On Todays episode we have Sam Gardel from Gardel Electrical & Solar.
Gardel Electrical & Solar was founded by Sam Gardel in 2011 after he saw a niche for a quality solar company that both designs and installs residential and commercial systems. Queensland-owned and operated, the company improves the energy efficiency of homes, businesses, and farming properties.
We discuss ways to improve your homes enevery efficiency through Solar and the correct system for you and your family.
On Todays episode we have Sam Gardel from Gardel Electrical & Solar.
Gardel Electrical & Solar was founded by Sam Gardel in 2011 after he saw a niche for a quality solar company that both designs and installs residential and commercial systems. Queensland-owned and operated, the company improves the energy efficiency of homes, businesses, and farming properties.
We discuss ways to improve your homes enevery efficiency through Solar and the correct system for you and your family.
[00:00:00] Hi, folks. Welcome back to Building with Bluebird. Today we have a great show for you. On today's episode, we have a special guest. We are lucky enough to be joined by Sam Godell from Godell Electrical and Solar. Godell Electrical and Solar was founded by Sam Godell in 2011 after he saw a niche for a quality solar company that both designs and installs residential and commercial systems.
[00:00:24] Queensland owned and operated. The company improves the energy efficiency of homes, businesses, and farming properties. Now recognized as an industry leader in the design, installation, and ongoing maintenance of electrical, renewable, and sustainable systems. Sam also takes pride in investing in his employees become the industry's best.
[00:00:42] So let's get to it. Welcome to Building with Bluebird, the Design and Renovation podcast, brought to you by Christian Case and Jeremy Thomason, directors of Bluebird Design and Build. Highlighting the DOE and don'ts of renovating or Building your Dream Home. This podcast will give you the insider's guide to the home building journey, as well as interviewing other industry specialists, Christian and Jeremy, bring their knowledge and expertise to the table for you, for people.
[00:01:08] Now let's get into this episode, and if you enjoy, please like, share, and subscribe.
[00:01:18] Great. Well thanks for coming in, Sam. Thanks for having me. So tell us a little bit, bit about yourself, I guess, and your company. So Guard Electrical's been around for nearly 12 years now, Brisbane, based in Yong Pilly. We used to do a bit of a new home electrical and renos. We've sort of steered into really specializing in solar now.
[00:01:39] So we mostly just do home efficiency stuff as well as commercial solar and a bit of lighting replacement from. Allergen and fluorescent lighting to L E d lighting. We've got about 40 employees. Yeah, nice. Fairly big team, so we get through quite a lot of work. Yeah, right. Well, obviously there's a need for it out there and there's a big market for it.
[00:02:02] How did you sort of get into, I guess you were doing some electrical stuff first and and solar, and then you've just sort of steered down more of the efficiency path. Like what reason was that for. Probably cuz I wasn't really ever trained in domestic electrical, to be fair. I did my apprenticeship as an industrial sparky and then I worked on overhead power lines.
[00:02:23] I just had to diversify pretty quickly cuz the overhead power line work got shut off on me pretty quickly. So I just sort of jumped onto what I could do and that was getting into the Reno space. Uh, to be fair, I got sick of dealing with builders is probably one that's That's very fair. Me too. Outta the, yeah, that we're doing a fair bit of high end stuff on.
[00:02:50] Yeah. Big residential renovations and it was just, I don't know, it was taking a lot of my time and then we were starting to do more and more solar and energy efficiency stuff and. I just found what I enjoyed and yeah, it just sort of took from there and we went from sort of four people to six people to 10 to 20, and it just, Seems to keep growing and I believe every sparky needs to specialize in something.
[00:03:17] If you try to do it all, you probably end up pretty ordinary at all of it. So yeah, we've dabbled in air conditioning as well, and sort of, we still do a little bit here and there, but we really don't focus on it so, It's just a whole nother set of tools and equipment and stock that we need to carry. So we just, yeah, moved into the solar space full-time.
[00:03:37] Yeah, it's a pretty good space to be with sort of everything that's happening with energy efficiency and changes to building code and, yeah. Yeah, and especially, I guess, yeah, everyone's moving to cleaner energy and also electric cars and all that electric infrastructure they're trying to get into place.
[00:03:53] It's a good industry to be in at the moment. Yeah, definitely. It's not just. Go put a 6.6 kilowatt system on someone's roof and walk away anymore. Yeah, we've got, you know, battery technologies getting better and a little bit more cost effective EV charging. We've got lots of smart switching going on by controlling pools and pool heaters and hot water systems saunas.
[00:04:17] So these are all the kind of things that are coming out and being more common if you're not specialized in this energy efficiency game and dealing with this stuff. All the time. You probably would struggle with trying to do that plus other electrical work because it is. A really fast moving landscape, you need to be on the ball with it because the, the times that we've all spent on site between me and the guys trying to figure out new products and stuff like that, it's pretty testing, but very rewarding once you get all the smarts working.
[00:04:49] Yeah, like I'm not across all the automation as much as I'd like to be, but it sounds pretty interesting in terms of what you can achieve for a home. And especially saving energy and getting all your electrical bills down, especially with infrastructure just going through the roof in terms of costs and price of living going up.
[00:05:07] So people are looking to these investments for getting solar and getting you home a bit more energy efficient. It's something I think we need to try and understand better too. Yeah. Because when clients come to us, so like, oh, we wanna put solar on and. I don't really know that much about solar, to be fair.
[00:05:21] Which is why it's great having you in today to educate us. Yeah. But like, as you said, there's a lot to it across the different sort of facets of all these areas. Yeah. What's the best way, if someone's thinking they wanna design a energy efficient home, or, you know, designs what works well for solar, what, what should they do to sort of, I guess, make sure they start on the right path with the house design?
[00:05:45] Yeah, so probably the most common thing I see is that people will have maybe a, a small solar system quoted into their, into their build design, which might be say a 6.6 kilowatt system, which is sort of the. Lower size of what is fairly commonly installed now, but then they'll have a gas, hot water system and then they'll have no other gas appliances in the house.
[00:06:09] So yeah, basically they're paying for either a street connection or a bottle fee for having a gas hot water system, as well as they're paying for the gas hot water system up front, which is about three times more than a normal storage. Electric hot water system. Yeah, either that or they've got solar hot water in the plans as well.
