One of my favorite Facebook group members is someone who shares a dislike for white paint.

In the comments, people discuss old houses from the mid-century era that have been painted white. Some debate whether they can undo the damage caused by previous owners. The focus is on the “incredibly destructive act” of whitewashing these homes, with a link shared to a house that is currently for sale. “I scrolled past three pictures and had to stop,” reads one of the 80 intense replies.

“Unbelievable destructive act”: A white-painted trend that surrounds the beauty of the Middle Ages. Photo: facebook / meta

These are my people and we belong to a retro house for sale group in Australia. This group is dedicated to sharing links to houses from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s (or earlier!) that are currently on the market. We also admire well-maintained vintage beach houses while mourning the tragically renovated interiors that have lost their charm due to new colors.

I may not know what this group is all about, but now it occupies most of my scrolling time and mental space. I find great joy in eavesdropping on discussions about old houses, connecting with strangers over a shared passion. The allure of retro pastel bathrooms and wooden paneling is like a free fashion show. My current favorite discovery is a church converted by Welby. It has a ghostly appearance and sits on 5 acres of land with aging houses around it. In Teac, Victoria, there are remnants of a cult commune or “church-based community” with a “rich heritage,” as delicately put in the listing.

But my obsession goes beyond curiosity. It’s no secret that the Australian housing market is tough, but within this Facebook group, dreams can flourish. I share links to remarkable properties with the group chat, envisioning myself repairing and restoring them.

“Church that looks like a ghost that looks like a ghost” … or a fixer upper that is perfect for this housing crisis. Photo: Realestate.com.au

I skip over listings in pricey Sydney suburbs that are out of reach and focus on fixer-uppers outside the city. I imagine a different life that could have been mine if I had bought one of these homes.

Could I live in a town like Kyogle, NSW, with a population of 2,751? Or perhaps Mount Barker, South Australia? But most of all, I dream of Tasmania with its retro mysteries, affordable prices, and proximity to the beach – if only the water temperature were a bit warmer.

“Can I live in Kaoguru, New South Wales? Population 2,751?” Photo: facebook / meta

This charm is on borrowed time. Retro houses in Australia continue to dwindle as money often triumphs over taste, leading to the demolition of older homes in favor of newer, cheaper options. I witness this reality daily. Despite the construction boom near my beachside Sydney neighborhood, I long for the stories that old houses hold. However, online, I maintain hope that one of these houses can be mine, exchanging thoughts and ideas with others in the group.

www.theguardian.com

Testing Millions of UK homes for Energy Leaks in Effort to Achieve Net Zero Goal

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Vehicles equipped with technology to collect data on building conditions

Madeleine Cuff

British city dwellers may have spotted a strange-looking vehicle driving around their neighborhood earlier this year. It looked just like a Google Street View vehicle, with a camera setup sticking out of the back to scan its surroundings. And like the Google car, it scanned city streets and took photos.

But these modified Teslas do more than just take pictures: they’re equipped with cutting-edge sensors and scanners that can report back the exact dimensions, heat loss, materials, age and state of disrepair of every building they drive over.

The car, equipped with what’s called the Built Environment Scanning System (BESS), has been on a spree to find out just how leaky and dilapidated Britain’s buildings really are. Between March and May, the car scanned thousands of roads and millions of buildings across London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds and South Yorkshire.

Data from BESS vehicles will be combined with thermal images taken by drones and planes in a £4 million government-funded project to build a huge digital database detailing the condition of buildings across the U.K. The aim is to help housing associations, local authorities and other property owners quickly plan renovation projects for hundreds of properties at once, says Ahsan Khan of xRI, the British nonprofit behind the project.

Decarbonising UK buildings is one of the toughest challenges on the journey to net-zero emissions. The UK’s 30 million buildings account for around a third of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions, with most of the pollution coming from the use of gas for heating and hot water.

Another problem is that many of the UK’s homes are old and drafty. Retrofitting these homes to make them more energy efficient is crucial, but knowing where to start is a huge challenge, as the age and condition of the buildings varies greatly. “We’re held back as a nation because we don’t really know what we have, where it is in terms of the built environment, and what we can do about it,” says Khan.

