Sustainable House Day thriving through innovation

FOR more than a decade Geelong Sustainability has celebrated innovative house design through its Sustainable House Day, and have reinvented this year’s program to suit an online format.

This year’s Sustainable House Day will include Q&A sessions with homeowners and sustainability experts and virtual tours of eight houses which are accompanied by eight one-hour webinars.

The wealth of content means the event will be held over a weekend rather than a single day.

The featured houses range from a passive solar home built in St Leonards with an 8.8-star Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme rating, to a renovated heritage home from the 1940s in Geelong West.

Geelong Sustainability president Vicki Perrett said the house tours would provide comprehensive coverage.

“We’re actually creating two videos for each house. One of them is just a little slideshow video to show what are the key sustainability features of that house and then if people are interested and they’ve booked that house they will then get access to a whole range of additional resources including a video tour narrated by the house owner as well as more extensive information.

“There’s some swings and roundabouts in us going virtual. Definitely two of the homes in the program would not normally open but because we’ve been able to go in and video them, they’re opening.”

People will be able to access digital copies of the content for at least a year after the event, and Ms Perrett said hosting the event online presented an opportunity to embrace a digital format for future events.

“As a sustainability organisation we are all concerned about our carbon footprint and our miles of travel, so we’re not getting people driving all around the region to houses that are quite geographically spread out.

“I think the next one will be a hybrid where we’ll be able to give people a choice.”

Many will leave the weekend hoping to build on the knowledge they have acquired, which is why between October 24-31 Geelong Sustainability will also be hosting its Speed Date a Sustainable Expert event.

The event will allow people to schedule up to two 15-minute “dates” where experts will answer whatever questions people have about their chosen fields.

These experts will include architects, designers, energy assessors, builders, solar designers and installers, window suppliers, and more.

Sustainable House Day will run from 11am-4:30pm on Saturday, October 10 and Sunday, October 11.

People can access to narrated tours of a house and a webinar with the homeowners and experts for $5. Alternatively, people can pay $20 and get unlimited access to videos, webinars and other resources across the weekend.

For bookings and further information head to geelongsustainability.org.au/shd2020/.