[00:06:29] With solar electricity, and then it's just doesn't really make sense to do it that way. So with the smart switching devices that I mentioned earlier, we can control the hot water tank and essentially use it like a battery in a sense. So yeah, right. We can divert excess solar production to the hot water tank so that.
[00:06:50] That becomes a guaranteed everyday self-consumption measure. Yeah. And by self-consumption, I mean the idea is to use the solar that you are producing. A lot of people aren't home during the day, so that's why we need these switching devices. Yeah. So that we can direct energy to where it can be better utilized.
[00:07:09] Yeah. So new things like pre-cool your home during the day, and. Charge your EV as well with that sort of theory. Yeah, exactly. So there's sort of the dumb way to do it, which is just what we've always been telling people is just try and use more power during the day. Yeah. I preach that every day and it's very hard to do it without actually having the automation behind it.
[00:07:31] So. Obviously the hot water system is an easy one. Sending your pool chlorination system to run between sort of nine o'clock and three o'clock is another simple one that's sort of set and forget. Yeah, and then we are doing quite a lot of pool heating as well. At the moment. A lot of people are putting smallish pools into, into their properties, which they're not that hard to eat in the cooler months.
[00:07:55] Yeah. So what we can do there is we oversize the pool heater by. Probably another 30% bigger than what it would need normally. And that means that we can run the pool heater for a shorter period during the day, and then we don't have to run it for 24 hours. So we just do eight hours of run time during the day and then it switches off and then it, the pool might lose a couple of degrees overnight, and then the next day it goes again.
[00:08:19] So if we have this picture from the start, then we can design the solar system to be the right. Size to suit all that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Like instead of just running the pool heater and those sort of objects just continuously and just chewing through it, just optimize it so that it works during the non peak hours and I guess thet part of the day.
[00:08:41] Would you advocate for getting involved during the design phase or is that sort of a bit of overkill? No, I think that homeowners looking to build should probably talk to someone in my game before they get too far down the road. Like you wouldn't go as far as changing roof lines and stuff like that just to suit the solar because.
[00:09:02] Essentially the panels are cheap enough that if you don't have the ideal orientation, then we can just put a bit more on to get the same Yeah. Output basically. So yeah. But considering your connections as well, like if you're gonna go gas, go all out on gas. Yeah. Go gas, cooking, gas. You can even go gas pool heating if you want to, but, Gas prices have jumped crazily in the last couple of years.
[00:09:27] Yeah. And the connection fee for street gas has gone up by about 50% as well. So if you are just using gas for one appliance in the house, you're, you're burning $500 a year just on the connection. Yeah. Fee. So I think you need to sort of stick down the electrify. Electricity route, which is, that's sort of the catch cry that the Smart Energy Council is saying now, like, electrify your home, which means EV chargers, solar batteries, and then obviously smart switching.
[00:09:58] So when like, I guess we're designing a home or someone wants solar. When you say, you know, it's a six kilowatt system on the roof, which is like, I think you said earlier, the base size most homes would have. Yep. Like how many kilowatt hours will we get out of a system that size and what would a normal sort of stand standard family home generally take to run a day?
[00:10:20] Yeah, so the basic maths is just to do 4.2 times the size of the system. So if it's a six kilowatt system, it'll do about 25 kilowatt hours per day on average. Yeah. But how that looks over a year is that you might get 35 to 40 kilowatts on days in summer and then cuz the days are longer. Yeah. Not because it's hotter.
[00:10:43] Yeah. Um, and then in winter, the sun flattens out into the sky a little bit more and you don't get as many hours of sunlight. So your production might be more like 16 or 17 kilowatt hours per day. And fortunately for us here in Queensland, that suits our consumption profile perfectly because we're generally heavy users of air conditioning.
[00:11:05] Mm-hmm. Whereas down south in Melbourne, for example, winter daytime is even shorter and it's freezing. So they're using a lot more heating when they don't have much solar production. So yeah. It sort of hurts them a bit. And then the general system size design for Melbourne, for example, would be a lot bigger than what we would go for in Queensland.
[00:11:27] Yeah. So we're getting more production through those winter months. So optimal day for capturing as much solar as you can is blue sky and not super hot. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. So a day like today here in Brisbane is a perfect. Day for solar production, it's a short day, but if it was this clear and this cold for a longer period, you would get more production.
[00:11:50] Yeah. Now than you would in summer. Cuz the panels actually lose a bit of efficiency for every degree that the cell temperature goes up. Yeah, right. I don't need to get into the technical side too much. It's called the temperature hot, bad. Yeah. Yeah. It's called the temperature coefficient and it's on, it can be seen on every solar panels.
[00:12:09] Data sheet, so Yeah. But yeah, look, generally in summer, longer days, more solar and the sun's also higher. In the sky, so it's easier to get that perpendicular sum to panel. Yeah, right. So going down this electrifying avenue, I guess is probably a good saving of costs because all the way I look at it, there's a little bit of investment at the beginning, but the long term, if you're in your house for 10 years, those rebates and the offset of the costing of your electricity is probably a big cost saver.
[00:12:40] And that's probably why the benefit of these systems are coming into play. Because like you said, gas is just. Fluctuating too much, but also the fees that we have to pay each month if you've got a main connection for gas sometimes is actually higher than your actual gas consumption, depending on how much you use in your house.
[00:12:58] So sort of makes sense to get rid of those sort of items. And then goes service fee, it's Yeah, the most expensive part of that bill. Yeah, it's crazy. So if you can go to solar, I think it's definitely, and it's also the issues that we're having with. System overloads and all these sort of things on the power infrastructure, moving to being self-sufficient is definitely a way to go.
[00:13:19] Yeah, and look, everyone, not everyone, but a lot of people like the idea of being self-sufficient and having batteries and that, my opinion on that is, If you're lending the money to put the system in at the, in the building phase, I wouldn't be putting a battery in at that point. The batteries are sort of a cost even, but they're good for the environment.
