thisNZlife

How you can transform an old, cold country house

Transforming an old, cold home into one with a much greener footprint is a slow but satisfying, cost-effective DIY project.

Words & images Nelson Lebo

The simple but amazingly effective DIY projects that will transform your home

If there's one thing I know well, it's living in a cold, country home. We're lucky enough to have owned three properties like that. Over the past seven years, I‘ve also visited around 2000 homes in my role as the eco design advisor for Palmerston North City Council. My job is to help occupants find cost-effective solutions to improve their health and comfort, such as how best to insulate, heat, and ventilate their home, so it's warmer, drier, and healthier to live in.

I spend the bulk of my waking hours – and sometimes my dream time too – thinking about redesigning existing spaces, indoors and out, to function better for both people and the planet.

What is an eco design advisor?

There are seven councils in NZ that provide homeowners with a free eco design assessment by an independent eco design advisor (EDA). An EDA doesn't sell you anything and offers completely independent information.

The goal is to help people update an existing home to be warmer and drier, or design a new, highly efficient one. Some people I've helped call me the House Doctor.

I go through it room-by-room or check plans for a new home, looking for design issues, such as:

■ where heat is being lost or gained, eg insulation, windows, drafts;

■ how to improve heating;

■ reducing moisture sources;

■ increasing ventilation;

■ improving the hot water system.

I enjoy the science and art of ecological design, and that's helped us significantly as we've slowly renovated our 85-year-old house near Whanganui.

The renovation and retrofit of our house is an excellent case study in synergistic effects of minimising internal moisture, retaining the warmth, and distributing heat throughout the home.

The improvements from retrofitting a home are often incremental. You only notice the cumulative effects one day by pausing to observe, “Wow, that's so much better than before.”

I've taken what I call an eco-thrifty

“Creative reuse and retrofit solutions is perfect permaculture. Applying permaculture ethics and principles in our gardens and homes inevitably leads us towards redesigning our ways of living so as to be more in tune with local surpluses and limits." David Holmgren, Permaculture concept co-founder

approach to improving our house. It's a philosophy I always take into retrofit and renovation, striving for the most benefits for the lowest overall cost, with minimal material sent to landfill.

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