Home Energy Audit Could Save You Thousands on Energy Bills - Here's Why - EP58

Honey, good news and bad news. She said, okay, what's the good news? She goes, We've got insulation. What's the bad news?

It's all in bags in a corner. Presented by Your Energy Answers. Back for an Your Energy Answer podcast with Adam Corrigan. And Adam runs Your Energy Friend.

Friend or friends? Friend. Friend. But you do have many customers, so friends.

Yes, yes, many, many customers. I think we've topped out it'd be close to 9,000 homes that we've been through now. Wow, wow. So I always believe, you know, we got the solar, we got the batteries and all that, but it all starts in the home and in the business, really in how energy efficient it is.

And I've just come back from Germany and I'm telling you the difference of a single glazed versus double clased versus triple clased house when you walk in it, it's huge, and so is the electricity bill. So how do you get into that space? How do I get into that space? Um I used to sell high-end uh software to universities.

Prior to that, it was big financial institutions. Um, but I've never really been a software guy, don't really like computers. Um I was living and working in Melbourne, wanted to get out of it. I really wanted to get into large-scale renewables, but at that stage there was just really nothing.

What 2000? About 2002 it was. There wasn't really much happening in Australia. So my partner and I we moved back to Sydney at that stage.

We then um I found a job with um who was called Solarheart, owned by Ream. Um, got in with them, but they were also working on a project after a couple of months. They're working on a project called the Blacktown Solar Cities. Um, and as part of that, I sat on an advisory committee um uh to the project, and they needed 3,000 home energy audits to be done, and they couldn't find anyone to do it.

So I put my hand up and said, right, see you later, solar heart, I'm off to do this. Um partnered up with a guy out of WA who'd done a previous project, similar funding from the federal government over in WA. Um used their call centre, bit of their software, trained up a team over here, and off we went. And I pretty much haven't looked back since.

I've been doing it, yeah, pretty consistently for God, what's that? Almost 15, 20 years or something stupid. Well, 2002 to now is actually 24 years. Yeah, I I did do a bit of a stint working with council for personal reasons, as we talked about before.

Um, so that's probably taken a chunk out of it. But yeah, been yeah, around for a long time. Right, so energy audit, I mean, do you just walk in there with a bit like you know when you do a buyer house and you get your building inspection and all that? Do you walk in there with a little bit of a pad and or do you or you do you ask them questions first?

Tell me nowadays, a why should I have an energy audit? How it works, all the secrets that you found out over the last 20 years. You're not getting. But it just just give me the picture.

So the the when people call me, the first question I ask is what's your motivator? What are you trying to achieve in the home? And it's normally one of things I call the three C's cost, carbon, or comfort. So cost, my bills are high and I don't understand why, or my bills are high and I just want to get them down, or the bills have gone through the roof.

I've got no idea what's going on. Can you please come and help me out? Carbon, I want to do the right thing by the environment. Not so many of those clients these days, a lot of the early adapters, they've kind of gone with solar, they've gone with batteries, they've got the electricity, they've they've gone down that pathway.

That as such, they're called early adapters. Um, cost carbon comfort, but put it this way, every every winter we get a huge up spike in Europeans and North Americans ringing us and saying, I've never been so cold in my entire life. What's going on with Australian homes? I've just spent millions to buy this place and wherever in Sydney, and I'm freezing.

What's going on? So it's normally those three. Then the fourth motivator now is you can now get a discount off your mortgage based on the energy efficiency rating of your home. So some people are ringing me up to go, hey, can I get one of these scorecard ratings because I want to apply for one of these discounted mortgages.

Do most banks do that? Yeah, most of the big banks are. Yeah, it's quite a broad range. So what do you get extra off?

It's quite significant. You're talking. I couldn't tell you the exact numbers, don't quote me on this. Um, but you're talking at least between a quarter to a half a percentage point off the interest rate for the life of the loan.

Right. So But I have to achieve a certain star rating, isn't it? Okay, well, so the way it works is the money's come from the federal government down through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which is kind of like the federal government's green bank. Um they are then working with all of the different finance organizations, you know, Macquarie Bank, Commonwealth Bank, you name it, all of them, all down to some of the smaller ones.

And they are working to, they all have slightly different eligibility criteria. So some of the banks just want, we just want no gas, we want solar, and we want a heat pump hot water system. And some of them do that sort of array, and they're all kind of different, and it's quite technical. Um, and others just want a seven-star rating with that scorecard rating tool or more.

Okay, so some of them, there was an even uh an offer last year with a it was a one of the Bank Australia, I think it was. They only wanted to see a one-star improvement in that in that star rating. And then straight away give you a lower interest. They give you, yeah.

I did a couple of homes last year, some were units, all they had to do was change their shower head, and they got them the one star rating increase, and that access, they were saving tens of thousands of dollars off their mortgage just by putting in a $50 shower head. Some of them didn't even put in shower head, they just put in a flow restrictor. Wow. I hate it, but when your shower kind of just dribbles down, just change it and then put back the proper one and uh I wouldn't suggest that at all.

Um but mate, like I've been in this game for 20 years, so uh most of those new shower and in all shower heads now at nine litres a minute flow rated maximum. Okay, so your shower head at home is a maximum flow rate of nine litres. You can't buy the old ones anymore, can you? No.

Yeah, okay. You can even get a six litre one if you want. Yeah, okay. All right.

Now, you just mentioned seven star rating. Yep. Um tell me, I don't even is there something coming towards us with star rating? I don't know much anything about that yet.

Yeah, okay. So if you look at where the origins of this is, if you look at all of Europe, all of the UK, um, most of North America, the ACT here in Australia, they've all had what they call mandatory disclosure. At point of sale or lease, you have to advertise the energy efficiency rating of the home. So that is coming.

So the current piece of software that they're using is, or that we're using and I'm using, is a piece of software that was developed by the Victorian government in association with the feds. I don't know exactly how. Um, but it's um it's called scorecard, and you get a star rating out of ten stars. It's a pretty good tool.

So what? You basically enter in how many windows, which way they're phase, what hot water system you've got, ceiling height, uh you insulation type, whether there's insulation in the walls, orientations, floor spark, heating, cooling. It's basically a measure of the building envelope and any fixed appliances. So fixed appliances being yeah, air conditioning if it's fixed, um, your hot water system, solar, batteries not in there yet.

You can tick a box, but it doesn't change the rating. Um, but yeah, solar has a massive effect. You can take an old one-star fibro box um that has no insulation, you put enough solar on it, that's a 10-star home because it's not a measure of the energy efficiency as such of the home, it's a measure of the estimated cost to run the home. So just like when you buy a fridge and it's got that star rating on it, that's a if you look underneath, there's a number there in kilowatt hours.

Estimated cost to run that fridge, same same principle, estimated cost to run that home. So that's the way the tool works at the moment. But as I said, not all the banks use that that calculation or that scorecard. But when you go in and do a scorecard, it's literally, it's it's not my favourite piece of work that I do because you're literally walking around with a laser measurer, measuring up every single room, every single window, floor type.

There's like 44 data entry points per room. So per room? Yeah, but a lot of them lap up. You know, you've already put the floor type is this, tick, tick, tick.

A timber floor, no installation. Exactly, it's got carpet, it's this, it's that, da da da. They're this type of window, they're aluminium frame, so it's just like, oh, the measurements this, bang, bang, bang. What's that program called again?

A scorecard. Score card. So that scorecard, when you filled it all in, at the end it goes dot du and it gives you a 5.3, let's say, okay.

Average home comes out at about two stars, two and a half stars. Is that all? Out of ten, yeah. Which I think they've just started at low to kind of say, well, we really want to start pushing people up.

Right. So then it's called the residential efficiency scorecard is the official name. Of course. Bureaucrat created that name.

I can't even say it's say it again. Residential efficiency scorecard. The residential efficiency scorecard for your house is one star, and you're going to pay a fortune to get it up. Uh no, not necessarily.

It's quite it's quite interesting what you can do with the tool. I I like it. I don't agree with the way the algorithm works, but I'm sure there's a much smarter people than me that have put their brains behind it. Um you can quite you once you've done a home, you can actually sit there and go, okay, well, let's do a variation on it and say, okay, well, if you need to get that one star improvement or you need to get to seven stars, well, let's figure out the most cost-effective way for you to do that.

It might be upgrade your insulation, might be putting in subfloor insulation, might be double glazing, it might be changing the shower head, might be putting solar on it so you can model it and figure out for the client what's the best way and the most cost-effective way for them to get to that seven stars or whatever they're trying to achieve. So let's say you walk into a house, you go through, you get your two-star rating, do you then make specific recommendations or do you have a consultation phase with the customer?