[00:13:40] They're also good for power security in your own property because you can get some backup there. But, I wouldn't be lending money to put a battery in because then it probably makes it a, a cost negative sort of scenario there. Yeah. But if you've got the cash to do it and you are wanting to do the right thing by the environment and also have a bit of power control in your house, then there is definitely some battery systems available now that are somewhat cost neutral over the life of the battery.
[00:14:10] Some people get a little bit hung up on the whole battery thing and tend to want particular brand that I won't mention. Um, okay. Please don't, yeah, we'll get, yeah, and it is possibly the worst investment you can make in my opinion. I've just got a question just going back to the grid. So if a house produces whatever kilowatts per day and the house doesn't use that solar, When we talk about that being fed back into the grid, there's a limit to how much you can put back into the grid, isn't there?
[00:14:41] Yeah. So generally, you're allowed to have five kilowatts of export per phase connected to the house. Yeah. So if it's a single phase property, the most you can put on is a 10 kilowatt inverter, and then that is export limited to five kilowatts. But. This is a fairly common thing at the moment, and houses with electric hot water and then maybe a pool and maybe work from home, that is still a fine scenario because we can make it use the energy that it's producing during the day, and then it will still be able to export a little bit and there's no loss.
[00:15:16] Yeah. But if you put a 10 kilowatt inverter on with say, 13 kilowatts of panels, which is pretty common. And then you are not home. You don't have electrical water or a pool. The system will just be exporting five kilowatts all day and then the other five kilowatts of the system will be sitting there doing nothing cuz it's restricted by how much can be sent back to the grid.
[00:15:36] So it's just a waste really. Yeah. So, and that's annoys me a lot. Um, but a lot of solar companies, Have sales representatives who are paid by the size of the system, essentially. Yeah. So nearly every time a customer sends me someone else's quote, it's oversized. Yeah, right. Well, yeah, that sort of makes sense, I guess, that you don't wanna be sitting there.
[00:15:57] You wanna be as efficient as possible with these sort of things instead of just, yeah, spending all this money to have this biggest solar panel set up in the street on your roof, but it's actually useless most of the time. It's all dependent on the energy consumption of the house. So one of the common questions that.
[00:16:14] That I would ask someone who's, how many people are in the house and if, or how many kids are there? What are their ages? Because as children grow, they use more energy. Yeah. It's pretty simple. So, and also when they're young, they also use a lot of energy cuz there's double the amount of washing and there's lots of air conditioning used to try and control the environment in their house.
[00:16:34] So yeah. When we might talk to a couple who have got one kid and likely to have a few more on the way, their energy consumption might only be 20 kilowatt hours per day at the time we're talking to them. But if we know that their family's growing, then we might anticipate that their consumption's gonna be more like 35 kilowatt hours per day.
[00:16:54] So then we would size the system to sue that. Yeah. Right. Future proof them a little bit. Yeah. So to a degree, if you go way oversized with the system, then that's where you really start to hurt the return on investment. Bigger is better in some ways, but it just takes longer to get your return on investment.
[00:17:14] It's more how user size.
[00:17:18] So just back on that with the, I guess the size of the units and. For families? What sort of, I guess, for a family of four size units should they be going for or Yeah. Sort of targeting, I guess that's a bit of a open-ended question and Yeah, it is. So, you know, you can look at a four bedroom house and it might only use 20 kilowatt hours per day because there might not be heavy users of air conditioning.
[00:17:44] Yeah. They may have no pool and they may already have gas appliances. So. And then they may also barely be at home during the day. But with a system like that, they might only need a five kilowatt inverter or six kilowatts of panels. But then the people next door could work from home. They could have electric hot water.
[00:18:02] They could have a little pool. Yep. And they might need a 10 kilowatt system. So, It's all, yeah, very dependent. It's relative, very dependent on the individual property. So yeah, basically it sounds like getting someone involved at the early stages when we're designing and quoting is to make sure that we've got the correct system in place and having talked, having a chat to someone like yourself and at the early stages.
[00:18:27] So otherwise they'll be overs, specing and oversizing and paying for something they don't use or they don't need. Yeah. Also understanding if people have, uh, inclined to get an electric vehicle in the near future is probably another consideration that needs to be done in the building stage in terms of putting battery systems in at the building stage.
[00:18:47] There's also some considerations that need to be done there because the batteries can't back onto a habitable room unless it's got fireproof backing Yes. Around it. So with all the new homes that we talk to, At the moment, we generally tell the builder, or ask the builder to make an allocation on sort of the inside, right or left of the garage.
[00:19:08] Cuz it generally backs onto an outside wall. And it's generally also where the, the switchboard goes. So that's sort of the, the recommended spot. You also don't require a. Bollard to be put in the garage. If you put it there, it's classed as mechanically protected. Right. But if you put it at the end of the garage where the, the nose of the car would go, then it has to have bollards on it and they don't look very pretty in the back of the garage.
[00:19:34] Ah, I can imagine walking through in the dark just trying to get to your car and just smashing my toes on that ball. You too many. I know. We're not drunk driving. So what other sort of things we need to be conscious about, I guess for the installation of solar and. Batteries and EVs, and then also sort of future-proofing builds for someone does want that EV with where they'll have their charging bays and stuff like that.
[00:19:58] Yeah, so there's no real need for a charging bay as such. It's more so just about potentially roughing in circuit, in the roughing stage so that an EV charger can be easily installed in the garage down the track without having to do surface conduit or cut plaster or anything like that. If homeowners aren't going to get solar done through the building package, then they also need to communicate with the builder and obviously get it roughed in because you get a much neater finish.
[00:20:28] And then obviously communicating with the builder about when the scaffold's up and everything like that, cuz that also. Makes the job go a little bit easier. Yeah. So yeah, we've done that a few times now where the clients at that time didn't want solar during the build, but they were gonna do it eventually.
[00:20:44] So there was a spot where all the conduits ran up to the ceiling cavity. And then down into the garage into a location and it's just, I think it's a lot smarter, I guess. And it's just pre-planning and yeah. So a lot of homeowners generally just get the electrician that's doing the build to roughen the solar for them.
[00:21:03] Yeah, and I go back to my specialized comment earlier, get the people who specialize in solar to do that. Yeah. We would probably charge somewhere around $500 just to do. Pre-wire, but then when you do get solar in the future, it's probably gonna take a thousand dollars off the cost because it's super easy once it's roughed in.
