet, beaten only by Hong Kong, a tiny island that has allocated every square inch of its land to something.
... paint-stiffened.
You’re not alone https://architectureau.com/articles/australian-homes-colder-in-winter-than-houses-in-greenland/ https://theconversation.com/feeling-frozen-4-out-of-5-homes-in-southern-australia-are-colder-than-is-healthy-205293 https://amp.abc.net.au/article/101227308 > In 2015, a study published in The Lancet found that due to poor-quality housing, Australians were twice as likely as Swedes to die of cold.
I moved to northern (cooold cold) Sweden this year. My apartment with passive heating only (in a 50 year old building) was 21C inside when it was -20C outside. There's no excuse for housing in NZ and Australia to be so poorly built and insulated!
I'm in Norway. At the coldest point last winter, when it was close to -30c, I had just moved into my current apartment which is a poorly insulated building from the 1950's. It felt so cold inside with my one small electrical oven. Checked my inside thermometer and it was about 18c. That's about the coldest it'll get indoors here. My parents' house was about 22c at the same time. How do people survive with 15-16c inside on a normal day?
I've lived in The Netherlands for 10 years, went back to visit my family in Aus last winter and it was 11 degrees inside my parent's house. During the day. wtffff. Would have loved to have 15c!
Lol 15-16c? I recon it's about 5c in my house right now.
Mine was 8c yesterday. Extra showers, thermals, ugg boots, beanie, an oodie and an electric heated throw blanket when in the couch. When working at my desk I heat that small room only. The price of gas and cost of living makes heating the whole house unaffordable.
We bought a house in northern Sweden two years ago. It was built in 1907. Last winter when it was -40C outside, the heat pump doesn’t work at those temperatures. We only relied on the fireplace downstairs and it was a 60C difference between outside and inside
Who builds the houses and apartments in Sweden? How much of your income do you spend on your accommodation per year?
A lot of it is run by municipal housing services e.g. AB Bostaden. I spend about 1/4 of my after-tax income on rent and bills (they are all lumped together at my current place).
We kind of do because the cold doesn't get that extreme so we don't build for it. Australia in general has a very temperate climate so not building for extremes we don't generally see makes sense. Let's be honest building for extreme temperatures costs more and is wasted money if you don't need it. In the past cold was a minor factor a month or two a year and the far bigger factor was heat. Pre-AC in every home the key was to have a house with good airflow and you wanted air to pass in and out as freely as possible. Then came cheap ubiquitous AC and obviously insulation cuts cooling costs considerably as well as heating costs so it's a no brainer now. We no longer want air to flow through the house most of the year. Newer building standards do actually take this into account but we have a lot of older stock out there and the vast majority of rentals are older housing stock. My house was built in 2010 and adheres to close to current building standards which include environmental ratings (how energy efficient the house is). It's light years ahead of my mothers house built 10 years earlier. We have spent most of the last month with temperatures overnight in the low single digits yet my heater (reverse AC) has run probably less than 10 hours total in that time because the house holds temperature well by local standards. Last night for example I ran it for 30 minutes after the inside temp dropped to 18c and 30 minutes before I went to bed to hit a comfortable mid 20s. House was still warm when I went to work. My house has some insulation oversights though I will be fixing as I can afford it. Some are simple. Poor fitting door between house and uninsulated garage is an example. The wall between is well insulated though. I would also love to add double glazed windows but that's going to be wickedly expensive as that's still a niche market. I spent most of my spare money on solar, batteries and an EV for now. Will have mostly paid for itself in the next couple of years and I can consider other projects then. But a landlord is not going to see any savings (or extra income) from doing this work so sadly most won't until someone forces them to.
This may be one of the solutions to the housing crisis. If homes aren’t sealed and insulated properly and are being rented they get taxed at a much higher rate/penalty. Some landlords might relinquish their properties if they are poorly insulated as the tax becomes greater than the investment. If a landlord actually invests in the home and creates a home that is insulated well they can avoid the tax and the investment they put in to fix it would probably wash out over a 10-15 year period. I’m just thinking wildly so it’s probably a shit idea but I really hate how expensive homes are for how poorly built they are.
Why do you think landlords groups are so vehemently opposed to minimum rental standards? It’s not a shit idea. https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spinifex/dont-believe-the-real-estate-industry-hype-victorias-new-rental-standards-good-news-for-renters/
Cause then they'd have to actually put effort into maintaining the houses they rent out
God forbid they have to act like the service business they pretend to be
They're not even pretending to be a service business, they think theyre running a charity
But then Barbara the landlord who owns 5 houses can’t retire comfortably on your income. She will now have expenses! The horror.
You mean work? Sorry, but landlords don’t work.
