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Lynn Beinat
Chief Executive Officer
Maurice Beinat
Chief Technical Officer
ecoMaster
When the first white settlers arrived in Australia, those who could afford to build houses modelled them on their English or European homes, despite the difference in weather conditions. The builders who came with them constructed houses they had previously built - workers cottages with adjoining walls or grand mansions that Queen Victoria put her name to. It was not until the first Queenslanders were built in the 1920s and 1930s that a popular house design responded to the climatic conditions of Australia. These iconic symbols of the tropical climes are raised on poles, shaded by verandas, and fitted with louvre windows, providing flow-through ventilation to combat the heat. These houses are a design success.
The same cannot be said for most of the existing houses in this country. The designs of most new homes require huge air-conditioners and large heating systems, increasing overall running costs while energy prices are tipped to only increase. Older style houses may have no insulation and gaps around doors and windows, and both old and new homes may not be taking advantage of the seasonal sunshine delivered free of charge. What do you do when your house is an energy guzzler and money pit, and a major renovation is out of the question?
I took a train trip to Gisborne, one hour from central Melbourne, to meet a couple who have built a company making houses warmer in winter and cooler in summer without major reconstruction costs. Maurice and Lynn Beinat built ecoMaster, now in its sixth year, a business reducing household energy consumption with purpose built design products and ideas. Through their Home Sustainability Assessments, the Beinats work primarily towards making houses more comfortable to live in, and are reduced energy bills follow.
Their ideas and methods come from the bitter cold experience of moving to Gisborne, always six degrees colder than Melbourne, after living and working in Europe. 'When we were over there (London) you have this notion about how warm it is (here), how fabulous it is back home. It was a big surprise.' Originally Sydneysiders, they were used to cold winters, 'but they were pretty short lived'. When the neighbours welcomed the family at the local winery, Maurice asked about the slow combustion stove. 'So when do you put on the fire?' He was expecting to light it at around 4pm in the afternoon. 'Oh, from about April,' they replied, 'and you turn it off in October.'
The house they had bought was costing them $100 a week to heat with LPG gas and that was at a chilly 12 degrees. They burnt 13 meters of wood, and including electricity costs, their total winter energy bill in 2003 was $2427, and they still weren't warm.
With the move to Gisborne came a change in careers, with Maurice going to TAFE to learn building, while Lynn threw off her computing work to volunteer at their children's Montessori school. At this time the school needed to relocate, so with Lynn's help they secured 10 acres to build the new school. Maurice says, 'So I was doing the study on building, and she was doing the study on sustainability. Lynn and I volunteered to build the school. While we were doing that, we started to work on our own home with the energy rating software and found out our house was a 1.5 star rating. (Five star rating is the aim for energy efficiency.) The results suggested that draft proofing would make a big difference. The following year we cut our heating bills by half.' The Beinats rising to both 'impossible challenges' - their own home's energy rating and building the school - facilitated a hands-on research phase of a burgeoning business.
They finished the twenty square school building on time; new skills and new ideas had been truly tried and tested. On a well-deserved holiday after the building project, Maurice had a one-page proposal of a business model to show Lynn. Maurice says, ' She failed to say no, that is a stupid idea.' EcoMaster, as an idea and now a plan, was in the world.
Maurice built a heat chamber in the garage with temperate gauges to test materials for sealing out heat, and hired a cool room to test other theories on sealing in warmth. 'What we found was they (methods for the efficient sealing of houses) weren't around, so we have developed our own door and window seals.' The company has expanded to employing seven staff, and a mechanical engineer to help develop products they have identified as lacking in the marketplace, like secondary window glazing, which is layered over existing windows.
Their experiments on their own home reduced the winter energy bill to $775 by 2006, and by then Local Council and Government policy promoting reduction of energy usage gave the company the experience and validation for growth.
However, the opposition over the last six years has been very real. Maurice suggests that Gisborne 'is the least green place on earth. When we first joined the local small business association, they looked at us like we were nuts. Here come the lunatics. We thought, well everyone must want it (to have a comfortable energy efficient home) but it wasn't in everyone's mindset'.
As a consultant for the television show Carbon Cops, Maurice visited a home to be featured on the show. 'There was bucket loads of stuff that could be done' he says, 'it was a thermal disaster. The funny thing was the sofa was edged close to the fireplace and the armrest was completely collapse from everybody sitting on it.' Obviously it was the warmest spot in the house.
'People buy a house because of the way it (the house) looks and based on the floor plan and who will get what room.' Maurice laments the lack of knowledge by homebuyers about the position of the house on the block, constructed material and the design in relation to light, sunshine and shelter. Developers and the building industry have now been regulated to improve energy efficiency in new houses, but the placement of houses in large developments usually pays no heed to which way the sun shines. In the future, ecoMaster plans to provide a training course for homebuyers, to empower people with simple, practical money and energy saving information.
This year ecoMaster received the HIA GreenSmart Professional of the Year Award. This accolade for their achievements over the last six years was a surprise to Maurice and Lynn. The Housing Industry Association had persuaded them to nominate and come to Canberra for the awards. Maurice and Lynn were hesitant to go, they thought they had a one in ten chance of winning, but the lure of the awards ceremony at Government House convinced them to attend. As Maurice says, 'it was very nice to get it. Unexpected, given it is an award to a company that is fixing up the mistakes of their membership.'
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