[00:21:23] Mm-hmm. So, cause that's probably one of the most time consuming parts of the installation process is getting the conduits in the roof and getting the cables down the wall. Yeah. Especially like if you just build a brand new home and then five years down the track you've got. The finance to do it or the, the solar panels have upgraded a little bit more and you aren't actually looking at it.
[00:21:42] Having these things in place already doesn't destroy your home, and it's already pre-planned and actually thought through. So yeah, getting the actual specialist in to do their job at the beginning is probably the best way to do it. Are you seeing that a lot more or are you just seeing, I guess everybody wants to get on the bandwagon of terms of solar.
[00:22:02] Yeah, but I think a lot of people are, I guess, don't have the information or they haven't got the budget for it. Not having the budget for it infuriates me a little bit because probably the only, the only investment you can put into your house that gives you money back. Yeah. Right. Well, that's, yeah, that's a good argument.
[00:22:20] The $6,000 couch is a $5,000 couch after one year, and it's a $4,000 couch after two years, whereas the solar's can drop a lot quicker if you've got kids. Yes. But the, the solar is one of the, obviously if done right, it's one of the best investments that you can have on your house. So, And obviously speaking about doing it right.
[00:22:41] I think I mentioned to you guys before we started here, like having a physical address is probably the number one thing I try and tell people when we're talking to them about solar, and they may be comparing us to an online marketing machine whose address might be a post office box in Sydney. Yeah.
[00:22:59] It's like, well, when it all goes to shit or something happens, who are you gonna ring? Where are you gonna find? The right people to come and come and have a look at the system. Like there are a lot of cowboys in your industry, aren't they? Like Definitely door knockers and definitely is. Wherever there's government rebates available, the cowboys will flock.
[00:23:19] Yeah. It's like we've seen it with the home insulation scheme. We've seen it with the water tank program. Yeah. And like. Solar's no different. So it's just ludicrous that you don't even have to be an electrical contractor to sell an electrical system. Yeah. Right. So what is the, I guess with the warranties, with these sort of things, is each product different in terms of their warranties or, and how long do normally solar panels last?
[00:23:42] Yeah. So the panels are meant to last 25 years. That's what their service warranty says. Yeah. Or their production warranty. Yep. Most panels have moved from having a 12 year product warranty to now a 25 year product warranty, but they've also got some Ts and Cs in there about degradation factors and everything like that.
[00:24:01] Yeah. But with the inverters as well, they've all sort of moved from being a five year warranty to a 10 year warranty, and it's all well and good to have those warranties, but if you don't have the original Yes on your side to come and service those warranties, Then it's, you're gonna have to pay someone else to then come and do the warranty work and they'll, they'll just charge you their early rate to fix it.
[00:24:25] Whereas with our warranty work, we just get reimbursed by the manufacturer of the product and it's a pitance to what it actually costs us to replace an inverter. But that's the commitment that we make to the customer at the end of the day. So I've still got customers from like seven years ago where we're replacing inverters and we might get 160 bucks for it, and the inverter might be at the Gold Coast and it's cost me like nearly 500 just to get that.
[00:24:54] Inverter replaced, but we made that commitment when we sold the system. So that's, yeah. What we do. It's, and the like, what we say about, you know, when you're going with a builder and your relationship with the builder isn't just like one year or however long your build takes, it's that seven years that the defect liability period lasts for.
[00:25:12] Yeah. What's the, you won't have that security if your builder has gone bust or is not around and won't come back to fix stuff. Yeah. Normally that aligns with whoever's got the cheapest quote. Not always, but nine times outta 10, the person that's undercut you by 30% is normally those operators that don't have the overheads or they haven't, they haven't priced things correctly to run a proper business.
[00:25:34] So these guys are operating out of a PO box and they've just got a sales team that they outsource things to. But the fact that these warranties are actually increasing is a good sign. It shows that there's a lot of investment and the products are actually getting better. So actually investing into these things that.
[00:25:50] The technology's increasing. It's not going backwards. So I think it's a good sign for consumers or gives you some confidence when you're purchasing these things. Yeah. Like if, if someone called you and said, oh, I've got a really good deal on a car, it's got nothing wrong with it, it's perfectly, if they open with that, there's something wrong with it.
[00:26:09] Always. It's a, you know, you Butte car, it's, and you have a look at it on face value units. You think it's a $20,000 car, but they're selling it for $10,000 then. There's probably something wrong. Yeah. People continually buy solar off, off telemarketers, basically. Yeah. It's just infuriating that people get tricked into it, and then we're the ones that end up having to go back and fix it and or.
[00:26:36] In a lot of cases completely remove it because we can't touch it because once we touch it, we own it, so, mm-hmm. It's pretty devastating when you have to tell a homeowner that their two year old solar assistant's been installed completely wrong. Their roof's leaking. It's a heap of junk and you've gotta basically start again.
[00:26:53] So, well, they end up paying for it anyway, so it does come around twice I say. So, yeah, I think. Do it right and yeah, do it once. So, yeah. Well, I guess, what's the rebates and those sort of things that you've mentioned before about government incentives? What's a sort of on offer at the moment? So it's been the same program that's been running for around 12 years, I think it is.
[00:27:16] It's called, they're called Small technology certificates or STCs. So I'll use a five kilowatt inverter with six kilowatts of panels as an example. That if you were to pay for this system upfront with no STCs, then the cost would be, say, $10,000. This system might have, well, this system has around $3,000 worth of STCs that can be claimed.
[00:27:40] Generally, the installer always claims that, or the retailer. So then we would, then the out of pocket expense would be $7,000 for that system. So the bigger the system, the more STCs. So if we turn that into a. 10 kilowatt inverter, there'll be like $6,000 worth of STCs. Yeah. Right. And do you see it increasing over time?
[00:28:04] STCs are on a sliding scale. Yep. And they have been since the inception of them, so, The renewable energy target of 2030. So we're in 2023, so there's seven years on the STC redeeming period. So each year it drops by one year, so it equates to roughly about 10%. So if I said this year there was $3,000 worth of STCs on the six kilowatt system, next year there'll be $2,700 worth of stc, and that'll work its way down to zero.