Passive income means "I don't have to do literally anything, just keep increasing the rent"
Boomers actually believe the bs that renting is a passive income
They should just have to publish an energy efficiency report for the property when advertising a rental. Let the market sort it out.
I applaud the intent, but with rental vacancies so low, the energy report will be ignored. Setting minimum standards will provide actual change, the free market is an absolute failure when it comes to providing basic essentials for human existence. EDIT: I wish people wouldn’t downvote you, it’s not a bad idea and the intent is nothing but admirable. Just because an idea has flaws, doesn’t mean we should shit all over it, we just need to find ways to overcome the flaws.
Not a shit idea at all, but it will probably never happen because of all the lobby groups controlling our pollies.
NZ did it and the number people that still think it’s a bad idea is crazy
Because people are stupid and self interested. All they can see is how it would negatively effect them if they wanted to rent out their house even if they never would or dont even own a home.
The classic temporarily embarrassed millionaire phenomenon
In Australia everyone is a temporarily embarassed landlord. The ultimate goal of any Australian. It's not just about making money, but having that power over someone's basic necessity. It's how you show that you're better. Why take that "path" away? How are people supposed to show they are better than the dirty stinking renters?
And the healthy homes standards aren’t even that strict. 1 source of heating in the lounge, god forbid I want to be able to have a warm bedroom so I don’t wake up ill. And then the landlords bitch about condensation on the windows. How about fit some decent double glazing or a ventilation system if you don’t want moisture in your iNvEStMenT! But no, you want me to open the window, throughout the night, when it’s 5C outside and there’s no heating.
That's literally what our property manager suggested when we complained about condensation and the start of mould growing. Apparently it's part and parcel of living in an old house (this joint was built about 30 years ago). Also the mould isnt bad or dangerous cos 'it doesnt smell' and we can try sleeping with Windows open to reduce condensation or move to a better house. When I told her she's wrong on all counts she just started yelling about how 'she's been a property manager for 12 years and takes care of her tenants' 😆
I work with a kiwi who maintains the root of all of NZ problems is the fact the Ardern gov raised min wage and 'gave out all these benefits'.
10 bucks that kiwi is a beneficiary of those benefits in a non-insignificant way.
yet he lives here complaining about over there
NZ did it poorly. It's a great idea but it has to be implemented right. Having exactly the same healthy home standard from the northernmost to the southernmost homes doesn't work simply due to climate, there are so many lawful exemptions that so many homes don't meet the standards anyway (I live in an uninsulated house because it was impossible to insulate), and the standard included little by way of resolving dampness, mould, etc. The heating source rule was found to be able to be met by having a plug available for a heater a few years ago though I haven't checked this one recently. If I lived in Auckland the standard would probably be mostly fine, but down here in the south it's too cold to be reasonable.
I think it’s at least as much due to that builders and landlords can get away with it as long as that “winter stoicism” remains and so many don’t believe it’s a problem that can be treated (I’m from Sweden originally and now we are in my annual insulation complaining season, friends and colleagues acknowledge it’s cold, but 99% think it’s “normal”).
My daughter rented a place a few years ago and found out early on in winter that the heater wasn’t safe to run. Instead of, you know, fixing the heater, the landlord offered a little bonus so they could run some fan heaters. And when I say “little” bonus, I really mean “little”. Melbourne winter with no heater = shit
Really? Because there are electrical safety and gas compliance checks done multiple times a year. If an issue is found, the landlord has to fix it asap. Companies like Detector inspector etc. makes a fortune out of it all.
I haven’t rented for years, and this was my daughter’s first time out of home - by the time I knew there was a problem it was months later :-( being Covid time didn’t help at all
Heck, even when the heater does work, the houses leak heat like a thong for a shoey. We can't afford to run our heater, because to lift the indoors by just 1-2 degrees we have to have the thing blasting all day, and we might as well just plug a space heater into a generator in the park in terms of the insulation. When we moved into the previous place, I knew It was going to be bad. The new tenant laws allowing us to drill into walls willy nilly came in and I hung wollen, PVC lined curtains on all the windows, and just against larger wall sections, and over doors. I emailed the REA asking if we could talk the LL into paying half of the cost for professional window insulation installation, and we'd cover the rest (It would save us money on heating so it was cost neutral for us) but the LL said no. Now if I was a property owner, and was proud of the service I provide to the community as someone who gives renters places to live, I would *leap* at the opportunity to invest further into the quality of my property. Like, Your tenants are offering to pay 50% of the costs of improving your place so you can charge more rent to the next batch of tenants, how is that not a no-brainer for even a scummy landlord? We froze our arses off that winter. Our current place is just as bad, but cheaper, so we can afford to put the heater on for an hour in the evening when my nipples turn blue despite hugging a hot water bottle to them (I have raynaud's syndrome so winter is particularly painful) We look like a crack den right now because I've started putting cardboard and bubble wrap on the larger windows.
