Excellent ABC Background Briefing show on what's wrong with HERS

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Excellent ABC Background Briefing show on what's wrong with HERS

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Started 10 years ago by alfresco24
Latest reply from aussiesue

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alfresco24
Member

Di Martin did a great presentation of why the current Home Energy Rating System (Accurate etc) and the building industry that apply it needs a lot of work.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2012-04-01/3917616

Aussie's are being led up the garden path with so many things that look good on paper but dont translate into real benefits. Likewise so many innovative designs cant get their results ratified and accepted because of the inadequate tools and a bureaucracy that doesnt have the money (or cant organise itself) to do it.

Posted Monday 2 Apr 2012 @ 12:43:11 am from IP #
Damnthematrix
Member

I've never used HERS, but I am an accredited BERS operator. In my experience, BERS is an excellent tool to predict thermal behaviour of a house, I designed my own house using it as a fine tuning tool, and arrived at a design so efficient, it basically can't be improved (except by my actually getting around to finishing it!!) http://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/mon-abri/

The proof's in the pudding AFAIC...... 16C inside one morning it was -6C outside, and never goes over 30C even when it's 43C outside. When I finish plugging all the gaps and installing all the remaining pelmets and curtains, I should be able to trim a further 3 degrees off both those extremes and end up with a house that never goes outside a 19C to 27C band.....

Posted Sunday 8 Apr 2012 @ 10:42:48 pm from IP #
Catopsilia
Member

Hi Damnthematrix

" 16C inside one morning it was -6C outside"
That is an over-temperature of 22 degrees C. That would beat my record over-temperature for an overnight minimum in my unheated house, which is only 21.8 degrees.
http://forum.weatherzone.com.au/ubbthreads.php/topics/42419/Re_Indoor_Climate#Post42419
In the linked post, I suggest that such a big temperature difference is favoured by very dry air. I think that figures beyond 20 degrees may be very rare anywhere in the world. In cooler climates all houses are heated.

Posted Monday 9 Apr 2012 @ 3:37:19 am from IP #
Damnthematrix
Member

Hi Catopsilia..... I'm absolutely certain this is due to the massive internal walls in our house consisting of core filled 200mm blocks. Plus we have small windows (compared to the norm!) and none of them are aluminium framed, even the louvres have PVC frames....

No way of knowing how dry it was, but there was a MASSIVE frost that morning, tried to photograph it but my camera seized up! It was so thick you could have skied down our western slopes...

How do you log your temps so accurately? I'm impressed with the charts you generate...

Posted Monday 9 Apr 2012 @ 5:47:44 am from IP #
Catopsilia
Member

For Damnthematrix
http://www.ata.org.au/forums/topic/3/page/2#post-14216

Posted Monday 9 Apr 2012 @ 6:32:05 am from IP #
Damnthematrix
Member

I'm impressed..... I'm flat out keeping rainfall records that way! I must say since my indoor/outdoor digital thermometer died a few months ago, I'm tempted to get one of those baby weather stations..

Posted Monday 9 Apr 2012 @ 8:15:36 pm from IP #
aussiesue
Member

There are other problems with energy rating apart from those mentioned in the Background Briefing program. For instance there is controversy about whether the model(s) underlying the ratings are applicable in a tropical/humid climate, where keeping cool in un-airconditioned space requires breeze (or maximum " air leakage") or even sub tropical where keeping cool in summer predominates over keeping warm in winter.

Additionally, if the ratings are to be used to assess built houses (rather than plans) for sale/rent, to be meaningful they need to measure real energy use. This will bring other factors into play such as how the house is managed (raising and lowering awnings for instance), but also landscape features, which can be at least as relevant as built features.

To impose ratings which don't measure what they purport to measure is ridiculous.

Posted Tuesday 10 Apr 2012 @ 6:57:41 am from IP #

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