Why are Australians in denial about how cold our homes really are? ‘Winter stoicism’ is partly to blame | Reena Gupta
Why are Australians in denial about how cold our homes really are? ‘Winter stoicism’ is partly to blame | Reena Gupta
I work from home with a hot-water bottle on my lap, wearing a dressing gown over my many layers of clothes. We do what we’ve got to do
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The reasons our houses aren’t as well insulated comes down to climate and cost.
Climate, people don’t die from extreme temperatures here like they do in places like Europe and North America.
Cost, we don’t have the demand for better thermal protection so anyone who wants to improve their home has to pay.
I’m in the process of trying to improve my home atm. I’ve had the blow in insulation replaced with batts, I’m replacing the windows with double glazing and I am trying to seal all of the gaps and vents that let out the heat. It will cost me 10’s of thousands of dollars by the time I’m finished, but it will make our house comfortable without costing us a fortune when we are retired.
We’re not dying from the cold in England either, but pretty much everyone has at least double glazing by now.
England’s average temperature is much lower than most parts of Australia. Your population is more than double Australia’s, in a landmass significantly smaller than Australia. You live next to a continent of half a billion people who have to deal with extreme’s of cold. The Pound is worth nearly double the Australian dollar.
Given all the above, it is no surprise that double glazing is much cheaper to install in England than Australia. So most people here just put up with the 3-5mm panes of glass installed in their houses by default.
Hobart climate is pretty close to London and the flats I lived in, mostly converted Georgian row houses, had insulation, double glazing and hydronic radiators. Hobart houses feel like tents. You can feel drafts going through.
Same-ish here in Melbourne. And then in Summer when it hits the 30s there’s no escape from the heat either because the breeze brings it in (at least there’s the beach then haha).
https://www.healthyhomes.org.au/news/heh1pp76ot3hpljgf9x3mp7umqndch
A new study published in The Lancet shows 6.5% of deaths in this country are attributed to cold weather, compared with 0.5% from hot weather. Most deaths will be from cardiovascular and respiratory disease, as it’s the heart and lungs that struggle when we are outside our comfort zone.
Cold weather causes twice as many deaths (proportional to population) as in Sweden. Australia's cold weather problem is, when measured in deaths, twice as bad as Sweden's. People DO die from extreme cold here in Australia, much worse than they do in Europe.
People DO die from extreme cold here in Australia
From looking at the study, the definition of "extreme cold" is based on percentile temperature local to the area. So Sydney's "extreme cold" is less than about 11 ℃, while for Stockholm to be considered "extreme cold" it needs to be below about -6 ℃. The problem with this is that it means any deaths caused by temperatures between -6 and 11 ℃ will inflate Stockholm's "moderate cold" rates, while they increase Sydney's "extreme cold".
Still, I think there're some really interesting conclusions from this data. Across the board, high temperatures seem to be associated with a lower temperature-related mortality rate than low temperatures are.
The other problem is that tradies don’t know how to / can’t be bothered learning to reduce a buildings energy consumption.
We had an argument for weeks with the Site Supervisor because his subcontractor didn’t want to install the Reverse-Cycle condensers on the south side of the house because it was “too hard”.
One of the refrigerant lines insulation was nicked during installation and we started getting condensation stains through the walls.
The contractor came back and once again, he wanted to relocate the condenser on the north side. He kept blaming us for making him run the pipes to a location that was “too hard” for him.
This guy claimed to be an Air Conditioning specialist and couldn’t understand how a heat exchanger in direct sunlight will not be as efficient at cooling as a heat exchanger on the cold side of the house.