Week 1: Meet your client: household systems and evidence
What crosses this fence line in a year, and how much of it nobody has actually measured.
You are handed one of five households and asked the question the whole course turns on: what crosses this fence line in a year, and which of those flows could feed something else on the same block? Before that is a design question it is a bookkeeping one, so the week sets up the closure ratio the course scores and the site sheet every later week writes into. You also meet the client properly — their priorities are theirs, not the course's, and the retrofit you eventually recommend has to meet the targets they set rather than the ones that would score well. Nothing here is measured yet. The annual demand figures are standard published values for a household of this size, and the site sheet marks every row as known, estimated or still to be measured.
This week
- Lecture, 22 February 2027
- What crosses the fence lineWeek 1 — the household's annual demand, the definition of closure the course scores, and the site sheet every later week writes into
- Tutorial, 25 February 2027
- Building your client evidence workbookThe first tutorial — choose one of the five client homes, build the four-sheet workbook every later week writes into, and fill one row of it properly
- Worked example
- All five homesThis week works across every home rather than leading with one.
What you leave with
A site sheet with twelve rows of station climate data, every value sourced or labelled a course assumption.
You have finished the tutorial when all of this is true, and you can tell without asking anyone:
- you have chosen one of the five client homes and written down why
- your workbook has four sheets — client facts, climate normals, measurement register, assumption log — with the column names given below
- sheet 1 carries at least eight client facts, each with a status of known, estimate or unknown, and a source
- sheet 2 carries twelve rows of long-term climate normals with the Bureau of Meteorology station number named
- sheet 4 carries at least one assumption with its basis and where it came from
- you can say, without looking it up, which sheet the simulated monitoring year will go on when it arrives in week 7
Where this sits
You meet the client and work through each candidate system — garden, mushrooms, insects, fish, preservation — far enough to know what it needs and what would have to be measured before anyone spent money on it. Every calculation in these weeks is a scoping estimate on published figures, not a claim about this house.
Expected effort
About 5 hours this week: 2 h lecture and notes, 2 h tutorial, 1 h preparation and quiz. This week: Orientation and tutorial practice only; no assignment work scheduled.
A planning guide from the semester planner, not a requirement and not a measurement of anyone. Tutorial submission sits inside the tutorial hours and the quiz inside preparation; neither is counted twice.