Ever feel like there's a better way to build?

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I'm Matt and welcome to the Mindful Builder Podcast, where we believe

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And now onto this week's episode.

What we haven't actually talked about in the podcast so far is

any of these low hanging fruit.

That Just regular homeowners.

Oh yeah.

That's can do.

Clean your filters.

Is it nine?

Is it 9 million?

Homes don't meet current energy standards in Australia.

I think that's the, the data, I dunno, I dunno.

All the homes I go into, don't meet them.

Not very few.

A hundred percent.

There's homes that have been built now that are actually brand new

that don't meet them just because they tick the piece of paper.

Yeah.

But we are here at the Build to Last studio.

Uh, by Pro climber.

Pro climber are a sponsor.

Of ours and our major sponsor of the podcast now.

So we big thanks to them for jumping on board.

Uh, there's multiple suppliers across Australia.

Each state has a supplier.

So any questions that you wanna know about the pro climber products, please

reach out to them@proclimber.com au.

But today's guest, Hamish Tim Forey now.

Tim, you, it's the biggest celebrity we've had in Look, I, I would think that if you,

like, there's a few people that come to mind when you talk about like, big impact

on a big broad scale, but at that kind of com consumer level, like homeowner level,

uh, like Matt, you and I might build three, four, or five houses each a year.

So we're having this very small impact.

And in a bubble.

And in a bubble.

But Tim, author.

Uh, also a chemical engineer.

Is that right?

Yep.

Um, look, I'm not gonna tell you bio.

Tim, do you reckon you could, um, give a little bit of an insight into who you are?

Yeah, it goes way back, I suppose.

Um, one funny thing is I, uh, migrated to Australia to work in the gas industry.

So yeah, I'm a chemical engineer that used to work with the likes of, uh,

Exxon Mobil and BHP, et cetera, and came down here to work in the gas industry.

But these days, working in the home space, um, I've been a strong advocate for the

last, uh, 15 years or so for people to not be using the fossil gas in their home.

Um.

These days, you've got cleaner, cheaper, healthier, safer options.

So that's kind of where it started.

Um, I, I did end up at the University of Melbourne back in 2015, and we were

kind of the first to work out that.

At that point, you know, it was right after the price of gas went up quite

significantly in Eastern Australia that, uh, in 2015 you could heat a home

with a reverse cycle air conditioner for a third, the cost of burning gas.

So that was a key message and I'm like, wow, this is, uh,

nobody's talking about this.

This was even before the cost of living crisis.

So, um.

That was good news.

Um, and also of course, uh, you know, uh, allowed you to get off a,

a fossil fuel and as our electricity supplies continue to become, you

know, more and more renewables, you know, this is where we needed to go.

Um, we published a report as a University of Melbourne, got a little bit of media,

but uh, then the next step was how do we.

Tell more people about this.

And I started the Facebook group, my Fish and Electric Home, uh,

which now has 168,000 members, and we still get a hundred people

a day joining the Facebook group.

Wow.

So, uh, yeah, we're, we're trying to get the message out to a lot of people

that, um, you can do some different things in your homes these days to,

uh, make them healthier, healthier and safer, and, uh, and, uh, cheaper to

operate, uh, not using the fossil fuels, getting onto the renewable energy.

Uh, taking advantage of the, the stuff that's out there now, the solar panels,

the batteries, the air conditioners, the heat pumps, as well as improving

the thermal envelope of your home, the insulation, the draft proof,

and the window coverings, et cetera.

So that's the, that's, uh, what we try to help people with.

What was your aha moment?

Because you obviously the gas, coal and it's like, oh no, this isn't right.

Um, yeah, so, um, being a chemical engineer, I'm really

interested in, in how systems work.

And I started to, of course, get switched on.

To the climate emergency.

I mean, as early as 1992, I, uh, people were meeting in Rio and talking

about climate change, and I was still in the fossil fuel industry and

we're like, oh, this is interesting.

Um, you know, maybe the clouds will save us or something.

And so the earth won't overheat, but it.

The more the scientists looked at it now, the clouds weren't gonna save us.

And you know, even to this day, we're continuously pumping out so many

gigatons of, uh, greenhouse gases into the atmosphere we're in big trouble.

So yeah, there was a whole series of aha moments from 1992 until I finally

did get out of the fossil fuel industry.

But, uh, yeah, we need to make some changes because I would imagine that,

um, you know, being a chemical engineer working for some of these big companies,

like you would've had quite a lucrative.

Job that paid well and you know, just maybe sometimes you could sort

of, maybe turn a blind eye to, to people would they probably continue,

they still people, people still are.

And uh, yeah, you, you know, maybe I was kind of early and I'm like,

okay, I'll leave this industry.

And then a lot of my colleagues and mates and friends will

leave the industry as well.

But, uh, no they didn't.

But then again, you know, um, well, I do worry about.

You know, the psychology of the top executives in those spaces, they

know what they're doing now, and yet they just keep doing it, keep going.

But then again, it's the, you know, we have corporations and corporations

are meant to do the best for the stakeholder in the short term.

And so that's, that's what they're doing.

Without any thought of the, uh, the morality of it all and key

to keyword, short term there.

Yeah, it's very short term.

Biggest issue I feel we have in the world right now in any, just, not just

electrification, but everything, anything poli like political is short term.

It's only gonna hurt.

Like I've got a daughter that's seven months.

You've got a daughter now that's seven months.

Six months.

Six months.

They're the ones are gonna pay for it.

Yeah.

And I've got grandkids, et cetera.

So yeah, there've been a few aha, aha moments along the way.

But then again, I was no saint, you know, by the time I got outta the fossil

fuel industry, yeah, the mortgage was paid off, the school fees were paid off.

So you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes.

So I can't say that I'm a saint, but uh, and so when I was getting out in 2010.

You know, it seemed like I was way too late.

But now again, now it's, that's 16 years ago, it seems like I was early.

And when did you come to Australia then?

Oh, way back in.

1994 was a permanent residency working in the gas industry.

I So you, you had come over here to work in the gas industry?

Yeah.

I came, uh, even before then on a temporary basis and then, uh, permanently

at that point from the States.

From the United States.

And that's when we bought our old Weatherboard, um,

in Bayside, Melbourne, 1994.

Yeah.

The house was built in 1904.

And even before then, I had, you know, done some renovations or some

improvements in houses, even in New Jersey where you have ice and snow.

And so there's a bit of a different building situation there.

And I've also lived in sub tropical climates like Houston, Texas, and

I've lived in Europe for a little bit.

Um, and then you finally behind this, uh, this old house in, uh, in

Bayside, Melbourne, uh, from 1904.

And, um, you know, it's a small place and it's like, oh, we got all these kids.

Well, we gotta do a, um, you know, an extension.

So we put some rooms up top, worked with a builder, a local bloke.

Um, you know, are we gonna get double glazed windows because, you

know, my folks had triple glazed windows in the 1970s in America.

Are we gonna get double glazed windows?

Uh, techno, we don't need double glazed windows.

I'm not sure where you would've gotten them in Melbourne in 1994 anyway.

And then how about insulation in the walls?

We gonna put insulation in the walls.

Nah, you don't need insulation in the walls.

And I said, how about we just put insulation in the walls?

So I thank God, well, at least we did that in 1994 at the old Weatherboard.

Wow.

And was, was this, uh, this, this weatherboard that you, that you renovated,

uh, 'cause I'm assuming you did work to the existing part of the house as well.

Was this like a little bit of a testing ground for some of the

things that you now talk about in.

