What does a home energy assessment include Canberra?
What Does a Home Energy Assessment Include in Canberra? 7-Point Expert $250 Checklist
Most Canberra homeowners spend between $350 and $480-plus on a home energy assessment. At Your Passivhaus, a comprehensive home energy assessment in Canberra costs just $250 — and on this page we explain exactly what does a home energy assessment include Canberra-wide, so you know precisely what you’re getting before you pick up the phone.
Whether you’re trying to reduce a painful winter heating bill, preparing to access the ACT Sustainable Household Scheme, or simply want to understand where your home is losing energy, this guide covers everything.
What Does a Home Energy Assessment Include?
A home energy assessment is a systematic, on-site inspection of the factors that affect your home’s energy performance. It is not a compliance certificate or a star rating — it is a practical audit that produces a prioritised list of improvements specific to your home, your usage patterns, and your budget.
At Your Passivhaus, our $250 assessment is conducted by passive house specialists. That matters because passive house design is built entirely around reducing energy use in cold climates — and Canberra, with its ACT Climate Zone 7, is one of the coldest capital city climates in Australia. Our assessors know where energy escapes in Canberra homes because preventing that escape is what we build our projects around.
The 7 Things We Check During Your Home Energy Assessment in Canberra
Our assessment process covers seven distinct areas. Each one directly affects your heating and cooling costs, your thermal comfort, and your eligibility for ACT government rebates.
1. Air Leakage and Draught Infiltration
Uncontrolled air leakage — draughts through gaps around door frames, window reveals, exhaust fans, downlights, and wall penetrations — is the single biggest energy waster in Canberra homes. Cold air seeps in during winter, warm air escapes, and your reverse-cycle system works overtime to compensate.
During the assessment, we systematically check every likely leakage point: door and window seals, exhaust fan backdraft flaps, ceiling penetrations, cornices, and skirting boards. Where a blower door test is included or added on, we can measure your home’s air changes per hour (ACH50) and give you a precise leakage figure to track improvements against over time.
2. Insulation R-Values — Ceiling, Walls and Underfloor
Insulation is not just about whether it exists — it is about where it is, whether it is correctly installed, and whether it meets the R-value required for Canberra’s climate. Under the National Construction Code, new Canberra homes must achieve R5.1 in the ceiling. Many existing homes fall well short.
We inspect the installed R-value in your ceiling space, and where accessible, check wall and underfloor insulation. Degraded, compressed, or poorly installed batts can perform at a fraction of their rated value. We note any gaps, compression, or displacement that is reducing performance.
3. Windows, Glazing and Thermal Bridges
Single glazing, aluminium frames without thermal breaks, and skylights are the most common sources of radiant heat loss in Canberra homes. A single-glazed window can lose 10 times more heat than an equivalent area of well-insulated wall.
We assess your window type, orientation, size, and shading. We identify north-facing windows that could be delivering free winter solar gain but are currently unshaded in summer, causing overheating. We note any obvious thermal bridging — where a conductive element (typically a steel or aluminium structural member) bypasses your insulation layer.
4. Heating and Cooling Systems
Your HVAC system can represent 30–50% of your home’s total energy use. We review the type, age, size, zone coverage, and condition of your heating and cooling equipment. We check whether your reverse-cycle air conditioner is appropriately sized for your floor area, whether it has been serviced recently, and whether the thermostat settings are energy-efficient.
We also identify opportunities — for example, homes running a gas ducted system can realise significant running-cost savings by switching to reverse-cycle (and may be eligible for ACT rebates to fund that transition).
5. Hot Water System
Hot water is typically the second-largest energy expense in an Australian home after space heating and cooling. During the assessment we note your current system type (gas storage, electric storage, gas instantaneous, or heat pump), its age, and its daily energy consumption estimate.
For Canberra homeowners, a heat pump hot water system is almost always the most cost-effective upgrade — particularly with the ACT Government’s Home Energy Support rebates of up to $5,000 for eligible concession card holders. We flag this in your report with estimated running cost comparisons.
6. Ventilation — HRV Systems and Bathroom Exhausts
In well-sealed homes, ventilation is critical. A heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system that is not correctly balanced wastes energy and can create condensation, mould risk, and poor indoor air quality. We check whether your home has an HRV system, whether it is operating correctly, and whether the supply and extract airflows are balanced at each grille.
