How does your roof colour impact your home’s energy efficiency.

In this episode, we talk dark vs light colours, NatHERS (or the National Housing Energy Rating Scheme), and your star rating.

Join us, as I talk with Sid Thoo, architect and certified home energy assessor, about whether your roof colour matters, and dark colours vs light roofs for different locations and climates.

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Learn more about Under the hood of NatHERS workshop sessions, CLICK HERE

I’m so excited about bringing you this info. Sid and I have collaborated to create these fantastic video workshops. These workshops will demystify and deep dive into the energy assessment process, and show how you can use it to make data-driven, money and time-saving decisions for your design and future home.

Check out the workshops here >>> Under the hood of NatHERS

(and if you’re a member of the HOME Method, they’re now included in your membership as a bonus).

PS If you join via this link, Undercover Architect may receive a small commission (at no cost to you). 

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Hello! This is Episode 208.

In it, we’re going to be discussing the topic of roof colour. And more specifically, dark roof colours vs light roof colours, and whether your selection really matters to the energy efficiency and thermal comfort of your home.

This is a topic I see often hotly debated amongst homeowners. And with around 70% of tiles sales through the southern states of Australia being in dark colours, it’s not surprising that, when you look across recent areas of subdivision, to see many people choosing dark colour roofs.

It doesn’t seem to matter what the climate is, or how hot or cold it gets – dark roof colours are the favourite. I recently travelled to Far North Queensland, and still saw a lot of dark roofs being used there.

Roof colour is something I’m asked about a lot. Does it really matter, and how much does it matter?

For many of us who know what it’s like to get into a dark car after it’s been parked in the street or wear a black t-shirt out in the sun during Summer, there’s a basic understanding that dark colours absorb more heat. 

And so, I’m also often asked, “if you live in an area where your focus is keeping your home warm in Winter, then aren’t you better off having a dark roof?”

This is why I’m really looking forward to you meeting my guest for this episode. 

He is architect Sid Thoo, and he is also an energy assessor. In all his work, he aims to help homeowners create eco-efficient, comfortable homes.

Together, Sid and I are going to be discussing a lot of the common questions and assumptions that I hear homeowners share when selecting their roof colour.

I’m also going to be telling you about a fantastic way to learn more about how to create an energy efficient home, so stay tuned (or keep reading) for that too.

Sid and I have collaborated on something really great that I know is going to be amazing for anyone wanting to improve the star rating of their future home, and understand more about the energy assessment process. 

We’re going Under the Hood of NatHERS and your home’s star rating, and I’ll be sharing how you can get your hands on that information.

I receive a lot of questions about roof colour, and light roofs vs dark roofs can be an area of much debate in online forums. Homeowners may be choosing a roof colour due to their personal aesthetic preferences, and not understanding the impact it may have on the comfort and performance of their home.

And, if you’re in the southern states and attached to the idea of having a dark colour roof, the common response can be “well, my focus is on keeping my house warm during winter, so a dark roof will help with that, and I’ll just use airconditioning or insulation to deal with the summer time situation.”

However, as you’ll hear in this episode, there can be some challenges with that approach.

I know personally, in all my architectural work, I’ve never specified a dark roof colour on any home I’ve worked on. Dark fascias and gutters, yes, but dark roofs, no. And that’s the thing … you can often achieve the aesthetic you want through the selections you make in your gutters and fascias, and let the roof colour be what it needs to be to suit your climate most effectively.

I’m really looking forward to introducing my podcast guest to you, and for you to hear some of the fantastic insight he has to help you understand more on the topic of roof colour, and its impact on your home’s energy efficiency and thermal comfort.

Let me tell you more about Sid Thoo.

Sid is an architect, consultant and educator specialising in eco-effective design and construction. Based in Perth, Western Australia, Sid works with a diverse mix of private clients, local authorities and property developers to achieve a range of environmentally considered, socially engaging and economical design outcomes in all of the projects in which he is involved. Sid is a vocal advocate for a collaborative approach, actively engaging with all key stakeholders as part of the design process.