The book and on, um, my Efficient Electric Energy Home.

Is that what it's No, no.

Get it, get it right.

'cause no one does my energy.

My Efficient Electric Home is the name of the Facebook.

Oh, it's, it's literal.

It's literally on the book, but, oh, I'm gonna keep, what's the best area?

Every different, oh, I don't know.

My electrifying energetic home or something.

I don't know.

Everybody always gets it wrong and that's fine.

'cause it was that.

It was a dumb name, but, um, for the, for the Facebook group.

But, you know, we, we knew we wanted electric homes.

Yeah.

But electrifying is not enough.

Uh, you also need to be efficient about it.

I mean, there's no point building an inefficient electric home.

And so that's why we had to have the word efficient in there as well.

And that helps to bring in, you know, the improvements to the thermal envelope

of a home, the insulation, the draft proofing, window coverings, et cetera.

So, um, sure.

Our own home, I've always been quite.

Hands on.

I grew up on a dairy farm, so, uh, you know, you know,

do a lot of stuff yourself.

DIY that's for sure.

You have to.

Um, and so, sure.

Uh, you know, I remember, you know, after 20 years of draft proofing the

house, I had a blower door test done.

So that, that was exciting.

Yeah.

So some of this stuff doesn't get done overnight, but uh, you know, if you work

at it, you can make some improvements.

You've gotta start somewhere.

That's right.

Yeah, just get started, you know, get started and the draft proofing

can be one of the easy things to do.

So, and when, when did the Facebook group start?

So that was, um, we just passed over a bit, over 10 years.

So back, back, uh, back in 2015 is when that group started.

And, uh, like in the first year, you know, once I started the group, I started.

Getting in contact with all my friends and people I knew who were in this space.

But after the first year, yeah, we had 500 members, but like I said, we'll, we'll

get more members than that new members coming in in a single week these days.

Yeah, it's crazy.

And who'd you start it with?

Who'd I start with?

Yeah, it was just yourself or who were the people that you sort of No, for the

Facebook group, you just, uh, well, what happened was, like I said, we wanted to

spread the word that people could save money by heating with an air conditioner.

And we had finally done that.

You know, we had the old banger, air conditioner in the wall that

was there when we bought the house.

And so on the hot days, you'd all.

Go sleep in one room, you know, that's what you did.

Um, and uh, and I put the ducted gas heating in in 1994.

'cause I worked in the industry and I knew that that was the cheapest way to heat.

Yeah.

And that's what people were doing.

Um, but, uh, you know, to start the, uh.

The Facebook group, well, we, you know, we finally, you know, uh, got around

to putting some split systems in.

Others, you know, have been way ahead of me in this.

I'm not a, you know, a leader, you know, eventually I follow up and get there.

And so we put some, a couple split systems in, you know, more to start a summer.

But then of course we knew that we'd want to try them for heating in winter.

'cause we'd, we'd done the numbers and worked out it was the cheapest way.

So the next winter, then we started heating with them as well.

And uh, that was about the point.

It was like, well, how do we tell more people about this?

And my kids said, well, you know, dad, there's this thing called social media.

And I said, what's that?

And they said, well, you know, I like Facebook.

And I'm like, oh my God, I gotta join Facebook.

So that's what I did.

And, uh, just started the group and it just, uh, goes from there.

So you, you said just before that you're not a leader.

Ah, you lic you rich.

You currently have 168,000 people on your Facebook page.

I'm just gonna go home following what the messaging that you,

you are trying to tell people.

How, how, how are you not a leader?

Oh, well, um, you know, just being, uh, just being a bit humble there, suppose.

Yeah.

No, no.

I've actually written down here.

Humble leader.

Humble leader here.

I was quite, no, but there were others that were, have been, you

know, look like, like we were just talking before we got started here,

you know, 10 months ago my wife, you know, bought our first electric car.

Yeah.

Which now I drive all the time.

Thank very much.

Um.

10 months ago.

But I've Did you, I've had friends who've had electric cars for 15 years.

So Do you know what though?

Like, 'cause I've read so's book as well.

Mm. Uh, plugin, his latest book.

Yep.

And he talks about having like this iterative process of getting rid of

our car, uh, like fossil fuel burning appliances and your car being one of them.

So why would you get rid of a car?

That's perfectly normal now, just to go and buy an ev.

It's the same with your hot water.

If your hot water's perfectly normal, a perfectly good and operational, and

it's gas, we'll keep it for a bit.

You know that there, that's there's a end of life.

Yeah.

Well, uh, well, yes and no.

Um, because every bit of greenhouse gas we put into the atmosphere is gonna

be doing this harm for a long time.

So, um.

Now I do encourage people to move as quickly as they can.

Um, you know, maybe, maybe we didn't, didn't drive a lot to start with.

Yeah.

And so, uh, you know, in that case, you know, there's priorities elsewhere.

I was just trying to, but even the hot water system, I was just trying

to jump to your defense about just getting, even though the hot water

system and any other gas stuff, I mean, you're paying like a dollar a day

just to be connected to the gas grid.

So, um, the electrical grid have kind of done that a little bit too, haven't they?

Like.

I, I'm with Amber and I've gotta pay 15 bucks a month.

Oh, sure.

You pay fixed charges for your, to be connected to the water and

sewage grid and, and your NBN grid.

Yeah.

And your electricity grid fine.

But the gas grid is the one grid that you can get off of.

And so with a hot water heat pump.

You can heat, uh, your water for a third, the cost of using gas, but then

maybe you've even got solar panels on your roof, and of course it's free.

You want to self consume your solar.

And so hot water's a great way to do that with a heat pump.

And now you're talking basically about free hot water and uh,

and getting off the gas grid.

And I'm not using fossil fuels, so now I wouldn't write, you

know, one thing about Melbourne, we've got very good water in our.

Hot water systems actually don't rott out that quickly.

Okay?

So if you say, you know, you can wait, you can be waiting

20 years to make these changes.

There's a lot of rebates and government incentives available now

to be making the moves off of your gas heating or off of the hot water.

Those rebates won't be there forever.

So, um, yeah, have a, have a good hard look at it.

But certainly if your hot water system is getting a bit old.

Then do the research and get your head across the hot water heat pumps and the

rebates because, well, we've just passed Christmas, but you know, it's gonna be,

uh, it's a good Friday when your, uh, your hot water system's next going to die.

And, uh, good luck to you, um, figuring it all out and deciding which heat

pump you want, you know, on a Easter.

I guess for those who wanna electrify their homes, this is a great book to read.

I haven't read this book yet.

I, I'm very excited that you brought it with me because I know GNE actually gave

us a, a, uh, synopsis of it, uh, before we Yeah, we caught up, which is amazing.

But I have read Tim's book, uh, sorry.

Um, um, plug Plugin.

Yeah.

Yep.

And I would assume that both these books are great pathways for people to.

Uh, look at, um, getting rid of their gas appliances and then to do it,

look, I'm wearing a goodbye gas shirt.

Like, these guys will come and electrify your homes.

And it's not, don't feel bad about not being able to do it all at once.

Mm. Like, let's just do what you can afford at the time.

That makes sense.

So, can I put a question around this and it's, I'm, I'm

not advocating for gas here.

My understanding, and maybe I have this wrong, is we just

can't flick off gas tomorrow.

Can we, we, we have to still rely on gas for say, 10 years.

Or 15 years to just top up the system at certain times.

Am I, am I right or wrong?

Uh, households could get off gas tomorrow if, um, you know, they Yeah.

