The Whole-of-Home Resilience pilot project will be a home resilience and energy efficiency assessment. Participating households will help us identify how to enable our regional community to prepare their homes against natural hazards like bushfire, flood, storm and extreme heat.

It will also will help us understand the changes or additions (retrofits) homes require and estimate costs required to raise the resilience and energy efficiency of homes. It will do this by looking at a range of house types, old and new, with exposure to flood, bushfire, storm and/or extreme heat, with a variety of construction materials and techniques, for example weatherboard, brick, brick veneer.

We will use the findings to prepare a cost benefit business case to support future policy and investment in home retrofits.

The free assessment will provide the participant with professional recommendations to make their home more comfortable year-round, reduce your energy bills, and prepare for natural hazards.

It will include an Energy Efficiency Scorecard and Resilience Rating which provide households with a tailored list of priority actions to measurably improve the climate resilience of their home. The ratings were created by Australia’s leading bushfire, flood, storm, cyclone, heatwave and energy experts the Resilient Building Council (RBC).

A trained and accredited Energy Scorecard and Resilience Ratings Assessor. The assessor will be working on behalf of the project partners who are the Castlemaine Institute, the Resilient Building Council, Mount Alexander Shire Council and the Victorian Government.

A trained and accredited Energy Scorecard and Resilience Ratings Assessor. With participant's permission, a representative from the Castlemaine Institute or Resilient Building Council may accompany the assessor.

A home assessment will take up to 3 hours. A pre-assessment and post assessment survey will each take approximately 20 minutes.

The assessed houses will receive an Energy Efficiency Scorecard and Resilience Rating.

The ratings provide recommended actions to improve the home’s energy efficiency and resilience against risks like bushfire, flood, storm and extreme heat. This can help participants plan and prioritise works that could reduce their energy bills, make their home more comfortable, and improve the disaster resilience of the home.

The information gathered will be analysed to understand what new materials or technologies are required and estimate costs required to raise the resilience and energy efficiency of houses throughout the region. Reports will be used by the the project partners to inform a cost/benefit business case to support future policy and investment in holistic home retrofits.

Participant's contact details will be collected by Mount Alexander Shire Council and used by the Castlemaine Institute and project partners.

Assessment reports which contain home addresses will be analysed by the project partners. Information such as addresses or maps that can identify a house may be used in project outputs such as reports and presentations to stakeholders.

Project partners are The Castlemaine Institute, the Resilient Building Council, Mount Alexander Shire Council and the Department of Environment, Energy, and Climate Action.