Yeah, yeah, okay, let's go back a step. If I'm speaking, if a customer calls me, it's normally cost carbon or comfort. 90% of the time they just want to make their home more comfortable and save money. If that's what they want, I don't recommend to them to get a scorecard assessment.

I recommend to go with what I do, and this is 80% of my business, is a home energy audit where I come in, I've got my own process, we do a detailed look around the home, we get their metering data, we do analysis of their metering data, we do a bill comparison for them, and we start with all of the basics. And it's normally I call my rudimentary five steps is number one, understand your energy and gas bill and how they work. Are you on a time of use tariff? Um, how much is a megajoule?

What are you actually paying for these differences? What's your supply charge? Understand all of those costs. I'd take the cost of the case.

Most people wouldn't have a clue, would they? No. No. Most people, if you go into a home, most people don't know what a peak a kilowatt hour is.

They don't have that, they know what a litre of petrol is, they know what a kilogram of rice is, but they don't know what a kilowatt hour is, and they don't know what a megajoule of gas is. So they just pay their bills. They're just paying their bills. But on the back, it actually explains it all.

Well, it doesn't explain to you what a kilowatt hour is or where they're actually using their power. It just basically says this is how much you've used. I mean, for a while there, they've changed it now. They used to put people on, people could, if they wanted to be, be on a time of use tariffs at different rates for different times of the day.

They didn't even put the times or the days where those rates were changing and what they were. It was how people meant to understand that. You're putting on. So the idea behind bringing time of use tariffs was to put downward pressure on peak demand events.

Well, if people didn't know when those times were and they were getting charged more money to use power during those times, you're trying to put in a financial disincentive. You're not going to tell them when the time is, or how are they going to change their behaviour? But I mean, to be very honest, all of that kind of stuff, yes, I get it, that it saves infrastructure if we don't have to build this eight-lane highway that we only use for ten minutes. But it's all kind of going for the energy retailer.

You now have to change your behaviour. Um you come home at five o'clock, it's now most expensive. The kids have come back from school, you want to put a hot uh one of them into a hot shower, you now would need to cook electric. You've got no choices really.

Yeah. I think to some degree, well, what do you what do you do? Go back on a flat rate. Yeah, but sometimes you don't allow if you have solar, for example, they don't let you go back on a flat rate.

Changing it, try another retailer. I had a recent experience where myself, I love it when electricity retailers call me. I'm sure you do too. Um and I was I'd do every time I get my bill, I'd do a comparison and shop around and find a better rate.

Um, and I had a retailer that I rang said, I want to go onto your I was already with them and I said I want to go on back onto a flat tariff. And they said, sorry, the network company in my area, that's Osgrid, said, No, you they're not allowing us to go onto that. And I was like, mate, can you go away now, speak to your senior management, and make sure that's kosher, make sure that's for real and that's what you're meant to be saying. Um, and he went off, put me on hold.

I sent a text message to somebody that I know at Osgrid that used to be the head of demand management, and said, mate, what's the go with this? And let's just say the expletive ridden rant that I got back. I it was basically it's BS. It was BS.

So I just said to them, Well, that's the deal. You either change me or onto that flat tariff, or I'm going to another retailer. And he said, Look, check with management, that's in our call script, that's what we've got to say. So I just went to another retailer.

Yeah, no, I got on a flat rare. I've had exactly the same communicated to me, but I also heard years ago Barrier Ferrell when the stuff came through promising people that if they want to go back to flat, they can go onto flat. Yep. But I think with the smart meters and all the demand kind of thing, the government really uh maybe they say, Oh yeah, you can, but deep inside they really like the time of day usage stuff because in their belief it changes behaviour in people.

Yeah, yeah, that's the idea behind it. But at the end, mate, look, I'm now on a flat tariff. I look one of the things I find really quite unusual at the moment um is we're hearing so much and it's so intense that and I've never seen it, I've as I said I've been doing this for 15, 20 years, the amount of media coverage around energy prices in Australia and oh, we're the highest prices in the world. No, we don't.

Um, and our energy prices are going through the roof. I'm paying a flat rate of 24 cents a kilowatt hour, including GST. I haven't seen a rate that low for probably a dozen years. So if you shop around, you can get really good deals.

I mean, 24 I haven't heard for 15 years. I mean, I hear 40, I hear 45, I hear 54. Yeah, I see really high rates. And if you less you shopper around, you are getting ripped off.

That if Are you sure it's 24? Yeah. Do you pay like $4 supply for your day? No, it's like $1.

10. You really shopped around. I mean, can you tell us who it is? Um, I couldn't tell you right now because I shop around that often and change that often.

I'm bad, mate. But you know what? They just recently gave us the reason for the latest electricity price increase or the churn. So people like you that switch around every three months when there's a cheaper rate somewhere else, I mean, you've got spare time.

I doubt, I doubt that is the biggest reason to be able to do that. No, but that's what the marketing marketing people came up because you know, all the people from the energy regulator, every time there's an increase, they go, and now please, what you have to do is shop around. But you know what? It's like with house insurances now.

I had one for $1,900 and I go, stuff it, I'm gonna shop around. You know the next quote? Five and a half grand. Yeah, I was sticking where I was.

Well, I had the opposite you couldn't get anything better. I had the opposite. I went with, I won't mention the name, but they my home insurance came in and they wanted almost seven thousand dollars. Yeah, cheating this house.

Oh no, it's an old fibro joint. Um and I shopped around and I saved almost uh two and a half thousand dollars just by changing my home insurance. But that's still a lot of money, four grand a year. I don't know.

I don't know. Well, back on a bush. Okay. Now, moving back, so you go to the house, I'm saying my reasons really, would you agree that the environmental reasons, it's smidgen.

Same with solar. When people say, why do you get solar? It's not to save the planet, it's to save my wallet. When I ask people what it that costs carbon or comfort, they normally go a bit of everything.

Yeah, they want to be greeny-denny and do the right thing, but the primary motivator when you start showing them how to save money, yeah, when you show them, hey, if you change your electricity retail tariff to this, they're like, oh my god, unreal. Do that. That's what's motivating people to change. It's like anything in life.

It's your primary motivator for most things. Now, look, I'm I'm kind of, you know, I'm gonna give you a free plug because I wanted something back from you here. So your energy friend has obviously learned over the last 20 years what are the low-hanging fruit when it comes to a house. Yeah.

Okay. So what are the kind of things that you look at first? I mean, before you recommend triple glazing the whole house, um you you know, you you'd you'd really kind of must have some low-hanging fruits that straight away you'd look at. Give me give me some of the stuff.

Number one, understand your energy bill. Number two, shop around, make sure you're on the best deal for electricity and gas. Number three, it's that energy efficiency piece. And in that energy efficiency piece, that's that's the big area.

Um, it's where you also tend to spend a bit of money, but there's a lot of low-hanging fruit in there to start with. And that, and then sorry, after three, it's solar and then batteries. But that energy efficiency piece, that's that's the big chunk. What was that called?

The pink bat scheme, by design wasn't really a bad thing. Maybe by implementation it was terrible, but it had good intentions, didn't it? Absolutely. And I have a beautiful saying which is the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Yeah. Yeah. But it's given insulation such a bad name, that whole thing. But wouldn't you say that if you walk into a fibroblase and they haven't got insulation in the roof, that's one of the cheapest things to do?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, insulation and draft proofing.

The other thing that I see a lot of when we go into homes, we I use a thermal camera. Great little tool, it just plugs into my iPhone, it's great. Um, and a lot of councils will now you can borrow a thermal camera from the council. Oh but you can literally walk around, and it's normally around light fittings, ceiling fans, and air conditioning ducts, where the installers, so the electricians or the air con trade, have been up there and they will literally pick up the insulation bat, toss it aside, and there's a massive big gap.

And you can see that through the thermal camera. It only takes a 5% gap in your insulation blanket, so either ceiling, floor, wall, five percent gap, and the effectiveness of that whole insulation blanket diminishes by half. Okay, so just let that sit in. 5% gap, the effectiveness of that whole blanket diminishes by half.

It's like putting a blanket on yourself and cutting holes in it. It just doesn't work, right? So 99% of the homes that we go into, that's one of the first things we show them. So they basically got the windows open, they just don't realize it.

That's it. You basically because you lose 30% of your heat in winter through the ceiling sheet and you gain 30% through the ceiling sheet. So all of a sudden, that insulation blanket is useless, and 90% of the time, it's cruddy old stuff that's been there for 20 years. You stick your head up, and I'll put a camera on a stick and basically take a whole bunch of photos and then show them and go, see, there's a gap there, there's a gap there.

Then you show them with a thermal camera, and they're like, Oh my god, that's where all your heat's going, that's why the house is getting so cold. So that um and then the big one, like walls, there's not a huge amount you can do about unless you want to reshoot the whole house. Um, sub floor, if they've got access, that's a fantastic opportunity if it's right for them and their type of flooring. What do you do?