Can manage all that and, uh, Victoria uses a hell of a lot

of gas inefficiently in homes.

Yeah.

You know, you gotta understand that, uh, years ago when they found a lot of

oil and gas in the Ba Strait and, um, you know, that was a 60 year supply.

Um, gas was basically a cheap byproduct of the oil production.

So oil was where the money was and it's like, geez, there's this gas stuff.

How do we get rid of it?

And so basically.

People were incentivized to inefficiently, you know, burn as

much gas as you could in inefficient ducted, heating systems, et cetera.

So that's the legacy we have.

And you're saying we can't switch off gas tomorrow?

Well, we actually have switched off gas yesterday.

'cause like I say, it was a 60 year gas supply.

And guess what?

I'm checking my watch.

Yeah, it's, it's year 61.

Yeah.

So all the cheap gas that was in the BAS trade is largely depleted.

It's.

It's trickling outta there.

Still a little bit at a slow rate, but you will see every

winter headlines about gas crisis.

Yeah.

Uh, you know, we can't supply enough gas to Victoria if anything you

know, goes wrong in this system, if you stay on gas in Victoria in

particular, more and more of it will be.

Coal seam gas coming down the skinny pipelines all the way from Queensland

and New South Wales, where they're basically pin cushioning the whole

countryside up there with 40,000 wells.

Lovely.

Is that fracking?

Is that, yeah, and fracking can be involved, but sometimes

you don't have to frack.

Um, and then they're also talking about bringing liquified gas in by boat into

Geelong or into Wollongong or Adelaide.

Well, that's, you know, clearly the most expensive gas in the world, so we do

need to get off gas today or yesterday.

Now what you're probably talking about is in the electricity

system for electricity generation.

We still use a little bit of gas.

Um.

In the system because yes, we haven't built enough wind or solar or batteries

or snowy Hydro 2.0 just yet to shut off all the coal plants and to never

need gas in the electricity system.

That's, yeah, but that is a tiny amount of gas.

That's used for that in Victoria, say, compared to what we waste in,

uh, the houses and also what we use in efficiently in, in aquatic

centers and industry, et cetera.

So huge opportunities to be using a lot less gas in Victoria and

and across Eastern Australia.

And here's the good news.

We are using less gas now.

Um, you know, I've been banging on for at least 15 years about

this, and finally, uh, we've hit the peak and the top of the curve.

And so now less and less gas is being used, uh, across each

eastern Australia each year.

And, uh, the data's just in that.

As of today, there are fewer homes in Eastern Australia connected to

guests than there were yesterday.

That's awesome.

So this is like the first time this has happened.

Um, I mean, governments have said things like, you know, we won't be

putting gas into new homes, but there was a bit of a legacy of homes that

had already been approved, and so the builders were gonna build those anyway.

So we built a lot of new homes, and up until recently, a lot of them

were still being installed with gas.

Uh, even though some people were getting their homes off gas, their

existing homes, we were still building new homes that were connected to gas.

So, um, we hadn't quite hit the tipping point yet, but, but now we have, uh, now

we can say that today there are fewer homes on gas than there were yesterday.

Um, you know, to use an analogy.

What if we could, could say that, uh, today there are fewer petrol and

diesel cars on the road than yesterday.

Uh, we haven't hit that point yet in the transport, but that's what's now happened

with the, uh, the gas in the homes from a, when we don't put gas into a home,

these, the, the new builds are, um, gotta be all electric now, which is great.

Awesome.

And if you're, I, I'm, I wanna go big scale, spec home development areas.

I don't understand why the developers were kind of against this 'cause it's a whole

service they didn't need to rough in.

It would save 'em a ton of money.

Oh, they were just used to doing things the way they always did it.

And the gas industry was pretty much subsidizing all that gas stuff.

It wasn't the developers that had to pay the money.

It's a gas industry basically.

Here's a bribe.

We'll, we'll pay for all that and then we could lock people into

buying gas for 30 or four years.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the developers, it was kind of like, EH, six, seven, you know,

um, I get that from my grandkids.

I was like, but uh.

But, and they were always used to doing it, and plus the people

thought they wanted gas, you know, because they didn't know any better.

It's like, oh, I want to have a, you know, all the gas flames

in my kitchen, et cetera.

It's stupid.

Not realizing that that can contribute to childhood asthma, et cetera.

So it was just a customary way of doing it.

And yeah, it's ducted gas, heating and evaporative cooling.

I mean, evaporative cooling, that's a technology from 40 years ago.

But there, you know, there still would've been a house yesterday

put in with, uh, vapor rip cooling.

So, I mean, I, I know the answer to this.

But there's a lot of people that who are very pro fossil fuels and pro gas and pro

burning coal and all that kind of stuff.

They, they'll be like, well, where does your electricity come from, Tim?

The sky?

Yeah.

The electricity, uh, more and more every day is coming from renewable energy and

it's, and it's just frigging fantastic.

Um.

You know, we recently had some 40 degree days and a bit of a heat

wave, you know, whether it was in Melbourne or across Eastern Australia.

And in the old days it's like, oh my god, crisis, the

electricity system's gonna crash.

We got a heat wave.

Everybody would be turning on their air conditioners.

We'll tell you what happened, uh, over the last, uh, you know, couple of weeks.

It's like, hmm.

Did anything happen?

No, nothing happened because at the same time, people were

turning on their air conditioners.

Of course, that's also when the solar panels are doing their

thing and now we have more battery storage on the main grid.

This is a good topic.

Congratulations.

And we have more, you know, of course we have this, uh, huge government

incentive now for batteries in homes.

And so, you know, the system now can easily handle the summer heat waves

and the air conditioning load there.

What will be more interesting and challenging, uh, will

be the, the midwinter.

Yeah.

Because of course your solar's not as strong.

Maybe the wind isn't blowing.

We haven't built enough energy storage.

Um, and at the same time we have people buying electric cars and

getting their homes off, off gas.

And, uh, you know, you'll, you'll be wanting to run your air conditioners

in the winter for heating, and though they don't use that much

electricity, they use some.

So yeah, winter's gonna be the, the bigger challenge on the electricity

systems than summer has been.

But, uh, yeah, we're, you know, Australia.

You know, doing reasonably well in this one space, even if we're failing in other

spaces, you know, we're still, uh, love to export gas and coal to other countries,

but for our own electricity supplies, yeah, they get greener all the time.

So there's been huge progress there.

So before we keep going to houses, the one thing I think hasn't been discussed as an

industry or electrification data centers.

He's gonna consume a ton of power in the future.

Do you know, I, I don't know the, I don't, I haven't looked too much

into it, but is it, do you know much about how we're gonna actually.

Cool.

These places run em.

Okay.

Um, yeah, so it's just gonna be, um, be more, uh, wind and solar and storage.

So, uh, you would hope that, that the people when they're thinking

about building a data data center, do think about where the

electricity is going to come from.

This shouldn't be your problem or my problem.

It shouldn.

Yeah, no, it does, but it does, does become our problem at some point.

Oh, it depends how it's all regulated and connected to the grid, et cetera.

So, no, I don't think you can just.

Front up with a huge electricity draw and, um, not have some people ask some

questions about how it's all gonna work.

So, um, yeah, outside my area expertise.

But you'd hope there'd be some people looking at it and at least

now we are starting to hear about it.

Yeah, because we're, we've had dinner data centers for a while.

And we'll have more in the future.

And so yeah, hopefully there's some, uh, work being done as to, um, how

they're gonna supply the electricity.

And of course, yeah, you do need to cool them.

You can use water, you can use air.

