THE recent cash handouts from both the state and federal governments to help with energy bills has provided some respite for Scenic Rim residents as they battle increasing energy costs to stay warm in these cooler months.
While that represents good news the bottomline is those cash supplements will soon be eaten up as the gas and electricity bills keep arriving.
Griffith University senior lecture, Dr Tony Matthews, who is an expert in urban planning, has advised those worried about future bills not to get complacent about energy costs simply because they got some free cash.
He says they need to act now to ensure they lower their future bills by improving the energy efficiency of their homes.
His advice was for residents, especially those in older homes, to get a professional energy efficiency auditor in to overview their properties to identify how to improve them.
“The survey is called an energy retrofit and it establishes amongst other things as to where you are losing heat in winter and where you are allowing warm air to flow in during the hot summer months,” Dr Matthews said.
“You set about finding ways to plug those gaps and to make sure the house is more airtight. It just goes back to the fact that most older homes in Queensland are not well insulated and not well designed as far as energy efficiency goes.
“The only way to fix it is to make changes and mostly this is by insulation.”
Dr Matthews said it was unfortunate that the Queensland government hadn’t invested more into providing this type of home energy auditing to help all families facing ever increasing energy bills.
Heat is main issue
“Cold is actually the secondary problem in Queensland the primary problem is heat, so if you get an audit done you should be thinking about the benefits for the full 12 months of the year,” he said.
“If you make the recommended changes you will start to see savings all year round, changes such as home insulation are passive and they just sit there doing their job for free, they don’t require any ongoing maintenance and they are doing their job 24hrs a day.
“Insulation is a very good investment, but it’s not just insulation you should look at, you also need to look at the home’s air flow and potential gaps in timber floors and around windows and doors.”
He advised residents looking to do a home energy audit to bring in an expert and not to try to do it themselves.
“This is not the standard home renovation stuff, you can make the changes needed neatly into your home, but you require someone who knows what they are doing to achieve it,” he said.
“Government’s should be much more proactive in advising residents that extreme heat and cold can be hazardous to their health particularly with older people. Unfortunately they won’t find much government support when it comes to fixing these problems at their homes.”
Just the facts:
Dr Tony Matthews is an urban planner and an international advocate for good cities.
A faculty member at Griffith University, Dr Matthews is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering and Built Environment and the Cities Research Institute.
He co-developed and co-presented ‘The Urban Squeeze’ radio program on ABC Radio, which ran for two seasons and won three Awards for Excellence from the Planning Institute of Australia.