[00:28:36] So, And that's a a pretty fair reason to sort of step ahead and get solar on your roof now, because in another few years, unless there's a new scheme, rebate system or scheme or something put out, then yeah, solar's just going to get more expensive. Well, that's it. And the thing is, I guess, The government puts these rebates in place to kickstart these programs so people start using them and if they more people start using 'em, the government's just gonna reduce it.
[00:29:06] The fact is we've also got all these NCC changes coming up where a lot of the energy efficiencies of homes now need to. Increase and it's a requirement for new builds and they haven't got onto the renovation side of it, but it will start sliding into that. And the easiest way to get some of these energy efficiencies is solar panels straight away.
[00:29:26] They're the easiest one to do before you need to upgrade any of your, your doors and windows or your external cladding or even your insulation levels. So these solar panels are probably the, I guess I won't, don't say easiest, but one of the. Most efficient ways to get your seven star rating. Yeah, and we see that a lot in the commercial construction space as well, where there'll be just a gimmick 20 kilowatt system thrown onto a, a new commercial building in order to meet the.
[00:29:55] Energy efficiency requirements of the building. Yeah. Thankfully a lot of people in this space then actually do it properly and get, get a quote off us or someone else to put the right size system in for that building. I think in the past there's been a lot of like, obviously houses that might not have the best, what's, I don't really know what the efficiency rating is called in the.
[00:30:16] Building side. What's that? It's like a neighbor's rating or something, is it? Or? Yeah, there's a few different ones. It depends on the state as well. Each state's different in terms of what you need. So I think in Queensland we've got a minimum, I think four or five star at the moment, and then we're moving up to seven star in the new homes.
[00:30:34] And that's, yeah, it's a mix of a lot of items. So yeah, the smaller block size with the bigger house is always going to be the challenge with keeping the energy efficiencies. Yeah, right space and especially if people want a full side of their house glazed, looking out to an aspect, and that aspect is actually west, you see it all the time.
[00:30:54] So they're getting absolute hammered with the sun. So yeah, either you've gotta upgrade or you normally do upgrade your, um, your glazing, but also, yeah, looking at these solar panels to make sure that. You can get these houses more efficient and actually bring your cooling down and your heating up. Yeah.
[00:31:11] Well, poor home efficiency designs all right by me because that means you need more solar. But, um, I think, yeah, I don't know how much energy the most homeowners put into thinking about. Home efficiency. We were talking earlier about black houses and things like that. It's just like, it's not the brightest move in Queensland because your air conditioning bill is gonna be through the roof.
[00:31:36] So also, I missed it earlier, but I think Jeza said about the cooling your home during the day and stuff like that. So that was another key thing I was gonna talk about with air conditioning. So, With a aducted air con, there's sort of two different ways to control aducted air con. There's the old way or the dumb way, and that's just having on off buttons for each zone.
[00:32:01] And then the, the return air duct measures the return temperature, and that's basically what controls the compressor in the air aircon. But at nighttime, if you've got three bedrooms turned on, Then the return air duct is just sucking hot air out of the living room. And basically we'll never cycle off.
[00:32:19] Yeah, right. Because if we use a system like My Air or the Actron Smart Control, or I think there's a poly Air Smart Control. As well. Then there's individual temp sensors in each room, and that's where the compressor sensors the, the temperature from. So once you've got your master control set, which would normally be the master bedroom at nighttime.
[00:32:43] Once that bedroom is at the right temperature, then the inverter or the compressor slows down and uses a lot less energy. So these control systems cost about $2,000 more at the installation stage, but they probably save around five to $800 a year in electricity by using the air conditioning in a much smarter way as well as you can.
[00:33:08] You know, control it all from your phone, turn it on and off, do whatever you want. Set scenes so that it turns on every day at midday or whatever. Yeah. So it's not just, I guess, a comfort thing. All of these upgrades, they're actually saving you money in terms of being more efficient and operating in a better way instead of just like, oh, I've got this novelty app that I can just log onto and turn it on.
[00:33:30] It's actually saving you money by only cooling certain areas that you need to, or not overworking, cuz that all would also reduce the, the lifespan of all your compressors and all that. If they're constantly just pumping cold air, that's it. Whereas if they're working efficiently and the correct way they've been designed using these extra apps or sensors, then it's just a smart investment.
[00:33:52] Yeah. So without this like being able to turn it on from your phone, then. What would happen is most people would get home from work at four or five o'clock on a summer's day. The house has been locked up all day. Yeah. All the thermal mass of the property is hot. As hot as, yeah. And then the air con gets flicked on at five, the sun's nearly gone, so there's no solar production.
[00:34:15] So then between the hours of five and eight o'clock or however long it takes to. Beat the air temperature and then also beat the thermal mass of the house. You probably used like 20 kilowatt hours in a four bedroom house, which is potentially more than what that house should have used for the whole day.
[00:34:33] Yeah, that's crazy. So would you do things like just when you were setting that up, let's say that there's a west side of the house that's obviously gonna be hotter during the day. Would you set the air con up to sort of cool that side of the house during the day? Yes. So you're not using the whole system or like I use the Maya system for an example cause I know how it operates.
[00:34:54] Yeah. But so yeah, during the day, if you had a Western bedroom and you have a temp sensor in that room before you turn the air con on, it's probably gonna be hotter in that room than it is on the eastern bedroom. Yeah. Yeah. So, To begin with, it'll put equal parts air everywhere. Yeah. Then when it realizes that bedroom on the east is getting near its set point, it'll basically shut the butterfly valve and put very minimal air to that room, and then it can redirect and focus all the air into the.
[00:35:24] Hotter room. Yep. So then it can cool it quicker and that's how you get the energy efficiency improvement rather than equal parts air going to both rooms. One will be freezing and one will be hot. Yeah. Sweet. So you're not having that battle sort of as you said at the end of the day when you get home and trying to cool the whole thermal mass of the house down.
[00:35:41] Yeah. Because it's been happening during the day. Yeah. And using the solar. Yeah. So if you're a family and kids are at school all day and you know, both mom and dad are at work all day. Then being able to turn your air con on it, say one o'clock from your phone, is much more energy efficient than just blasting.