Currently, the only means of judging a building’s sustainability is the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), a mandatory document that rates every building on a scale of A to G and gives owners advice on how to improve the rating. But EPCs, which rely on the judgement of in-person assessors, are “expensive, time-consuming and inaccurate”, says Dr. Mike Pitts The project is part-funded by the government body Innovate UK, with other funding coming from the UK Space Agency and the Welsh Government.

For organisations such as housing associations and local authorities who want to renovate hundreds of properties at once, EPCs are of little use – instead they often have to send their own assessors to the properties and plan the works schedule, which is a costly and time-consuming undertaking.

Speeding up renovations

The new database is expected to digitise much of this process. If it works as planned, it will use machine learning to tell councils, for example, how many properties already have double glazing installed, or which homes need top-up cavity-wall insulation. In an instant, it will be able to pinpoint exactly which homes have the space and sunlight to install rooftop solar panels. Crucially, it will calculate projected savings on energy bills and provide return-on-investment information, helping organisations access green finance.

“The xRI project represents a major advance in our understanding of our existing stock,” says Mat Colmer of Innovate UK. “The validated data set will improve and automate the refurbishment process, speeding up the entire refurbishment process.”

About 7.5% of homes in England, Scotland, and Wales have already been scanned, and Khan says the framework is in place to build a beta version of the database, due to be released later this year. For now, xRI is focused on decarbonizing buildings, but the BESS vehicles are collecting data on everything they see, from tree cover to potholes, that could be put to use in the future. “The amount of data is just staggering,” Pitts says.

David Grew Researchers from Britain’s Leeds Beckett University call the project “exciting,” but warn that an in-home inspection is essential before any renovation work begins. “Homes have been tampered with many times, so the same home could be completely different,” he says. “This quick and agile method is great for accelerating progress and momentum, but it can’t and shouldn’t replace a really high-quality inspection before construction begins.”

Kate Simpson A researcher at Nottingham Trent University in the UK says neighbourhood data collected by BESS vehicles could help plan local power grid upgrades and climate resilience projects. But the data needs to be collected carefully, she says. “What’s the minimum amount of data we need to make the right decisions?” she says. “That way we can minimise the environmental impact of storing that data.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Ancient Humans Made Their Homes in Lava Tubes in the Arabian Desert

Posted on April 18, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Researchers investigate Saudi Arabia's Umm Jirsan lava tube system

PALAEODESERTS project, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Archaeologists have discovered, for the first time, evidence of human habitation inside a lava tube in the desert of northern Saudi Arabia.

A lava tube is a cave formed during a volcanic eruption. The surface of the lava river cools and solidifies, but hot molten rock continues to flow beneath it. Eventually, the lava will drain out of the tube, leaving behind a tunnel.

Matthew Stewart He and his colleagues from Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, dug a trench inside Umm Jilsan. At 1.5 kilometers long, it is the largest lava tube in Saudi Arabia. Researchers found animal bones, stone tools and pottery dating back at least 7,000 years, and possibly 10,000 years.

Stewart and his team have been working in the area for more than 15 years and have uncovered numerous stone structures on the surface, confirming human habitation. However, the desert's hot and dry climate has degraded the organic material, making it difficult to determine its age.

The surface landscape is a “hot, dry, flat basalt desert,” Stewart said. “But when you're inside a lava tube, it's much cooler. It would have been a great refuge because it's so protected.”

“It's changing our understanding of the prehistory of the Arabian Peninsula,” he says.

Researchers also found human bones in parts of Umm Jilsan's underground network, which are believed to have been dragged in by hyenas.

Stewart and colleagues found rock art at other nearby lava tubes, including depictions of domesticated sheep and goats, that would have been made by “cultural contemporaries” of the group who used the tubes as shelters. he says, he discovered.

mike morley Researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, describe lava tubes as like “prefabricated activity spaces.”

“As a scientist who works primarily in caves, I'm excited to see that there is another type of cave system used by humans in the past,” Morley says. “These discoveries represent a treasure trove of archaeological information in Arabia, a vast region whose prehistoric archeology has only recently been systematically investigated.”

