Sustainable House Day, Braitling, NT

Retrofitting a House On a Limited Budget

Our home is a 3 bedroom, brick, ex-Dept. Housing home in Alice Springs. It was built in the early 1980’s and had no improvements made to it to increase its sustainability or liveability. We purchased the home 4 years ago. It is a good example of what homeowners can achieve on a relatively small budget over time to greatly improve the comfort level and sustainability of an average home (as well as save significant amounts of money on water and power bills). We have worked on the house ourselves, as well as engaging suitable tradespeople to complete work where necessary.

Garden: We removed most non-native plants and removed the lawn from the front of the block, replacing it with local plant species and rock mulch. We halved the large lawn area in the back and replaced it with a sandpit/play area for kids. We do not water the lawn at the back very often (as is evident!!) but it gets water from the evaporative cooler in summer so it tends to look greener at that time. We have planted local indigenous plants around the garden and attract a lot of birds and reptiles. The garden is watered deeply once a week with a subsurface dripper system (2-3 hours a week) and we keep it well mulched to retain moisture. All the irrigation systems are run from timers.

We created small swales around the garden by hand to direct rainwater and move it to trees and garden beds where it can be maximised.

We have two deep raised vegetable beds. These are filled with manure, compost and pea straw and are watered via a dripper system for 10 mins every 1-2 days. We felt it was important to be able to produce some of our own food in the garden because of the huge transport issues associated with getting food to Alice Springs. We raise our own vegetables from local seed where possible (as it has been bred to survive local conditions better).

External House: We removed a carport from the northern side of the house as it was trapping a lot of heat and funnelling this heat into the house.

We found that the dark grey of the cement house bricks retained a lot of heat so we rendered the house in a very light colour. We also put a rendered false wall on the western side of the house, and shade cloth to shade the bricks from the intense afternoon sun and planted trees along that side. We did these jobs ourselves and have found that they have significantly reduced heat inside the house in the late afternoon/evening. As a result, we use the cooler much less.

Roof: Soon after we bought the house we put two whirly-birds in the roof to help remove hot air from the roof cavity. The following year we had insulation pumped into the roof cavity (the shredded paper type). Although this was a significant outlay, we noticed that we were able to reduce the time we needed to keep the cooler on in summer and that heat was retained much longer in the house in winter. We also got a painter to paint the roof white  last year (using Solar City program) and have found it that it has further reduced our need to use cooling in summer. With both the insulation and the roof painted, we have found that the ambient temperature inside the house in high summer is at least 6-7 degrees cooler.

Solar Panels: We put a 1500 kW PV solar system on the roof last year (through the Solar City program). Our household consumes very low levels of power and so we estimate it will take approx. 7 years for the system to pay for itself. We no longer receive power/water/sewerage bills and instead receive credits from the power company instead.

Indoors: With the insulation, whirly birds and painted roof, we have been able to halve the amount of time we have to run our evaporative cooler in summer. We also make sure we have the cooler regularly serviced to ensure that it is running efficiently.
We have also been able to reduce the amount of time we have to use a small heater in the house in winter. The insulation retains heat so well in the living area of the house that the heat from using our oven to cook often keeps the living areas comfortable at night time. We have also sealed all the gaps under doors, use door snakes inside and have the heater on a thermostat and timer for very cold nights.  

We replaced our shower head with a water-efficient one and are in the process of replacing our toilet (using local Water Rebate program).

We replaced all globes in the house with CF globes gradually over time.

Household Behaviour: By being aware of our own behaviour and surroundings, we have been able to keep our power and water bills quite low. We close up the house in summer until the evening when the weather cools. We use an indoor thermometer and cool the house to approx 26 degrees in summer and heat it to approx 19 degrees in the evening and early morning in winter. We find we consume much less power in the house working to these temperatures, we remain comfortable and not too disconnected from the outdoor conditions.

We try and use appliances (eg washing machine, vacuum, etc) primarily during off-peak times (eg early morning, late evening or weekends) and turn them off at the wall when not in use. We also ensured that we replaced old appliances with more efficient ones wherever possible.