Episode 13

NatHERS for Existing Homes: Training, MagicPlan, LiDAR and the Assessor's Kit

30 July 2026 · 76 minutes · Hosted by Brian Haines, Matthew Graham and Andrew Hooper

Summary

NatHERS for Existing Homes is moving towards national rollout, and the question the team keeps being asked is a practical one: what is the training actually like, and what does an assessor need to walk into someone's home and rate it? Matthew and Andrew are both partway through the training, so this episode is a first-hand account rather than a preview.

The conversation covers how the accreditation is structured and why this cohort's experience differs from the first, how MagicPlan's LiDAR scanning and AccuRate Enterprise actually work together on site, and where the two pieces of software still do not quite talk to each other. Then it turns to the kit — the phones, grips, lasers, selfie sticks, thermal camera and inspection camera the two of them have accumulated, with prices — and closes on the defaults an assessor falls back on when a specification simply cannot be measured, and how closely an existing-home rating matches a new-home one.

In this episode

• 0:38Why this training keeps coming up, and who delivers it

• 2:36First cohort, second cohort, and the three expert pools

• 5:33The process, end to end: MagicPlan, Watson, AccuRate Enterprise

• 6:20How far MagicPlan and AccuRate Enterprise have come

• 7:49What makes AccuRate Enterprise a variant, and simplified shading

• 10:40Andrew as a complete novice, and what LiDAR can do

• 11:15Apple only, Pro only: why the device matters

• 13:28Sixty or seventy photos, and documenting everything

• 16:22The Watson conversion, and the one-way trap that overwrites your work

• 20:23New homes versus existing homes: different rules, not just simpler ones

• 22:36Why documentation is far more rigorous, including conflict of interest

• 27:38How long a job actually takes, end to end

• 31:19Web-based AccuRate Enterprise, and remembering to hit submit

• 36:15The kit: phone, grip, light

• 42:52Selfie sticks, ladders and staying off them

• 46:50The Bluetooth laser measure that does triangulation

• 51:00Thermal camera, and when it is worth carrying

• 53:44The Bluetooth speaker as a modern-day cowbell

• 1:00:34Defaults: when you cannot measure, and what proof an upgrade needs

• 1:03:37The borescope, and the challenge of measuring insulation thickness

• 1:08:46How the defaults are built into AccuRate Enterprise

• 1:11:16Back-to-back: existing-home ratings against new-home ratings

Key points

The training is still taking shape

Two registered training organisations are accredited to deliver it: Transformed, and the newly amalgamated Northern TAFE. Neither has fully set out the Certificate IV course yet, so Matthew and Andrew are working through a second cohort that sits ahead of the general intake but is still evolving alongside the tools. Both may have to return for supplementary training later, as may the first group. The honest framing throughout is that they can speak to their experience of the software, but not yet to a finalised course.

Three pools of accredited assessors

Out of roughly thirty-five accredited existing-home assessors from the first cohort, three expert pools have been drawn: mentoring, auditing, and technical advisory. Both Matthew and Andrew are pre-selected across the pools but active only in the technical advisory one for now, because mentoring and auditing require completed accreditation and further steps beyond it.

How the process works, end to end

You walk the house with MagicPlan, which uses LiDAR to produce a 3D scan. That data passes through conversion software — known affectionately as Watson — into AccuRate Enterprise, the benchmark assessment tool, where it is worked up into the certificate the homeowner takes away with their star rating. Both MagicPlan and AccuRate Enterprise have been in development for years; the AccuRate the team uses is a variant tailored specifically for existing homes, carrying AccuRate's DNA but with substantial modifications.

Simplified shading, and why it exists

The clearest example of the existing-homes simplification is shading. In a new-home assessment you model eaves prescriptively — projection, length, horizontal and vertical offset — which is detailed and time consuming, and often impossible to capture to that standard while standing in an occupied house. Existing homes builds in tolerances and simplified shading schemes that flow from MagicPlan through to AccuRate Enterprise, deliberately trading precision for something achievable on site.