It has also been suggested that lava tubes could be a place for humans to take refuge on the Moon or Mars.

topic:

archeology/
ancient humans

Source: www.newscientist.com

11 futuristic visions from old inventions: From carrier pigeons to self-cleaning homes | Lifestyle

Posted on March 13, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

“Things can only get better,” D:Ream promised, but they were wrong, as were most people throughout history who tried to predict the future.

But that hasn’t stopped us from trying, and some visionaries have been quite successful. Leonardo da Vinci also envisioned a helicopter and a refrigerator. Joseph Granville suggested in 1661 that lunar travel and communication using “magnetic waves” might be possible. Civil engineer John Elfreth Watkins, writing in 1900, predicted mobile phones, prepared meals, and global digital media (“Photos can be sent via telegram even if you are far away. If there were a battle in China in 100 years, a snapshot of that most shocking event would be in the newspapers an hour later.”). Visionary American cartoonist Arthur Radbaugh in the late 1950s to early 1960s, through his series Closer Than We Think, introduced ideas like wrist-worn televisions, robot-run warehouses, and bloodless surgery.

Many of these predictions, however, turned out to be inaccurate. Watkins believed he could eradicate mosquitoes and the letters C, X, and Q. Radbaugh imagined a colony of monkeys in space riding a hamster wheel-shaped “unicycle” vehicle. Most futurists simply added imaginative touches to existing technological advancements. It requires a great deal of creativity to envisage a truly different world.

Perhaps that is why more outlandish events occur in fiction. Jules Verne’s book Paris in the 20th Century, written in 1860 but not published until 1994, foretold a world with copy machines, techno music, and individuals who view art degrees as foolish. HG Wells took it further (or deeper) by imagining the atomic bomb.

What people anticipate often reveals more about their aspirations and anxieties than the actual future. Predictions tend to surge around significant dates and momentous global occurrences, reflecting contemporary concerns. The rapid technological advancements of the 19th century gave rise to new uncertainties as well as hopes, and the future they envisaged mirrors this duality (women’s pursuit of happiness also emerges as a recurring theme). The 1960s vision encompasses the space race and the “sky’s the limit” enthusiasm that promotes a sense of boundless possibility – alongside the fear of the Cold War and the quest for viable alternatives in case nuclear annihilation renders life on Earth untenable. The reality tends to lie somewhere in between these extremes, but the list of people who have been anticipating the apocalypse for the past millennium serves as a peculiar consolation for those who believed in cataclysmic events involving fire, flood, comet impacts, or the Antichrist. Hey, we’re still here (for now).

It’s a whimsical retrospective vision of the future. So let’s hop off the hoverboard, ask the kangaroo butler, and start with the roast dinner pill.

March of the Intellect, 1829

“6 hours from London to Bath!” Photo: Heritage Images/Getty Images

The imaginative stride of cartoonists is remarkable. Much more captivating than reality. An enormous steam-powered horse emitting smoke; a vacuum tube transport to Bengal; a flying whale gargoyle ferrying convicts to New South Wales in style; a refuse collector biting into a whole pineapple; a postman with elegant wings – it’s bewildering. Heath believed the future would be kinder and more user-friendly. That, to me, signifies progress.

Test tube baby, 19th century

Simmer until done. Photo: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

French author and illustrator Albert Robida, in his “Twentieth Century” trilogy created in the 1880s and 1990s, predicted video conferences, doorbell cameras, pneumatic tube transport systems like hyperloops, industrialized food production, and a world polluted with “pathogenic ferments” clogging its rivers. The test tube baby seems a tad on the nose, but the image of a toddler scientist concocting this idea makes me wish they had invented something like ibuprofen instead.

City with a roof, 19th century

‘Is it still raining? I didn’t realize it.’ Photo: Alamy

The German Hildebrand chocolate company produced trading cards in the late 19th century envisioning various marvels of the future: buildings that could be moved on rails by steam engines, aquatic penny-farthings, summer holidays in the North Pole. Unfortunately, these might only become a reality in about 30 years from now. I won’t name names, but there are a few cities in the UK that could definitely benefit from a rainproof glass roof (cough, Manchester cough).

