Find energy efficient heating products and suppliers in Australia.

Australia covers a wide range of climactic conditions, from the tropical heat of the north to the cold winters of Tasmania and Canberra, and heating requirements for Australian homes vary accordingly. Homes in tropical and sub-tropical parts of Australia may not need any heating at all.
   The most environmentally friendly solution to home heating is good passive solar design to use natural heat from the sun, entering through north facing windows and absorbed by building materials with high thermal mass such as concrete slabs. Alongside this, good insulation is a must to reduce heating needs. In most of mainland Australia, a well insulated home with good passive solar design will not need any heating - except possibly during the middle of winter.
   If your home does need heating, however, it is worth looking for energy-saving options, as space heating can easily make up a large part of your home's electricity use and greenhouse gas emissions.
   Closing internal doors and only heating one or two rooms will keep down your heating costs. If you spend time in the kitchen in winter months, heating from your stove can also help heat the room.
   The least efficient form of heating are cheap, portable bar and fan heaters. Reverse-cycle ducted air conditioning is a medium efficiency system.
   Wood-fired heaters and stoves are not necessarily more energy efficient but they are considered to be carbon neutral: the carbon dioxide they release when the wood is burnt equals the carbon dioxide the tree absorbed while growing. The most eco-friendly and energy-efficient (although most expensive) type of wood heaters use compressed wood pellets, which burn efficiently at high temperatures and are made from sawdust waste from mills.
   Another efficient heating system is hydronic central heating - water is heated in a boiler and circulated through pipes to radiators throughout the building. After flowing through the heating system the water is piped back into the water tank to be reheated. This is very common in Europe and especially efficient for heating large areas in colder regions. The greenhouse emissions of a hydronic heating system are largely determined by the type of water heater - a natural gas boiler generates less emissions than an electric boiler. The most eco-friendly form of hydronic heating is solar hydronic heating, which uses solar hot water, so you are heating your home using solar power.
   It is even possible to combine solar hot water with solar hydronic heating. Although the heat from a standard solar hot water tank will not be enough to heat an entire house it is sufficient to heat a couple of rooms.
   Hydronic heating can use wall-mounted panels or underfloor heating, although the latter, with piping built into the concrete slab, is only practical during construction of new homes.
   A final method of heating buildings is ground source heat pumps. In winter these systems pump air, or a liquid such as water, from underground where temperatures remain relatively constant year-round, either into your home or into a heat pump to heat it further. Ground source heat pumps are still rare in Australia, but deliver low-emissions heating and cooling and should become more common in future.