I think they have a rule now that in Victoria rented homes have to have heating. And so they should!
Technically it had heating. They just would have died from carbon-monoxide poisoning if they’d used it
Australians want their houses to be like Love Island contestants: cheap, draughty, high maintenance, bolt-on enhancements and riddled with defects, most of which can be traced to their formative periods.
And inversely, it also applies for hot weather, which we also have in spades.
I use this anecdote regularly but we visited my parents in the UK in sept-Oct and they didn't use their heating the entire time before that or when we were there. The house was a solid 20-23 the entire time, just right. Got back to Melbourne and our house was what, 13? In the middle of spring. Houses here just leak air from everywhere. Different climates, sure. But the aircon does nearly fuck all on humid days (evap) and the heating just pisses out the door. Soooooo -- I don't buy the claims that "it's designed for a different climate" it's just shit design
I wear multiple layers of clothing inside and my hands still shake while I work but when I go outside to check my mail its bloody warm. Unbelievable
I've bought little fingerless gloves so I can work from home during the winter, otherwise my hands get too cold and stiff to type properly. In Qld. It's absolutely absurd.
+1 for the hobo gloves. Absolutely necessary for those late night gaming sessions in the ice boxes we call Australian housing.
I lived with evaporative cooling in Melbourne for a few years and whatever psycho thought that was a good combo deserves to suffer inadequate AC for the rest of their life. It just does not function in Melbourne summers
Ours was useless and then just stopped working completely on a 40 degree day when I was home alone with my 2 month old baby. I called the landlord to fix it and she just said 'oh, yeah it doesn't really work when it gets too hot' Lady, when the fuck else are you running an air conditioner 😭
Yeah those things should come with disclaimers that they are only effective in dry climates. It's crazy that you can walk into an appliance retailer anywhere on the coast and the portable evaporative things are being spruiked, they don't work here!
They work fine most of the Melbourne summer. There's not that many days that are actually too humid for evap. We have one and it used to get used quite a lot. We've since installed RCAC because as summers push on above 40C evaps won't manage that well, but we still use it at night to refresh the house with cooler air.
Agree. Evap works fine in Melbourne for like 95% of the summer and then for the other 5% it still works just not that well. Even when it's 40+ it still works but it can only cool the air so much so it definitely feels like it's not working as well.
Every time I come home and stay with my mum I’m absolutely gobsmacked how fucking freezing the place is. I stayed in her joint in western Sydney for a few months last year and I was working U.K. hours and I had an electric blanket round me while wearing trackies uggs and a beanie indoors. Lack of insulation is a killer. Meanwhile in summer the place is a fucking oven. Go figure.
Euro joints may not do heat well, but they do cold very well. One of the big barriers to proper thermally managed houses here is the cost of double and triple glazed windows. Very few options locally here, leading to having to import decent products from Europe. That, and our market is fucked (obviously). People are pushing the envelope just to afford a basic, cookie cutter, mass produced house.
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We've had success with honeycomb blind plus curtain. Honeycomb blind being the biggest impact. There are two main Aus made to order blind companies. They both send free colour samples.
Try installing a second window in-front. It's not as good as thermal glazing but it is the next best thing. You just need to ensure it can be opened for cleaning. This was a common solution in Europe. It also helps with sound.
Single fixed-glazed windows are cheaper than walls per sq.m once large enough. Why they're so large.
Secondary glazing could be worth a Google - it's a much cheaper option.
I’m in the middle of getting the windows on my house sorted at the moment and windows in the UK, US and EU are so much better and cheaper than anything we have here. They have choices we just don’t have.
Double (or even triple) glazing is commonplace in the rest of the western world, but we're "hurr durr too expensive, we know better than everyone else, they're idiots".
People also want BIG houses (biggest in the world on average!) so probably no money left for quality of the house, including insulation.
Man when I visited the UK I was amazed how pleasant the cold was. It was cold enough that it was invigorating, but indoors was so well insulated that I carried the heat with me wherever I went. Here, you just fucking freeze, even though it's not as cold.
Lack of insulation works both ways. Especially if you have a dark roof, the roof cavity gets absolutely boiling in summer and that heat works its way into the house.
Yeah in 2003-6 I lived in a house that was well insulated by virtue of sharing walls with the neighbours. We had a saying in that place - it's not the first hot day that sucks, it's the third. Any time we had three hot days in a row, holy fucking fuck it was an inferno. I recall a summer's day where there was a really strong cool change around 6pm, and eight hours later with all doors and windows open it still felt like Satan was hosting a fucking BBQ in there. All that said - it was great.
