A Freshwater first

By Sean Car

Freshwater Place continues to lead by example in apartment living, having recently become the first residential building in Victoria to disclose its water rating under the National Australian Built Environment System (NABERS).

And it’s not the only sustainable change that has been made at Freshwater Place this year. Under a new program led by new building management and the owners’ corporation (OC) to fine-tune and optimise the building’s resources, cuts on electricity (19 per cent), gas (28 per cent) and water (27 per cent) have all resulted in significant savings for residents.

The initiative has been spearheaded by its new building manager Adam Vince, who made the jump to residential earlier this year having previously managed commercial office buildings in the CBD for eight years.

NABERS is an initiative of the federal government aimed at creating market incentives for efficient and sustainable apartment buildings in Australia. Mr Vince likened the rating to the star rating that one would find on their home appliances, but for buildings.

He said that while the standards had been prominent in the commercial office sector for many years, it was long overdue for residential, with Freshwater Place one of only eight residential buildings nationally to have disclosed its water rating.

Having already achieved a four-star rating (out of a possible six) on water thanks to the introduction of a range of new savings measures, Mr Vince said the building was also working actively to complete an energy rating within the next 12 months.

“Currently, there are 1579 buildings that have undertaken a NABERS rating across the commercial sector in comparison to eight ratings for apartments,” he said. “If NABERS takes off in the apartment sector like it did in the commercial sector, it will benefit the residents in our Southbank community who live in an apartment by putting money back in their pocket by firstly identifying the low hanging fruit.”

Now 15 years old, the 62-storey building consists of two pools, two spas, two steam rooms, four cooling towers, a car wash and around half an acre of lawn and landscaped gardens.

In addition to a rainwater harvesting system that supplies filtered water from a 160,000-litre water tank to irrigate its gardens and car wash, it is now staging its cooling towers and matching pool room and water temperatures to reduce water losses through evaporation.

It will also soon embark on installing a range of new fixtures and fittings within common areas and bathrooms, as well as sub-metering to provide live savings data, which Adam said would hopefully help them reach a five-star water rating within the next year.

And given the extensive benefits that came with a NABERS assessment for a building and its residents, Adam said that he was keen to encourage other apartment buildings to start having similar conversations.

“I just want to get the conversation started to push it out to other residents in the Southbank community, as well as others in Docklands, so that they can put the pressure onto their building managers and OC managers and say ‘hey, look what Freshwater had done … why can’t we do that here?’,” he said.

“If all apartment buildings got involved with NABERS and had an initial assessment undertaken, it will be a step in the right direction towards generating good news stories for all including the environment.”