Use that uh styrofoam stuff or what? I don't. Oh mate, look, I've got a really good interesting. I mean, I'm not saying you're doing it, but no, I'm not doing it.

I don't and I'm reasonably careful and kind of reticent about recommending specific products, particularly solar and batteries, they keep changing so quickly, it's impossible to keep up. Um, particularly if you're trying to keep across glazing, insulation, draft proofing, and the whole gamut of what goes into uh upgrading an energy efficient home. Um, there's just a lot of different products. You don't have to say anything, just walk in with a Bradford sticker on their forehead.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, and that's the thing. Like, most homes have only got an old R2 bat. The minimum stand in Sydney now is an R4, and what they've got is Old, it's diminished. It's like I say to people So what you're saying insulation?

I thought insulation sits there and never rots. I mean, isn't does it go down in the basic compressors like anything? Do you have a 30-year-old goose-down duner on your bed? No, because after a while, all those feathers they compress, right?

So it's not actually the goose down that's keeping you warm. It's a layers of air that are trapped in between them. So it's the same with your insulation. You get dust, you get vermin, you get, you know, um possums, rats, you get it.

You get electricity coming in and moving things out of the way. Yeah, they just move them. I've been in ceiling spaces where the whole insulation's just been picked up, moved, and tossed into the corner. Wow.

I've been in ceiling spaces where they've opened one bag and put the insulation around the manhole and the rest of the bags are just jammed into a corner. I had a client, I'll give you some more, another horror story. A client, or sorry, she's actually a council client, mid-north coast way. Um she was picking my brains out of having a new house being built, master builder.

Fantastic. I said, just make sure the insulation's up to spec in the walls, everywhere you can. Um, ceiling, walls, um, subfloor, um, and make sure you do as much drive proofing, make sure it's as airtight as you can possibly get it to be for the builder. Just push him on that.

And she said, I got the keys. She bring me up on a Monday, and she said, I got the keys last Friday. I said, Oh yeah, okay, how'd you go? Great.

She goes, Oh, you have a mistake. And she said, But I wanted to recall you. I said, Oh, why? What did you find?

She goes, Well, I sent my husband up into the ceiling space on Sunday night. I said, Oh yeah? She said he came back down. He said, Honey, good news and bad news.

And she said, Okay, what's the good news? She goes, We've got insulation. What's the bad news? It's all in bags in a corner.

Wow. That was from a master builder. Now they called the master builder. She said, But I already called him that morning.

So we call him, he was disgusted, frothy. It's probably his subby who did it, isn't he? Exactly. It's um, mate, do you do you want to go and install insulation in the ceiling space?

I've done it. It's horrible, it's hard, nasty work. Don't do it on a summer stay. Yeah, so to get good people with a good company, that's hard to find, you know.

But it's not hard work, really. I mean, those bats nowadays, uh or even the ones you can roll out. I mean, it's got a bit of a sense of uh, but you've got to wear the the safety gear and the guy that I refer people to, Duncan, he's I'll give you a plug, mate. Um, he's like a founder of the what's it called?

He'll kick me for not knowing this. Um, the Australian Insulation Installers Association or something they're called. So they're kind of going, you have to do this, you turn off all the power to the house, you have to wear this breathing apparatus, you have to wear this safety stuff, da da da da. You don't stable into the power clock.

Yeah, exactly. All of that. So and he's been around in the industry since, yeah. Yeah.

There's more to it than what you think. But okay, um now hot water is a big uh energy sucker, up to a third, 40% of the house electricity. Yeah, typically 30-40%. So um are you a kind of guy who's now against gas?

Oh I'm not so much against gas. Um I mean So if I'd have a gas hot water system and it's instantaneous, what's the what's the quality of that kind of gear? Well, the quality is normally fine. No, I mean the energy quality that kind of if if you're talking gas, is it gas storage?

If it's a gas storage tank, they're normally around, you know, 100 litres, 100 plus. It's basically a big kettle sitting on a stove simmering away. Incredibly inefficient. Horrendously.

Do they still exist? I thought Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're still out there. And the problem you get with gas replacement is a lot of the plumbers and the trades, if they're replacing a hot water system, they'll just go, I've got one on the truck or I can go and get one for you in 20 minutes and you'll have hot water.

Because when hot water goes out at home, people want hot water really quickly. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Here's indoors, everyone, no one wants to be without it.

When the tank dies after 10, 12 years, you know me at 15. It yeah, okay, I've I've had them die quicker than that, but there a lot of people don't use that as an opportunity to upgrade to something more efficient. A lot of people go to instantaneous gas. Instantaneous gas, in my experience, I mean I can look at a gas bill and tell whether they're using 90% of the time, I can tell whether or not they've got gas-hot water because gas is just hot water's a big energy user, 30 to 40 percent.

If you're using gas to create hot water, particularly if it's in a tank, your gas bill is going to be right up there. Um, and you can see the seasonal variations well if you're using gas for heating. Um, but if you've got an instantaneous gas-hot water, they're pretty efficient from a cost perspective. And you never run out of hot water.

You can have 20-minute showers. No, no, well, yeah. I mean Yeah, I know that's probably against your religion of how to do it. But I mean some people come off a plane, 12-hour flight, they want to have a really nice, long, relaxing shower.

I've put in a solar hot water system. I've got two teenage kids. I've never had that connected to control lobe one or two, so it just runs off the sun exclusively. We never run out of hot water.

Okay. My daughter takes 20-minute showers, my son takes longer, he has baths and never run out of hot water with through business the house. Right, right. But I mean, the solar hot water systems nowadays a lot of times getting taken off the roof, replaced with solar.

I know he used to work for solar heart, his heart is hurting, but solar heart does PV now too. I know. Um so my point is take the solar, don't go for six, eight thousand dollars solar hot water system now, take that off, put PV on, and then that PV send it into the hot water tank. An old electric storage hot water system, put it on controlled lobe one or two with a hot water diverter, cheapest chips.

So, would you, for example, if somebody had already solar and they have an electric hot water tank, would you recommend a diverter to them, for example? Is that the type of thing you would recommend? Um you'd have to you'd be just have to be careful with the installers, whether or not they're prepared to work with a very old hot water system. They most likely want to put in a new tank.

Um, so you just need to be careful about that. But that's the installers issue. But that's I mean, I did a house in Chitaway Bay, Central Coast last week, and yeah, he had the exact same situation. He had I sorry had bottled gas, um, gas, no, he had an old solar hot water system, solar heart hot water system, split system, hot water collectors on the roof, tank on the ground.

It's about 15 years old. Said, mate, get ready. She's probably gonna go. I said, mate, just put an electric storage hot water system in.

Um he could have gone to a heat pump. Oh, sorry, he could have I said go to an electric storage hot water system and put in a hot water diverter because he's gonna put solar in. So take the panels off the roof, free up a bit more space, more solar generation, solar PV generation, put that hot water diverter in, controlled load one or two, then just isolate it at the switch. 90% of the time it will get all this hot water free from the sun.

Fantastic, cheap way to do it. The alternate for him would have been to go, we'll put in a heat pump hot water system, but he's already got a solar hot water system, so the rebates they're not going to be eligible for him. Ah, do you only get it once, is it? Well, no, it's because you get the rebates based on upgrading for whatever.

It's all about efficiency upgrade, right? So um you you get it for replacing a gas storage hot water system or electric storage hot water system, you don't get it for replacing a solar water system. So for him, long term, and as he said, you know, he was an old South African guy, great bloke, he said, you know, I'm not going anywhere, you can carry me out of here in a box. I want the system to last.

I said, Well, mate, for you, long term, that's what I'd recommend for you. If you're a few buck, that's the best way. Um you know, heat pumps are very fashionable now, but uh between a heat pump and solar within just an older style electric hot water system, what do you recommend? Um look, I've been looking at heat pumps for a long time.

Don't get me wrong. Um a good heat pump is an amazing bit of kit. A fantastic piece of heat. And they're really cheap ones coming out now.

There has been so much, and I've seen it, I've been in homes, um, and there was just a lot of cheap junk being put in through that New South Wales scheme. Um and it just I thought it was really bad policy because basically what they were doing was they were pushing these hot water systems out. Great, they're more efficient, but they're not gonna last. Like some of them you because basically when you add up all the rebates, the federal rebate and the state government rebate that you got for uh replacing electric storage or gas storage hot water system, you got about 1200 bucks.

Now there's companies out there replacing those um gas or electric hot water system with one of their heat pumps for like 400 bucks. Like by the time you bought the kit, played the plumber, paid your sales guide, get your guys' trades out on site, taking the old system away. There's a lot of cost in that. If you're doing that for a couple of hundred bucks and the heat pump can't be very good.

