Should the government force home owners to upgrade their homes to be more environmentally friendly?

Should new green housing legislation be applied to new homes only, or also to existing home?

I’m listening to an ABC By Design podcast that is interviewing Tim Redway, the chief marketing officer for AV Jennings, one of Australia’s larger residential builders. He is advocating for the federal government to enforce green standards on all new houses. Old houses are also targeting, when an old house is sold he reckons the owner should be forced, through legislation, to improve their sustainability.

You can listen to the podcast here. The segment discussing the legislation of green housing in Australia is from about 14:00 – 26:00.

What do you reckon? Should the government force home owners to improve the sustainability of their homes? Should it include old and new homes? Let us know below in the comments …

From everything that I have read and heard renovating in Townsville in 2008 will continue to be a challenge for home owners.

Most quality builders in Townsville are booked well in advance, and the costs involved with renovating in Townsville continues to escalate. In October 2007 our builder was already booked until July of 2008.

A standard carpenter’s rates right now in Townsville is up over $55.00 per hour. Our builder tells us that if a half decent carpenter isn’t paid that much, then they will move on to another job that will pay $55.00 per hour or more.

The rising cost of materials will also continue to drive up the costs of renovating.

Many of the larger building projects in Townsville are being either cancelled or postpones primarily due to a lack of tradesmen. The lack of trained tradesmen is no longer just affecting the small home renovators, but it has reached a point now where it is affecting everyone, including the large developers.

In the lead up to the national election last year here in Australia there was a lot of talk about the lack of affordable housing. There was a lot of discussion about releasing new lands, but I didn’t hear much talk about training up new tradesmen, or importing the needed skills. In North Queensland I reckon that bringing in those skills is what is needed to help alleviate the housing shortage.

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I figured that it was about time to update how the various stages of our renovations are going right now:

Enclosing Under our Queenslander

The actual enclosing under of our Queenslander is now complete. It has been finished up to lockup stage, so all the windows, exterior doors and cladding are now up. We can lock up under the house now, have a (mostly) enclosed laundry and can park our car under the house behind an automatic panel lift door.

I still have to paint, hopefully before the wet season, but the cladding is already primed, so it’s at least protected from the elements for now.

Building In Under our Queenslander

Although the house has been complete to the lock up stage, we are now “paused” with completing the building in process. Because of some unexpected work that had to be complete upstairs during the enclosing stage (replacing the bathroom and attaching the roof) we have been put behind schedule and over budget.

The walls under our house have all been framed, the plumbing has been run and the electrical cabling has been mostly completed, but this is where we sit right now. We have been quoted $8000 to sheet the walls under house, including all plasterboard, villaboard and plastering. It’s tempting to do, but unfortunately not at this time.

We also have flooring, bathroom fit outs, the electrical fit out, an internal staircase and painting to do before it becomes livable down there. Continue Reading →