It really is kind of shocking how poor our building standards are in Australia. A european home built here would probably cost a quarter to heat and half to cool.
A German guy i work with was saying they stopped using double glazing in favour of triple glazing years ago now.
Australia.... we have a single pane of glass. They don't even include the screens on your new house.
In General it seems that they quote houses based on the lowest cost construction, then charge a fortune for any minor deviations.
Glass shouldn't be an expensive item, as a material its not expensive. And the technology for making double/triple glazing is all done and dusted.
Double glazing would do way more for the environment than those joke water tanks people put on their new home.
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My pet hate at the moment is the add on TV for the power company where the guy proudly tells his wife he's spent 6 hours putting insulation in the roof, but he's made to look foolish because all they had to do was call whichever bullshit middleman power company it is and get their cheap prices.
Sorry bullshit power company. That buffoon has done his bit for the environment and you've done nothing apart from making less money from the activity of getting data from the power meter and sending a bill.
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Where i work we use enough power to get a pretty good deal, but at the moment its all under investigation because the long term contracts are up and it'll cost us 4 times as much. We found that we can pay SP Ausnet directly for the meter on a separate bill to the Energy company. It seems the Energy companies put around $500 per year extra on top of the SP Ausnet price for absolutely ZERO additional value. There are also some pretty good solar options for Businesses now.