No, you're probably talking about a three or four hundred dollar heat pump. If you want a decent heat pump, you're up for you know six, seven thousand dollars. So, and that's the thing. So they're gonna have new costs in a few years' time, and maybe it's quite a few.

Well no, so what the government then did in its its brilliance, um, this is sorry, the former New South Wales government, they basically said, Well, we're getting such a high failure rate, what we'll do is we'll put, I think it was a five or seven-year full replacement warranty on all the product that's installed. Yeah, so then they give you a seven-year warranty and then just kill the company and run away. A seven-year warranty on paper is worth nothing. So they got No, no, it was the government backed it.

Oh, the government backed the crap gear. So you and I. Oh my god. So so obviously Oh my god.

So what happened then? So they kept selling crap. So there's a lot of cheap, nasty heat pumps out there. And then when they die, can they get the rebate in here?

If they're within that five years, they'll get a full replacement. Of another cheap sh crappy one or something. I don't know, mate. I don't know enough about the system.

You know, whenever rebates get involved in this industry, it just always ends up somewhere in the bottom of headaches. Well, I think it's kind of like you go back to, you know, the initial solar rebate. You could probably even talk about pink bats, you know. People, if there's some government dollars to be had, you know, it attracts a lot of people.

It does. Yeah, because there's money to be made. So but let's come back to you in the house. You come to me, you you've looked at my hot water, you give me feedback, you looked at my insights.

The first thing we do, look, normally before we go out to a house, we analyze your uh your bills, we analyze your metering data, um, then when we get on site, we sit down, we have a chat, I take you through the bills, show you what we found, show you what the savings are. That normally already, the savings you'll make off your electricity and gas bills that I can show to you just by changing your retail offer. I did a guy, I'm gonna see him on Friday, Ray. Um, he's gonna just, and he's a really low energy user, actually.

Um he was going to save, what was it? I think it was about total close to $2,000 just by off his electricity and gas bill, just by changing his retail tariff. Just by shopping around. How big is his normal bill?

Um it wasn't huge. His gas was I couldn't tell you off the top of my head. But I mean it got to be a 45 grand in the first place to be able to get two grand down. Oh no, you can normally like 20, 30% off of your gas and electricity.

Gas is normally a bit harder, but it depends on how long since you've shopped around. If you haven't shopped around in the last two, three, four, five years, guess what? That electricity retail is just slowly bumping the rate up, just like our home insurance we were talking about before. So loyalty is not being rewarded, is it?

Oh, it's a loyalty tax, yeah, exactly. So we do that, we show them the bills, we show them the savings, um, and then we said we do a walk around of the entire house, so subfloor, all the major appliances, ceiling space, thermal camera inspection, and we basically have a one to two hour discussion as we walk around the room based on. I mean, it's kind of funny you asked me quite generic questions like what do you do in this for a home? And so, well, every home's different.

And everybody home, everybody's home is trying to achieve something different. Like I did a house recently, an old duck out in Western Sydney out here, and I was talking to her about the star ratings and the increased value of homes, and blah, blah, blah. She turned around to me and said, Dallas, when I sell this house, someone's just gonna put a bulldozer through it. I was like, you know what?

You are right. So the star rating's not gonna make a licking difference to you, you know. So every home is different. That's kind of what I enjoy about what I do.

Every home and every household is different. And we're talking so how much you walking in there, giving me that advice, looking at all of that, the the full gamut, what am I up for in 2026? But what do I charge? Yeah, yeah, I charge $600 for a normal residential home.

If I've got to travel to the Southern Highlands, I'll probably charge some travel time as well. Um, but yeah, if you want to. How long are you in that house? In the house, normally about two hours.

But you know, I've still got to get I've got to get to site, I've got to get home from site, so there's travel time and travel costs, and we live in Sydney, so it's tolls. Um, I've also then got to get my EA to get access to their electricity bills, we've got to get access to their metering data, we've got to do the analysis, and then I've actually got to go away and sit down and write a report for them. And what I actually also offer, which I really love doing, is if I go into a house, I'm yours.

You've paid me once, I'm yours for life. So in two years' time, and I still get this all the time, a couple of times a week. People ring me up, go, Adam, we finally decided to go with solar. I've got three quotes.

Can we have a chat? And I'll jump online with them, we'll go through the quotes and I'll say, Oh, look at this, look at this. Or for 600 bucks. Yep, yep, that's all we do.

Jesus Christ, you wouldn't have bought your shirt and you won for a while. No, I haven't actually. Getting a bit old and ragged. That's I'm out of it.

That's a I mean, I I can hear you want to defend your 600 bucks, but you're potentially saving people eight, five, ten, seven, twelve grand. I mean, that's a that's a decent investment, isn't it? Easily, easily. And you're doing that uh, you know, over years, so and you're making your house more comfortable and you're saving money.

So what do you have a house for? Well, you want to be comfortable, right? Right. Otherwise you're in a tent or you're out in the street.

That's why you have a house. You shield you from the weather. So you want to be comfortable in there. Do you often come into a situation where a husband-wife team have decided this is too cold for both of us, and then they in harmony um have the discussion and you educate them, or um that word harmony I put deliberately in it?

What's it like? It's everything. It's everything. You name it, mate.

Are you a marriage counselor sometimes? Sometimes, absolutely. You go in and they're arguing about one of the questions isn't always how long's your shower? Oh, five minutes.

No, it's not. Oh my god, you take half an hour. No, you take longer. What if you do on your hair?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, okay, here we go. And it's and it's but it's also quite interesting when you were talking about, you know, curtains for windows. What do they want to do?

You know, best solution is a heavy curtain with a pelmet. That's the most cost-effective way to reduce heat loss out through your window. But you he's kind of like, oh, I don't know whether the wife will go for that. But then you bring the wife and you show them what a pelmet and a heavy curtain looks like.

Oh, yeah, no, I'll go with that. And so it's about having that that nuanced discussion with them as a couple. You're trying to navigate your way through, okay, this is what they're trying to achieve. They want the house to be more comfortable, um, or she might want it to be more comfortable, and he just wants to save money.

Okay, that's his primary. So you're trying to figure out a way to try and meet both objectives in a in a most cost-effective way for them. I mean, if I would ask you to come in, I would possibly have a budget or something I want to achieve. Do people kind of go, listen, mate, it's so cold.

I just want this place five degrees warmer. What do I have to do? Is it like that? Or somebody says, Listen, I've decided I want to put 40 grand back into this house to bring it more comfortable.

What can you give me for 40 grand? Very rarely will you have somebody that's already got a pre-decided budget to say this is what I'm gonna do. We do advise people around when they're doing renovations sometimes and what the best things are, the things they really want to look at. Um, but yeah, most of the time, to be honest, it's just a mixed bag.

You never know really what you're gonna get into. You know, it could be somebody in the eastern suburbs who's come from Europe and they've just spent two, three million dollars on this house and he's freezing cold, in it. But his wife doesn't want to put heavy curtains across the bloody great big floor-to-ceiling glass windows because that's their view and that's what they paid for. So it's about finding the right way to kind of achieve the energy efficiency gains uh in the right circumstances.

It's always a mixed bag. Um, I had on some Western windows one of those window films put on. Are they just a gimmick or are they actually helping? Oh, I've I've had a bit of experience with them.

I mean, it's like that Solar Guard style stuff. Yeah, there is some gain, and at one stage they were eligible for government rebates, so I'm guessing there would be some science, verified science behind it. Having said that, if you've got a western-facing window, the most effective thing you can do in summer is external shading. External shading is five times more effective than any form of internal shading.

Stop the light from hitting the glass, and particularly if it's aluminium frame, you put a thermal camera on an aluminium frame window that's facing west in summer, those aluminium frames will get up to 65 degrees. So you can put a curtain there if you want, but if that it's just heating up the gap between the glass or the aluminium frame, the glass and the curtain, all that heat is just pouring straight out the top. So external shading, you stop the problem. Do you got a lot of experience with double glazing, or is that just too expensive or what?

Um I mean, I want to put double glazing in in my house. Um absolutely UPVC double glazed. Um I'm a big firm believer in the product, it's it's phenomenal. I mean, it's pretty much a stand in all of Europe, UK now, and a fair chunk of North America as well.

Um and if you go back probably four or five years, you it was really hard to get in Sydney. But now there's dozens of different companies doing it, so it's becoming really quite price competitive. It's not exorbitantly expensive, um, but as a measure of making the home more energy efficient, it's not in your highest cost of return. You know, it's not really, really quick.

It's it's a big expense to do retrofit a whole house with double glazing. You're talking probably $30, $40, $50,000, $60,000, depending on the number of windows. I mean, I had a house once on the inner west on a major, major road and close to the railway line, and the double glazing did help me a lot to achieve the value increase because I also had the noise reduction. Yep.

