'Get it Right with Undercover Architect' Podcast
Season 15: 44 Ways to Create Your Sustainable Home
Sustainability can feel overwhelming, full of jargon, competing opinions, and no clear starting point. There's also not a 'one-size-fits-all' approach.
Season 15 uncovers 44 practical ways to sustainably design, build or renovate your home so that it performs well, costs less to run, and feels genuinely great to live in.
Get started on designing your future home ... and get it right! Request your free 5 Step E-Guide now.
SECTION 1: DESIGNING FOR CLIMATE + SITE
[#401] 44 Ways #01: Design Your Future Home for the Orientation of Your Site
Season 15 | Episode 01
Of all the decisions you will make in a new build or renovation, one has more impact on your home's comfort, sustainability and running costs than any other. And it needs to be made before design begins. In this episode, Amelia explains why site orientation is where every great home design starts, how the sun moves across your site across the seasons, and how to use that knowledge to design a home that stays cool in summer, warm in winter, and costs far less to run year-round.
[#402] 44 Ways #02: Design for the Breezes + Wind at Your Site
Season 15 | Episode 02
Your site has two distinct wind stories, and they often come from completely different directions. One is a natural asset that can cool your home and reduce your reliance on mechanical systems. The other is a force to design against. In this episode, Amelia walks you through how to read your site's wind and breeze patterns, how to design your floor plan and windows to capture natural ventilation, and how to protect your home from the harsher wind events that can drive up maintenance and make outdoor spaces unusable.
[#403] 44 Ways #03: Naturally Heat + Cool Your Home
Season 15 | Episode 03
Orientation and breezes don't work in isolation. In this episode, Amelia brings the first two ways together into a whole-of-home passive design strategy, showing how orientation, shading, thermal mass, and the building envelope interact as a system to keep your home comfortable across the seasons. You'll learn how this daily cycle of passive heating and cooling actually works in practice, why thermal mass is only beneficial when the design supports it, and how getting this right from the start can dramatically reduce what you spend on energy bills for the life of your home.
[#404] 44 Ways #04: Know Your Climate Zone
Season 15 | Episode 04
The design strategies covered in the first three episodes of this series don't apply the same way everywhere. What works brilliantly in a temperate climate can actively work against you in a hot and humid one. In this episode, Amelia explains what climate zones are, why they matter so much for sustainable home design, and how knowing yours gives you a practical filter for every design and specification decision in your project. This is the episode that puts everything covered so far into context for where you are actually building or renovating.
SECTION 2: SUSTAINABLE DESIGN STRATEGIES
[#405] 44 Ways #05: Design a Smaller (Smarter) Home
Season 15 | Episode 05
When most homeowners think about sustainability, they think about what to add to their project. But one of the most impactful sustainability decisions you can make is simply to build less. In this episode, Amelia introduces the concept of enoughness as a practical alternative to the default assumption that bigger is better, shares data on how Australian home sizes compare internationally, and gives you a framework for interrogating your design brief so every square metre earns its place in your home and your budget.
With over 30 years industry experience, Amelia Lee founded Undercover Architect in 2014 as an award-winning online resource to help and teach you how to get it right when designing, building or renovating your home. You are the key to unlocking what’s possible for your home. Undercover Architect is your secret ally