As well as being a registered architect, Sid is also a certified house energy rating assessor. He is also a non-executive director of eTool, a global leader in the life cycle assessment of the built environment. Previously he has served as Chair of the Association of Building Sustainability Assessors (ABSA), and was part of the Sustainability Advisory Group for the City of Vincent.

Sid was a co-winner of the City of Vincent Sustainable Design Award, and was a co-finalist in the Landcorp Gen Y Housing Design Competition. His projects have also received awards from the Master Builders Association (MBA) and the Urban Design Institute of Australia (UDIA).

Sid has lectured at a number of Australian universities and colleges, and was recently a Clinical Professional Fellow in the School of Built Environment at Curtin University.

Listen now.

Now, if you want to learn more about how to truly understand what’s driving your home’s energy efficiency, and its star rating, and be able to make design decisions with that understanding …

… let me share some exciting news with you, about something Sid and I have collaborated on to go under the hood of NatHERS and help you understand more about the energy assessment process.

For ages now, I’ve wanted to create some content that demystifies the process of achieving a star rating for your home. And so Sid and I have collaborated to do just that (keep reading).

Your future home’s star rating is something you need to establish before you can get a building permit on most renovations and all new builds in Australia. 

Getting an energy assessment done is a necessary step in most projects, and yet, in most projects, this process is totally underutilised for how helpful it can be in making better informed decisions, and saving money in your build and your home’s long term use.

And at the moment, the minimum requirement is 6 stars, however this is likely to change to 7 stars soon. NatHERS, or our National Housing Energy Rating Scheme, and it’s the framework within which we assess the star rating of our homes in Australia, and it’s something that many homeowners don’t understand or are very aware of.

For most homeowners as well, their energy assessment is a step that happens right before getting their building approval or permit. 

It’s often carried out by a consultant they may never meet, who is organised by their designer, building certifier or builder. And because it’s at arm’s length, and also done after the design decisions are fixed in place, a HUGE opportunity is missed to use this process to inform the design, your investment of your budget, and the result you can create in your future home.

When you know how to incorporate this assessment, and the consultant that does it, into your project sooner, you can make data-driven, climate-specific, decisions about what will, or won’t, improve your home’s performance.

Don’t know whether to upgrade your insulation? Don’t know whether double glazing is worth it? Don’t know the wall materials, or external colours to use? 

These are all things you can test and iteratively check their impact, using tools that are already being used in your project, by people you will already be hiring in your project.

And through understanding more about that process, and how to work more closely with your energy assessor, you can actually see how much it adds or detracts from your star rating, so you’re not batting at shadows, or guessing at what to spend money on.

Understanding this process, and what’s involved, and getting onto it sooner in your project, can be hugely beneficial in improving the energy performance of your future home. 

And so, that’s why I’ve collaborated with Sid to create this series of workshops called “Under the hood of NatHERS.”

These workshops are in 4 parts. They are:

1. Introduction to NatHERS
2. NatHERS for renovations
3. NatHERS for new builds
4. How to get the best design outcomes with NatHERS

Want to hear some great news about these workshops? 

If you’re a member of my flagship program, the HOME Method, you access these incredible workshops as a bonus of your membership.

And for those of you that aren’t members of the HOME Method, you can purchase these workshops separately. To learn more about what’s inside these workshops, and how they can help you understand NatHERS, be clearer on the energy assessment process, and more confident in how to achieve a sustainable, energy efficient home >>> CLICK HERE

I’m so excited about these Under the Hood of NatHERS workshops we’ve created. 

I know that this info will be hugely empowering for those of you wanting to improve the sustainability and energy performance of your home, find out what is really needed to create a 7 or 8 star home, and make data-driven decisions with confidence.

RESOURCES:

Join the “Under the hood of NatHERS” workshops here >>> LEARN MORE

Access my free online workshop “Your Project Plan” >>> FREE WORKSHOP

Take the first best steps in your project, whoever you’re working with, and whatever your dreams, your location or your budget >>> GET STARTED GUIDE

Access the support and guidance you need to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home inside my flagship online program >>> HOME METHOD

FIND SID THOO HERE:
Website: https://sidthoo.com/
Sid’s services and courses can be found here >>> https://sidthoo.com/shop/