So I didn't get my values through the energy efficiency, which was an extra benefit, but uh the front of the house was unlivable before I did the double glazing. So there is a big difference in sound efficiency, too, isn't it? That's why I'm doing it for my place because I live on a fairly busy road and all our bedrooms are right up near the road. So that's the motivator for me.

Having said that, my dream for my home, if I had the money, um, is to rip it right back to bare bones and try and get it to close as I possibly could to passive house standard, which would include double glazing. Okay. So if you kind of go down the list of the let's make it 10, lowest hanging fruit, if you're looking at an energy efficient home, more comfort, what are the top insulation? Yeah.

Draft proofing, they're your top two, and they'll flip. I never heard of draft proofing. I mean, you didn't have to, you came from Germany. The houses are built nice and tight there.

Yeah, yeah, but I mean, I've never seen a guy give me a business card and said I'm a draft proofer. I know. Do you have to do it all yourself? Or there's one company I've found in Sydney that um that does it.

One, and he's actually called, can I give a name? Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, Draft Proof in Canberra, but he's based in Sydney. Um but the business originated in Canberra, so whatever.

But he he's based in Sydney. He's great, fantastic, unbelievable. He's the only company I've found. Down in Victoria, there are companies that will come and do it for you.

But but can't I just put a snake under the door? No, because what about the rest of the door frame? You've got around a door, big rectangle, one, two, three, four, five, six metres. If you've got a three-mil gap around that hole, that's a hole that big.

The average Australian home has a lot of it. But a bit of fresh air is good. No, it's not. It's where all your heat and your coal's going.

So the average home has a one square meter hole in it. Okay? A one square meter hole. But with all the little doors and the window cracks and all the doors, window cracks, bathroom exhaust fans, kitchen exhaust vents, wall vents, um, cracks underneath your door.

Jams, skirting boards, you name it. Air conditioning. Yeah. Everything, all those penetrations underneath your kitchen skirting boards, all those penetrations for your plumbing and your electrics.

They're big holes as well. So when you walk around with a thermal camera, we get the air con, we crank it right up. Walk around, you can see where all the hot air's coming in and where all the cold air is going out, depending on the time of year. Alright, sorry to interrupt you.

So we started off with what was it again? It was the I'd say it most homes it's insulation, draft proofing number one and two. Okay. And then it's oh well, before that, it's understand your bills, shop around, draft proofing, insulation.

As I said though, every home's different. Um, and then it's external shading, stuff like that. Um again, sorry. I've I'm using my own house at the moment.

I have So you just try to pick my brains for a free energy order for your place. Listen, I give you six bucks at the end. Oh, really? Six bucks, go.

You know, funny enough, when I just said that, I saw just at that millisecond, his face, he smiled, but deep inside there were two errors going my way. So I'm sorry if I infended you. No, no, no. Look, we I I believe helping people to get it more efficient.

We did a video a while ago on how to make a hot house cool in Western Sydney. Yeah, yeah. And and we had quite a lot of the things that you did, but we also had trees nearby and all that kind of stuff. We gone into that.

Even a an a whirly bird like an electric one underneath that turns itself on even at night if it's still over 25 degrees to try and blow the air out. External. So so so all of that kind of stuff. So I know a little bit about it, but I just want to kind of confirm and double confirm what's happening.

So what I did is I had a two-story house on the top floor, western, no, it's the north side. Northwestern corner. North side. Northwestern corner, upper level of a house that gets the hottest.

Oh my god, that bedroom is so hot. You're getting sun all day. Yes. So I put I went online and I said, where can I buy shade?

So I bought these nice looking plastic shade thingos that are quite big in span, and I risked my life going up on a ladder with a mate of mine. He was one side, I was the other. We put the thing on, screwed it on, properly fastened, and then the next big, big windstorm we got, the con the structural integrity of that kind of cheaper thingo, it just took off. Yeah, I still got a couple of hooks and a little bit of plastic sticking there now, and I'm wondering how I'm gonna get back up and take it off.

Where can I get some really strong quality, maybe made out of aluminium? Go with the big brands. But I don't even know where to get it. Oh I mean, are there shades, are there shades companies?

I don't yeah, there are, and there's a lot out there. And I don't have a specific company that I recommend for that because there's as I said, sometimes there's just too much product in the market for you to be able to go, that's good, that's bad. I don't know, I don't have the time to research every product. But I mean you could get a kickback out of that product.

I could, but yeah, mate, like chase that, track it, mate. How often do I recommend external shading and then an area that they're gonna service, blah, blah, blah. It's a bit too hard. Okay.

But external shading, like the old school, you remember those old school canvas awnings that roll up perfect, green and durable, yeah. Yeah, the old horrible colours, but you can get them in all sorts of different styles now. Go with the big brands, go with the big companies, go with something with a warranty. You know, when I'm advising, when I do workshops with councils on solar and batteries, that's the biggest point I pretty much make.

It's all about warranties. Yeah, but I mean hang on, Angela. You move into batteries and solar now. But I mean, some of those warranties are not worth the names written in because these companies already decide in four years' time I'm going to close my doors.

So who's the company? Go with the big brands, the ones that have been around for ten years. Exactly. They're not going anywhere.

So we got to shading now. Um then you obviously check. Something you mentioned earlier, if they've got a decent sized roof cavity. But as I said, it all comes down to what the issue is in the house.

But if it's so using your example, Western Sydney house getting too hot, um, thermostatically controlled exhaust vents. The I mean, everyone, a lot of homes have got those whirly birds, and there's conical things that spin around. You hear mixed science, mixed reviews on them as to how effective they are. Thermostatically controlled exhaust vents, fantastic.

So they're powered by electricity, they've got a power that runs to them, some of them are even solar powered. Um, and once the temperature in that ceiling cavity gets over a certain temperature, they turn off and just suck that air out. And I hear one of them can do as much as eight little whirly birds. Yeah, yeah, probably.

They're really, they're really they're very efficient. They're quite powerful. They're they are about 1200, 1800 to install, but but uh you know, if you basically get rid of the heat on top of your ceiling, that helps. Otherwise, you've just got a really big hot blanket sitting on top of your house, all that heat's just radiating through the ceiling, and you're trying to cool the house down.

So now, um, I've actually got a slightly different approach which might put you out of work. I don't know if you like it. That's right. Here we go.

Just an idea. So instead of running around with your little heat gun and fill the gaps and do this thing, and you know, kind of put a bit of insulation shading over the window and all those little hickledy-pickledy things, I want to play it like cricket and just hit it for six. Keep the place as inefficient as possible, put just a huge solar on the back, put a big battery somewhere else, just spend two things, maybe your hot water make that a little bit more efficient, just do those three things.

The rest of it is really crap, but because you've got this huge energy uh engine of the solar now driving it, everything else, who cares? I'm inside, I'm comfortable, I run my air con guild-free, full blast. Yep. Isn't that another approach?

That is, if you've got the money. For the solar and the battery. Yeah, exactly. And a lot of households don't have the money.

Right. But if they've got the money, yeah, that's pretty much doing me out of a fair bit of work at the moment, in that people are just going, well, screw it, I'll just spend 15, 20 grand, put on a huge solar system, put in a massive battery, and I'll just crank the aircon 25. Who cares about the gap under my front door? Exactly.

But the one one we do still get clients that have done that sort of thing, and they go, but as soon as I turn the air con off, five minutes later I'm freezing cold or stinking hot. So that issue still exists. And we do, in Australia, our homes are terribly leaky. And I'll give you another way of thinking about it.

In have you you've heard of a door blower test, right? So all of Europe, the UK, most of North America, before you get an occupancy certificate for a new build or a major renovation, you have to do what's called a door blower test. So they literally look it up if you're at home, just Google door blower place, look at images. Big red plastic sheet goes into one of the external doors, they close off all the other doors and windows around the house.

Big plastic sheet, and it's got a fan built in or it attaches to a computer, they turn the fan on, the fan's trying to suck air out. Um, so it's testing the air tightness of the home. So the if you want to go to the highest possible standard, which is called passive house, um German idea, um, the hole that you can have in the entire building envelopes of doors, windows, everything, it's smaller than a 50 cent piece. Good luck in Australia.

Exactly. As I said, the average home, one square meter. But if you do that door blower test on the average Australian, New South Wales home, actually, if the entire that fan replicates an external wind, I think it's 35 kilometres an hour. If you run that, the entire volume of air inside the home, the external wind of 35 kilometres an hour, guess how many times the entire volume of air inside your home is exchanged per hour?

I have really so seriously, you can ask me the lotter numbers. I think I've got a better chance. I don't know, three, I'd say? 18.

Wow. 18 times an hour. So, and if you think 35 kilometers an hour, you think, oh, geez, that's a stiff breeze. Next time you're in the car, get your car to 35 degrees, stick your hand out the window.