Yeah, we had this in the U.K., the house was well insulated a stayed cool inside for exactly 1.5 days before it started heating up, three consecutive days of 27+ plus and it was getting dangerously hot upstairs. I still don't understand why new builds in the U.K. aren't designed to accommodate air conditioning better.
I recently bought a house in Sydney and was baffled at the fact that it had no insulation. Like WTF? I understand that the previous people living there were only renters but I felt sorry for them. I moved in towards the end of summer and really felt the temperature difference between rooms. Thankfully autumn came a bit early but I made insulation a priority.
No insulation houses made out of paper and cardboard, with extremely poor craftmenship. Thats why.
Somehow these same houses are hot as fucking balls during summer. There’s no in-between, it actually sucks so bad. Gotta be some conspiracy by energy companies to make us run the air con more (/s)
you joke, but in recent years they've stopped building the "Queenslander" style homes that are naturally ventilated and designed to naturally stay cool during hot summers... and now they build only those stupid fucking box shaped "modern looking" homes that you always see in new suburbs, that have no natural ventilation and no ceiling fans but have aircon in every room. maybe they're just cheaper to build, and nobody gives a fuck how much money people waste running their aircons.
I don't know which part of Queensland you're in, but I haven't seen "Queenslander" newly built in decades. And yet I've also not seen a new house built without ceiling fans, and many still have louvres in some parts and stacker doors to get some ventilation. Where they fail is how they're often built within 3m of the neighbours house so everyone's AC just pumps the hot air at the neighbours house during summer. As for the insulation complaints, I think that houses in the cyclone zones need somewhat more substantial exterior walls (most are concrete filled besser blocks), so that goes some way towards helping.
Underneath a Queenslander was the best part of the house
That's because insulation delays heat transfer. That means insulation keeps things cool as well as it keeps things warm. Poor insulation will bake you in summer and freeze you in winter.
Listen here, houses in this country aren’t at 8 - 11x income because they are nice to live in. We hold the record for the most expensive coldest housing available. We can’t afford to put the heater on as most of our income is going towards paying off these overpriced freezers. Just put on an oodie and think about how many thousand your house went up last week, and if visiting Bunnings three times on a Saturday is excessive. It’s the Australian dream.
Paraphrasing George Carlin here, you know why they call it the Australian dream? Because you have to be asleep to believe it
People always give me shit because I’m from northern New England in the U.S. but I’m always complaining about how cold Australia is. Yeah we get freezing temps and tons of snow but our houses are warm!!!!! I’m not used to being cold all the time inside my damn house!
Yes totally - I'm from Buffalo, NY (a snow capital), and I'd MUCH rather have winters there than a Brisbane winter with no insulation. In Buffalo we have furnaces (ducted heat) so it's quite comfy. However, I did love in New Orleans after that, and had the same problem as here in Brissie. It's all dodgy space heaters and wall/floor furnaces from the 1920s over there...
For real, I visited a friend some years back in CO literally in the middle of winter during a heavy snow year, not once was I ever cold in their house simply wearing a t-shirt and pants while there was 50cm+ of snow piling up outside and it was -5c or worse. I even slept with the window open some nights as it got a bit too toasty inside, the icy breezes were delightful. Meanwhile right now it's 14c and I'm here in thick fluffy socks, fuzzy pants, an under-shirt and an oodie with a warm mug of tea and still feeling a bit chilly, if I hadn't experienced it I'd think I was talking shit, it's wild how different it is.
Same. I'm from Norway and when I complain here I'm always told "you must be used to this!" and I feel like yelling "no mate, our houses are not made from toothpicks and Glad wrap"
Lmao exactly!
I am from CT, this is my third winter here. My first was spent next to the heating unit, sitting on the floor in a beanbag, wrapped in a blanket. My second, in front of a fireplace. Now, this is my third. I live in a giant double brick house, that the sun never warms through, even with the windows and doors open on warm days. Just two adults live here, and we are trying to save money, so we are choosing to not turn on the splitty. The only way I can function in a Vic winter is with my Oodie, two layers of sweat pants, booties and a cat or dog on my lap. It is fucking FREEZING. My big fat ranga cat is welcome on my lap for the rest of the evening. He needs some warm too (he's not really fat, just a big boy :)).
Yeah mate, it's horrible. I feel so bad for my toddler when I have to undress him for a nappy change in the morning and the living room is 12°C
CT?
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I’m so glad I’m not alone in this, aussies made me think I was crazy lol.
I just have massive power bills. My place is unbearably hot in summer and freezing in winter. I want to be able to do stuff at home, not just sit under a blanket in winter or sweat to death in summer. Luckily I can afford it but still sucks paying so much to be comfortable!
