What’s the smart data that will help you design an energy efficient home?

Learn how the right data can help you improve your new build or renovation, in my conversation with the team at Powerhaus Engineering.

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Hello! This is Episode 315, and in it, I’m sharing an incredible new way you’ll be able to access smart data that helps you design an energy efficient home. 

I’m really looking forward to sharing this episode and the next with you, as I introduce you to Hannah and Andy from Powerhaus Engineering. 

Together, they’ve created an amazing app that enables homeowners, designers, builders and energy assessors to interrogate meaningful and relevant data in a home design and its energy modelling, and interact with it to see what will make measurable improvements.

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Inside the Powerhaus App, you can access and toggle through data that will help you understand what’s worth spending money on, and what really will make the difference. 

And you’ll be able to do this interactively, seeing what’s relevant to your project plans and climate, and understanding intimately what can truly impact the energy efficiency of your future renovated or new home.

And you can do it in a simple to understand and easy to read way. I’m so looking forward to sharing this with you.

Powerhaus Engineering is dedicated to creating homes that power themselves. Their passion is in using data and innovation to build smarter and with bigger impact. 

Powerhaus empower their clients with the tools and levers to balance cost, comfort and carbon. They want to help you build better, and for comfortable, safe, healthy and fossil-fuel-free homes to be available to everyone.

Powerhaus Engineering was founded by Hannah Angus and Andy Pickard, who are partners in business and in life. They live on the south coast of NSW with their young family, and I had the incredible good fortune to meet and spend a lot of time with them at the Australian Institute of Architects Conference in October of 2023. 

At the time, I was so excited to hear about the app they’d been developing, and could see the massive potential for homeowners everywhere, that I’ve been really excited to bring them onto the podcast to talk about it more with you.

The team at Powerhaus have a huge and varied range of experience and expertise in energy efficiency consultancy, thermal performance and home energy assessment.

Before I introduce you to Hannah and Andy, let’s first give you some background, in case you’re new to your research into renovating and building, especially when it comes to understanding its energy efficiency early in your design phase …

At some point in your renovation or new build project, you will most likely need to get an energy assessment done of your proposed project as part of achieving your required building approvals. This happens in most locations globally. 

The energy assessment process usually requires a specific consultant: in Australia they’re known as Energy Assessors or Thermal Performance Assessors. They use climate data in your region and specific computer modelling tools to determine, based on the design, construction and materials of your future project, what its energy use will be each hour, day, month and year. 

That then outputs data to determine if your proposed project meets required standards for energy efficiency where you’re located.

In Australia, this is done under NatHERS or the National Housing Energy Rating Scheme, and homes are given a star rating. In most locations in Australia, we have a 7 star energy rating requirement for new homes, which has recently been upgraded from 6 stars.

Now, I’m putting this all very simply for the sake of this podcast introduction so we keep it short!

I’ve got other podcast episodes that go into this in A LOT more detail, which I’ll put in the resources below, including how whole-of-home house ratings work, dark roofs vs light roofs and their impact on your energy efficiency, plus other important information.

But, for the sake of this episode, let’s just state that: you will most likely need your home’s energy use assessed by a specialised consultant in order to assess its compliance and achieve approval to construct your project.

Now, on the matter of these specialised consultants:

I find energy assessors can sit in two camps: the assessors who are box tickers and the assessors who actually assess and provide feedback. 

The box tickers who are assessing the simplest way to achieve compliance, usually at the end of the design phase. Working with them can be quite transactional and one-step. 

You give them your design, they give you an output at the end that often looks like “upgrade your insulation to R value ‘x’, add ceiling fans, change these windows to low-e glass, or double glaze these window openings, etc”

This totally underutilises all the tools and data you can access to make informed decisions about your home’s design, to best set up its energy efficiency, thermal comfort, climate suitability and performance long-term. It’s a hugely misunderstood and missed opportunity not only by homeowners but by many in the industry.

Instead, you can work with an energy assessor who models, interrogates and provides feedback about what will or won’t improve the energy performance of your home. The process is collaborative, where they’re able to show and test for you what changes you can make. 

Not sure if you need double glazing? The modelling can tell you the difference it will make in your heating and cooling requirements. What happens if you increase your insulation? Change the colour of your roof? Change window sizes? What impact will these things have on your home’s energy use and comfort overall? And are they worth spending money on as a result?

Working in a collaborative process with an energy assessor during the design process can provide you with the information you need to make data driven decisions like these, and more.

And the Powerhaus App takes this collaboration and data knowledge to a new level I know is going to be super useful for you in your project.

RESOURCES: 

Find Powerhaus Engineering here >>> https://powerhausengineering.com.au/

Instagram >>> https://www.instagram.com/powerhausengineering/ 

Here’s some resources to review …

• Episode 291 ‘Building Science 101 with Jesse Clarke, Pro Clima’ >>>  https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-building-science-101-jesse-clarke-pro-clima/ 
• Episode 292 ‘Building Membranes and Condensation Managment with Jesse Clarke, Pro Clima’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-building-membranes-condensation-management-jesse-clarke-pro-clima/ 
• Episode 293 ‘7 Star Homes with Jeremy Spencer, Positive Footprints’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-7-star-homes-jeremy-spencer-positive-footprints/ 
• Episode 294 ‘The ‘Whole of Home’ Rating Scheme with Jeremy Spencer, Positive Footprints’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-whole-of-home-rating-scheme-jeremy-spencer-positive-footprints/ 
• Episode 295 ‘Does Size Matter in Achieving 7 Stars with Jeremy Spencer, Positive Footprints’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-does-size-matter-achieving-7-stars-jeremy-spencer-positive-footprints/ 
• Episode 296 ‘Air Tightness and Blower Door Tests with Jessica Allen, Climasure’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-blower-door-tests-jessica-allen-climasure/ 
• Episode 297 ‘What’s a WUFI Analysis with Jessica Allen, Climasure’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-wufi-analysis-jessica-allen-climasure/ 
• Episode 208 ‘Roof Colour: Dark vs Light (and your home’s energy efficiency) | with Sid Thoo’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-roof-colour-dark-vs-light-energy-efficiency-sid-thoo/ 

Access the support and guidance you need (like Clare did) to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home inside my flagship online program, HOME METHOD >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/the-home-method/ 

Learn more about how to interview and select the right builder with the Choose Your Builder mini-course >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/choose-your-builder 

Access my free online workshop “Your Project Plan” >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/projectplan