So they say, oh, they use a lot of water for cooling.

Well, you don't have to use water.

You can use air.

It's a bit less efficient.

But that's another way to do things.

So we've um, we've electrified our homes.

We put solar panels on, we put batteries on.

Uh, and that's great.

That's awesome.

But if we've got a leaky inefficient home.

Yeah.

Then, you know, we're just using, and particularly getting back to that point

about the winter, uh, the, you know, you might have an issue in winter.

What are some of the low hanging fruit that anyone today can go and do in

their own home to make their homes more efficient so they're not using as much

heating in winter and cooling in summer?

Yeah.

So, um, a top one can be checking out your roof space insulation and, uh,

you know, if it's safe to do so, if you can go have a look at your roof space

insulation, if you see any bare plaster when you're up in your roof space.

Well, that's a problem 'cause you're, you're unprotected and

you do see a lot of bare plaster.

In fact, I see bare plaster every time I go into the roof space.

Why?

Well, because someone went up there to install the NBN or to install the solar

panels or, um, the contractor was lazy.

Yeah.

Or check a roof leak or something like that and they'll move the installation

outta the way and never put it back.

And so, uh, most often you find a lot of flaws in the roof space.

And, um, I've got kind of a bald head here, you know, on a hot summer day,

I can, I don't even need a thermal imaging camera into the red camera.

I mean, those cameras are useful.

You can go in and you could say, right, that spot of your roof

there, it's 36 degrees, you know?

Yeah.

'cause it's not insulated.

Um, but I can actually feel that on the top of my head as well,

so I don't, I'm getting there.

I was about to say that.

Can you feel the same thing too?

Don't even gimme five.

Don't need the, uh, thermal imaging camera anymore.

So yeah, fixing up your roof space insulation for some people, if it's

safe to do so they could do that.

DIY, but, uh, or perhaps get in a insulation, uh, installer and, um.

Get your roof space insulation.

Right.

That's important.

And another one, uh, another one.

Um, I'll save the best for last.

The second one is the window coverings.

So, you know, warm window coverings inside for, for winter to keep

the heat in, but it's summer now.

So also some sort of shading outside.

Yeah.

To keep the sun from, you know, the sun from, uh, hitting the glass.

That's critical.

And then the third one's the draft proofing.

So, um, our homes are very leaky.

They were leaky by design.

The older ones, you know, where maybe in the old days they used wood or coal

for heating, you'll find these old wall vents in the wall, and that was for air

to come through and to burn the wood and the coal and then go out to chimney.

So, um, if you haven't been burning wood or coal in your house as your

main energy source for a while.

Then, uh, you could possibly think about closing up those wall vents.

Oh.

Um, you should probably get off gas first because, um, some gas heaters as

well need that oxygen coming in through the wall to, uh, burn the gas in an

old, uh, wall gas heater, for example.

Um, or any gas heater potentially can be putting out carbon

monoxide and could kill you.

Yes.

So, uh, before you start the draft proving it's a really good idea to have that.

The gas out of the house, then you're not gonna die from carbon monoxide just

on the gas that then you can set about, then you can set about plugging up the,

the, the house and drought proofing it.

And the, and the last thing we should probably talk

about is moisture management.

On top of that, I want to just jump back to the gas scene

because I get really confused.

And when a client's like, nah, we need gas, so let, let's just go to hot water.

No one runs outside to go, did it come from gas or electricity?

So to me it should be really easy.

Just swap, there shouldn't be even a discussion on that one.

Yeah.

And can I, can I just add something to that?

So, uh, late last year we replaced our last gas appliance and that

was our, that was our heater.

So had Drew, um, uh, come over and installed an all-in one ducts.

Uh, unit, uh, now this unit is not our long-term one.

It's actually gonna go on our barn at some point.

D is made by reclaim.

Am I right?

I don't know, but anyway, great unit.

Um, really cost effective, but I'll tell you what, that is so

much quicker to get to the point of my tap than the gas one was.

I don't know why.

So did you have a tankless gas, a hot water system?

Uh, instantaneous.

Yep.

Instantaneous.

Well, they call it instantaneous because it's not, yeah, so it's good marketing.

So an instantaneous gas unit is the opposite of instantaneous.

Okay, great.

Yeah.

Whereas what is instantaneous is a tank of hot water sitting there.

Whether it was like the old school gas appliance really by

gas in the old days, or electric resistive or hot water heat pump.

A tank of hot water is sitting there waiting for you to use

it is truly instantaneous.

Whereas the old, um, gas tankless units, I call them tankless, not instantaneous.

Yeah.

Um, you know, you would turn them on and they would think about it and they're

like, Hmm, I wonder if this guy's serious.

Does he want hot water?

Uh, yeah, I guess he wants hot water.

All right, I'll fire up and it's gonna take me a little

bit while to heat up the water.

And then finally it would heat the water.

And then you still have the delay with any system of the, the, you know, just

purging the cold water outta the pipes.

So any home's gonna have some delay.

But yeah, the so-called instantaneous were particularly non instantaneous.

Yep.

Well, I love my ducks unit.

And then Look, ducks have no affiliation with the podcast whatsoever.

I love that too.

But, but from a, but from a, a, a cost point of view, like it was a.

Really cost effective unit to put in.

But, um, the, the point I was trying to make is what you were saying

before I turn it on now and it's boom.

Yeah.

Hot water.

Love it.

You're not sitting there going, oh, did the gas heat it up, you in the shower?

Yeah.

So then, okay, so let's jump onto heating.

No one cares if it's come from electric or gas as well.

Like they're not jumping up to see if the pilot light's on or not.

Like it's if they're keeping warm and the heat is working.

Yeah.

That, that, that, um, that could be.

Be true.

Like if you had a ducted gas heating system and then now you're, you've

got a ducted reverse cycle system.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That could seem pretty much the same, but in, in some homes, the, the other switch

is you might have ducted gas, but Okay.

We're not gonna go with a ducted air conditioning system.

We'll have the individual split systems in the individual rooms.

So that can be a bit of a, a change.

Totally.

Yeah.

The hot water can be dead easy, and that's why you find now

the Victorian government has.

Said that we will not be replacing gas hot water, uh, with another gas,

hot water system, unless I'm, I'm sure there's some loopholes through all that.

Yeah.

But that's the, uh, that's the main thrust.

That's awesome.

And Victorian government was, was happy to take that step, whereas they haven't

said the same about heating, because Yeah, heating can be a little bit trickier

as to exactly what you're gonna do.

It's not necessarily just, just like for like.

And then we've got cooking.

Mm. So I love cooking and I have a Boer downdraft range Wood now.

Mm. A Yeah.

The, the downdraft, um, cooktop.

I, but does Is that induction?

Induction?

Yeah.

Okay.

Right.

I I, I don't when people say that like, oh, I've got gas yet.

Way more control, like, fuck off.

Straight off.

Like you get so much control off an induction.

Yes.

It's one to 15.

It's, you know, it's, there's 15 different settings on the gas.

I'm not sure.

You know?

Yeah.

And, and you're visually looking at it.

'cause I think the thing is, and we've spoken to Sarah from Electrify

this week, it's a visual thing.

We think we have control.

Mm-hmm.

But I can tell you now, like the ability to like ball something

and instantly simmer it.

Like with a click of a finger.

Yeah.

I, I, I don't understand anyone that would want to put gas in it.

And I'll tell you what, man, as your kids get older, 'cause I've got two,

uh, three kids and they want, when they're hungry, they're hungry pot.

And if they want 10 minute noodles, they're pot of water done like that.