The device is not negotiable

MagicPlan's scanning is Apple-only and needs true LiDAR, which means an iPhone or iPad Pro — the base models will not do it, and Android does not have equivalent LiDAR. It runs on either the phone or the iPad; the iPad gives more screen but is awkward in a small toilet or similar, where a phone lets you stand back further. The team's cost-saving advice is that it does not have to be the latest model — LiDAR arrived several generations ago — so a second-hand or refurbished Pro from marketplace, bought around the back-to-school or end-of-model sales, does the job.

Document everything, and mean everything

This is where existing homes is far more demanding than a new-home assessment. Andrew's single-storey scan produced sixty to seventy photos. A single aluminium window means photographing the frame, the single glazing, the internal blind, the external blind, the seal, and the eave above — some with the blind down, some up, some from outside. Then the room: flooring, walls, colours, light fittings, heating and cooling outlets, door sizes. Nothing can be selected without evidence. Even a declared conflict of interest is not enough on its own — you have to document how you are managing it, which applies as much to rating your own home during training as to a real job.

The Watson conversion is one-way, and it will overwrite you

The scan-to-AccuRate transfer has improved steadily, but it is a one-way process: MagicPlan into AccuRate Enterprise. If you have done work in AccuRate and then run another export from MagicPlan, it overwrites everything you have done, with no warning — the big green button in MagicPlan wipes it. The training flags this in bold red, and Andrew still managed to trigger it by hitting the wrong button, saved only because the import takes three or four minutes, which gave him time to duplicate the file first. The practical rule the team land on: keep making backups, and duplicate your AccuRate file constantly. Some fields also still do not map across — plug-in cooking items, for instance — so MagicPlan is used as a reference to re-enter what did not carry, and each version maps a little more.

Different rules, not merely simpler ones

The team are careful to say existing homes is not just a lighter version of new homes — the rules are genuinely different, which is why separating the two schemes was the right recommendation. The guidance is deliberately prescriptive to force consistency, so assessors do not each interpret the same scenario differently. That creates its own difficulty for experienced new-home assessors: Andrew describes catching himself wanting to add an internal wall to a subfloor on a split level, exactly the millimetre-perfect instinct existing homes does not want. And where the modelling is simplified, the documentation is markedly more intense.

How long it takes

On Andrew's training houses: a one-bedroom apartment took twenty to thirty minutes to scan; his own large single-storey took around an hour of on-site work once he stopped experimenting, plus considerable time learning the interface; the double-storey scan was a little over an hour. The scanning is the fast part. AccuRate Enterprise afterwards was, in his words, more than a day on the first house — partly the learning curve, partly that it is a web-based tool where forgetting to hit submit before the page refreshes loses your work. Everyone agrees it accelerates sharply with practice: first house slow, second faster, third faster again.

The kit, with prices

The bulk of the episode is a genuinely useful walk through the equipment the two of them have settled on. The single big outlay is the Apple Pro device; almost everything else is a modest accessory that removes a specific friction — a third hand, a dark room, a ceiling you should not climb into.

• iPhone or iPad Pro (with LiDAR) — the scan itself; must be a Pro model, second-hand is fine. Price varies.

• Telison Master Grip case — a firm one-handed grip, heat sink and lens filter; steadies the scan. Approx $160.

• Ulanzi SK21 selfie stick — reaching split-system labels without a ladder; Bluetooth remote. Approx $60.

• Bluetooth laser measure (green, e.g. Leica D2) — triangulation for eaves and heights; sends dimensions to MagicPlan. Approx $380.

• Tape measure (high-contrast face) — easy to read and photograph as evidence. Approx $30.

• Thermal camera (FLIR One Pro) — optional; blends thermal over the photo, needs a temperature difference. Approx $600.

• Inspection camera or borescope — photographing subfloor and roof space through a vent, without entering. $40 to $200+.

• Bluetooth speaker — lets an occupant hear where the assessor is, a modern-day cowbell. Price varies.

The cowbell

The idea Matthew found most worth passing on came from watching an experienced assessor, Kell, work. Before starting, he switches on a small Bluetooth speaker and carries it, so the homeowner can always hear where the assessor is moving through their house. It answers the unspoken awkwardness of a stranger walking through occupied rooms taking photographs — should I follow them, can I go in there — with something simple and human. A genuinely good, low-cost piece of practice.

