1. Reduce strata energy and water consumption and wastage
Residential buildings can have an immensely positive impact on the environment if their owners corporations choose to embrace sustainable strata living, while saving money and increasing their property’s value too.
If you and your owners corporation are on the fence about committing to drastic changes in order to increase your property’s sustainability, we have some good news for you. You don’t necessarily need to make huge commitments to begin with, as you can choose from cost-effective measures that vary in complexity.
Whether your committee is only willing to start with something simple, like replacing fluorescent, incandescent, and halogen lights with LEDs, or are ready to go big and install a full photovoltaic solar system, this important thing is to make a start. Any steps you take to improve your building’s sustainability and performance will likely help your owners corporation save money.
While it’s all well and good to talk about energy and water reduction methods, it can be hard to get a snapshot of what this means within the specific context of the common property. To help you out, we’ve taken a look at energy and water consumption in strata settings.
Energy usage and wastage on common property
Common property usage generally depends on the size and type of the building, and what kind of facilities (pools, lifts, gyms etc) the building has.
Up to 60% of an apartment building’s entire energy consumption can usually be attributed to common property areas. In contrast, simple energy-reducing measures have been found to reduce energy use by 40% or more.
There are multiple ways to reduce energy wastage on common property to embrace sustainable strata living, including adding variable speed drives (VSD) to any motor or pump system. VSDs make sure that a motor’s electricity output matches the environment it’s trying to control, saving on excessive wastage. Other methods your owners corporation may want to opt for include:
- Embracing solar panels
- LED lighting upgrades
- Adding sensors and timers to assets requiring electricity
- Introducing instantaneous gas to hot water systems
- Integrating pool covers to retain heat and reduce evaporation.
If you’d like to take an extra step towards increased savings through increased sustainability, you may be interested in PICA Group’s CommunityUtilities program. CommunityUtilities helps committees and owners reduce the cost of energy by finding competitive energy rates on the market. With an average saving of $3,628 per scheme and a total of over $5 million saved on the program so far, it’s worth undertaking.
Understanding where most common property energy is used or possibly wasted allows us to identify where sustainable infrastructure can be implemented. The table below reflects average energy patterns and where energy is most commonly used in strata properties.
| Low rise buildings |
|
| Common area asset |
Common area energy consumption |
| Lighting |
90% |
| Heating, ventilation and air conditioning |
6% |
| Other |
4% |
| Medium and high rise buildings |
|
| Common area asset |
Common area energy consumption |
| Heating, ventilation and air conditioning and pumps |
47% |
| Lighting |
27% |
| Pool |
12% |
| Lifts |
8% |
| Other |
6% |
Source: NSW Fair Trading & Smart Green Apartments audit
Water usage and wastage in strata properties
It is sometimes difficult for owners corporations to determine if their water usage is excessive or acceptable. To solve this problem, Sydney Water now provides the figures to benchmark water usage on properties, giving owners corporations an indication of how much water usage and wastage is happening.
| Sydney Water’s benchmark for water consumption |
|
| Category |
Litres per bedroom per day |
| High use |
300 and higher |
| Typical |
200 to 300 |
| Best practice |
Less than 200 |
| Unachieved target |
Less than 130 |
Source: NSW Fair Trading & Sydney Water
Water wastage is commonly perceived as something owners corporations can’t control because apartments built in NSW before 2014 don’t have individual meters. Rather, water usage is paid through the administrative fund and owners then pay via levies which are proportionate to unit entitlement. With 86% of water use occurring in private apartments (and 51.7% being attributed to showers — the single biggest water consumer), it’s seen as a strata variable.
Owners corporations that are looking to embrace sustainable strata living while saving money will be delighted to learn that there are great initiatives like WaterFix Strata and NABERS that look to incentivise and reduce wastage across the property.
WaterFix Strata helps strata communities embrace sustainable strata living by analysing the building’s water history and the number of bedrooms to usage, fixing leaks on the common property and private lots, and installing water efficiency devices. The results can be astounding. For example, WaterFix Strata assessed the Cassia Garden Residential Apartments, a 138-lot building in Sydney’s CBD. It saved its owners 35 million litres of water; a combined saving of $74,000.
WaterFix isn’t just for large strata complexes. It also takes on small strata properties, such as a smaller block in Sydney’s Chatswood, where it saved the owners corporation $6,000 a year.
The WaterFix team often finds savings by installing monitors on the tap that connects the property to the main water supply. Through this, they can see and access water activity. In the case of the Chatswood apartments, the monitor showed the water supply to the building never dipped to zero, indicating a leak. Then, using a leak detection team, they discovered five substantial leaks: two behind concrete walls inside private lots, two common property tap leaks, and a leaking toilet in a vacant apartment.
Originally published on 24 August 2020
Updated on 21 October 2021
Categories: Certainty, Enhancing Community Living, New South Wales, Supporting sustainability & energy savings