Yeah.

My, my story is, you know, I might, I'm not a big cook, but I may cook a big

breakfast and so I'm gonna be having some tomatoes and mushrooms and spinach

and later I'll put the egg on there.

But I always have to remember to put the toast down first because I'm

gonna be done cooking all this over here before the toast is even ready.

So that's what the induction And you don't burn anything because you

can control, you really control it.

That's right.

You work it out Eventually, you know, you don't use the pee anymore

'cause that's too bloody powerful.

It's too fast.

Um, and so, yeah, you gotta, uh, gauge it down a little bit.

But we had, we had, um, we had, uh, Ben, who's the executive chef from Chin Chin

on, and he, so he's a good friend of mine.

Uh, recently bought another house in Warren Di.

Moved in and there was an induction cooktop and he said to

his wife, you know what, that'll be the first thing we change.

Uh, we'll change it back to gas.

'cause he's just used to cooking with gas.

And after a while of cooking on it, he's like, you know what,

I actually really love this.

Oh, thank God.

Yeah.

So like, he's an absolute convert now.

And you know, we've been chatting with him.

Um.

Goodbye gas and, and trying to get him to come on and like advocate

for cooking with induction.

We just need to try and figure out like a really cool catchphrase that's not.

Cooking with gas, but mm-hmm cooking, with, just cooking properly.

I dunno what, so I actually, so on that cooking with electrons, yeah.

So he, he made a point where he, I remember him talking and he didn't

put his pad cu in his cookbook because of he couldn't get the right

temperature in a house off gas.

So he's like, I'm not putting something if we can't replicate it.

The same in the house as I would in the restaurant over Christmas.

I have that cookbook and I actually, he's now in there 'cause he's got

his induction and I cooked it.

Yeah.

He's induction cooked and it was unreal.

Like you, I, I was able to like to fry off the noodle to get that

burn char through it, and then.

Something you, I could never do that on a gas.

Yeah.

I think, um, you know, my fish Electric home, the Facebook group,

that's kind of a useful way to see what's being talked about out there.

And, uh, yeah.

Three, four or five years ago, oh, you know, endless discussion

about induction versus gas.

Induction versus gas for cooking.

Oh, the induction's no good.

Oh, I can't do this.

Can't do that.

We're not hearing so much of that anymore.

Yeah.

So you kind of feel like we've kind of moved on and even.

A few years ago, the gas industry was running ads about

how great gas cooking is.

And in fact, um, you know, they were telling some, some lies there, so they

got shut down by the advertising council.

Yeah, good.

And so I guess the gas industry's kind of backed off, uh, from that

a bit as well, so we don't really hear that discussion so much.

Yeah.

I had one client, uh, she had me into the house.

She said, yeah, I wanna talk about insulation, drought

proofing, heating, hot water, but.

We won't talk about cooking because my husband's a chef and

so we'll stick with the gas.

I'm like, okay, fine, fine, fine.

Um, and so I didn't talk about it for half of the session, but eventually I

kind of brought it up again and, you know, has anybody in the house got asthma?

Oh yeah, my kids got asthma or whatever.

Well, I gotta tell you that, you know, a fair chunk of childhood

asthma is linked to, um, gas cooking in the home, et cetera.

Uh, but anyway, I didn't say too much more about it, but like two

weeks later I get the text message.

You'll never believe it.

My husband's, you know, decided that we'll go with induction at home.

Wow.

So draft proofing.

'cause it continues on from where we were before.

Um, I think it's a big wallet we now build airtight.

Yep.

I think it's the, the last.

Big tick box of a, a home that we can, we can look at.

I know the, was it five, six years ago?

The average air exchange of a normal home was 15.4, and Justin, who works

performance membrane, screwed that data up because in Tassie there

was one set of data and his three houses that were under passive house

levels we're now down to seven.

So this is big positive change here, but that's new homes.

We're not looking here at.

The existing home and draft proofing.

I've gone from, just for context, I've gone from living in a really crappy

old house that we didn't do much to.

I now live in a passive house, so I've gone from one to the

other, and the comfort levels are different, and the main one is.

Draft, draft proofing we're airtight.

I, I don't even like the ceiling fan anymore because it's like the breeze.

It just reminds me of the old house.

Yeah, there's this, there's this thing called radiant asymmetry, and that's

like, if you're sitting by campfire, the front of your body is warm, but

the, you know, if it's a cold day or you know, the back of the back of you

is cold, and so you can experience that in homes as well where, you know.

You've got that surface over there that's warm enough, um, maybe it's by

the heater, but that surface over there, a single glazed window is, is cold.

And so you just feel these radiant things going on and um, and yeah, you'll get air

currents and drafts, et cetera, whereas, uh, the more comfortable situation is

just where every surface is, you know, 20 degrees or whatever you want it to be.

And yeah, you don't need a lot of, uh, air blowing around the place

to make you feel comfortable.

But of course, in your passive house, you'd have your mechanical

heat recovery ventilation.

Yeah.

So you would have some airflow, which is important.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's very, yeah.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

But the biggest one, we talk on that the touching of services.

So my biggest gripe with the industries, we've gotta throw

hydronic heating in our slab.

So I've got a decoupled slab, a hundred mil XBES insulation and just a slab.

I'm walking bare feet.

And it's the only surface that we actually as humans.

Contact all the time.

Like we don't sit up against the wall and place ourself on

the wall to feel what it's like, but that slab is so comfortable.

I can't understand why you'd ever put hydronic in a slab.

Like, because it's just we, we can build in a way, now that we know that

the comfort level can be the same.

Either or.

Sure.

There was a, uh, article in Renew Magazine, so published by the excellent

not-for-profit organization, uh, renew.

And, uh, the fellow, Cameron Monroe had, uh, done an extension to his house.

And basically the title of the article was How I Blew $40,000.

And because what he did is he.

Got a, uh, he had the hydronic in the slab and it was powered by a heat pump.

'cause of course he wasn't gonna be using gas, but of course he had

also built a good, uh, you know, uh, building shell with, uh, top insulation

and draft proofing and good windows.

And he'd also done another thing.

Which was a problem.

He put an air conditioner in there, split system.

And so of course what he found was all he needed to do all winter long in a space

like that that was built well was just to have the air conditioner slowly ticking

over in the background, bringing in what small amount of heat was, was leaking out.

And uh, so basically he was happy to write the article about how he blew $40,000 on

all the hydronic stuff, which this, which.

Which he never bothers to turn on.

So Cameron Rose, a good friend of the podcast.

He's been on here, a number of Times's, a regular, he's a regular guest,

uh, and does, oh, would say most of our passive house, uh, analysis.

But he hasn't told us about the No, he told us he didn't get his air change, but

he hadn't told us about the hydraulic.

He's kept that one a little bit quiet.

Yeah.

I mean, a post came up the other day, uh, on my fish electric home.

Yeah, they're doing a major renovation.

It's gonna have a great building shell.

And she says, uh, you know, but, but I just got a quote for

the hydronic and it's $30,000.

And so I had to get on there and say, Hey, you know, if you want me.

That's pretty good quote too, by the way, for hydronic.

Yeah.

Here's what I've written for before about hydronic.

Um, you know, so there's a post that you can read.

Yeah.

How you probably aren't going to, how you aren't or not going to need it.

Um, and, uh, then.

I added another comment later saying that I could go visit them,

you know, as part of my business and maybe save them the $30,000.

You're right, it seems like a pretty cheap quote.

I used to, you know, think it was like 40,000 or something with

radiators and all the other stuff.

