Housing for our changing climates

Skylights can keep out sunlight with pull-across blinds; lined curtains, pull-down blinds and venetian blinds can be drawn early in the morning. There can be ceiling paddle fans, even punkahs, personal electric fans, and the old resource of hand fans. In two-storey houses, downstairs can stay cool in summer, upstairs can be warmer in winter. As in many places across the world, there might even be somewhere to sleep on the roof or an outside verandah. There are many tricks for keeping the house cool that everyone should know, before turning on the air-conditioning switch.

At present both our new-built “individually designed” little boxes and new “McMansions” hardly even rate the lax environmental standards set by the states. Where are the water-tanks, essential even if not yet plumbed in? Where are the wide eaves, the heat-resistant roofing well pitched to allow insulation above the ceiling, and appropriate space for deciduous shade trees, climbers, and outdoor clothes-lines? Fittings and floors designed to need minimum cleaning and cleaners? Carpets should not require steam cleaning because they show every mark. Some fashionable basins, baths and cabinets even assume someone will be forever cleaning under them.

Homebuyers should ask, where is the storage-space? Must everything that comes in the front door require something else to be thrown out because equipment used only so often cannot be stored? Storing for salvage? Room for auxiliary appliances to use when the “family sized” washing machine, power mowers and hot water services are not needed? And are kitchen double sinks big enough for manual dishwashing too, and can a bench length take a two-tier dish rack? Room for bikes, shopping jeeps, scooters, a ladder to reach top shelves?

Where is the box that should be inside, next to every front door, with a plan of where the pipes and wires go, to be handed down from resident to resident?

Our housing should both protect against the consequences of climate change, and, by being sustainable, help to prevent it.

So while you are about it, make sure your home is as far as possible fire-proof and flood-prepared, that the roof will not fly off in a high wind, and you can survive a few days if the power goes off. And make sure that insurance premiums will reward you for being prepared.