It's not really much. There's not that big a breeze, right? Right. So that's how leaky our homes are.

So you're spending all this money, solar, batteries, servicing, my aircon, get a bigger aircon, throw all this money at it. Go on to Bunnings, get on. There's a really good website down in Victoria, and they sell really good product for draft proofing. It's called EcoMaster.

Get on their website. You can draft proof a door really effectively for 50, 60 bucks, you know, as opposed to going and spending oh 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 on solar batteries, this, that, the other. Draft proofing insulation, that is the most cost-effective thing you can do for your home. End of story.

I mean, obviously, now I'm moving into a slightly socio-economic area, but obviously a tenant can't just go and buy a solar system and a battery, but potentially with the right approach and permission from the landlord, they can do something about draft proofing, can't they? They can do a bit of draft proofing, they can put up heavy curtains and windows, they can work with their maybe get air conditioning in ceiling fans, change their electricity provider, change their electricity retailer, just using fans.

Um you know, there's not many ceiling fans are fantastic because you know that's what cools your body down, air movement. That's a critical thing. And running a little fan, cheapest chips, yeah, it's like 50 watts for a little portable fan. Um tenants are limited to a degree in what they can do, but even if they just put up heavy curtains, if you can't afford that, put up a blanket over the window.

But um you know how when I rent a house, I have no idea if this is energy efficient or not, and if this is going to be like killing my electricity bills because it's so cold and everything like that. That's right. Why wouldn't down the track the tenants have the right to find out how energy efficient your house is? I think that's where the government's going with this mandatory disclosure.

Well, hopefully it becomes mandatory, it already is in the ACT, so that a point of sale or lease, you have to advertise that energy efficiency rating because you know energy costs are such a big issue, apparently, at the moment. Um, it's getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, it is, it's a big political issue at the moment. Um, but I think it's mainly a political issue.

No, no, no. Can I just I was with Clobird, I'm happy to say it. I was on 75. Sorry, on yeah, 75 was 78 cents supply fee.

Yep. Gone to $1.39. Yeah.

Okay. Exactly. I mean, I've seen some increases this year through last year, which is 37% certain elements to it. That the electricity bills, people who used to have $400, $500 and go, oh, yeah, okay, it's annoying, but this is it.

They will see a thousand dollar bills going forward that they never had experienced before. And there's not much flexibility they can use because you still need to hot water, you still need to cool your house uh at what 43 degrees in Sydney. I mean, you're not gonna not run aircon. Yep.

So um I I I just believe that in Gen Yun it's it's taken up a bigger and bigger slice of people's budget. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is. I mean, I was listening to something on the way out here and uh on this similar topic, and you know, they're saying oh electricity prices have gone up by 40% in the last three, four years.

It's like somebody counted and said, Well, so's the cost of wheat bicks. And I was like, okay, yeah, I hadn't thought of that analogy. But I think what you're going to see, and you're seeing it now with your connection fees going up, I think you're going to see what's happening in the gas retail market is that more and more people are getting off gas, but that gas network's still got to be maintained. So the cost to the households that are still connected to the gas is going to go up mainly in their gas connection fee.

And I see it in real time retail contracts all the time for gas. The less gas you use, the more they put your your connection fee up. Oh, I didn't realise that. Yeah.

I thought everybody gets the same. No, no, no, no. Same with electricity. So I think what you're going to see more and more of is electricity prices are going to trend down.

For a lot of people, the amount of electricity they're going to be buying from the grid is going to diminish, but we've still got to maintain that grid. So the cost to maintain that grid is going to be reflected in your daily connection fee and also in the electricity that you're buying from the grid. But as more people get onto solar, and more importantly, more people get big batteries in their homes, there's going to be less demand from the grid. So the price to maintain that grid is going to have to be borne by someone.

Right. And if you go off grid totally, I don't think too many people go off grid completely. Or I don't advise it. Because you you grid your backup.

I know, but I've put um I've got a 35 feet. What if your battery fails? I can buy a generator. Okay.

But you've got to race it out and do it. It's the same if your hot water system fails. You want that hot water, you're gonna want power quickly. So if you're connected to the grid, there's your backup.

Yeah, okay, I'll agree with you. With a point. But just the forty percent of the wheat bakes, I can choose not to buy wheat bakes. I can buy something else.

But with the electricity and the gas, I don't have that much choice. No. No, exactly. So okay, so if you walk in there now, and I I'm the customer, and I say, okay, I got on one hand the insulation, I got the uh what do you call it, the roof over my western window, I'll put a bit of an awning over that, and I have all these little improvements in the draft proofing.

Or I'll buy a solar and a battery system, should I do both, or should I do one over the other? Do you recommend or you leave it up to people to make a choice? Well, once again, it comes down to the individual home. What are they trying to achieve?

And I'm not I'm as as we spoke off air, I I'm not gonna tell you all the little tips and secrets and all the little things. Yeah, he said to me, Oh, I'm coming to this podcast, but mate, it's taking me 20 years to know all his staff. I'm gonna give you a bid, like a taste test, but if people want really the full hundred percent of everything I've got up in here, six hundred bucks, please, individually. I'm not putting it on a podcast for 10,000 to know all his staff.

And now for the last two hours, he's trying to get everything out of my nose, and I'm being polite about it, but I'm not gonna give you everything. Did I kind of paraphrase that? Pretty much, pretty much. Man, I've got school fees to pay, brother.

Come on. You know what it's like. Um, but yeah, I mean, every home, like so. Some homes, once you tell them about that opportunity to get a discount off their mortgage, they're saying, okay, well, hang on.

We've spoken to the mortgage broker, we've gotten you in now, we need to get to seven stars. Okay. That becomes their motivation. Most of them have a mortgage.

Yep. Can you explain that idea to get half a percent off my mortgage just because my house is more energy efficient? How does it work? So the money comes from the federal government through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

They then are working with all of the banks with the idea they're trying to incentivize households to become more energy efficient to increase their energy efficiency rating of their home. If you've got solar, a large solar system, you're most likely eligible. You'll probably hit seven stars. So you will most likely be eligible for one of those discount alone.

But most people wouldn't have known about it. They wouldn't go to their bank, they wouldn't ask for it. And they maybe already got your score. The the problems that I've seen from my perspective, me being working with consumers, um, when it first came out, I went to a mate, Scotty, he's a mortgage broker, um, and went, buddy, great, this has happened.

He goes, mate, I've heard about these loans, I don't know too much about it. But some of the product guys that come in and try and talk to them about different loans and different products, told him about it. He said, Give me a week. Because the idea from my perspective was he can do the loans, I do the star ratings, win win.

Client wins, he wins, I win. I'm getting paid, he's getting paid, everyone wins. Um anyway, he came back to me and me a week later, we went and had lunch, and I said, What'd you think? He goes, mate, great, great rates.

I can't beat them. Best on the market, right? If you can get that discount and meet those eligibility criteria, I said, Right, let's do business. And he said, mate, I can't.

I'm not interested. Why not? Because one, it's more paperwork for me, and number two, the commission I'd get from the bank because the government's taking on part of the debt, I get less commission. So more paperwork, less work, he's not interested.

I want the mortgage interest rates to be as high as possible because that means I get more money. So for him, it wasn't a go, but I have I was banging my head against a wall for a couple of months, but then I finally managed to find two mortgage brokers that just specialise in this area. So every single one of my clients now, one of the first questions I asked them is, Have you got a mortgage? Because I'm there, as I said, straight up.

I like helping people. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to give 600 bucks, um, earn my 600 bucks, look after the customer. That's what I'm trying to achieve.

It's my motivator is yeah, I want to make the house, that the world, sorry, a greener and more environmentally stable place. Um I'm when I'm working with a with a householder, I'm trying to act in their best interests at all time. I'm trying to look after them. If I can show them how to save tens of thousands of dollars off their mortgage, fantastic.

That's a win for them, it's a win for me. It also means all of a sudden they've got tens of thousands of dollars, they can do their draft proofing, they can do the insulation upgrade, they can put in solar, they can put in battery, all of a sudden it's a win-win-win for them. So the richer the person and the bigger the mortgage, the more the potential saving from the bank. Yeah.

And therefore, really, you want to market yourself in the eastern suburbs. Yeah, and if you're in the eastern suburbs, you even get a well get this, you even get a rebate from the council for getting a home energy audit if you're in the eastern suburbs. Uh, which which council is that? Ramwick, right?

Ramwick, yeah. Ramwick Council even give you a rebate. Okay. Um is there stuff like that in other states?

In other council areas? No, but Victoria. Oh, Victoria, you can get a scorecard assessment and you will get you get what are called VETs. So you know how here in um New South Wales we have ESCI's energy savings certificates.