That's a quote for, we had one, so we've got a retrofit project at the moment

that we're, we are gonna start soon.

We have to keep it because we've only got 2.4 ceiling height.

I can't build up and put insulation on top.

We just won't meet code anymore.

So we're keeping it, but we're gonna sort of.

Trench around the outsides and at least get some insulation on the,

on the footing to keep it in there.

And just replacing the system was about 40 grand.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

Yeah, it's quite expensive.

I mean, my, my son moved into a place, first thing we did

was rip out the hydronic.

That's expensive to run.

Yeah.

That would've been gas fired.

In his case.

The home he bought already had three, can air, three air conditioners.

So just put two more in the other bedrooms and boom, job done.

So again, he, he saved a, a heap either in the short term with the operating costs

or the longer term when you're looking at a, replacing it with a heat pump.

The reason that people like hydronic is.

You know, they've experienced hydronic in a crappy home where, you know, they

knew that with the hydronic, at least if they set their backside on the

radiator, their backside would be warm.

And so that's, that's the reason they're like, I must have hydronic.

They've not had the experience of living in a decent, uh, thermal shell, you

know, seven star or even better wear.

Uh, every surface is just, you know, the temperature that you want it to

be and where hydronics not needed.

So yeah, they're, they're kind of coming from this lived

experience in a crappy house.

Yes.

Um, and then they visited somebody's home.

At least they could sit on the hydronic radiator and they were warm

and they think that's what they're gonna need and not having a modern

place hot air blown over them.

Like we're, our house is constantly, and I've got data

tracking through my whole house.

Right now.

We're constantly sitting 22 to 23 degrees.

That heatwave, that just heatwave, that just come recently, we

consumed on that one day one.

Was it one kilowatt the whole day?

I consumed yesterday.

What?

I was just grabbing the data up before.

Sure.

It can be, it can be absolutely tiny.

Our old weatherboard, which isn't.

Perfect.

Not every window's yet double glaze.

We don't even have under floor insulation.

We're so low to the ground.

I don't have perfect window coverings on everything, but we would spend

less than $150 a year across the whole year for Oh wow, that's awesome.

And cooling.

And that's not taking any credit from solar or battery or anything.

Um, that's just how cheap it can be.

And uh, you know, on the coldest day, you know, we might spend a, a dollar 50.

On the, uh, electricity to it up stay warm on the coldest day.

Yeah.

Whereas there's people out there still spending 10, 15, 20, $30 a day on gas.

So, uh, so that's what's possible.

People say, how can I go from $30 to $1?

Well.

If you're no longer heating with gas, but you're heating with an air

conditioner, oh, that cuts it to a third.

So we go from $30 to $10 and then if you make the improvements and go from

30 air changes an hour down to like six, you're, you're cutting it again

and you fix the roof space insulation and some better window coverings.

Boom.

That's how you can, can get from spending $30 a day on heating down to a buck 50.

That's like a Netflix subscription per day.

Yep.

Like that's, if we want to compare what people will spend their

money on, that's practically.

Uh, that it's actually, it's, it's even more than that.

That's, it should be Melbourne.

That's why it should be in Melbourne and Australia.

This is not extreme climate.

This is not 40 below sort of stuff, but we've, this isn't new.

This isn't, this is the other thing.

Like, it's not like you've come up with this concept.

Well, I guess the air conditioners are new and you know.

10 years ago is when we said that it was a third, the cost of

heat with the air conditioners.

And there was, there was two reasons because the price of gas had gone

up a lot, but the air conditioners today or 10 years ago are a lot better

than they were 10 years before that.

So there, there have been improvements on the air conditioning space as well,

just making it cheaper all the time.

And then if.

You know, you could turn on your air conditioner once the sun's shining.

You have solar panels.

Well, yeah.

That's practically free.

And now a lot of people are gonna have batteries.

So even turning on the air conditioner for heating or cooling in the middle of

the night is basically gonna be free.

The battery ones there.

And you got a question?

Yeah.

You, you, you touched on, um, some of these improvements before, like the sort

of low hanging fruit, and you did very quickly touch on moisture management.

Mm. So what a, I mean.

You know, we build high performance airtight homes.

We've got a centralized HIV That's right.

Which, which in itself manages the internal Maybe, maybe, well,

maybe we'll come back to that.

Okay, great.

Yeah.

Awesome.

But gen, generally speaking, I'm, I'm talking more more talking about

like a, an existing home where someone's doing their own DIY stuff.

How, what, what are your recommendations for managing.

Uh, the change in building physics.

So yeah, moisture management.

So the first tip is, is get yourself a little, uh, humidity monitor

hydrometer, you might wanna call it.

You know, you get 'em for 20 bucks off the internet.

Something that can tell you your humidity levels and your temperature, heck by

three or four of them, and spread 'em throughout the house in a bathroom down

the bottom of a wardrobe, you know, down in the basement if you go to a basement

or something like that, or a sunken area.

Anyway.

Uh, we're meant to live in a relative humidity zone of like 40 to 60%.

Yeah.

Um, and what we find is often, particularly in winter around Melbourne,

et cetera, is the humidity can be way too high in homes in the winter,

and that's where you can end up with issues with, with asthma or dust mites,

but also eventually mold, et cetera.

But the absolute humidity is a lot lower though when we talk winter,

because water will hold more.

Or less moisture.

Yeah.

The, um, so the, the number you get off these little devices is relative

to humidity, which is the amount of moisture that can be held in air

relative to the temperature, but that confuses the hell of a lot of people.

So, uh, and anyway, 40 to 60% is the relative humidity range

we're meant to be living in.

And some people will say, well, maybe the humidity's too low.

Well, yeah, if you're in Canada, in the wintertime, they will have an issue with

moisture in their homes being too low, and they might actually run humidifiers.

Yes.

But we don't find that in Melbourne.

What you find is the humidity getting up to 60 and then into seventies.

So beyond that.

The healthy range and, um, and particularly, yeah, if we're, if we're

starting now to do the draft proofing, you know, maybe your humidity used to

be lower when your house was so leaky.

Now we've draft proofed it.

Great.

We're keeping the smoke out, which is important.

Yeah.

For bush fires, et cetera.

Or maybe your no neighbor's barbecue.

Um, but also, um, you know, it, and, and we're, uh, with draft proofing,

we've reduced our energy costs.

But you do have to also keep an eye on things like moisture and carbon dioxide.

We breathe out carbon dioxide, so you gotta open the windows from time

to time if you don't have mechanical heat recovery ventilation to get the

carbon dioxide out of the house and the moisture can even be, be trickier.

So you look at it and you're like, yeah.

Yeah.

Down at the bottom of the wardrobe.

There it is.

Getting above 60%.

I did have some mold on my leather shoes there once.

Yeah.

So where's that coming from?

You know, moisture comes into the house, uh, because of the cooking, because of

the bathrooms, but also, uh, you know, in the bathrooms, the showering, et cetera.

But also, uh, the dog, when the dog's breathing out, that's moisture.

When you're breathing out, that's moisture.

If you're putting water on a pot plant, that basically comes out the

transfusion to the, uh, yeah, it could be coming in from the, yeah.

You know, leaking through the walls or through the environment.

But another really important one is the closed drawing.

So we find a lot of people in Melbourne, and they may even do this

in the houses that you're building.

They're hanging, um, they're hanging laundry around the house to dry.

Um, 'cause they think that's efficient, but it's, it's not.

Um, and maybe a mechanical heat recovery ventilation system will

save them and we'll drive out the clothes and the moisture and

the moisture leaves the house.

