How Old Houses Are Good for the Environment
Most of us would not argue with the statement that being environmentally friendly begins at home but how far are we willing to make this a statement of fact. We can start with our houses. It has now been shown that old houses, along with their heritage significance, if old enough, have considerable value in an environmentally conscious psyche. If you doubt that this is true just take a visit to Australia’s oldest homestead, Elizabeth Farm at Parramatta in midsummer. You will enjoy sitting on its refreshing shady veranda overlooking the green garden and will soon come to the way of thinking that old and green belong together.
Bishops Lodge in outback NSW was built at Hay in 1888 and Hay experiences some of the hottest summer weather in Australia. To visit Bishops Lodge in the heat of summer you will find a cool welcome refuge from the outside heat. This has been obtained with an outer wall cladding of lightweight corrugated iron and no air conditioning whatsoever. The wide veranda that encircles the building keeps the suns heat from the rooms as do the shutters at the windows when the suns angle finds its ways under the veranda early in the morning or later at in the afternoon. Between the outer walls and the inner walls is Cyprus Pine sawdust that when packed tight makes for perfect insulation.
When these old homes were built there was no electricity grid to plug any air conditioning unit into, no space heaters or ceiling fans. The occupants had to be innovative in the way they had builders put in windows that opened but with a smaller glass to wall ratio than we have today. The windows and wide verandas created air movement much as the first floors of Victorian terrace homes do with their living rooms on the first floor in order to take advantage of the breeze that finds its way upstairs after escaping the radiant heat from the hot ground outside.
It makes one wonder how wise we have been in pulling down our old homes to replace them by the concrete and glass Mc-mansions of today. According to the Bureau of Statistics one in seven houses built in Australia today replaces a home previously built on the same block. In many cases the home being replaced would have been smaller and would have consumed less energy. This is without taking into account the amount of energy used in making the concrete and glass that the new home is built of.
The construction of buildings uses 32 percent of the worlds energy resources as well as 12 percent of water and 40 percent power consumption. On top of this construction is responsible for 40 percent of the worlds waste that goes into landfill as well as 40 percent of the world’s air pollution. Households contribute 9.5 percent of the total greenhouse emissions in Australia at the present time. Much of all this can be avoided.
Concrete, the main building product that is used in the Mc-mansions and the massive office blocks we see rising ever higher in all our cities, has seen its production rise by 400 percent since 1970, on top of this it also accounts for six percent of all human related carbon emissions. If remaining unchecked the building industry, including housing, will continue to use more and more energy.
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