A city planner has exposed the hidden dangers lurking in newly built houses in Aussie suburbs.
Samuel Austin warned outdated building codes meant houses were being built to retain heat rather than stay cool.
Common features on the houses are dark roofs and walls, little to no backyard and limited space at the front for a lawn or trees.
Mr Austin warned the poor design led to an increase in temperatures in the area with parts of western Sydney reaching as high as 50C in 2020.
‘And the worst part? It’s completely 100 per cent legal,’ he wrote in a Yahoo column.
Dark roofs, dark walls and little greenery is a recipe for soaring temperatures (pictures Sydney’s Marsden Park)
The outdated law never took climate change into account, making new homes already unsafe
‘This is alarming. And it isn’t just a small stretch of houses either.’
Mr Austin said in the past five years a whopping 36,000 houses have been built to the outdated codes in Sydney.
Astonishingly, another 35,000 homes are forecast to be built over the next five years using the same housing codes.
Most have little to no backyards or front spaces for trees to help cool the temperature and roads are a dark asphalt, which absorbs heat.
M Austin said that there was a joint report led by the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils (WSROC), investigating the heat of the homes.
Their study tested a brand new single-story house against a 2017 heatwave.
‘It found that even with the air conditioner running, the daytime indoor temperature crossed 28.5 degrees — well above the maximum range for a safe working environment,’ Mr Austin wrote.
‘And what about during a blackout when residents can’t run their air conditioner, a common and regular occurrence during days of extreme heat in western Sydney?
‘Indoor temperatures reached a maximum of 37.6 degrees, and exceeding 30 degrees for seven hours.’
In NSW, new houses must be considered ‘thermally comfortable’ under the law called ‘BASIX”.
The urban planner said this law ensures a house’s temperature must not reach extremes – neither too hot or too cold, as both can endanger lives.
‘But there is something very backwards about this law. It is effectively ignoring climate change,’ Mr Austin wrote.
‘Currently the law requires houses to be built to be “thermally comfortable” in the historic climate of 1990 to 2015.
‘And this is causing some big problems. Historically western Sydney had a longer “cool period” than it did a “hot period”. But that is no longer the case.’
A massive 36,000 ‘dark’ houses have already been built in Sydney’s west, with another 35,000 to be built over the next five years
When WSROC compared the housing to 2010 – 2029 data and forecasts, it found the new houses were already outdated and unable to meet the standards of ‘thermally comfortable’.
‘And when modelled against the forecasted 2050 climate? The study found that these new houses could be risking human lives,’ Mr Austin wrote.
Mr Austin said the WSROC has low-cost solutions to help address the issue.
‘Installing ceiling fans to living rooms and bedrooms can greatly improve internal thermal comfort. Adding external shading devices to windows can avoid heat gain,’ he wrote.
‘And importantly, changing external walls and roofs to lighter colours will have a significant reduction in heat generation.
‘It’s not impossible to address this issue. We have both the expertise and knowledge to solve it, we just need to make sure it gets implemented.’