But in your more ordinary homes, yeah, there's a lot of people out there hanging

house clothes around the house to dry.

And again, that.

You know, that could work in a very leaky house, but once you've, uh,

draft proofed, you need to stop that.

Sure.

Hang your clothes outside to dry if you can.

But in Melbourne, in winter, there will be weeks when that's difficult.

And so these days they've invented seven to 10 energy star.

Very efficient.

Heat pump, condensing clothes dryers, which are basically

dehumidifiers for your clothes.

Yeah.

And so use those, uh, rather than hanging the laundry around and

ending up with a moisture problem.

The other thing you can do, so I've got the heat pump, they're

all dry, they're awesome.

Yeah.

If you have the space inside, what, what I've done with my house, I

couldn't make the whole thing work.

But you put your heat pump tank inside 'cause you're generating heat and just

that if you put your tank inside, 'cause it's obviously, as you said originally,

you've got a tank full of hot water.

So that will initially give some heat across the house too.

So like you keep it a little bit more stable, but, um, what you can do is you

can have like a hanging rail in there.

And you can actually hang your clothes in the same cupboard as your heat

pump tank and that will dry it off from the heat from the, the tank.

Well, you might get your clothes dry, but the concern in a existing ordinary

home is where does the moisture go?

So in your place you've got mechanical, heat recovery, ventilation, and so

the moisture leaves the fair point.

Someone else were to try that.

The moisture will find its way to the coldest, darkest place of the house

that's potentially this problem.

Don't.

Don't hang clothes around the house to dry unless, you know, the, the

only way that could work is if you had a, a, uh, a dehumidifier.

Yeah.

Um, that can work.

But like I say, or you're monitoring your humidity inside and you, you're

making sure you got no problem.

Um, but a. Like I say, the heat pump, condensing clothes dry

is basically a dehumidifier for the clothes anyway, so use it.

They don't cost that much to operate.

And in the middle of the day, electricity is free now, isn't it?

Yeah.

Or if you've got a battery and even in the middle of the night.

Yeah.

So battery's a good one because, uh, I legally couldn't

put a battery on my house.

I, I wanted to put one on.

We're just the st couldn't, couldn't fit it.

Yeah, no, it's just, yeah, they, we, we are building into two boundaries,

and this is the issue that I've realized is the ones that we need them

are a lot of the inner city suburbs.

Um, the, if we, for example, we'll talk Carlton or it says Terrace, terrace

Terrace, like surely we've gotta come up with a solution for something like that.

Yeah.

And I'm not sure I've got that solution today, but, uh, yeah.

And also your car.

Um, so you don't have car parking?

No, I don't have car parking.

I do the Right.

So we can't run your house off your car.

That's another option.

Yeah.

For some people.

So that's, that's the, that's my future thing.

'cause I'm generating, like, I generated 66 kilowatt hours

yesterday and I used 1.32.

Yeah, look, so we got, we got an electricity grid and people, you know,

people can leave the gas grid, but you're gonna stay on the sewer and water grid.

Yeah.

You're gonna stay on the NBN grid, uh, um, of one sort or another, and you're

gonna stay on the electricity grid.

So that's what it's there for.

That's a, it's a social benefit.

Not every home is gonna be its own fortress that it can look

after itself a hundred percent.

Um, so that's what the electricity grid is there for.

And, uh, you know, we are hearing things about.

The plans that are being offered from the electricity suppliers of like free

electricity in the middle of the day.

Yeah.

So, uh, renters or people in the smaller, uh, apartments or, or

whatever where you're more constrained.

Um, yeah, look, look out to the system there and what it's able to offer you.

And you may find some.

Sweet deals.

Not every property needs to have solar.

Why not?

Because your neighbor has solar.

Yeah.

And so we've got a market, we've got an electricity grid, and so you can

actually benefit from that stuff.

And, and it's like for a renter, for example, you might be out the house and

if your power is free from say 12 to three, the sun's peak kind of thing, you

just might set your, your air con, like I've got a day in air con, like you can

just set the timer between 10 and 10 and uh, 12 and three just to turn the heater

onto a certain temperature or the cooler.

So by the time you come home from work.

It's a little bit more comfortable.

That's right.

If the place isn't terrifically leaky.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you've got good roof space insulation, it's draft proofed and

you've got some window coverings.

Yeah.

Some of that heater cold will still be there by the time you come home.

Yeah.

And if it's free, like you might as well utilize It might,

well, might as well use it.

In fact, it benefits the system because.

You know, on our electricity grid, when there's a lot of solar

prices actually go negative.

I've got, so some people are getting paid for using electricity.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Use it.

That's what the market signals are telling us.

It's not wasteful anymore to, to use something that, uh, you know,

is abundant at, at certain moments.

There may be a bit too much of now that's gonna dynamically change.

You know, if we went out tomorrow and suddenly built a lot more

batteries than, you know.

Some people say We have too much solar.

No, no, we enough.

We're gonna have a lot more solar in the future than what we've got now.

But right at the moment, we don't have enough, uh, uh, storage places to park it.

So yeah, there could be a bit of an imbalance Right at the moment, community

batteries is where I see the big one.

Yeah, there's um, yeah, so more batteries, more energy storage out there.

We'll soak up some of this solar, but then we'll build more solar and

then we gotta build more batteries, and then we're building data centers,

so we gotta build more solar and we gotta build more batteries.

So this is gonna keep going for a while.

Yeah.

We can't solve all the problems.

Now, Tim, um, you say you've got, uh, you've still got your, uh, home,

what, what do you call it, where you go out and you assess people's homes?

Like I call myself a home comfort and energy advisor.

And is that something that, uh, our listeners can get in contact

with you still, or, oh, sure.

You know, I've got a website, tim forey.com au.

So.

So there it is.

So, um, yeah, it's been great fun.

I've been in over a thousand homes.

Um, standard consult, I go in for three hours.

It's like a tutorial.

I mean, you know, the client will say, do I need to be there?

Well, you're damn straight.

You need to be there because it's a tutorial.

We're gonna look at everything together.

I'm even gonna drag you up into the roof space if, if you can manage the ladder.

So you can personally see your, um, your installation or I can take some photos.

If you don't wanna come up the ladder, that's fine.

But, uh, yeah, I spend three hours with the, uh, the client and, uh,

we look at everything and I offer a whole bunch of suggestions and they

even have to take notes 'cause I'm not gonna go home and write it up.

Yeah, it would be a 50,000 word, uh, uh, essay, you know, 'cause there's.

Just so much.

Um, so yeah, their note taking is important, but some, some have even

done audio recording or video recording.

That's good.

Whatever you wanna do.

Ai, ai, ai, ai recording one.

The one guy recorded everything and then told AI to process it.

And it was, now he's got a book, now he's got a book.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was there.

So there it all, so anyway, you don't need to write reports anymore.

The, we have the internet, we have AI people.

People can keep track of these things.

We've got a book, but at the, there's a book you can write and there's

a book as a book you can write.

Yeah.

But in the, in the end, um, you know, then we come back and we talk about

the priorities and work out what are the things they're really gonna do.

And then independently I can say, well, here's people you know, that could,

uh, you know, do your installation.

Or Here's people that, you know, seem to be doing a good job with the solar

panels, or whatever it might be.

And then I offer to stay in touch with people afterwards if they have any

problems, making all those subsequent steps, getting the quotes, pushing

the button, getting things happening.

I'm happy to stay in touch, uh, afterwards as well, and that, that also keeps me

in touch with, with what's going on out there in the, in the, the marketplace.

