Sensational-Adelaide.com

Ah, my pet hate - Mawson Lakes power usage. The med density development in Mawson Central is fantastic and great to see. These buildings wouldnt use any more power than if they were in other areas. The cause of Mawson Lake's overuse comes from these horrid, friggin mindboggingly stupid mcmansions built one after the after in the low density streets. None have any eves or verandahs to be protect them for the sun, most of 2nd storeys are not built of brick, but fibreboard stuff rendered over, so the insulation is just cheap and nasty. Every single one of them has ducted a/c in every single room, and all would be on at once in summer. My manager at work lives in one, who braggs when we have a heatwave, because every single room is kept cool, 24 hours a day for 3 months, under 20 degrees. The average suburb would have about 40% of ducted a/c houses, Mawson Lakes prob has 95%.
However Mawson Lakes in excellent in terms of water usage.
As Ive said before in another rant, we realised over a century ago that stone houses with large verandahs keep houses significantly, naturally cooler, and especially if the windows face west.

I think there should have been a further push for more solar cells on people's roofs to offset their power usage in Mawson Lakes.

12kVA is insane for a home! I shudder to think of how large the electricity bills are. What monstrosities of air conditioners are these people using?

I think that this is the 5 level building photographed in the Mawson lakes thread?

normangerman wrote:I think there should have been a further push for more solar cells on people's roofs to offset their power usage in Mawson Lakes.

Ive looked into getting this, it was prohibitively expensive.
We need more rbates

Yes, currently $8000 rebate for 1KwH or above system, which typically cost from $4000 after the rebate installed. A more comprehensive system that provides most of an average homes energy is about $25,000 after the rebate. Considering these systems only last about 25 or 30 years that equates to almost $1000 a year. Methinks the price will have to halve before it is economical OR the price of electricity soars!!

During my sister's 10 days in Adelaide (after coming back from overseas posting), she decided to finally invest a property in Adelaide. My mom was here as well and I brought the 2 of them around the metropolitan areas to look for a property for sale. They didn't like the rest of the suburbs because but they fell heavily in love with Mawson Lakes, especially my mom, because this is about the only area/place in South Australia, where everything is new, build from scratch, and a self-contained location.

In the tight schedule, my sister closed a last minute deal of a townhouse located at Shearwater drive, Shearwater lake. She loves it, so is my mom, but I think the price is over-rated, but at such tight time-frame, second-best is still better than nothing. But I must share this....

If you already have a property in Mawson Lakes, good on you, you are another lucky investor. To you who may want to purchase a property in Mawson Lakes, be prepare to fork out huge amount of money, because property prices there have jumped from 60%-100% some even more, over the last 2 years. I remembered buying a land and building a house over there 2 years back can be had for only less than AUD300k, now, the price guide for such property ranges from Mid AUD400k to high and even passing the half-a-million bracket.

Simply, unbelievable. But seriously, it is a nice place. Not the other side of Mawson Lakes, across Salisbury Highway.

jk1237 wrote: we realised over a century ago that stone houses with large verandahs keep houses significantly, naturally cooler, and especially if the windows face west.

And my north-facing, verandah'd, mudbrick house, leaves those for dead!

on another note terrace housing construction is set to play a big role in the Playford North development

As good as Mawson Lakes is, I doubt they have employed a more sustainable approach to their buildings.. most buildings probably wouldn't even have eaves... if someone can correct me on this I would be glad.. but yes props to the development for their high density living..

Mawson Lakes: a model for town planning, but a shaky job of sustainable architecture. The developers are to be commended for their efforts to minimise water usage with recycled water infrastructure, but the home designers leave a lot to be desired. It doesn't take that much effort to be more environmentally-conscious with home design - changes to lines on a draft page are nowhere near as expensive as the additional running costs for a poorly-designed home.

The curse of the homogenous home design strikes again.

Mawson Lakes is another outstanding example of how the importance of passive design has been disregarded by the government. by implementing a grey watering system DOES NOT make mawson lakes more environmetally friendly as the houses will now consume more energy than a well thought of architecturally designed house because they have no window shades and no consideration for their location!

Does anyone have a history/outline on how Mawson Lakes was planned and established from swamp lands into the suburb it is today?

Just found this article on the mawson lakes website. It states that although Mawson Lakes admits that it's PEAK electricity demand is higher than average, the average daily household use is LOWER than that of households in other Adelaide suburbs.

I would have thought therefore that overall a Mawson Lakes household probably uses less power, as peak demand only occurs on excessively hot days.

http://www.mawsonlakes.com.au/llweb/maw ... s_20071009

I think Mawson Lakes is the very very very scaled down version of the Multi function polis (MFP) that was going to be originally at Gilman. Its the same ideas though, of a high tech sustainable housing development that included major employment (ie Technology Park), education (ie Unisa levels campus) and more higher density housing, like a city within a city. From what I know, the area was not really swampy but simply open fields. All the lakes were created from run-off from Dry Creek as I dont remember any lakes there before. Even the Greenfields wetlands were created from nothing.


Pushbutton, Id like a independent view of that, separate from the Mawson lakes' own website