Defaults, and the burden of proof for an upgrade

Where a specification cannot be measured — roof space or subfloor you cannot access — there are defaults for almost every element of the thermal fabric, bracketed by the decade the home was built. They make sense as a fallback, but they are loosely bracketed and can move a rating substantially. If a homeowner has upgraded, the burden is on them to prove it: without documentation, the default applies. And the defaults are not an easy way out. Heating and cooling in particular runs a sequence — is the unit on the GEMS database; if not, calculate efficiency from the label's power in and out; if not, step down again — six or seven steps before you are permitted to record "unknown". Sources include the GEMS database, the Australian Gas Association database and energyrating.gov.au. AccuRate Enterprise builds the fabric defaults in automatically once you enter the construction year, though you still need evidence of that year, typically the building permit.

The measurement that is genuinely hard

Establishing the thickness of insulation is one of the biggest practical challenges. A borescope through a wall vent, paired with a small tape measure for scale, can tell you insulation is present, but the resolution makes distinguishing R2.5 from R5 difficult — you need a measurement, not just a photograph. It is the clearest illustration of the episode's underlying theme: the whole scheme is an exercise in getting as close to the truth as an occupied house physically allows, and then being honest about the assumptions where it will not.

How close the ratings actually come

Andrew ran his own two-year-old home both ways. Originally rated 6.1 stars as a new home, it came out at 6.2 as an existing home — a tenth of a star apart — with Whole of Home at 101 against a modelled 110 or 111. On an early-2000s house permitted to a five-star standard, the existing-home assessment returned 4.7 stars, a difference he attributes comfortably to the age, the older Chenath engine and the defaults applied, and well within a five per cent tolerance he is happy to work with. The team's consistent caveat: where the real specification is known, the two methods track closely; it is the assumptions, where detail cannot be gathered, that move the result.

Documents referenced

• NatHERS publicationsTechnical Note, assessor handbook and existing-homes scheme material.

• Energy Rating (GEMS)The appliance database referenced for the heating, cooling and hot water defaults.

Transcript

Lightly edited for readability. Hesitations and repetition have been removed and technical terms corrected; the substance is unchanged.

0:06Welcome to The Rating Room, the podcast where we unpack everything NatHERS. I am Brian Haines, and alongside me are my co-hosts Matthew Graham and Andrew Hooper. We dive into the technical, the practical and sometimes the controversial side of residential energy efficiency assessments in Australia. If you are working in the field of NatHERS, or just trying to navigate the space, this is where the ratings get real. Where are we at today?

0:38One question we keep getting asked on the NatHERS Assessor Network Facebook page is how NatHERS for existing homes is going — the training, the processes, all of that. The two of you are right in the middle of the training now, so I thought we could have a discussion on how it is going, what tools you are using, and the thinking behind it. I can see a whole heap of gadgets on the table, Matthew. That is just my usual everyday carry.

1:25You are both going through Transformed for the training. Is Transformed the only place you can do it currently? No. The second registered training organisation is Northern TAFE now, I think it is called — an amalgamation of two former TAFEs that have joined forces. They are the other accredited RTO for delivery. Neither has really set out exactly what the courses are yet, so while Matthew and I are doing what we are doing, it will be a little different to the actual Certificate IV that everyone else is going to experience, or that we may have to go back and redo later. So we can talk about our experiences with the software, but not so much the course.

2:36For everybody following at home, the reason the two of you are doing something different is that we are a second cohort. There was an initial group that went through a pilot — a bit more than a pilot — as it was being developed, and the cohort we are going through is a little more advanced, but still developing as the tools develop.

3:13On the mentoring side, from the first cohort there are roughly thirty-five accredited existing-home assessors — do not quote me. Out of that there are pools of experts, pre-selected in a way, because you cannot fulfil those duties until you have completed your existing-homes training. There are three pools: a mentoring pool, an auditing pool, and a technical advisory pool. You are both on the technical advisory and the mentoring pool — pre-selected for all three, but only actively engaged in the technical pool for the moment, because auditing and mentoring require completion of the course and accreditation, and further steps after that. So we are just in the throes of it. Andrew is a little further advanced than I am.

