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this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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Melbourne
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We planned our current suburban house to be Zero Energy (8 years before it was just a Marketting term).
There were some roadblocks, especially with the Site Supervisor not understanding what we were trying to do. (He just couldn’t comprehend, and decided to make unauthorised changes because he “knew better”.
We planned no gas to site, white (heat reflective) roof, lots of insulation, AC condensers on the south (leeward) side of the house, etc. The builder had a promo on a free PowerWall and the maximum legal amount of solar for a residential property.
We even had SECCCA liaise with us to do a case study on everything we were doing and the effects on energy usage.
They tried to steal defeat from the jaws of victory at every turn. The wrong colour roof was installed, they ran gas to site and tried to bait and switch us with “Electric Assisted” hot water rather than an Electric boiler, incorrectly wired PowerWall circuits so we couldn’t take advantage of the extra power and the AC technician insisting that the Condensers had to be installed in full sun, because installing them in the shade was too much hard work for him.
There were structural issues too, but they were not related to Zero Energy.
We persevered and after they fixed all the issues, we ended up with a 10 star house.
Nowadays (or recently, before the building industry crash), Zero Energy and a rating above 7 stars are table stakes for a builder and most are happy if the customer pays a bit more to boost it to 8 or 9 stars.
Wow, lucky you built when you did, I'd hate to be building a house from scratch now. Just going by the way the building industry is at the moment and the kind of shoddy cookie cutter places getting whipped up around my way, styrofoam in the foundations and particle board in the frames. It'd take a bit to find a good builder around here I think, and then you'd be praying they didn't go bust and leave you with a half finished house. Glad you stuck to your guns with your place, sounds like you had a fight on your hands but worth it in the end.
There was a house behind us where the builder did a runner.
Styrofoam is always used in the slab, but never in structural areas such as foundational footings to structural areas of the slab.
Particle Board is actually used as a component in Engineered beams because it has better torsional strength than plain wooden beams. You can get timber beams that are stronger than an engineered beam, but only from old-growth forest like Mountain Ash and Huon Pine. Steel beams are another option, but then you have more thermal issues.