Josh looks at smart building

Josh Byrne’s series — Josh’s House Star Performers — is educating Australians about how to build smarter homes, not only to be kind to the environment but also to boost health, happiness and budgets.

Since the inception of Josh’s House in 2012, environmental scientist and media personality Byrne has shown the benefits of a more sustainable lifestyle. With his own home now built, Mr Byrne has just completed an online television series weighing up his own house against other high performance homes around Australia.

“I’m really excited about this new series and we are already getting some great feedback, ” Byrne said.

“Through my experiences and research over the years, including the completion of our own 10-star housing project in Hilton, I have developed a strong belief that there is a better way we can be designing and building our homes for the benefit of our health, hip pockets and our future.”

The series sees Byrne embark on a nationwide tour of the best high-performance, volume-market housing projects — from the Zero Emission House in Melbourne, CSR House in Sydney, Innovation House in Townsville, Lochiel Park in Adelaide and WA’s own Pilbara Vernacular Demonstration House in Karratha.

The Pilbara Vernacular Demonstration House in WA’s North-West is the result of a design competition by the State Government’s development agency, Landcorp to demonstrate the climate and socially responsive design principles of the Pilbara Vernacular Handbook.

“The Pilbara Vernacular House was one of the highlights for me, ” Byrne said.

“The Pilbara has long been recognised as one of the toughest building markets in the country and this project is challenging the status quo by showcasing an innovative approach to climate sensible and socially responsive design.”

Byrne said he developed the series to see what’s possible for the future of housing in Australia and encourage that conversation across the country.

“We all think about the performance of our vehicles, maintaining them to ensure they are running well but we don’t often have a conversation around the performance of our homes, ” he said.

“Simple design principles and behaviours can dramatically impact the efficiency of our homes and save us thousands of dollars each year not to mention the benefit for the environment, our health and happiness.”

Byrne said state-of-the-art data collection proves there is a better way to design and build homes across Australia’s diverse climate regions.

“This information will be shared freely via our online video series and supporting material on the Josh’s House web site, so that industry and new home buyers can readily access it, ” he said.