In Victoria, the equivalent is a VET, which is I don't know what Victorian energy efficiency tradable, I don't know, something like that. You can get those allocated to having a home energy or a scorecard assessment. So you basically get subsidized. Okay.

So you can get that star rating subsidized if you're in Victoria. Other states, sorry, no idea. But I mean, now with AI, you could possibly put some good inquiries in and get at least three quarters of it correct, wouldn't you? I mean What do you mean by that?

Well, I've uh let's say I'm in WA and I say I want my home to be more energy efficient. Is there any government support for an energy efficiency order and where can I get it done? Yep. And then hopefully it spits out something that guides you further.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right, all right. Mate, I had a guy ring me the other day and he sent me his string on AI. It was fantastic, it was really quite it was pretty good what the AI spat out around energy efficiency, but it wasn't really tailored to his home, so it was kind of useless.

But it came up with my name in the end, so I was quite happy with it. I was surprised. How do I get into AI? I don't know.

No, no, no. If you if you are out there mentioned often enough, it kind of just picks you up and throws you back up, so that's all positive. Uh and if you're in Sydney, Adam Currigan, your energy friend, that's it, can help you with an energy audit. Um, do you sometimes kind of as wrapping it all up here now, but do you sometimes get involved by architects right at the beginning of the process?

Wouldn't that make a lot of sense? Mate, I if people are doing a major renovation or uh a brand new build, I put them in touch with somebody who's kind of one of the environmentally sustainable passive house architects in the country, and he kind of goes, What are you trying to achieve? And I love him because similar mindset to me. Like, what are you trying to achieve?

What's the cheapest and most cost-effective way to get you there? That's what we're trying to achieve this way. So you've kind of got your niche to physically go out, physically see what's already there, you're not kind of branching out into that area. Yeah, I mean, look, I've got a mate who's a builder down in Jindy, um, and he's godfather to my kids, Rod, legend, Mont.

They're over in Japan skiing at the moment, lucky buggers. But they um one of the ideas he threw at me once was why don't we get this sustainability architect, myself and him, and work as like a consultancy. So when people are doing major renovations that kind of come to us, we all get together, do an hour on the house, and charge them accordingly. And I just thought, mate, it's hard to market.

We probably could do it now, but mate, between the three of us, do we have the time to do it? Who knows? But I do we give general advice on renovations, but I mean, renovations have you ever done a renovation? Uh yeah, marriages usually break down halfway through.

Exactly so. Yeah, I try and avoid them, mate. Um, yeah, they're not pretty spaces, but yeah, we the other area we We do a lot of workshops for councils, we're doing a lot of webinars for councils, um, there's a lot of state government work coming up. Um, do you do any marketing or is it just word of mouth?

I it's been pretty much just my website and word of mouth up until now, but now we're starting to do a little bit of online marketing and um getting into what's it called? Um, Instagram. Um, yeah, I got on that apparently the other day where my partner's driving it all for me. I don't know anything about that space, it's not my bag.

Um but yeah, that's typically what we've done. The other areas we do a little bit of work is smaller medium business. We do a few small and medium business. I just did a place down in Manley the other day, and they will save oh easily 15 grand a year just by doing what we suggested, what we found in their little shop.

And what did they have to put in in the first place to get that 15? I mean, if I have to put 150 grand in. No, they'll be g really, really quick. Change their electricity retailer, that was gonna save them heaps.

Um, and then just to make the place that had heaps of leaky, leaky, leaky, horrible old refrigeration, and that was 90% of their bill. So just by fixing that up and addressing that. Okay, okay. So you're basically shining the light.

Um, in terms of Australian roofs and homes and all that, what always kind of gets me going, I drive through Western Sydney, it's so hot, and then what colour do we choose for roofs? Black. Black. I mean, why would the government let that happen?

Do you see a lot of times practices where you just go, oh yeah. Massively. Yeah, all the time. All the time.

Yeah, you get frustrated or you just put up I don't let myself get frustrated anymore, mate. I don't there's no point. No point, it doesn't serve you. If you have a logical mind, why would black roofs be allowed in Western Sydney?

Because they're the cheapest. What? Black tiles are cheaper than apparently that's what I heard. Don't quote me on it, don't know.

That's what I was told at uh we did a heat forum thing out at um it was hosted by Penrith Council. The guy out there, I can't remember his name, Top Lug. Um, and he showed me what Penrith used to look like with their old aerial mapping, and then the same area with all these homes jammed in together, black tile roofs, and I was like, oh mate, that is why it's getting no trees left. You know, you see all be quarter acre or half acre blocks, you know, house, veggie patch, gardens, and now all of a sudden it's all jammed together, all black, black driveways, even.

It's like, come on, guys, you know, you wonder why it's getting so hot. But is that a failure of the federal government, state government, uh councils, or the homeowner who's decide they got no brains to think ahead? I mean, which one is it? Well, I think it's a bit of everyone, and also throw in there the building lobby.

You know, they want to keep the cost of construction low. But so they want to keep homes as cheap as you possibly can. And then the running costs is the issue for somebody else to worry about. Mate, go and have a look, or anyone out there, go and have a look at um the different governments around uh the country and how they're looking and how they responded to the latest um what is it called, the NCC, the National Construction Code, and what the feds want to do with that and lift the efficiency of homes.

Take a look at how different jurisdictions have responded to that. I heard enough seen that there was a lot of money spent by the building lobby on media consultants to hijack that debate in order to make it look like they were on the side of the battlers and the people who wanted to make the homes more efficient actually would make the home so expensive that it would be unaffordable. Do you follow that thinking? I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.

Um But I mean, my point is it there is a fair point to argue. Now houses are already so expensive, and now if I put another two levels of energy efficiency on it, and that adds another $40,000 of cost, then uh I tell you what, draft proofing is not expensive. It's basically tape and making the door or window fit properly. Right.

That's there's not a massive improvement, increasing cost on that. Okay. Insulation is cheap as chips. Right.

There's you're 90% of the way there to make the home more energy efficient. And some basic design and maybe a different coloured tile on the roof. Okay. Now, um what about under the under the floor in the older style homes in the inner city and all that?

What do you use for that? I don't I don't know. No, no, but I mean what type of product is there around us? Um there's a whole bunch.

There's expandable spray foam, um, which I love the concept behind it because you're getting a hundred percent coverage. Sorry, my daughter's calling me. Um you're getting a hundred percent coverage, which is fantastic. The bats, they've got them and come in rolls and they're fitted to the floor joists, so they just roll straight out, all clipped in, fantastic.

There's another Bradford product out there which kind of got a rigid bottom to it, a more rigid solid bottom, so the bats don't sag. It's a whole bunch of different products. So I kind of leave that and don't I try and be what I call product agnostic because if I'm talking about insulation, glazing, solar, batteries, drafting, that all these different I can't birds. Yeah, exactly.

I can't keep across what's the most efficient part of technology, particularly solar and batteries at the moment. There's so much new product coming out. So it's more I stick with the general concepts and then I recommend, if they're in the right area, people to go with preferred suppliers, people that I know, people that are like, if there's an issue, the customer comes to me, I can go to them, they will go and fix it. And you say basically, mate, I recommended you, you give me a bad name, go out there and fix it.

Fix it, otherwise, I'm not recommending, and they go, yes, no problem, and they go and fix it. Wow. And others that don't, see you later. Okay.

Look, Adam, uh, I have to say I've learned a lot. I really appreciate your generosity in giving us the time today. My pleasure. Um, I think this whole space is just becoming more and more important because with electricity and everything coming up, and people you know the expectations of people in the comfort they want in their home now has gone up too.

Yeah. Um, I think you know, and feeling powerless to really how to hell do I fix it, where do I go? And you're basically like the person that gives them a map with many different ways to get to a better outcome at the end. So at the end of when we we've gone through a home, we'd help them do a semi-partial design on solo or whatever they're interested in, we give them a detailed plan.

It starts with a checklist, bang, bang, bang, here, and that's based on the conversation that we've had. So if depending on what their motivator is, well, that's what we're trying to address. So start with this, do that, do this, do that, and this will get you to where you want to be. It would possibly be a good career choice for a lot of young people, too, because I don't really know many blokes who do what you do.

I'd say what is or women, I should say, or sorry. And if people and I do this all the time, um all the people at the scorecard team, if any of them are listening, when I'm in a home and I see an opportunity to try and encourage somebody to go towards becoming an energy assessor, yes, I do. Because if it becomes mandatory for people to declare the energy efficiency rating of their home, of the house at sale or lease, the numbers on that is it's gonna be about a quarter of a million homes in New South Wales per year that will be need to be assessed.

So that's hundreds, probably a thousand jobs that are available out there. But it needs we need people in the industry now so that the government can then say we're gonna make it mandatory because we've now got the numbers of assessors to meet that demand. So yeah, uh huge opportunity, particularly if it becomes mandatory, uh, you'll have work for life. But what about I mean, initially the government possibly was gonna more do like a voluntary thing.

