Australian homes are so cold that some are falling below the WHO's recommended 'safe' temperature
ABC News
15 Jul 2022

Amity and Micky love their rented Sydney home, except for the chilly temperatures during winter.   



In Amity and Mickie's rental home in Sydney, there's a room connected to the main living space by a doorway that has no door.

A note stuck to the wall reveals the family's pet name for this room: "Antarctica".



Patricia Karvelas stands next to windows, smiling at the camera.

"It's got a ceiling that's just plastic sheeting and no insulation," Mickie tells ABC RN Breakfast.

"It's absolutely freezing."    

Mickie has wedged a rod above the doorway and draped a heavy curtain to try to halt the cold air wafting in, but it's not having much of an impact.

It's just one of the small modifications the family has made as they shiver through a second winter in a house they otherwise love.

And the conditions are taking a toll.

"I feel like the cold really impacts my mental health, probably more than my physical health," Amity says.

"I find it just really affects my mood, being cold."

Despite this, the family hasn't asked for any changes to the property to fix the problem because they don't want to put their landlord offside and risk eviction.

Amity looks out into the room she often refers to as 'Antarctica'. Condensation forms on the window from her breath.

But they are taking part in a national project, run by community organisation Better Renting, which is investigating just how cold Australian homes get. Their rental is one of 70 sites that has been monitored through winter for about seven weeks.

The project organisers gave the renters temperature monitoring devices to test how often their homes were below 18 degrees Celsius. This is the recommendation set by the World Health Organization for a "safe and well-balanced" indoor temperature for a home during winter.

Results so far are concerning.

For example, one night Amity put on three heaters at once, in one part of the house, to see how much she could warm it up.

She only got the temperature to 17C.

Not built for winter
Other tenants taking part in the temperature monitoring project are also struggling to heat their homes to the recommended level, according to Joel Dignam, the founder and executive director of Better Renting.

"Even in some relatively warmer parts of Australia, the average temperatures are still really low. So in New South Wales and Victoria, the average temperature in the rental properties we're tracking is still below 18C," Mr Dignam says. 

Australian houses so cold they're making people sick
As much of the country shivers through winter, how cold does your house get? Early findings from a new survey given to RN Breakfast suggest Australian properties are falling far below the international benchmark for healthy temperatures.   


Temperature trackers give Better Renting round-the-clock data from the 70 sites as parts of the county endure an unusually cold winter.

In the first fortnight, the data showed the homes were below 18C for 70 per cent of the time.

The coldest temperature recorded so far was 1C, logged by a participant living in their car in Hobart.

Those with a roof over their head have logged temperatures as low as 6C.

Emma Baker, who heads up the Housing and Healthy Cities Research Group at the University of Adelaide, says the data collected by Better Renting is concerning but not surprising.

It matches a 2019 study she was part of that looked at 35 homes in South Australia. None of them reached 18C in winter.

"Power used to be really cheap so Australian houses were basically designed as winter tents that you could pump a whole lot of energy into during winter and warm them up," Professor Baker says.

But that's no longer an option for many renters as power bills soar.

Researchers are also showing greater interest in the links between cold homes and health.

A little computer in the bedroom reads a temperature of 14 degrees.
The temperature in one of the bedrooms was a chilly 14C at 9am on a Sydney winter's morning.
"We know that cold housing affects people's blood pressure and their risk of cardiovascular disease, and obviously respiratory disease," Professor Baker says.

"But the really interesting thing that's been coming up lately is mental health.

"Mental health seems to be the canary in the mine, the thing that is affected first by having cold housing."

Participants in the Better Renting project have been asked about the impact their homes' temperature is having on their health and wellbeing. Ten of the 56 who responded mentioned mental health issues related to their home temperature.

When you live in a country like Australia where 9 months of the year the temperature is anywhere from warm to hot weather, you could probably forgive the builders for making homes feel as cool as possible. In a month's time, I will be opening up the windows and curtains to let the cool spring air into the house. I only need to close up the house for 2 or 3 months of the year during the winter. And I only need to put a heater on in the bedroom for a few hours of the night to sleep comfortably. The rest of the year, sometimes I cannot keep the house cool enough.

Queenslanders are the worst. The McMansions on a slab with brick veneer and all the roof insulation are actually pretty good. Except for all the windows.

freediver wrote on Jul 16^th, 2022 at 4:11pm:


My toilet was replaced a few years ago. I found that the labourers had left a sizeable gap where the drain was that lead to downstairs. I was wondering why the winters were colder than usual for that room until I discovered the gap a few months back.

Johnnie wrote on Jul 16^th, 2022 at 6:22pm:


About 5 tea light candles (citronella) that last about 4 hours each. The other candles last up to 8 hours each. They are effective enough that the toilet room is kept much warmer than usual. I may decide not to bother with using them next year.

Crack in the wall from the sloping. Can only conclude that I need to take a sledgehammer to some of the support posts downstairs and knock them back into place.

Marla wrote on Jul 17^th, 2022 at 1:30am:


That is a couple of photos of my front door that I took about an hour ago. People think I should move, have the house knocked down, and rebuilt with a 2020 standard house.

I doubt that I want to move to a larger version of Rockhampton.