A six-star rating in construction indicates that a building achieves a high level of thermal energy performance.
Choosing construction materials to ensure the building will meet the crucial six-star rating is of the utmost importance for architects, builders, and specifiers. Foamex expanded polystyrene is a high performance construction material that can play a major role in a six-star energy rating for your building project.
The main benefit of aiming to achieve high star ratings is to build more energy efficient homes which in turn can have a direct impact on the cost of heating and cooling your home.
Houses built in 1990 averaged about one star on the NatHERS scale, the house ratings scale system which uses computer simulations to determine the potential thermal comfort of Australian homes on a scale of zero to 10 stars.
Before the introduction of national energy efficiency regulations for houses in 2003, less than one per cent of Australian houses achieved six stars. From November 2011, 6-Star equivalent became the minimum requirement for construction across Australia. Many well designed houses are now being built that are rated at seven stars or more.
Foamex expanded polystyrene has recently been used to help building projects achieve 8+ stars. Positive Footprints, designers and builders of environmentally sustainable homes, used Foamex’s Styroboard EPS to complete a construction project that achieved 8+ star rating.