[00:35:58] This is provided you've got solar, of course, which, which you should, which is much more energy efficient to run it essentially by using the solar production to cool the home. And then once the thermal mass and the house is cold, it, it uses minimal energy to maintain that temperature. Yeah, that's, see, that's, I've always there, and that's probably my ignorance, but we've got that at our house.
[00:36:19] We've got an old school system, an old school ducted system, and one of my daughter's rooms is ice cold. And then the other one's super hot because one's in the sun and one's not. So same thing, they're just getting smashed with the same air temp all the way through. Whereas one room's still a sweat box.
[00:36:35] Yeah. And you can like balance the air a little bit by closing the, closing the duct on the, in the roof a little bit. Yeah. But. Yeah, it's, that's pretty common thing. The other thing is people don't clean their return air ducts, and when that filter is dirty, it can severely impact the efficiency of the air con.
[00:36:56] Cause if the air's not getting back to the indoor unit in the roof space, then it'll just use more and more energy to achieve the same temperature. How often do you reckon they should be serviced and cleaned? Or what's your recommendation? Probably every six months. Yeah. Right. So, It can be done by a homeowner though.
[00:37:13] Like people always ask us for air conditioning servicing and we're like, alls you have to do is pull the the filter out, hose it off, leave it in the sun to dry, put it back in. It's, yeah, easy, not difficult. I don't think I know anyone who would do that. Once every six months. It's like you a smoke detectors supposed to do the batteries on that certain date, but even split systems are the same.
[00:37:36] Like split systems have a little filter Yeah. In the front of 'em and you know, if you don't clean them then the aircom will run. Extremely inefficient. Yeah, I was just thinking about that for the office. It's just, I've got a job to do this stuff when I home. Just, yeah, cleaning every system. So, Well, there's definitely so much to it.
[00:37:54] And I guess getting yourself or an expert, like in your industry as well, just on board early in the piece is the way to go. And like we've always been pushing, always get as much information upfront because once you're on site, it's just an absolute nightmare. Not a nightmare, but it's just, it makes it harder.
[00:38:12] So getting all this information, you can design your house correctly to. Operate efficiently. What would your advice be to designers like Christian if you were gonna get the the ruler out and smack 'em over the knuckles? Any pet peeves you have about house design and stuff like that for air conducts.
[00:38:30] Make sure you put air conducts in your plans. Yeah, don't ever put switchboards on the bottom level of a house that's not on an external wall, because if you ever want anything changed in the future, then it's an absolute horror show to try and get cables back there. There's. These, oh, there's these houses in Sanctuary Cove.
[00:38:50] They're all sort of the same house all along one street and the, the switchboards in underneath the stairs on the bottom level of three story house. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, it's good stuff. We've put solar on about 20 of these places and we know how to do it now. But yeah, we basically gotta cut snap vents into.
[00:39:09] Into their pantry, and then we've gotta put another one in one of the bedrooms, and we've found a way that we can get the cables down. But you know, the cost to put solar on those places is about a thousand dollars more than it needs to be just because someone put the switchboard in a Yeah. Horrible location.
[00:39:24] Position. Yeah. Yeah, that's probably one of my pet peeves. Especially like also from practicality point of view, if you have a fuse or something trips, you've gotta go all the way downstairs in the dark to switch all this stuff back on. So, yeah. If you put a, oh, what? So you're saying maybe put it on the upper floor, having a sub-board and then also having a main board.
[00:39:44] So having a main board in the garage that's fairly accessible. It doesn't have to be easy, but if you can like lift a roof sheet or kick some tiles or. Something to get back to the switchboard, then it's much easier than trying to get to a switchboard that's underneath the stairs in the middle of the house.
[00:40:01] Yeah. So when it comes to the home design, is that what you were up with? Yeah. I just wanted to hear you grill Christian, to be honest. What about builders? I suppose on the design aspects, things to probably start thinking about moving forward is when talking with a. Homeowner or someone who's about to build is getting their interest around what their plans are.
[00:40:27] So if they're going to get an ev for example, then you know, thinking about that, thinking about how two cars are gonna sit, fit side by side, potentially two electric cars, how that's going to work, thinking about a battery location and you know, not making the garage so, Skinny that you can't get two cars in there easily to charge, or the battery won't fit, or the inverters don't have space for that.
[00:40:54] So I suppose just talking to the homeowners about what their intentions are around their electricity needs. Yeah, so I like, obviously we're always learning as we. Progress in the business. And I guess that questionnaire we've been developing for a few years now as well. But it's always good to have more information because then we can actually just go, well, yeah, you're gonna use this, you're not gonna use this in the future, so I need to think about this and that.
[00:41:22] And yeah. And also it like we can't remember everything either with the amount of moving parts on a home, having these lists in place that, oh yeah, you are. That's right. Are you gonna have an electric car? Like where is it gonna po be positioned and yeah. All these sort of things get hung up on the toilet roll holder.
[00:41:37] Yeah, yeah. People, yeah. They're more worried about house and then you forget about the, the whole solar system. Yeah. Or that they need air con or where, what rooms need air con and how you're gonna get those ducks to that, to those rooms. So, I've seen plenty of new houses get extra cupboards that weren't intended on.
[00:41:55] Um, it happens a lot. Air con design not being considered. Same with like raisin builds cuz we've got so much steel in these houses to raise them up. Like thinking about how do you get all these ducting down and yeah. Putting bulkhead in the right spots. And so what's, I guess with those sort of things, what's your take on more efficiency with your aircon outlets in terms of rooms like.
[00:42:18] And circulation. Yeah. Probably getting the air conditioning contractor involved from the, from the start. Yeah. Before we get too carried away with where everything's going. And you know, people generally don't like too many bulkheads, but if you can do one. Nice bulkhead that maybe runs down the whole one side of the house, then that can make it a whole lot easier.
[00:42:40] And you can put like slim line horizontal outlets in those and that pretty nice. Also need to consider that if there is any zone motors or anything in the lower level that they need to be able to be accessed in the future. So if there's, what I've seen in the past is usually like a butler's pantry or something like that might have a dropped ceiling in it.
