What can you do to increase thermal comfort?

Achieving thermal comfort means feeling neither too nor too cold — and being able to function without discomfort due to temperature. So what can you do in your community and at home to increase thermal comfort through all seasons? Check out these tips that have been put into action by people and communities around Australia.

Rugged up locals shopping at the local growers markets in Bendigo. The Karen community in Bendigo runs a community gardening program to help newly arrived migrants settle in, as featured in the podcast Everything We Need. Credit: Carmen Bunting Photography/Carmen Bunting Photography

As you'll hear in the podcast

Everything We Need

, adapting to a changing climate is about more than coping with emergency events. It’s dealing with

food and water insecurity

, rising energy costs, supply chain issues and other threats to our health and wellbeing.

There are several things that you can do to improve your thermal comfort, and not all of them require spending money on heating and cooling.

Tips to support thermal comfort

Assess the thermal comfort of your home
Invest in a thermometer for measuring air temperature and figure out the hottest and coolest parts of your home and how well it performs in extreme weather. Understand the orientation of your dwelling and where the baking western sun falls (in Australia). Audit your insulation - not just in the ceiling but walls, floors and windows too. Focus first on areas that are most sensitive to heat variation.
Stop drafts
Stop drafts coming from under doors, windows, old vents and chimneys. A range of products available - from inflatable pillows that can be inserted into disused chimneys to adhesive insulation strips, door snakes and heavy curtains.
Close the house down and reduce radiant heat
On very hot days, shut all windows and blinds as soon as it warms up. Turn off non-essential lights and devices as these emit radiant heat. LED lights emit less heat than incandescent bulbs – and use less power as well. Once the outside temperature cools down, open the house up and get the air flowing through it.
Use Cross Breezes
A cross-breeze, where the air flows in one place and out another, is a good way to cool your home quickly. Experiment with different combinations of open and closed windows and doors to find an effective cross breeze for the wind direction. Place fans strategically to help create good flow.
Use fans effectively
Ceiling fans are best when they have a summer mode (turning counterclockwise to push hot air up) and a winter mode, so the hot air is pushed down to where you want it. Placing a bowl of iced water in front of a desk or standing fan to make it more effective.
Befriend indoor plants
Healthy, lush and leafy indoor plants have multiple benefits - they can
improve your wellbeing
and clean the air as well as cool your house down. The only catch is — you must keep your indoor plants alive!
Increase your personal resilience to temperature extremes
To a degree, our sense of what is ‘too hot’ or ‘too cold’ is relational; 22 degrees celsius inside can seem cold when it’s a hot day and warm on a cool one. Work out what works for you and increase your resilience by withstanding greater extremes gradually. The more work an air conditioner does to change the inside temperature from what is outside, the more pressure it puts on the power grid and the more emissions it produces.
Wear appropriate clothing
Heat and cool your body, not your home. Put on a jumper and snuggle up with a lap blanket rather than changing the ambient temperature with air conditioning. Light coloured, loose clothing is best for the heat. Putting your feet in cold water or using a water-filled atomiser to spray a cool mist on your skin can help cool you down.
Keep the western sun off your walls
Keeping the summer sun off your walls and windows from the outside is better than trying to manage direct sunlight from inside your home with drapes and blinds. Where possible, use external shutters and drop shade cloth where the western sun hits your home. The best option is to use green shade - deciduous vines let the winter sun in and keep the heat out in summer.
Insulate your home and install double glazed windows
If possible increase insulation in your ceiling, walls and floor. Double glazed windows are significantly more effective at keeping out that heat and cold than regular glass. The ideal way to manage thermal comfort as climate change intensifies, is to use ‘passive' or non-mechanical methods of heating and cooling that are not impacted by power shortages.