About Thermarate

Specialists in how buildings perform.

Thermarate is an Australian building physics consultancy with more than 20 years in practice, based in Perth with clients across the country, and home to Australia’s largest team of in-house NatHERS accredited assessors. We work at the leading edge of NCC energy compliance, on homes and commercial buildings, where dynamic simulation, life cycle assessment, the Code’s own Verification Methods and on-site testing meet, for builders, designers, surveyors and some of Australia’s largest building-product manufacturers.

Compliance is a floor, not a finish line. The Code offers more than one way to meet it, and the right one depends on the building. So we start with the physics, show our working, and tell you plainly when another route would serve you better.

01

Lead with the Code

Every claim we make cites a clause, a published study or a priced job. If we can’t source it, we don’t say it.

02

The pathway is a design decision

Choosing it early protects the design and the budget. Choosing it late means an upgrade list.

03

Go further than the Code requires

Comfort without air-conditioning, resilience in a warmer climate, and a house built the way it was modelled.

04

Respect the tools

NatHERS is a sound tool, our accredited assessors use it every day, and for many designs it’s the right route. We’d rather add a route than knock one down.

Depth over volume. Every time.

We take on a limited number of projects, and every one is modelled by our own team, never by contractors. Every model is checked by a second modeller before it leaves the office.

Our research work for manufacturers keeps us close to how products behave in real buildings. That knowledge goes into every house we model.

Simulation

Dynamic and two-dimensional

Hourly whole-building simulation, and detailed heat-flow modelling of frames and junctions.

The Code

Every NCC pathway

NatHERS and Whole of Home ratings from our in-house accredited assessors, H6V2 for houses, and every Section J method for commercial buildings.

On site

Verification

Insulation checked at handover, product substitutions re-checked against the model, and independent review of models prepared by others.

Led by an engineer. Staffed in-house.

The minimum qualification for a NatHERS assessor is a Certificate IV. Thermarate is led by a university-qualified engineer, its director Alistair Brownlie, and every project is delivered by our own team of accredited assessors and building physicists, never by contractors.

We’re members of Design Matters National, which accredits our NatHERS assessors, and of the Green Building Council of Australia.

Alistair Brownlie

Director

Alistair is a university-qualified civil and structural engineer, a NatHERS accredited assessor and a Green Star Accredited Professional. He reads a design the way it will be built, from the frame up, and that engineering view shapes how Thermarate finds the right compliance pathway, whether that’s a NatHERS rating or a Performance Solution.

Let’s talk about your building.

A house that needs a smarter pathway, a product that needs evidence, or a submission that needs a second opinion.