[00:42:59] Yeah. With a access panel. So that's a pretty common one that I've seen. And if you do it that way, then you only need to bring generally like one 400 mill duck down from the top ceiling to the butler's pantry. And then you can have like the two 50 mill ducks going out to the rooms or whatever from there.
[00:43:18] Yeah, no, I think that's one thing we learned very early on, I guess. And it's also the benefit of having building that we've, I know Jeremy always whinges about getting services through the house, so that's, oh, the amount of, like, we're getting decent at that now just cuz we've had practice. But the, and we do the build as well, but the amount of plans we get from other designers where there's.
[00:43:37] No thought to where the air con's going, where the service ducks, even for plumbing ducks, I guess Yeah. Is ridiculous. Yeah. You get this brand new house and there's these big pipes just sitting on the outside of the house and it's just pull head in. Yeah. It's, it's, I guess it all just comes back to everyone working together and pre-planning it and not rushing the early stages to get on site.
[00:43:58] The five degrees Skillion roof with about, you know, 200 mil gaps between the top string and the bottom string of trust. And then they want ducted air. So I'm thinking about a job now, actually. I know few of those. And then it's even better if it's a steel house because you can't like, You try and drag the ducks through the truss, isn't it?
[00:44:18] Just rips 'em just, yeah, it's a bit too, those nightmares. See that's the other issue as well. I guess with energy efficiency, having these small roof cavities, like not only is it a nightmare for you guys getting services, but they can't hold the heat and from the sun that gets on the roof and then got this small cavity, it just increases the heat in the rooms.
[00:44:40] So that comes back to energy efficiency and making sure your design is as energy efficient as possible. Yeah. Well that's why they designed the Queenslander. Yeah. Yeah. Well that's, that's just, you know. Exactly. It's a perfect design for Queensland for air conditioning. There was, you know, there was a need for a high pitch roof with plenty of roof space, large eaves or wraparound verandas.
[00:45:01] And now we've gone away from all that and we've got basically no eve, lots of glass, full sun exposure on usually two sides of the house. And people wonder why their energy bills are 1500 a quarter. Oh, that's a, that's a little gold nugget there. You've just dropped. Just build more Queenslanders. So in terms of, I guess, future proofing your home, what can homeowners do and batteries gonna be around forever or what's the.
[00:45:28] What's your advice? I think that at some point in the near future, there will be a battery rebate in place. The batteries offer a benefit to the grid because they offer some stability to the grid because it slows down how much export is going to the grid throughout the day. Mm-hmm. So from a grid stability point of view, there's some benefit there.
[00:45:50] And then from the homeowner's point of view, there's also the benefit of, you know, giving yourself a battery for some nighttime consumption as well as having some backup power in the case of a power outage. Yeah. My way of mostly doing things at the moment is that we, we put a hybrid inverter in, which means that it's a hundred percent battery ready.
[00:46:10] So if a battery scheme does come out, you can just basically drop the battery. On the ground, connect a couple of cables and it, it's ready to go. So, yeah. Right. But people do get a bit filled by crafty salespeople who say that every inverter is battery ready because there's a, it technically is, or every solar system's battery ready because you can do what's called a, an AC coupled battery, which is like a Tesla or a sonn, for example.
[00:46:41] And those two batteries, they can. They can work irrespective of if they're solar or no solar. They're their own unit, right? They just connect to the switchboard. They basically monitor the, the net result of what's happening at your energy meter. So if there's power going out to the grid, it'll pull that power back and start charging.
[00:47:02] If there's power coming in from the grid, I'll start discharging and, and cancel that. Power out, but So sorry. You can actually have a battery on your house without a solar system. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. Right. So that's called a AC coupled battery. But then you can have what's called a DC coupled battery or a hybrid inverter.
[00:47:19] So we install a lot of DC coupled batteries. They're cheaper. And also with the DC coupled systems, it means you can oversize the solar more. Yeah. So with a normal grid connect system, you can only do 30% more panels to the inverter. So that's why it's. Five kilowatt inverter, 6.6 of panels. Oh, it's 1.33 times the inverter size.
[00:47:43] But if you've got a DC coupled battery, essentially the energy produced by the panels doesn't have to all be inverted to AC power to then charge the battery. It can go straight from. DC to DC straight into the battery DC You can have on a five kilowatt hybrid inverter, you can have like nine kilowatts of solar on there.
[00:48:04] So it'll generate five kilowatts of AC power. But then I'll also put a couple of kilowatts directly into the battery. On the DC coupled side, so it's getting a little bit more technical, but Oh, I wasn't aware that you could actually, like, I don't even know what you'd need a battery on a house for if you don't have solar, like yeah, it's pretty pointless.
[00:48:24] But in there is circumstances where a battery without solar. Can be beneficial. It's not really in Queensland, but in other states, for example, they can be paying as high as 70 cents a kilowatt hour for on peak charges, and that's between I think 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM So basically when everyone's cooking dinner, they're getting smashed for their electricity costs, so Right.
[00:48:48] That's why the battery uptake in other states has been much higher than what it is in Queensland because. 90% of Queensland homeowners is still on flat rate electricity, where we pay the same all day all night. It's all the same. It's 5 cents or whatever it is. But when you change energy providers, there's a chance that you'll then be put onto a demand tariff, which is what.
[00:49:11] My house is on now, so I get charged different at different times of the day and it's usually high energy users that get moved to that first. I shouldn't be saying I'm high energy user. Yeah, I was gonna say, what are you, what are you running at your place? So, but yeah, I've like, even during the floods, I know that there's a couple houses that had batteries on the upper floors, like the house was designed to flood.
[00:49:35] Yeah, and it could still operate. So all downstairs was on a certain switch switchboard and they turned everything off and then upstairs was still operating and they had water around them. Like it's just, yeah. It's fascinating like to know that they can have these sort of situations or they've planned for it.
[00:49:50] And same with like you one of those guardian, you flooded. Yeah. Well my main switchboard went, yeah, completely underwater, but. Yeah, I probably could have had the same arrangement if I hadn't have been 200 Ks see on a fishing charter. Right. But even like, I guess depending on where you're based as well, if the grid always overloads or there's always a down, having a battery is great.