I think they'll do a voluntary rollout to start with, and it'll just build from there. But yeah, definitely there's training available, just look up scorecard. They're now switching that scorecard software to what they're gonna call you've heard of NatHers. Uh so all new homes have to hit a minimum um NatHurz rating.

National, I can't, we can never remember what it is. It's so many acronyms. I know National Australian thermal energy rating, something like that. Um but yeah, everyone has to hit to, I think it's in New South Wales and now seven stars.

So they've got that piece of software, they're now gonna flip it and use the back end of that piece of software. So for people like me, I'm due to start the training in a couple of weeks. So it won't be. Do you have to pay for it every year like a license, or is the government's all new, we don't know what's gonna happen.

Might. Yeah, there might be, you know, accreditation points. It's gonna become a new trade. So is this run by the states or by federal?

A bit of a combination of both. Might. Yeah, so the software will now be fed, um and uh r requirements around it, I think you're gonna see that's gonna be decided by the states as to whether or not it becomes mandatory or not. So yeah, tell your local politicians, make it mandatory.

Adam, I I actually think you know, be careful what you wish for because you will need many Adam Corrigans out there. If this would be mandatory, it would collapse simply because at the moment we don't have enough people with your knowledge out there, do we? No. We don't.

There's not enough trained assessors. Yeah. So we've got to get the numbers up there. So and I mean it's a great But how do you train yourself?

I mean, did you just learn on the job? Well, for me, yeah, I've pretty much learned on the job when they released the scorecard software. I went to Victoria, they trained me up and sent me home, and then I tested the software for them in New South Wales, and then in the ACT I tested down there for them. And um, so I've kind of been at the front of all of this.

But for a lot, I think what they'll you'll see them doing is they'll go, hang on, there's a lot of guys that are in their late 40s, early 50s, former tradies, know their way around a house. They'd be fantastic at this. Yes, oh geez, you're gonna be able to do that. They don't want to carry the 23 kilopanels over 50.

Exactly. You're looking to get off the tools, great way to make some money. Now, with all these seven-star ratings and these type of things, I can sit there as an architect, design it all perfectly, it all complies, like now can put it in the advertising to sell that house, but that house has to still be built and it be has to be built according to what is in the plans. Do you sometimes find what's on paper and what's actually implemented in the building industry?

There's a bit of a gap. Um well I I typically don't see the plans. I'm going into existing homes that are being lived in, but it goes back to the same the example I gave you earlier on, where lady up mid-north coast, brand new home, master builder, no insulation in the ceiling space. You know, it's there, it's all there in the bags, but it hasn't been installed.

So you see that quite a lot. You see with the thermal camera, you'll see windows and there's no insulation above the window frame. Why? I don't know why.

I can't figure it out, but you see that so very often. Um, the gaps in the insulation blanket, drafty doors, or quite often you'll see the front door has got draft proofing around it. They've done a really good job. But the door to the garage, which faces due west and is stinking hot, has got no draft proofing around it, and it's just leaking in steaming hot air and leaking out the hot air in winter.

So you see a big mix of different stuff. Now, um in the olden days, councils used to uh inspect all the homes when they were finished and all that. Now you've got certifiers and all that. Is the energy efficiency and the fact that it's done properly, like for example, that insulation properly rolled out in the house, not just a couple of bags sitting in the ceiling, is that something that actually anybody takes ownership of and certifies it and checks it out?

Not to my knowledge, no. I don't know of any anyone that's ticking off to make sure all the homes are properly insulated, and from my experience, I don't think there is. If there are, they're not doing a very good job of it. We've gone into brand new homes and done projects where we've got to go and look at either new new volume homes that have been built.

Um, and yeah, the insulation stand in those is is pretty poor. Um, and same with the draft proofings, very poor. Um, social housing the same. Um, so but yeah, it's always a mixed bag.

There's no there's no general rule for one type of house or one type of builder, it's it's always a mixed bag. So would you say that say if I build a really nice couple of million dollar house right at the end when I have the final inspection all that, it might be a good investment to get somebody like you coming in and actually saying, listen, there's those and those little uh those gaps, yeah. Yeah, and why is there no insulation in this wall? Why is the insulation not being installed and properly in the roof?

Oh gee, the builder wouldn't like you. No, they wouldn't. Not at all. You've got to pull a gip rock off.

Yeah, put it in to start with. Oh my god. Yeah. So you're kind of like the bloke who can find all the sins.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You do a lot. Uh we won't publish your home address. No, no, no, no, no.

It's all right. I'll put a good builder. I'll be fine. Yeah, anyway.

But the good builders like him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that's and that's kind of the thing.

It's it's I mean, I got into this initially was through a few of my friends, really, in that they're kind of builders that are in this space and they want to be doing the right thing. We've grown up together, we've still got, we've all got that same kind of mentality if we want to do the right thing. Um and yeah, they even with them, a lot of the time they're trying to tell their clients, these are the right things you should be doing, and they're just looking at dollars. They're just looking at cost.

So the client just wants to, they're not motivated by having an energy efficient home a lot of the time. They just want the city. No, the householders. The householders themselves.

Yeah, they just want, you know, the best view, but then they'll get other clients where they go, No, I want to do full passive house or whatever. So So do you walk away sometimes from a couple or so where you've given them all the good advice and you feel, gee, this is good, they're gonna apply that, they're gonna save big bucks, and then others where you go, I don't know why I went there because uh you know I've got all I've given them all the good advice and they they're not gonna follow.

Um you know the biggest the biggest differentiator I find is if the clients found me, contacted me, they want me to come out to their home, which is 95% of my clients, they're stoked, they're happy, and I love helping them out. We do some projects where it's a free service, so some sort of government agency is paying for it, but there you kind of a lot of the time you're like, well, I don't bother. But at the end of the day, you're getting paid, and I've got bills to pay, so you've just got to do the work sometimes.

But yeah, I find that's the big differentiator is if people are paying for the service, they value it and they appreciate it, and they'll continue to engage with you going down the line. If it's a free service, it's like, yeah, thanks, see you later. Yeah, I found the same thing. Years ago, I did some photography.

Yep. Okay, this is still when we had print films. Yeah, yeah. And I did a wedding for a mate of mine for free, and there would have been a three grand job.

Yep. And somebody else they paid me the three grand. A couple of weeks later, I wanted to get the negs to for my portfolio. So I ring this mate of mine that I got it for free, and I said, Oh mate, I gave you the NEGs, can I just borrow them for getting a couple of spare prints out of it?

He didn't even know anymore where he put them. But the people who paid three grand for it, they knew exactly where they're putting. Exactly. So this is exactly the same thing.

So sometimes the government, when they put these rebates in and they give things for free, this is again a good example of the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Exactly, exactly. I should uh really get that uh copyright. Exactly.

I think the more buy-in you get, and I've done different government programs for the last 15, 20 years, um, the more buy-in you get from the client up front, the more effective the program is. The more commitments. Undoubtedly, undoubtedly, because they value it then. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So even I've done some programs where they've offered it to them, and electricity retailers said, Oh, look, you pay $20 and you get this energy audit and it's valued at $600. And people go, Oh, okay, I'll do that. If you just offer it to them for free, it's like, oh, whatever. What are you year for again?

Well, mate, I'm giving you my time, you should be happy. Exactly. Or you turn up and they go, Oh, sorry. I had a colleague that I did some work with down in Victoria, she told me the other day, we're doing a project with one of the retailers at the moment.

Um, it's a bit of a trial to see how they can most because I think what you're gonna see is you're gonna see electricity retailers and gas retailers, they're not just gonna be retailers, they're gonna see themselves as solution providers. You know, they want to be oh, energy, we we will look after everything for you. We'll look after your electric vehicle, we'll provide you with this, we'll look after your battery, we'll look after your solar, blah, blah, blah, water. No, no, no.

What they're really saying is we would just want to own you completely so you can't run away. Because not many people trust their energy retailers. That's it. That's it, so that's what they want.

So we're working on this project, and anyway, it's a free service. And my my colleague Danielle, she um she said she rocked up and the she rang the lady, she wasn't there, and she said, Oh, where are you and she goes, Oh, it was a nice day, I decided to take the kids to the park. She's like, I've just driven two hours to get your house, but it's free, so she doesn't value it. So that's the difference.

All right, well, we've learned a lot today, and maybe some of you guys looking in the Sydney area for Adam and see him in real life. And by then he possibly put his prices up to $7.20. But uh you're gonna get a good service, it's an investment into the energy footprint of your house and long-term savings.

Yeah, make your house more comfortable. Yeah. Okie dokie, see you later. Please support the channel by liking the video, hit that subscribe button, and ring the bell and check out all our other videos.

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