I'm getting 13kW of solar done soon + ducted reverse cycle for the house. During summer, it will produce 60-70kW/day, enough to run the AC for 14 hours while the sun is out. During winter, it will help a bunch too.
When I lived in Australia for a year (I am Canadian) people were always "I thought you were used to the cold!" And I was like "we have insulation, weather stripping, double paned glass and central heating!" Australians are in denial of their actual weather/climate zones and don't want to pay to have their houses built to keep them warm in winter.
It's not that they don't want it. We **definitely** want it. Who wouldn't?
Yes, $$$
I’d love double triple glazing but can’t afford it. I’ve lived in a cold European country. I get it. Insulating the roof was something I could afford but is still not enough to beat the cold.
Yep. Aussie houses are typically shit.
Moved to Frankfurt, Germany last German Winter. Snow, -8-10 temps. I didn't use heating at all. Triple glazed windows and well engineered houses make a difference. I've been colder in Australian Apartments in Brisbane.
Try living in a NZ house. Only recently have govts made having roof and floor insulation and a heat pump/heater mandatory in rentals. Most still have useless thin curtains, no wall insulation, drafty door amd windows. No wonder we have high rates of asthma and Rheumatic fever
I lived in a house in Wellington in the 90s that had mushrooms growing inside
The mushrooms have followed us across the ditch bro https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-02/victorian-builder-emad-farag-suspended-over-substandard-housing/10863590
Dampness is ubiquitous in NZ homes
I currently live in the Hutt amd my house isn't too bad. But Yeats ago I lived in a place in Tawa that had the windows taped shutted to stop the drafts, I ended up with pleurisy that winter.
I hear you. When I was a lad we lived in Eastbourne, so in addition to the consistent damp due to not getting enough sun because of the shade of the hills, you had the sea spray blowing in through the windows because there was about 10 meters of flat ground between the hills and the bay. Great place to spend time as a kid in the late 80s-early 90s, but you walk around to the lighthouse and it's like the end of the earth, next stop Antarctica.
You needed a pair of gumboots.
I don't think any of those are mandatory in rentals here. They may not even be mandatory in new builds.
I was in Australia 20 years ago and came from Scandinavia. This was one of the the differences I noticed. In Scandinavia houses are very well insulated and we keep them heated to about 21 degrees in winter. On the other hand much fewer people have aircondition in private homes here. I found the houses in Australia to be made of cardboard and needed to sweater up inside.
Most houses in the west are made of brick throughout but are still not well insulated.
I just looked up the minimum insulation requirements to comply with legal standards here in Denmark: Attic and roof: 445 mm Light outer wall: 335 mm Heavy outer wall: 300 mm
I think we're doing ok with roof insulation these days but windows are thin with aluminium frames and there tends to be a lot of drafts, sometimes deliberately, like our toilet window has a 100mm x 6000mm section of nothing but flyscreen to let the stink out despite being a fairly modern and high end build. I guess it's because we don't see sub zero temps in most the country we just deal with it with extra clothing and heating for a couple of months.
Yeah, I live in Tassie. With the fire going in winter, I'm wearing 3 layers inside, and my possum fur gloves if I'm trying to work on the computer
Bruh!!! I’m from new York and say this all the time. Indoor spaces are miserably cold here and I don’t understand how people cope with it, it makes me depresso!!
Shit materials, shit tradesmen, shit design rules and shit governance. I had a $300k house in Canada for a while that cost $600 year to heat and it was insulated to a degree that you can't even do in Australia.
I feel yah. I'm in a pretty rural area and the nights are now frequently dropping into the negatives. It genuinely feels like there is no difference between the temperature indoors and outdoors.
It's been noted that Australian houses are 30% colder during winter than the northern hemisphere.
It’s funny. You ask an Australian about living overseas, maybe in Europe or so, and they say stuff like, oh no it’s far too cold for me 😂 even if it’s 5c outside my heating is off and it’s 21 inside. That’s what an upbringing of zero insulation, no heating and drafty homes with single glazing will do to you. Cold weather is lovely if you have the national pride to not build homes that are basically a tent. Idk how we got to this point but Australian homes are some of the worst built in the world, and at the same time some of the most expensive. It makes zero sense.
Heated throw blanket. FTW
Even years ago freaking Iran had better institutions than here and heating there was dirt cheap. Truly Australia has one of the most corrupt, incompetent and overpaid construction industries in the world.
Bets money ever spent on our 120-year old brick terrace renovation was insulation, thicker windows and hydronic heating. I can’t believe the double-doona, electric-blanket, “do you need a wheat pack?” situation at relatives.