[00:50:14] Like where I'm located, I know that as this one power pole that always blows for some reason, it happened three times in one year. But there's the guy on our street that's got batteries and he's, he's the only one that's just got lights in the area. So he's lit up like a Christmas tree and he's, but he's prepared for it, so well, we see a fairly good uptake of batteries in sort of fringe suburbs.
[00:50:37] So like, say Jim Boomba for example, a lot of the blocks out there don't have town water. So basically you can't flush the toilet unless you've got power. So Right. We, we see quite a lot of uptake of batteries out there. You can't really back up the whole house unless you want to spend crazy amounts of money.
[00:50:55] Yeah. But you, what we can do is just select a couple of circuits to back up. So what we generally would do in that situation is just back up the circuit that the pressure pump. That, you know, fills the toilets and runs the top your fridges and stuff. And then we back up the fridge circuit or the kitchen.
[00:51:11] Yep. Circuit. And that's enough for people to get by. And then obviously we back up the lights as well. So it's usually just two power circuits and one. Light circuit or something along those lines. And then yeah, in a power outage, they're still able to somewhat operate. Yeah. It's pretty fascinating to see.
[00:51:29] Especially, yeah, that house, that hash grove that Yeah. Went under and they were just like posting, and the whole house is like fridges still work. Yeah. And those sort of things. And then obviously the next day when the sun's back out, they're getting more power put back in. Yeah. But I guess, once again, clever design.
[00:51:45] Yeah, it's, um, well, it's, yes, it's, I think they're doing a case study on it because it's actually quite smart and the, the pre-planning that's gone into it has worked, I guess, and it's been proven. So moving forward with technology, what's the next step, I guess, in. In terms of solar and the battery world?
[00:52:04] Well, we'll go to the energy efficiency world. Yeah. Um, solar and batteries are probably, there will be more advancements, but they're fairly advanced at the moment, so I can't see too many changes in that space. Probably the biggest sort of technology changes that will be coming is being able to use your electric vehicle as a home battery as well.
[00:52:26] Yeah. So there is some. You know, case study's about, and there's some prototypes about of this at the moment. It's super expensive to implement, like anything is in the early days. But so is that like when you get home, plug the car in and it's then pushing power through the house? So, or if you work from home in the back, the car's been on charge all day.
[00:52:47] Yeah. You'll be able to set a set point that you want to keep in the vehicle. Yeah. And then it's, so it's called two way. Charging basically so it can discharge from the car to the house. That's it. Can also charge from the the house. Yeah, I know the Ford Lightning does that over there in the States. We haven't got it here in Australia yet.
[00:53:05] Yeah. But um, that was their big thing. I believe there's some implications around the getting it all approved through the gr different Yeah. Authorities like Anna Jackson, Ergon and Essential Energy and stuff like that. So. It's definitely something that will happen. It's just going to take a little bit of time.
[00:53:20] So, so you could run, essentially, you could charge your car throughout the day on your system and then at night you could be feeding back in from the car to the house. Yeah. Yes. That's crazy. And there'll be another step further than that as well, which is. Like energy trading. So say for example, your car is at home, it's fully charged.
[00:53:41] It's a pretty ordinary day in terms of solar production. There's a high demand on the grid. There'll be programs that can call up your car to discharge to the grid. Over and above what your house is using, so, yeah, right. You know, if you've got thousands of cars or home batteries all connected at the same time and the control system asks for that energy to be put into the grid, then you'll get paid for this.
[00:54:08] So there's all, that's pretty cool. You can already do it now. Yeah. It doesn't work very great in Queensland at the moment, but in other states you can do that from your home battery. So there's like a, that makes so much sense. Like it just, Takes so much stress off everybody's infrastructure and all these warnings that we get, like during a super hot day, they're like, oh, we're gonna be running at this and expect some rolling power outages.
[00:54:32] Yeah. Whereas if everyone's providing back onto the the grid, like it's a no brainer. Yeah, exactly. And I think it'll just keep growing and growing, so it's a pretty exciting space to be in for me anyway. Yeah, especially like as it advances, these things become more cost effective so everybody can get access to it.
[00:54:50] Yeah. There'll always be early adopters and there'll always be a few teething issues, but there'll be no doubt that I don't know how long it'll take. It might be five years, it might be 10 years, but essentially most houses will either have an electric car, Or a home battery that is able to be controlled by the network to give grid stability.
[00:55:11] Yeah, great. So I think moving forward there, everyone's just trying to make the house more energy efficient, get solar involved, and be more productive, I guess, in terms of environmentally friendly and also just making it everything more livable. That's right. We haven't really touched on the environmental factor, but that's definitely another driver to.
[00:55:31] To do solar and to, yeah. Do your bit towards getting Australia in line with some other countries in terms of our renewable energy sources. Yeah. I guess it'll be all the big players that try to stop that, but I think, yeah, if everybody adopted it, it's definitely a smarter way to move forward. If people wanna reach out to you and get some more nuggets and some help with solar or batteries and stuff like that, where should they check you out?
[00:55:57] Yeah, so obviously on all the socials Guard, electrical on Instagram, Facebook also can just drop in and see us in you on pill. So we've got a showroom at one slash 22 Valey Street in Yong Pilly. We've got some home batteries and aver all working and set up there. So it's a working showroom. We can show you what it all looks like, show you some graphs, what the energy production and consumption looks like on the apps on your phone.
[00:56:26] Yeah, everything like that. So, We can also pull your plans up and sort of superimpose the panels on there and stuff like that, so you can have a look at what it looks like. Yeah. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming in. It's been really informative. I think a lot of people are gonna get some great stuff out of that.
[00:56:42] Thanks for having me. All good. Good. All right folks. Thanks for listening to Building a Bluebird. We hope you got some great information outta today's episode. If there are any questions or topics you want us to cover, or even if you want to be a guest on the podcast, please reach out via Instagram, which is bluebird underscore db, or head to our website, www.bluebirddb.com au and contact us through there.
[00:57:07] Make sure you also like share and subscribe so you don't miss out on any exciting future episodes. All the informa. That has been discussed during this podcast is purely based off our own personal experiences and those experiences of our guests. The information, advice and opinions presented are for general information only, and any reliance on the information provided is done at your own risk.
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