Outlier + Adapt Podcast

Erika Bartak is an ESD consultant and sustainable housing researcher with a background in architecture and a passion for designing and promoting better housing. She is particularly interested in narrowing the gap between discourse and practice in sustainable housing. This has provided motivation for her doctoral thesis investigating energy efficiency culture, and practice within the Australian vol...

Today we are speaking with Olivia Terziovski principal lawyer over at Boutique Lawyers one of Melbourne's leading building and construction law firms. Olivia has dealt with 1000s of Building and Construction matters and insurance claims over the last decade. In this information intense episode. Olivia shares with us some of the most commonly asked questions by her clients and some of the most comm...

In this short catch-up episode, we bid farewell to a valued member of our team and welcome a new member on board. We touch on why we've been away for a while and give some hints about upcoming projects. We thank you for your patience and hope this answers a few of your questions. Stay tuned; we'll be back with our regular programming very shortly.

We have talked about waste management on this podcast before, and today we want to take it a step further and chat about creating a circular economy. For that, we have Scott Bryant on the podcast, who is a circular economy coordinator for the City of Greater Bendigo. Scott has been an amazing resource for the creation of our own waste management plan, and has extensive experience working in this f...

We are kicking the new year off with a super interesting topic: sustainable property developments. We have Jess Cuman on, designer and thermal assessor in his own business Adapt Design Group, who has done a lot of work for The Cape, Australia’s most sustainable development. We talk about his own personal journey that brought him and his family to focus on more sustainable and energy efficient hous...

It's been a massive year for us at Outlier, and we wanted to take this last episode of the podcast for the year to reflect a bit about some highlights and milestones, and also look at some massive changes that we will be facing next year. The National Construction Code will finally upgrade to a 7 star minimum energy rating, but that is not all! There are also some exciting new upgrades to the ener...

Waste management has been a big topic for us lately! Not just because our team member Evangelia has been super passionate about it and introducing a proper system for our office, but also because the building industry is a massive producer of waste. Around 18 cubic metres of waste come in everyday - from just one building site. The majority of this waste is going to landfill - unless you are worki...

Are you unsure of the benefits of ventilation for your home? Then this episode is for you! We sit down with Joel Seagren from Fantech to dive deep into the topic of ventilation. Joel has a tonne of knowledge and experience working with different systems for all types of homes. He explains the benefits of having a controlled ventilation system, and how the different setups work. He also talks about...

In this episode, we speak with one of the biggest influencers in the sustainable building sector of the moment: Hamish White from Sanctum Homes. We have been following Hamish for a while, and were lucky enough to meet in person on one of his builds a few months back - the Hempcrete house that is. We talk about the details of this very special project, as well as about his motivation to become a bu...

Get ready for a massive deep talk into the ins and outs of how the people behind the scenes calculate the performance of a home. We sat down with Emilia Iacovino from Detail Green, who is not only a thermal assessor, but also a PHPP pro and an engineer with a passion for sustainability. We spoke about the differences in assessing a house under the national energy rating scheme, and using the passi...

There is no denying that it gets progressively colder outside – and unfortunately for many homeowners, inside as well. With dropping temperatures, the need to improve a home’s thermal performance and insulation is becoming bigger and bigger. Which is why we decided to bring our trusted builder David from Ecowise Homes back on the pod and grill him about what options there are to winter-proof a hom...

We have met Anthony Stagg a few months ago when we picked up our very own Retrotec blower door test kit. Anthony is the director of 2 businesses: Fire Protection Technologies and Energy Conservation Technologies, a company that sells blower doors and provides training to perform residential blower door tests. We are so happy he took the time out of his busy schedule to sit down and have a chat wit...

Everyone who has talked to me in the last year or two has probably gotten an earful about windows. I am known to be the crazy window gal amongst my friends, and I finally got to properly nerd out with a real life professional. Gary Smith from Ultimate Windows has been in the window industry for most of his career and has seen a lot of change happen over the last couple of years. In our interview,...

This is a good one! In the first episode of 2022, we sat down with Ben O'Brien from SolarPro Bendigo to talk about solar energy. Ben is a sustainable systems engineer and very passionate about solar energy, especially for residential homes. He explained to us how solar panels work, how much they cost to install, and what current government loans are available for homeowners. On top of that, he had...

In the last episode of 2021, we discuss the environmental pros and cons for renovating vs rebuilding a home. Then we go into a little reflection of what the year has been like for us, and we make some very exciting announcements to look out for in 2022. Happy Holidays and happy new year!

In the last episode, we spoke about our approach to designing efficient homes and mentioned the term hybrid home. So, we decided to elaborate a bit on what that means to us, and how these high performance homes are different to conventional builds as well as passive houses. It is a brief talk, but we managed to touch on what high performance means to us, why it is so important and why we believe t...

People love the idea of energy efficient houses, but are afraid of the potentially high extra building cost. Building designer Anthony and builder David explain how much it really costs to build a high-performing house in Australia and clean up some of the myths surrounding passive houses.