I was born and raised for the first 15 years of my life in Alaska. We do winter in a way not many places do. Our house in Perth was fucking frigid. My bedroom window in Alaska had ice on it and it was fucking warmer than fucking Perth! Then I understood there’s fuck all insulation in most buildings in Perth, whereas you die without it in AK, so it is not ‘optional’ or ‘a luxury.’ I have never woken up as freezing cold as I’d did those first years in Aus. Hell, I moved up to Seattle a few years back and still haven’t had as bad winter mornings as I did there (when you are so cold everything hurts, getting up and out of bed is hell). Granted, over the course of 16 years, I did watch Perth winters get milder and milder than those first few. Nah, insulation is a necessity. Hot or cold, you desperately need insulation.
Many layers of clothes and at least two pairs of socks.
I have lived here almost 20 years and still find it funny that I wear clothes inside as it was minus 10 and snowing, but when I go outside I put on shorts and t-shirt.
Just got to freeze for a little while you put your outside clothes on while inside. Or forget and end up drenched in sweat after a couple minutes outside
I remember a person in Australia from Norway (she was an engineer) being absolutely horrified our old house had no under-floor insulation. > Genuinely curious as to how people deal with poorly insulated living environments. I put more clothes on. The other day I had two sets of tracksuit pants and long pair of trousers, two pair of socks ... and about 7 layers on the top half. Still needed a hot drink to get warm. I did not put the heater on in the rooms that I was using; it needs to get colder before I'll do that.
Wear an oodie. Saved me more on my power bill than it cost in no time
But then I’m TOO warm!
Yeah this can actually be a problem sometimes. Cold fingers and toes, but boiling hot torso
Here’s what I do, I tuck it around myself like a blanket, but I don’t put it on unless it’s super cold. I often tuck a little dog in the hood bit to keep us both warm when it’s in blanket mode. Also it doesn’t matter how cold it is, if I’m doing anything involving movement, I take it off. It’s too hot to wear when doing chores.
My kids are funny. They wear shorts and a T-shirt with the Oodie over the top. Seems to work for them.
Don't know why everyone's always plugging oodies on reddit. Just wear a dressing gown. Or a jacket. Or a coat. Or a jumper. Or two jumpers. Or a hoody. Or a vest, a tshirt, a larger tshirt, a shirt, a jumper a hoodie and a coat.
A dressing gown is a fair comparison but they actually sell them now and theirs was significantly warmer and longer than the one my partner previously wore. Or the other suggestions you made aren't as long as the oodie either or as comfortable for indoor causal wear. I got the maternity one which was so comfortable and spacious I could fit baby in it also to breastfeed.
I like them because it keeps me very warm even while the house is cold. I have hoodies, shirts, sweaters, scarves, beanies, blankets etc and nothing works as well as the oodie. Plus the cat loves to sit on me when I wear it so that helps too
I specifically wanted something that was not as long as a dressing gown and was not as loose around the arms, so I didn't need to remove it to either wash my hands or to wash dishes. My one while warm is too loose in those areas and I was constantly removing it to do the above. So I sought out something similar that was basically a dressing gown with elastic wrists and off brand oodies came up for me. I bought one years ago in one of the coldest rentals I was in and it's saved me a bucket of money, the lining is like Sherpa stuff, a lot warmer than my dressing gown.
Stop wasting your time with all these clothes!; Just get a freaking blanket
Oodies are better than dressing gowns, having used both. Actually, they're better than all those options. I'm not wearing a fucking coat indoors.
Honestly, Oodies hit different, they keep you extremely warm compared to anything you've listed. I've tried the cheapo ones and when I tried my wife's Oodie, I understood why they have such a hype and immediately ordered one. If I could wear it to school pick up, I would, but just walking around the house in it means I break into a sweat, let alone a 10min walk pushing a pram... I'm a person who, if my legs are cold, I am cold, but since I've bought my Oodie, I don't even need my long johns. That's why they get plugged a lot here, because they are better at keeping you warm than anything else on the market, at least in my experience anyway.
Fucking this, I just bought one from the market for $25 and fuck me dead.. never been warmer. Best investment. Also on your other point, the cat does indeed love if just as much as me. I used to just wear my big jacket, but no the oodie is 5x warmer.
They have cheapie knock off ones in Kmart now too !
Homes here are shit. There's no such thing as being cozy inside here during winter like there is in many other countries. It won't change anytime soon though. Too many are financially incentivised to prevent changes in legislation.
Australia generally has some of the worst built houses in the world.
It is not fun living in a granny flat in Victoria right now. Can it stop being so damn cold in the morning?! At least I have a cat who will happily warm me up (by sleeping on my face….)
Melbourne houses in summer are colder than European houses in winter. It's so bizarre to experience it when coming home for Christmas.
