Home Energy Stars Project

Stage 1 - Home Audits
MEFL has delivered the Home Energy Star project across Moreland since 2002. The project began by offering a home energy audit, follow up report and bills analysis for each participant - more than 120 Moreland households participated in this phase of the project, not only learning how to reduce their own energy use and greenhouse emissions but also helping MEFL to build a detailed understanding of Moreland's housing stock, demographics and energy use needs and behaviours.

Stage 2 - Community Workshops
In 2007 MEFL launched the second phase of the Home Energy Stars project, which saw us deliver a series of workshops across the municipality on saving energy at home. Drawing on the knowledge gathered from the home audit phase, the workshops were able to reach a broader audience and proved to be a very popular method of community outreach. Hundreds of participants have so far attended workshops, taking away a store of information on how to improve the efficiency of their homes and each participant received a free Energy Starter retrofit kit, to help set them on the path to reducing their emissions.

See the Events page for upcoming workshops.

Stage 3 - zerocarbonmoreland
The next phase of delivery will tie in with MEFL's exciting new direction - zerocarbonmoreland. This initiative will work with householders, businesses and community groups to help Moreland achieve its goal of becoming a zero emissions community by 2030. Stay tuned!

Evaluation
With the help of our fantastic volunteer Andree, MEFL is currently evaluating Stage 2 of the Home Energy Star program. We hope to have the evaluation completed early 2008.


Case Study: Two minds don't always think alike

Home energy stars Mindy Blaise and Yarrow Andrew represent two of MEFL's typical clients. She is happy to make energy-saving changes only if they make no impact on her comfortable, aesthetic life-style, while he is keen to make whatever changes are necessary partly as a commitment to a better world and partly for the fun of experimenting with energy savings.

When Euan Williamson from MEFL visited to make an energy audit on their small terrace house in Brunswick, he was faced with a difficult task that had nothing to do with energy saving, and all to do with customs, habits and expectations of comfort.

Mindy grew up in the US, and was amazed to find on recent arrival here that households made do without clothes-dryers and dishwashers. Despite Yarrow's objections to her need for such appliances, MEFL can help out by supplying details of which models might be most energy-efficient.

As part of the energy audit Euan conducted a shower-flow test (see tip 5, center pages). Mindy's comment "our shower feels too good to be saving water" was interesting when the test showed that they already had a low-flow showerhead and were getting excellent water-savings. Yarrow has a clock beside the shower to time them to only 5 minutes.

Yarrow likes to be 'handy' around the house, as Mindy puts it. He had cleverly fitted bubble-wrap over an open skylight to stop too much heat from escaping into sculptural but energy-wasting hole above the ceiling, a cheap and simple trick that could be stylishly improved by using a sheet of prismatic polycarbonate to do the same job. Their house has a skylight in every room, and good energy-savings would be made if each one were sealed at the ceiling level. The rooms would be more comfortable too, particularly in summer when the skylights have no protection from hot sun.

The main other area for improvement was an easy one to spot: two large north-facing windows that were letting in wonderful winter sun, but would be very hot in summer without external blinds or shading of some kind. It is fair to suspect that a pergola will be next on Yarrow's handy list.

For more information contact Anna Strempel
or click the Registration form below to contact us online!