5:04Arguably we are a little late to the party, but still relatively early, because it is not finalised yet and will not be until the next cohort starting in July, who will hopefully have more finished training. And as Andrew said, we — including the initial group — may have to go back and do some supplementary training. We just do not know what that looks like yet.

5:33The process, for people not familiar, is walking through the house using MagicPlan, software that uses LiDAR to 3D scan the property. It goes through some conversion software into AccuRate Enterprise, the benchmark assessment tool, and you work that data up into a certificate the homeowner takes away with the star rating. That is the basic gist.

6:20Both tools have had a journey. Ironically I am doing my training, but it is not as if MagicPlan and AccuRate Enterprise are new. MagicPlan goes back to some original alpha testing with CSIRO in its early days, when it was more a proof of concept. It has come a long way — my recent experience is very different, the technology has matured a fair bit in the last five years. AccuRate Enterprise I have also been alpha and beta testing for a similar period, but the AccuRate we are using is a variant tailored for existing homes. It has AccuRate's DNA, but it has changed — a lot of things very specific to an existing-homes assessment that you would not have seen for new homes.

7:49What is the difference between the original AccuRate and AccuRate Enterprise for existing homes? The technology that transfers the information from the MagicPlan scan into AccuRate Enterprise is known affectionately as Watson, and it has developed over time. You have two pieces of software doing fundamentally different things, and the information from one needs to be mapped across to the other. It started with a few things being mapped across, then more, and now some things you might think would be mapped across are not necessarily. We are in that phase, and the next phase will see a lot more of what is captured on site in MagicPlan flow through into AccuRate Enterprise.

9:18There are specific things you see in there I had not seen before. For example, a simplified model for shading. Previously in AccuRate you would be very prescriptive — eaves of a certain projection and length, horizontal offset, vertical offset — which is detailed and time consuming, and a little unreasonable to capture at that level on site. Sometimes it is impossible to capture properly to the same level of detail as in a new home. So there are assumptions and tolerances built into existing homes, with simplified shading schemes flowing from MagicPlan through to AccuRate Enterprise, to make it easier.

10:14There are quite a few simplified processes in AccuRate Enterprise compared with a new-home assessment, and I think that is why they took seriously the recommendation to separate new homes and existing homes. It was a good thing to do.

10:40Andrew, how has your experience been with MagicPlan and the LiDAR? Really interesting. Unlike Matthew, I have had nothing to do with either MagicPlan or AccuRate Enterprise previously, so I came in as a complete novice, picked it up and ran with it. Like any new software you are learning its idiosyncrasies and the tweaks you have to work with. I am absolutely amazed at what LiDAR can do, the level of detail it picks up.

11:15This is Apple software only, which was new to me because I do not use Apple products, so you are also learning that. Android products do not have true LiDAR the way Apple Pro products do, so you have to get the Pro ones, not the base models — the cost keeps jumping up. It works with either the phone or the iPad, depending what you are more comfortable holding. I use the iPad to scan the corners, but in a small toilet you are contorting yourself, where with a phone you could pull back a little further and capture more.

12:13Can you swap between devices during a scan? I do my scanning on the iPad, and I have MagicPlan on my Samsung Android, so I can use that at the same time and take photos, and it all uploads to the cloud fairly quickly. They suggest not using multiple devices at the same time, but I have had no issue yet. You can also view it on your PC, and the beta MagicPlan has just released lets you edit on the PC, which you could not do before. So now you have three devices you can work with, but only the Apple can do the scanning. Being able to work on the PC has really sped up the process, because there are lots of forms and data to enter, and doing that on a touch screen takes a long time — a mouse is a lot quicker.

13:28You take lots of photos. On the single-storey house I ended up with about sixty or seventy. You have to provide evidence of everything. If you say a window is aluminium, single glazed, with a blind inside and a blind outside, you photograph each of those elements, and the fact the window has a seal on it. It does not include the colour of the window yet, but that probably will come. Sometimes you have the blind down to take a photo, then put it up, open the curtains, go outside, look at the eave above the window. And that is just one window. Then the rest of the room — flooring, walls, colours, light fittings, air conditioner or heater outlets, door sizes. Sometimes you are trying to take a photo with one hand and hold a tape measure in the other and you really need a third hand.