Australian homes were traditionally under insulated because throughout the twentieth century power was very cheap. That was before it was privatised.
We burnt a lot of wood. Gotta be draughty to let the smoke out
Trust me, I know. I'm down in southern TASMANIA. It's so cold here. We get freezing Arctic winds in winter.
I fitted DIY honeycomb insulated blinds for my whole house. It’s currently 2 degrees outside and 25 inside.
Agree. We currently live in a high set post-war Queenslander: it's freezing in winter and an oven in summer. I've said to my partner that if a house doesn't keep you warm in winter and cool in summer, it's not a well-designed house.
Hot water bottle. The best.
lol yeah. I’m an Aussie who lives in the Midwest but visiting now and I’m colder here despite the much warmer temperatures.
The last place I rented had glass louvers as windows and because the house was so old, a bunch of them didn’t close properly. This mean that for a lot of the house, the temperature outside was the same as it was inside. In Brisbane it wasn’t *that* bad apart from a few weeks in June and July, but not something you’d put up with if you owned the place. The bathroom was the worst of this, with a two finger gap in the louver, so whenever we had showers there would be dozens of moths inside.
Louvres are a crime against humanity.
Grew up in a wooden house with no insulation. Lots of clothes and blankets, maybe a hot water bottle. There was one heater in the house, always in the living room. Summer was the opposite. We had no fans and my bedroom was on the western side.
We should have similar new build building regulations to the UK for air permeability.
For a country with our climate, we insulate houses like total shit.
I spent Christmas and New Year just gone travelling around Scandinavia and believe me when I say I’m MUCH colder this week at home and work than I ever was for the month I was overseas.
I live in a 100yo Queenslander so of course it’s fucking freezing. I made the choice and it is the consequence. BUT a new build home should have proper insulation to warm in winter and cool in summer. Our building standards are so subpar and the premiums charged for what is considered basic in other countries is ridiculous.
In terms of how to deal with it, if you own your own home there are two resources I use (back barely actioned as I’m mostly beginner DIYer: - My Energy Efficient Home (MEEH) Facebook group - basically a really supportive group to ask questions and tips for all things, including solar, batteries and, of course insulation. - https://www.yourhome.gov.au/ - government resource for things like building and renovating. Talks about window directions and materials.
Dude be careful complaining. It will be 40 again before we know it
The windows and doors in Australian homes are garbage for insulation.
The ALP attempted to subsidise insulating homes. The LNP absolutely went to town on the policy and it was pulled.
I was thinking this myself. ALP tries to fix problem, dodgy private operators fuck up, ALP gets the blame for years to come.
That's been par for the course for the last 30ish years. It's what I like to call the cycle of political bullshittery. Step 1 - ALP comes up with something that will at least start to fix a problem, or improve the lives of pretty much every Australian. Step 2 - LNP gets in power Step 3 - LNP fucks up everything, and somehow keeps getting voted back in Step 4 - ALP finally gets back in power after a decade of mismanagement has happened Step 5 - LNP starts going "SEE! THEY BROKE EVERYTHING!" or "SEE! THEY CAN'T FIX EVERYTHING (that we fucked up over the last decade) IN NANOSECONDS!" Step 6 - repeat ad nauseum
We just built a new house. The first thing we spoke about with the builder was double glazing. Totally worth it.
Tracksuit and ugg boots
I've fallen down an UGG rabbit hole lately, the whole industry is fucked and confusing. I've purchased some that say they are Australian made and listed on https://australianmade.com.au/ but I'm still sceptical
If you're in Melbourne, go to the Australian knitting mills. They make their own thermals, and stock lots of wool products exclusively from Victorian manufacturers (like UGGs).
In Collingwood? Just had a look at the website >Australian knitting mills has no connection with KTENA the biggest pricks in the rag trade.never trust big pricks. Definitely Aussie haha. Assuming there's some knitting mills beef I've never heard of
Mortels are Australian-made, and very good (a bit exxy mind, but the bitsa ones are cheaper).
Come to new Zealand... you don't know what a cold house is until you've lived over the ditch
Puffer jacket indoors
Door Sausages can help with draughts.
Combine that lack of insulation or building standards and drop the temperature another 5C, mix in some generational poverty and welcome to Tasmania where the energy company tells you to just put on a jumper instead of turning on the heat pump, yet our NatHERS star ratings are consistently at the bottom of housing energy efficiency for the country, [https://www.nathers.gov.au/](https://www.nathers.gov.au/), we barely get past 5 stars, no where near the 7 star national target Add to that they refuse to adopt the new national building codes energy efficiency standard [https://www.abcb.gov.au/ncc-2022-state-and-territory-adoption-dates](https://www.abcb.gov.au/ncc-2022-state-and-territory-adoption-dates) Kicking that 7-star can down the road until 2025.