Crowded, c1901-14

Sky Rage first appears in this illustration for a French satirical magazine. Photo: Science and Society Image Library/SSPL/Getty Images

While imagined visions of future transportation frequently depict crowded skies with flying vehicles, road traffic continues to remain tediously earthbound (barely enough space for a two-lane road, I tell you). Robida presented a sleek, almost animalistic driverless vehicle approach. I, however, appreciate the comical impracticality of this airship traffic jam. You can easily tell it’s French from the man’s gesture on the far left. They sure threw this at me at numerous Gaulish crossroads.

Bathroom, 2000, 1899

Because she’s worth it. Photo: CCI/Shutterstock

Commissioned by French toymaker Jean-Marc Côté, illustrations of the year 2000 for the 1900 Paris Exposition achieved fame when Isaac Asimov republished them in 1986. They depict scenarios like underwater hippopotamus and seahorse rides, a bus pulled by whales, and scientists investigating giant, menacing “microorganisms.” I chose this specific piece illustrating how the laziest woman in the world would prefer to conduct her nightly errands. Science, let’s materialize this!

School, 2000, 1899

Are headphones required during class? Little did they know. Photo: Public domain

Another 2000 card portrays a rather bleak vista of the future school. I appreciate how the teacher reassigns the Racine and Molière editions to child apprentices rather than mastering them personally. Côté wasn’t alone in envisioning educational reforms that involve transmitting knowledge through buttons pressed with an audible click, as Arthur Radebaugh did in the late 1950s. The idea was to enable students to advance at a pace

Source: www.theguardian.com

Privacy Concerns Rise as Smart Devices Gain Popularity in Australian Homes

Posted on February 10, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Do you have any smart devices or home appliances that can be controlled remotely in your house? These devices have become a common feature in modern homes over the past decade, offering convenience but also raising concerns about privacy. These smart devices collect, share, aggregate, and analyze data, posing potential risks to personal information. According to Katherine Kemp, an expert in law and data privacy, privacy laws in Australia are not up to date, which is a global concern. The information collected by smart devices can be used for targeted advertising, and it’s unclear where this data ends up.

While smart devices offer benefits such as environmental friendliness, Kemp believes that their main purpose is to collect and sell more information rather than promoting environmental sustainability. There’s a concern that companies use this data for targeted advertising and other commercial purposes, potentially creating detailed profiles of individuals.

Concerns about privacy and consent models have been raised by Sam Floreani, the policy director at Digital Rights Watch. The collection and use of data depend on underlying incentives, and it’s essential for individuals to fully understand the implications of sharing their data. He also mentioned the need for improving consent laws and rights around personal data.

Australia’s current privacy laws require consent, but customers are not always given the right information to make informed choices. The government is planning an overhaul of the law to bring it into the “digital age” and strengthen enforcement powers for privacy watchdogs.

Convenience and privacy

Some argue that sacrificing privacy for convenience is worth it, especially if it improves accessibility. For the visually impaired community, smart devices play an important role in reducing social isolation. However, concerns remain about the trade-off between convenience and privacy.

“That’s too tempting.”

Early concepts of smart homes focused on collecting data solely for the occupants’ purposes. However, the potential for lucrative behavioral advertising services led to a shift in the use of this data. Changes in privacy laws are needed to establish stricter standards for how companies behave regarding smart devices.

Source: www.theguardian.com

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Tag Archives: homes

The Most Massive Homes in Video Game History: Top 12 Estates Unveiled

Mount Holly, Blue Prince

Edison Mansion, Maniac Mansion

Spencer Mansion, Resident Evil

Finch House, What Remains of Edith Finch

Jetset Willy, Mansion

Island Cottage, Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Snow Peak Ruins, Zelda: Twilight Princess

Croft Manor, Tomb Raider

Luigi’s Mansion

Lighthouse, Beyond Good and Evil

Botany Manor

Carnovas Estate, Phantasmagoria

Speeding up renovations

March of the Intellect, 1829

Test tube baby, 19th century

City with a roof, 19th century

Crowded, c1901-14

Bathroom, 2000, 1899

School, 2000, 1899

Privacy Concerns Rise as Smart Devices Gain Popularity in Australian Homes

Convenience and privacy

“That’s too tempting.”