14:42There is a lot to do. Walking around takes a while and it can glitch a little. If you are doing a hallway that opens into a living space, do you end it at a permanent opening? Sometimes it is easier to keep going into the next room, pick it up as one room, and split them apart in the software later. If you try to end it at a permanent opening it gets confused, because it has already scanned and knows there is something beyond, so you get weird artefacts. They are not hard to fix though — I just get my pen on the iPad, move the node, fix the corner, and we are good. It is really intelligent. One question clients keep asking is whether it works for CAD, and yes, there is a DXF export. When I scanned my place it was maybe ten millimetres out, so quite good — I had the laser measure to confirm, and what it was calculating was pretty accurate.

16:22Once your data is in, you use the Watson function to export to AccuRate Enterprise, and then a heap more data. How is that conversion going? During the scale stream we had a lot of issues, where it was dropping off items and you would have to rebuild things in AccuRate Enterprise, or fix the data in MagicPlan and send it back through Watson.

17:11It is constantly improving. I did not experience the first batch, only the current iteration. A number of things do not copy over quite right — for instance, a permanent opening between two spaces comes in as a controlled entry or a door, so you go back in AccuRate and set it to uncontrolled permanent. And are you doing that through AccuRate or MagicPlan? AccuRate. It is actually a one-way process now, MagicPlan into AccuRate. If you do work in AccuRate and then run another export from MagicPlan, it overrides it.

18:18That is what we were finding — it overrides all the data you have done in AccuRate and you have to do it all over again. The training makes it really clear, in bold red: do not do that if you have done work in AccuRate. I still managed to do it. I had the whole project finished and was trying to figure out which button exports it, and of course I hit the wrong one — they are very close — and imported MagicPlan back over the project. It takes three or four minutes, so I had time to get into AccuRate and duplicate the file, which saved a backup just as the new one came in. Lucky. So the first thing is keep making backups — that is a hot tip. The big green button in MagicPlan will overwrite all your work with no warning, so duplicates in AccuRate Enterprise are essential.

19:24Honestly, I am not sure the information was coming across incorrectly before, so much as the fields were not mapped across from MagicPlan into AccuRate. Just because you choose something in MagicPlan, you think it will flow through, and it does not necessarily. Sometimes you go in and use MagicPlan as a reference — there is an induction cooktop, say — and select it, because the plug-in items do not come over yet. The next iteration will bring more across, and each version is a little more exacting, reducing what you need to do at the second stage.

20:23How is your experience as a new-homes assessor comparing? Going through the Certificate IV for new homes versus something similar for existing homes — do you think it is as rigorous? The rules in new homes and existing homes are quite different, so it will be a while before you can make a direct comparison. It is not that you cannot match a new-home approach in AccuRate for existing homes — you could, with the time, and we did — but it is not required. The guidance is clear: these are the rules, this is the technical note, you come across this and you do that. That is designed to encourage consistency and standardisation — you do not want assessors interpreting scenarios differently. So the rules are arguably simpler, but it is difficult at this stage, especially while training, to drum out the new-home approach. I desperately want to add an internal wall to a subfloor on a split level, and you do not do that — I have to remind myself that is not what we do in existing homes.

22:24At the same time, while it is simplified, there are things they are much more intense on. Documentation — you have to document everything, and you cannot pick something without evidence. Conflict of interest, off the top of my head: you have to have processes you follow, not just say you have one. You have to do more to manage it, to eliminate the conflict or the perceived problem. It is much more rigorous in many ways. Going from a new-home mentality, where we are trying to be millimetre perfect, to the existing-home mentality, with a lot of workarounds — they pull at each other. There is method in the madness though.

23:50What you said about separating the two is a good way of looking at it, because you are never going to be that precise on site. There are things you will never know unless you are pulling walls apart and analysing windows to the nth degree with hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. So separating them is the way to look at it. But I have had to reset, and it is still hard. As I go through the training I am still struggling with it. And it is training, so we are pretending to be an assessor, but encouraged to do our own home and relatives' homes — ordinarily you would flag a conflict of interest doing your own home, and you have to document how you are managing it, the same as everything else.