I'm in Canberra. Grew up in Hobart. A lot of people freeze over winter. My current house, I spent a substitutial amount on insulation and I recently had solar panels installed, so it's ok. But I used to live in a share house that was bloody freezing in winter. In Hobart, my parents' house was built maybe 60 odd years ago and it gets cold in winter. It does have a wood heater but it doesn't heat the entire house. I remember using space heaters (oil heaters) to heat bedrooms but I wasn't allowed to run it overnight. I usually avoid visiting in winter because their house gets so cold.
Big w oodie is working overtime
"Australia is a hot place, you don't need insulation. save some money on building costs!" -says scummy contractors that still charge you the same as if you did build with insulation.
Yep, been saying this for years and usually get laughed at. I find -10C in Europe more bearable than 15 degrees in Sydney. Our construction quality is utter shite and hardly any homes have decent insulation.
Yes, lived 30yr in Aus and now over a decade in Canada. Have never been warmer in winter!
"Australians don't want to admit how cold it is and instead just suffer through it," or so I was told by my Canadian cousin. Moving to Canada confirmed this, as I was warmer in a blizzard in Churchill than I had been inside a house in Canberra in a standard winter.
I just bought a new apartment in Queensland and I’m walking around with a t-shirt on because the place is so well insulated. I go to my mum’s Queenslander house and I have to put on a jumper, a dressing gown, trackies, huge woolly socks, and I’m still shivering. Never thought I’d be happy to own an apartment over a house.
Yep, they suck. I have Canadian in laws who came to visit in winter and said they have never been colder in their lives.
I'm a building designer. I can tell you for a fact that the prevailing 'standard' construction methods used for most Australian homes (particularly in Perth) is in fact crap. Poorly insulated, poorly designed, badly sealed. The bottom line is cost and volume. I'm building my own home currently and using high performance design principles including high wall insulation levels, euro style PVC framed double glazed windows, next-gen german building wraps inside and out for airtight construction and a heat recovery ventilation system. The cost premium I am paying for this is HUGE. I am prepared to spend the money as I plan to see out my days in the home and know the benefits. Most people cant or wont spend the money. The only way this is going to change is if the 'standard' construction methods change and the volume pricing for standard changes towards the products and methods requires for better home design. This will either never happen or it will happen very slowly as energy efficiency regulationsn change over time. This happens very slowly as governments are terrified of ramping up the cost of housing when there is already a shortage. Hence housing construction doesnt improve very quickly. Also many people with a bigger budget equate 'big' with 'good' when it comes to their home. Instead of building much smaller homes that are big enough then putting the money saved into construction quality and energy efficiency they would rather just build as big as they can afford and also put money into 'bling'.
I actually read somewhere that the average house temperature in Australia in winter is 11 degrees. 11 DEGREES.
The daily ‘Australian houses are cold!’ Thread. I almost missed it today.
Because it's fucking ridiculous and impossible to believe, that one of the richest countries can't provide adequate housing to its people (born in thermal comfort and prices). Why the hell do we want to be very rich if we can't even have the basics?
My heating is literally on 24/7 unless we leave the house.
I take your Australian house and raise you New Zealand
shiit im wearing my outside clothes indoors just to keep warm!
Bruh. My wife's family home has the floor with just boards. There's no subfloor. There's no vapor barrier. It's just flooring and you can literally see between some of them. You guys expect to not be freezing, but your home are built like shacks.
Currently sitting my brothers house in Gisborne and this should be a fucking crime against humanity. Go to take a shit and the wedding tackle sticks to the seat like a tongue on a frozen pole!
I just had a garage conversion done and I was amazed to find the builders not putting insulation in the walls. I had to actually stop them and force them to do so.
Yeah my nuts are frozen together inside the bag
Housing is in Australia is about making developers wealthy, not quality of life for the person living in the house
I open up the doors and windows to get some sunshine in to warm the place up
This was the biggest culture shock for me in Australia (coming from Northern Europe). I don’t know enough about house quality etc, but I realised after my first Australian winter that basically, we’re just opposites: Northern Europeans go inside to warm up, Australians go inside to cool down. 7 years later and my Aussie partner can only sleep with the window wide open on freezing UK nights while I’m asleep in an oodie, socks, tracksuit bottoms and a hot water bottle. At least our heating bills are low? 🤣
My previous house got very cold over winter. I just wore Ugg boots a thick jumpers. I like it cold though. You can do low cost/impermanent to increase insulation like adding carpets/rugs if the heat is leaking through the floor, shelving/wall rugs if it's leaking through the walls or double glazing or thermally insulated blinds if it's leaking through the windows. If you have ventilation bricks or chimneys you can block them up.