Felixandrews

The best space is made with love and care, of natural materials, by you. Here is the story of a tiny hemp-lime hut. Built in 2025 at a cost of $11,000.

A disappointingly common story in Australia: ceiling insulation tossed aside by electricians, plumbers, or HVAC installers.

How to breathe well (without freezing). Solving indoor air quality and mould problems using mechanical ventilation with heat recovery.

The story of a new house in Canberra (Australia) that failed to protect against winter cold and summer heat. How did this happen? What can be done to fix it?

Costs and benefits.

Steel beams are the weakest link. Thermally speaking.

Attempts at rectifying incorrect insulation in a raked ceiling.

The missing insulation: Spray-foaming the ceiling under box gutters.

Retrofitting insulation on the exposed edge of a heated concrete slab.

It’s curtains folks.

Adding another layer to the windows.

Retrofitting insulation boards for better walls.

A life less leaky.

How the Australian building industry and regulations failed to deliver a comfortable house.

For transparency, progress and accountability of a model that is central to the Australian residential building sector affecting millions. (Ownership can remain with CSIRO.)

Insulating 1969-era architectural downlights in a raked ceiling.

What are the goals of housing energy efficiency regulation? How does the current system deliver on those goals?

NatHERS really likes concrete floors. If you don’t have a concrete slab, you will have a hard time getting your star rating. But this depends on at least two questionable assumptions.

Or to put it another way, NatHERS lets big houses off the hook. In two ways. Because small houses naturally have more surface area; and energy use limits are per square metre, not per house.

I needed a place to store and use my tools. A shed-workshop. I made it as soundproof as I could, for the neighbours (or maybe just to learn about soundproofing). Construction took 2-3 months and cost $6k.

Acoustic results, and conclusions.

Schedule of materials with costing.

Storing and using tools.

Superficialities… plastering, painting, flooring.