25:34Each cohort's experience will be slightly different. There are different workflows for the MagicPlan side, and Andrew and I adopted a slightly different one to the first cohort, because of a technological advance where we could go around and take photographs and assign them to rooms later. I think the first group were taught to capture all the photos of things in a room and assign them as they went. Being able to use multiple devices and exchange the photographs means you can do that separately, on a tablet or a desktop.

26:23I will add that you are not restricted to those devices for photos. You can use a standard camera, bring it into your PC, upload the whole camera roll into MagicPlan and assign it to each room. There are lots of technological options. And the software being used now is not specifically optimised for this job — it is third-party software, so future purpose-built tools will make the process quicker. Absolutely. The MagicPlan and AccuRate tie-up is one solution, a proof of concept, and other players will come into the industry. They might go for this two-software approach, or wrap it all up in one seamlessly integrated piece of software, so that experience would be different again.

27:38Andrew, roughly how long has it taken you end to end? Let us separate the scan and the AccuRate part and add them together. In training we had to do three houses — a single storey, a double storey and an apartment, the minimum three. The apartment was a one-bedroom unit — one bedroom, one bathroom, one kitchen living zone — twenty or thirty minutes, and I am still fumbling my way through, so you get faster. My house was the single storey, quite large, and it was the first one I did, so I played a lot — I wanted to see what it would do and how I would break it. Once I stopped playing it took about forty-five minutes to scan and pick up the photos, then I had to go back for a bit more because the technical note said to. So maybe an hour of on-site work.

29:29The double storey I just walked in and did, and had the whole scan done in a little over an hour — I was not too upset with that. That one I did not go into the roof space, which is a whole set of legal issues, workplace health and safety, one of the modules you must do. So there were things I could not get to — the heater and cooler units were up there. The cooler outside was an American unit that did not have the GEMS data we seek, so I spent time fumbling on that. But the actual scan had two errors I fixed on the fly. Then sitting in front of the computer was, let us say, more than a day.

31:19It is different from my experience of FirstRate and HERO — it is a web-based browser, which means if you forget to click submit before the page refreshes, you lose what you just did, and you do not find out until you hit calculate and it says there is an error. So you have to keep remembering to hit submit. Coming from the new-home side, I keep looking for where such-and-such is, because I know it does this — and you have to change that mentality and go back to the simplified methods. But shading is a lot faster. On new homes that takes up half my time; here you set three or four shading elements and say all these walls have the same, so the simplified method makes it much faster. It is a little harder to recheck your work, so you need your own quality assurance processes, because it is web-based — click one thing, wait for it to refresh, click the next. It takes time, but that is the way it is.

33:04Practice makes perfect. Even over three projects the first was really slow, the second a bit faster, the third faster again. You pick up tips and tricks, and talk to others in the industry who say, did you try this? There is a difference between watching the videos showing how it works and actually observing somebody do it and then doing it yourself. It was a revelation last week when I saw somebody experienced do it — the way they went about it was different, and I realised I had been overthinking it, and if I did it again I would focus differently.

34:43I was flying around with MagicPlan, it was great, everything coming together, click click click. I did not have as much of the learning curve Andrew had with AccuRate. For me it was more about understanding what was coming through and what was not, and reminding myself that you do not have to do it to that level of detail — that is not required for existing homes, which makes it more accessible. Whether people use that level of detail in the real world, I am not sure. Technique is something you are always picking up.

36:15I started just with the iPhone, and very quickly learned there were things I needed to add to make it more enjoyable and quicker. When you say things you need to add — I have bought a few, they are on the table. Go through them.

36:33We will start with the phone. It needs to be the Pro version to have the LiDAR. I am not as young as I used to be, so I went for the Max, the largest screen — not much larger than the Samsung Android I actually use, but I honestly do not know how to drive this phone. All I know is MagicPlan. The first thing was I did not have a case for it, because it was new, so I was being very gentle on site the first time, and I really needed three hands. Andrew and I chatted — I was looking at a small rig with a light and a handle, and Andrew suggested there are grips available. So I splurged, and this is the case that comes with a grip.