For homes without an HRV, we assess whether the bathroom and kitchen exhaust fans are drawing correctly and whether they are fitted with self-closing backdraft flaps. An exhaust fan without a flap is a permanent draught hole during winter.
If your HRV needs balancing or servicing after the assessment, our HRV balancing and servicing team can take care of that as a follow-up appointment.
7. Energy Bills Review and Usage Patterns
We ask to see 12 months of energy bills (or your online portal data) before or during the assessment. This gives us your actual baseline consumption figures, identifies seasonal spikes, and helps us calculate the projected dollar saving for each upgrade we recommend.
This step is what turns a generic checklist into a personalised report. Two identical houses with different occupant behaviour can have very different improvement priorities.
What You Get: Your Assessment Report
At the end of the assessment, you receive a written report that includes:
A prioritised improvement list. Each item is ranked by cost-effectiveness — highest return on investment first. Quick wins like draught sealing and ceiling insulation top-ups typically appear first. Larger investments like heat pump hot water appear further down with full payback period estimates.
Estimated savings for each upgrade. Where possible, we include the annual dollar saving you can expect from each recommended improvement, based on current ACT energy tariffs and your actual usage data.
ACT rebate and scheme eligibility notes. Your report includes a section identifying which recommended upgrades are eligible for the ACT Sustainable Household Scheme zero-interest loan (up to $15,000) and the Home Energy Support rebate (up to $5,000 for eligible concession card holders). This section alone can pay for the assessment many times over.
How Long Does a Home Energy Assessment Take in Canberra?
A complete assessment typically takes 60 to 90 minutes for a standard three- to four-bedroom Canberra home. Larger homes or homes with more complex mechanical systems may take slightly longer.
We ask that you (or an adult household member) are present during the assessment so we can discuss findings in real time, ask questions about your energy bills and comfort issues, and show you specific problem areas as we find them. This makes the resulting report far more useful than a document you receive cold in an email.
Your written report is typically delivered within two business days of the assessment.
What Happens After the Assessment?
Your report gives you a clear, ranked list of next steps. What you do with it is entirely up to you — there is no obligation to use Your Passivhaus for any follow-on work.
That said, many of the services our assessment commonly recommends are things we provide directly:
Air sealing and draught-proofing — We can carry out a targeted air sealing program based on what we found during the assessment, sealing gaps around penetrations, door frames, exhaust fans, and ceiling access hatches.
HRV balancing and commissioning — If your heat recovery ventilation system is unbalanced or underperforming, our HRV balancing service uses calibrated flow hoods to measure and adjust every grille in the system.
Blower door testing — If you want a precise, quantified air leakage result (required for Passivhaus certification and increasingly requested for NatHERS existing home assessments), we can schedule a blower door test as a separate service.
Hot water heat pump installation advice — We can provide independent guidance on heat pump hot water system selection, sizing, and ACT rebate eligibility.
Frequently asked Questions
What exactly does a home energy assessment include in Canberra?
How is a home energy assessment different from an EER rating?
An EER (Energy Efficiency Rating) is a compliance certificate — a single star rating calculated from your home’s physical characteristics for the purpose of sale or rental disclosure. A home energy assessment is an actionable audit. It identifies specific problems, quantifies their impact, and recommends improvements you can actually implement. Read our full comparison: EER Rating vs Home Energy Assessment in Canberra.
Do I need to prepare anything before the assessment?
Can a home energy assessment help me access ACT government rebates?
What is the difference between a home energy assessment and a blower door test?
Book Your Home Energy Assessment in Canberra
Your Passivhaus offers the most affordable professional home energy assessment in Canberra. At $250, our assessment is conducted by certified passive house specialists who understand what genuinely reduces energy bills in Canberra’s cold climate — not just what looks good on a compliance form.
To book your assessment, visit our Home Energy Assessments Canberra page.
Your Passivhaus is a Canberra-based certified passive house consultancy specialising in energy-efficient construction, home energy assessments, HRV systems, and building performance testing. We work with homeowners, builders, and developers across the ACT.
For more information on energy efficiency standards and ratings in Australia, visit the Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) official site.