Aged Care and Senior Living Projects Making Lives Peaceful for Seniors

Housing for aged people is a separate department for the Australian government and thus the construction companies working on this domain must follow certain rules to provide the best care for the senior citizens. The construction companies which want to provide the best of services to the old people, listen to them carefully to understand their needs before plunging onto a project. Aged care and senior living projects have become an important part of any housing construction company in Australia. Not all types of housing are suitable for the aged people. Their homes must be more user-friendly than the others that are used by young residents.

Housing for aged people can be provided in the form of residential, commercial, affordable projects. Even government projects are run for senior people residing in the country. Often a team of experts handle such projects because these are sensitive to handle. There are retirement village projects for construction companies which are especially done for aged people. This is a community for senior citizens residing in individual premises sharing common facilities. There are retirement parks as well. However, there are quite a few differences between parks and village in terms of occupancy, ownership, permanent living and also protection to the residents.

Lifestyle villages usually offer different experiences than mixed-used parks. These villages are often targeted to people above 45 and are designed especially to cater to long-term residents. Many of these buildings offer swimming pools, recreation centers and storage areas for caravans and boats.

Aged Care-Senior Housing

There are hostels for seniors which are built according to the rules laid down by the Australian department of housing. The Federal Government take care of these facilities and the entry is based on care needs. These care needs are evaluated by the Aged Care Assessment Team or ACAT. Aged people wanting an admission often have to give a fees to enter a hostel. Sometimes, waiting lists are published for these places. A minority of these aged care services provide both high-end and low-end care services which allows you to stay in one place if the needs change. Residential care can be offered for temporary as well as permanent care. The temporary one is known as ‘respite-care’.

While most of these care houses are funded by the government of Australia, the residents are required to pay a certain amount. The government only regulates those fees. Two types of fees are applicable here- basic daily fee and income tested fee which depends on the income.

These aged care housing projects are aimed at making life easy for the aged people. After all, towards the end of life, they should be able to spend some days in peace. Since these housings are affordable and protected, they can actually lead a peaceful life here. The Australian construction companies are well adept at building such housings which help senior citizens to lead their lives peacefully towards the end.

Green Building Helps in Upgrading and Retrofitting Old Constructions

In the building and construction industry, the focus has recently shifted to retrofitting old buildings instead of establishing new ones. This step not only preserves the tradition but also makes the construction more sustainable. This is particularly applicable to museums because they uphold the tradition and history of a particular place. Developers are finding it challenging to extend the lives of old constructions like museums through modern retrofits. These projects are complex but they offer a big advantage of reducing the carbon impact of building construction. This step is also being termed as green building because they are recycling the building and the materials to refurbish the old hagged structure.

What is Green Building Material?

Green building materials are composed of renewable resources. These materials are considered to be environment-friendly and responsible for green building. Green building materials offer some distinct benefits to the building occupants:

• Reduced maintenance costs for a lifetime.

• Greater design flexibility

• Energy conservation.

• Lower costs associated with altering space configurations

Building and construction activities worldwide consume 3 billion tons of raw materials every year which is 40% of global use. Utilizing green building materials encourages conservation of dwindling nonrenewable resources globally. Additionally, integrating green building raw materials into building projects can aid in reducing negative environmental impacts connected to transport, process, extract, fabricate, install, recycle, reuse and dispose of the building source materials.

Green Building Material Selection Criteria

In order to retrofit the old museum buildings through green materials, you need to choose the green materials properly by following a flawless selection process. The process includes steps:

• Resource Efficiency- To find out resource efficiency materials with recyclable content should be used. Also materials sourced from sustainable managed sources with a green certification should be used. Also, it is important to find resources that are energy efficient.

• Indoor Air Quality (IAQ)- Indoor air quality can be improved when non-toxic materials are used. Also materials with minimal chemical emissions, low VOC assembly, moisture resistant and equipments resisting pollution should be used to improve air quality.

• Energy Efficiency- Green materials used in retrofitting old museums should be energy efficient. This means using raw materials and components that help to reduce energy consumption in buildings and facilities.

• Water Conservation- This is also an important part of green building. Raw materials and products used in the refurbishment of museums should be such that they conserve water within the building and also in the landscaped area.

• Affordability- Affordability is the measure of product life-cycle cost pertaining to the materials on the whole. It is also defined as a percentage of the overall budget and is extremely useful and important in finding the right materials at the correct cost.

All these factor help in choosing the green building materials that will be used in retrofitting any old building, particularly the museums because they are old and also because they exhibit objects that are really ancient too. Thus, a lot of research is required to evaluate the materials and finally select them so that the buildings can last long.