How green is my home? Eco Easy Home app has the answer
An Australian draftsperson and building product developer has teamed up with an eco-architect to produce an iPhone app to gauge the green credentials of properties.
Eco Easy Home was quietly released in early March with a feature set to rival a full assessment by a sustainability consultant.
The app uses a variety of assessing factors to allow users to work out how green a house is.
One feature developer John Civijovski is particularly proud of is the alignment tool. The feature lets users work out just how north-facing a property is as it tracks out the future movements of the sun. The information gleaned from this tool lets users calculate the solar gain of a particular property.
“Being able to locate homes with a northern orientation is totally new. A tool like that just doesn’t exist,” Civijovski says.
“You can move the sliding guides and pinpoint homes quite neatly.”
The rating system of the app asks the user a series of questions to let the app assign a value score to a house.
Civijovski says he initially wanted to help people find the thermal strengths and weaknesses of a house, particularly for those don’t know where to start.
“You don’t have to know anything about energy efficiency.”
“It’s a complex area, but we have broken it down into a simple interface that anyone can use. If you use it regularly, you will become familiar with jargon like orientation, insulation and thermal mass, and eventually become an energy-efficiency expert.”
The app intersperses information on energy efficiency with an aim to educate users as they use the tool.
“If you’re looking at buying a home and you’ve narrowed it down to two or three you can make comparisons using Eco Easy Home about which has better opportunities. One might be better in winter while that’s better in summer.”
Civijovski worked with architect Gareth Cole, an architect and public speaker on sustainable design. He has worked as an architect for 30 years and runs The Ecologie Group Architects, which specialises in passive solar design, solar systems, energy efficiency and sustainability.