37:58It protects it, has a graphene heat sink — I did not realise how warm the phone got, and the battery, because it is constantly on and the LiDAR uses a fair bit of energy — and a UV filter that slides on and off, which I leave on to protect the camera. But the thing that makes it shine is the grip. It is like MagSafe, with a button, and you can zoom. It does not actually work the camera functions — important to be clear for anybody thinking of buying one — it is not that you can fly around with MagicPlan doing the scan and also press the button to take photos. It works with the camera app, or its own camera app. It is easy to take the photos and assign them to rooms, or upload them to your computer later. It just clips on and gives you a firm grip, so I feel a lot more sturdy going around doing a scan.

39:24I was impatient the first time and flying around too fast, and it was a bit dark in the first house, so the scan was not as good as it could be. MagicPlan works in landscape but also portrait. Because I went through on the second cohort, it was fine to go around and do the scan in scan mode — get a nice clean MagicPlan scan — and then retrace my steps, put my photographer's hat on. It is something Andrew and I both enjoy as a hobby, so I get in taking the photographs, cropping them nicely. Doing it slowly is important — if you go quick it does not really work. You can see the LiDAR lines go Tron-style, which tells you to go a bit slower than you think.

40:47The house was quite dark, so this is the next attachment — the light. It is MagSafe, you press the button and get a light. It is pretty bright, which makes the oldest, darkest houses much brighter, because it is not just the LiDAR, it uses a bit of the camera's contrast too. It can flip up and rotate if you do not want it coming straight on. That was $160 on Amazon, though you can get similar off AliExpress or Temu — this one is the Telison Master Grip. It has made it a lot more enjoyable.

41:52I will add it does not have to be the latest model. True LiDAR came in around the iPhone 14 or so — it may have been earlier — so you can go to marketplace and get a second-hand Pro model, as long as it has the LiDAR. They are getting more expensive, but I am thinking of getting a second-hand one and linking it to the iPad, without spending top dollar on a new one. And you can combine it with other technology — I have a Samsung tablet that works fine, so I use the iPhone for the LiDAR and the tablet for extra screen.

43:03I bought a few more things that come out of the limitations. I am not a huge fan of going up ladders, so — a selfie stick. This is a Ulanzi SK21, it comes up, MagSafe, so you attach the iPhone and get up to photograph a split system's label. It has a detachable Bluetooth remote so you can take the photograph with the camera up there, and if you hit it on the ground it springs open into a little tripod. It is about 2.1 metres. Mine is over three metres — it is literally a stick with a screw on top, a broomstick, but it collapses down and fits in a pouch.

44:44Part of workplace health and safety is dealing with ladders, and preferably not climbing them. If you want to look into the ceiling space you poke something up rather than climb. A lot of jurisdictions now require the mains power off if someone is working in a roof space, which will upset your homeowner, so you poke something up and take a photo to see what is under the roof — whether there is insulation, the thickness. Ideally you measure it, but it is hard if you cannot get up there. Maybe you put a ladder and poke your head in for parts, but be sensible.

45:49At one point I was doing workplace health and safety assessment for Scorecard assessors. A four-legged tripod is great — open it, put a rubber ball on the end, extend it up to pop the roof access hatch, then send your camera up on a selfie stick, so you avoid dragging a ladder through the house. Did you bring a ladder in? No, but I have a telescopic one that folds in half, because it needs to fit in the car. I have a big car, so I need a small ladder.

46:50MagicPlan lets you check the dimensions with your laser measure. The one I had was over ten years old — nothing wrong with it, but no Bluetooth to send dimensions straight into MagicPlan. This one is a green laser instead of red, which I find easier to see, and it has a horizon function so you know when it is level. It is a Leica D2. Even in ten years the technology has come — it has a little piece that flips open, and it adjusts the measurement from that point, whereas my older one never did. You hook it onto a corner and it knows you have opened it and hooked it, so that corner is the start point. It can do triangulation, which means I can do eaves now — before I was walking the tape measure. So you get the dimension, and again you document everything, taking a photograph of the measuring device, which feels ironic, but that is the level of documentation. You check heights of rooms, shine it up on the ceiling, photograph the reading, and now with Bluetooth send it to MagicPlan. That was about $380, the selfie stick around $60.

