For Light House, the inner gyprock lining is the It all started with a Canberra home she bought vital part of the sealed building envelope. Even in 2007. ‘It had good orientation, and an EER of for renovations they often re-do the gyprock 2.5, but lacked insulation, and had very leaky single throughout the home to prevent air leakage. glazed windows,’ she remembers. ‘In Canberra a well oriented, well designed So there was room for improvement, especially home with an insulated slab, double glazing and in draught reduction. Around this time Jenny saw a wall and roof insulation will only need heating in blower door in action on TV. the very coldest months, and won’t need any air ‘So I thought, ah, that is what I need for my conditioning at all,’ Jenny explains. house, I’ll ring up and organise a test.’ But it wasn’t that simple. The one she’d seen on ‘Through good design we minimise the TV was in Victoria and turned out to be the only one number of holes in the building envelope’ being used for residential testing in Australia. Also around that time she discovered thermal cameras. ‘I realised there is a perfect match, team up the This is an impressive result for a city with summer blower door testing with the thermal camera and temperatures up to 40 degrees, and winter lows you can actually communicate the results to people down to minus six or even lower. with something they can see.’ With such a variable climate, it is worth the extra The blower door tests the overall air leakage of care taken in the construction process, to end up the house, while the thermal images can show hot ‘OUR HOMES ARE with homes that stay comfortable no matter the or cold spots where air leaks create temperature weather extremes outside. differences. WELL ORIENTED, Light House has a full testing regime for their Not one to wait around, Jenny took her idea and AND DESIGNED TO builds, using a blower door to test for air leakage in ran with it. She left her job, went to New Zealand to BE SPACE EFFICIENT, the building envelope and a thermal camera to find buy a blower door, trained in large-scale air leakage WELL INSULATED the cold spots or gaps in the insulation. testing at the Wisconsin Energy Institute in the US, AND AIR TIGHT’ ‘Builders can be terrified the first time I come learned all about thermal performance modelling in with the blower door and camera to test the in Australia and then started up a business in building performance,’ says Jenny. ‘But once they Canberra doing house energy efficiency rating and realise it is just about sealing up any gaps they performance testing. understand.’ Demand was high and she soon found herself Jenny herself has been the victim of badly working with an architecture and building company, designed and built homes ‘with frost forming on then joined them full time as a director and energy the inside of the bedroom windows at night’. Those adviser. cold nights are part of what drove her to create As demand for energy-efficient houses expanded, something more suitable for the climate. the design part of that business grew too big for LIGHT HOUSE-DESIGNED HOUSES ARE ALL ABOUT SMALLER, SMARTER DESIGN NOVEMBER 2018 HOUSING 19