Sustainable building and renovating online event series

Council is hosting a webinar series on building sustainable homes with experts from Renew, a non-profit organisation which provides independent advice on sustainable homes.

Winter comfort for rental properties

Thursday 23 May, 7pm–8.30pm

Find out practical ways to make your rental home more comfortable, energy efficient and cheaper to run. This session includes advice on reading energy bills and appliance upgrades and is relevant for both renters and landlords.

Watch back: Designing for resilience

The fundamentals of how to retrofit, renovate or design your home to be resilient to climate change and fit for future conditions.

Watch back: Finding a design team

Making smart choices when it comes to finding designers, architects and builders who share your sustainability goals.

Watching back: Sustainable building materials

Increase your knowledge of the environmentally sustainable building materials available for your new build or renovation.

Watching back: Water and greening

Learn to integrate sustainable water systems into your home design, and how to create a garden that is climate-ready and water wise.

Glen Eira Case study: Caulfield South Passive House

Motivated by a desire for a healthy, comfortable home, Jonathan Haling has built a high-performance Passive House with very low energy use and minimal need for heating or cooling.

Passive House is a design standard that achieves thermal comfort with minimal heating and cooling. Jonathan's home is considered best practice in sustainable design and construction, and uses as little as six kilowatt hours per day for all essential energy requirements. 

The four-bedroom family home makes the most of a 280 square metre block, with large downstairs open-plan living areas looking out onto a narrow lap pool and generous deck. 

“After living in many poorly functioning rental properties, including new-builds, we were concerned that building to the minimum standards wouldn’t be a good choice for our family home investment,” Jonathon said.

“I started a self-education process and came across Passive House, a high-performance building standard developed in Germany in the 1990s.” 

Key features of the sustainable home

• mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, to provide fresh air and maintain stable indoor temperatures 
• avoiding thermal bridges (pathways that enable unwanted loss or gain of heat from the building) 
• airtightness to maintain a comfortable indoor temperature 
• tripled glazed windows and high quality doors 
• external window blinds and adjustable shading  
• all-electric appliances, including efficient electric heat pump technologies for hot water and air conditioning 
• 12kW rooftop solar PV system  
• LED lights throughout and use of natural daylight and skylights  
• electric vehicle charging with integrated solar power storage 
• recycled bricks and lightweight timber frame construction
• underground recycled water storage for toilet flushing

Glen Eira City Council partnered with Jonathan and Sustainable House Day to showcase the home to the public. It’s part of Council’s response to the climate emergency, working towards the goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2030.