Well, that was my next question.

How do you continue to learn?

Yeah.

Yeah.

With, yeah.

Either working with the clients or the Facebook group's.

Enormous.

Yeah.

And of course, just reading all the stuff that's, that's out there on LinkedIn

or Renew Economy or Renew Magazine, because that's an awesome research.

Renew and Sanctuary do my, the only magazine I subscribe to,

and there's, there's a, there's another amazing, uh, Instagram.

Uh, account that people should follow.

And it's Jenny Edwards and, and, uh, ish Fayer up in Canberra.

The fix it chicks.

The fix it chicks.

Fix it.

Chicks, yeah.

Uh, like honestly, low cost, like low hanging fruit tip tips and tricks.

Uh, I think they've got.

Tens of thousands of followers on that.

Oh really?

That's great.

Yeah, I never was really to get the Instagram happening,

just that was a bridge too far.

But I guess the point I'm trying to make is there's a lot of free information

out there for you to make improvements to your home over this weekend.

It's a long weekend here in Australia, you got three days going.

Yep.

Oh, you've got three days to go and, um, and plan that one to go and

draft proof and, and look at all the things that you can do in your home.

Yeah.

You get some external shading happening.

Grab, grab.

Yeah.

It's meant to be hot here in Melbourne.

Grab the book.

And where can people get this book from?

Oh, just everywhere.

So My Fish and Electric Home handbook.

Yeah.

It's.

You know, still in bookstores and, uh, libraries and online

and lots of different places.

Uh, yeah, clean your air conditioner filters, that's big one.

Uh, you'll probably have the air conditioner on coming up,

so, um, clean that filter.

I mean, particularly if you're using the air conditioner or

winter long for heating as well.

People used to say, oh, I'd clean my fill every two years or something.

No, no, no, no.

If, um, you know, you're using it a bit, especially for heating

every couple of months, more than every couple of years, yeah.

I mean, we, we encourage our clients.

We've actually got a recurring, uh, email that goes out every quarter to

remind them to clean their filters.

And then we offer a service where we can, and Deacon, on the deacon

I have, it actually pops up.

Yeah, any filter, it actually is like a, it comes up, Hey, that time fantastic.

Because gee, people, people just don't know.

I mean, I've had CSRO scientists that had no idea there were a

filter in their split system.

You know, you open it up and you're like, oh my god.

You know?

Yeah.

I've got one final question, and before we do the mindful moment, so.

I Facebook comment sections can be a pretty toxic place at sometimes

and that takes a mental toll on some of the comments you get.

Like they're not always positive.

How have you dealt with that over time and is that something that's taken a mental

load on you or has like at times Got you.

Like, why am I doing this?

Yeah.

I mean, I haven't even been an admin.

At the Facebook group for about the last three years.

Uh, you know, I was an admin for seven years, and you're right, it was probably

time to, to get out at that point, but before I made that move, um, you know,

we had, we had six other admins and, uh, five of them are still there working hard

and I check in from time to time and they, they seem to be managing it, but, um.

Yeah.

Uh, some people say this group is the best thing on Facebook or

on social media, so that's good.

And um, so it's just up to the members to report things

they see that they don't like.

Um, 'cause the admins don't see everything.

So, uh, report stuff and then the admins can figure out if they're gonna

deal with it or not deal with it.

Um, and, uh, yeah, so you can clean things up pretty.

Pretty quickly.

I mean, you, you, you've get your robots and scams and stuff that come

across anyway, um, which are just, uh, generated by some machine somewhere.

So that still slips through occasionally, but other people come

on and, you know, say something that's a bit abusive, so, okay.

They need to be dumped out or misinformation or, yeah, if we've

got, oh, there can be as far as information people, you know,

like the other day, oh, commercial kitchens will never use induction.

So you don't get upset about a comment like that.

It's a learning opportunity.

Education.

Yeah.

And so you say, well, okay, read this article about all these commercial

kitchens that are now using induction or read what this top chef is saying

about, I think the Mulberry group are looking at electrifying a lot of

their, um, kitchens across Victoria.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, um, some of the comments you're like, oh, I wish do I wish that comment wasn't.

There.

I mean, it's just evidence that the message has not gotten fully across,

but it's a learning opportunity.

So if it's done respectfully and professionally, we can try to teach

some people I buy back, but I always ask my favorite question is why?

Why, like, why do you think so?

And it unravels 'em pretty quickly.

Like, why, why do, oh no, I don't ask questions.

I provide information.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, because I can kind of see where they're coming from, right?

They don't know.

They, they haven't read the latest.

So here's the latest read that, I mean, that's their problem.

But, uh, Facebook's a lot easier to link in a comment

link in a, like, uh, an article.

Instagram is, you can't do that.

You can't do that.

That's, and maybe why I haven't bothered with Instagram.

Mindful moment.

Yep.

You got something?

Uh, I'll throw it over to you, Matt.

Okay, so this week's Mindful moment, brought to you by ME gt

Australia's largest training provider.

Um, Tim, the whole idea of the mindful moment is we, we want to

sort of give people something to take away, uh, for what they do.

An apprentice that we, we've both got apprentices and learning.

Um, I think the mindful moment for me this week is something

just like electrification.

It can be done.

I think that, um.

It's not new technology.

There's still a fair bit of misinformation out there, I think from gas companies

and providers and that, and that's okay.

Like they're, they're doing their job as we spoke about earlier on.

But I think that we've got a cha like apprentices, when we spoke about plumbers,

like I've speaking to my plumber and he's like, but I'm not gonna have any work in

the future because if we get rid of all the, the gas, like what am I gonna do?

I'm like, we've still got water buddy.

And he still got sewer.

Yep.

So I think and get, and get your refrigeration license or air conditioning.

Yeah.

Refrigeration license.

Refrige.

I go do the mechanical ventilation as a job.

That is the most clean work ever as a plumber.

So I, I think from, if you are worried as an apprentice, as a, say a plumbing

apprentice, you might lose your job because, oh, we're gonna have gas work.

I'm like, mate, there's so much more opportunity for you.

I'll tell you what, like, I think, do we know a plumber that's not busy?

I, I, I would say that that organizations like MEGT are only

gonna get busier over the next decade.

Because so many more people are seeing trades as a stable,

viable, uh, employment.

So, you know, if you are a, um, even a mature age person Yeah.

Looking at switching industries now, I'd a hundred percent encourage you to

get in in touch with people like MEGT.

Um, and something else to add to what you were saying before, Matt,

like particularly with the younger generation that are coming through, like.

My feeling is that these guys don't, that they, they haven't been, um,

bombarded with all this messaging from the fossil fuel industry like we have.

Yeah.

You know, they're coming, they're approaching this with a completely

different lens now, and they're the real change makers that I'm seeing.

And they get to do hydrogen in the future as well.

No, no.

That's a joke.

That is, that is a joke.

That is a joke.

It was like a physical reaction from Tim there.

Hydrogen goes bang.

Let's just say that.

No, no.

Um, but no, Tim, no hydrogen's expensive.

Yeah.

Oh.

Uh, yes.

It's just, it's not gonna be happening.

So anyway, Tim, thank you so much for coming on today.

Uh, you've been a huge advocate for the industry.

I know we go back to you saying you're not a leader.

I think if anything, it's actually quite the opposite.

I know you're trying to be humble there, but thank you very much for coming on.

Um, anyone that wants to reach out to Tim, everything will be in our show notes.

So thank you very much.

Thanks for having me.

Cheers.