50:04The tape measure I like is a high-contrast face — black on white, which I find easier to read and really good when photographing. It is around $30. Small things like that. Andrew and I developed an equipment list and kept reminding each other — have you got your first aid kit, a torch to access those spaces, a battery pack, because you are bound to run out of juice, which would shut you down quickly.

51:00Not really for existing homes, but still good to throw in the kit, is a thermal camera. This is the FLIR One Pro — pretty small, USB-C, it plugs onto the bottom of your phone, and they do them for Apple and Android. It does a composite image of what you are photographing and superimposes the thermal image, so you can switch them off or blend them. I always have it in the bag. The conditions need to be right — you need a temperature difference for it to work, so not every time of the month. Not essential for established, but around $600. There are a lot of other thermal camera manufacturers, and some that just do the thermal image, which are a third or half the price — so you do not have to go top end.

53:44This one is a shout out to Kell, the assessor I saw last week doing a scan. Sometimes it is the small things you take away, and I had never thought about it from the homeowner's experience. I am doing training for family and friends, who are used to me walking around doing something strange, but in the real world it is a very different experience. Kell said one of the first things he does is put a small Bluetooth speaker on — a modern-day cowbell — so as he walks around doing the scan, inside or outside, the homeowner can hear where the assessor is in their home. I love that idea. Imagine being a homeowner with an assessor you have never met — should I follow them, where are they, should I go in that room if they are taking photographs? Switching on some music means the homeowner knows where you are. A really cool use of a bit of tech.

56:25I do not carry all that. I have power in the car, so I can go back if I need to. My selfie stick is a bit different, and I have a laser measure I use — older and bigger, so it takes more room, and no Bluetooth, so you manually type a figure into MagicPlan and override it. I like the speaker idea, though I would feel weird if my music choice did not match the homeowner's. Music choice is going to be the biggest decision you make — some old-school thrash to really wake them up.

57:18What we are getting at is that the course, plus the additional expenses to have a career, is not all that much really. The biggest outlay is the iPhone or iPad — expensive devices to access the LiDAR. I tried a MagicPlan scan years ago without it, and you can do it, but it was hard work and not efficient. You will fairly quickly realise the investment in an iPhone or iPad with LiDAR is worth it. Pick up a second phone on marketplace or eBay. This was not a new iPhone — refurbished. My iPad was new, but I did it at the back-to-school sale, got ten per cent off, and they threw in the pencil.

58:49Did you use the pencil on site? Yes, I find it convenient — touching the screen with fat fingers I get things I do not want. With the pencil I can draw, sketch, tap. So pick your time to buy the technology — Black Friday, back-to-school, end-of-year sales. Apple does not have a lot of sales, but there is always a new model around September, so they run out old stock in August, and when the new one comes out they drop the price again. There are always times to get it.

59:51The three of us have been in the industry a while and are not going anywhere — we are heavily invested. So these are the tools of the trade, and especially if you are going to mentor people it is important to be on the cutting edge, with the tips and tricks that help assessors be the best they can be. That is my attitude towards it.

1:00:34Where you cannot measure a specification in an existing home, there are defaults. Can you explain those? There are defaults for pretty much everything to do with the thermal fabric, from insulation to sealing of exhaust fans. I learned this the hard way on the first project — I could not get roof access, like Andrew, so I adopted a default, and the subfloor too. I could take a photo, but it was not easy. A lot of businesses will run into these issues and adopt a default, and they are based on the decade the home was built, which makes some sense, but it is loosely bracketed. In an old building it is not much of an allowance.

1:02:15Are you happy with those defaults, given they can make a substantial difference? And if somebody has upgraded, what proof do they need? It is a great question. I still have my mindset in new homes, and I am not really a defaults guy even there — a lot of assessors use default windows, but most of my projects have custom windows, so I avoid defaults and get explicit specifications. You will not see a project of mine with medium walls, medium window frame colours, medium roof — it will be monument on the roof and night sky on the windows. I like to be particular and accurate.

1:03:37So it will not surprise you, with my toolkit, that on the first one I was kicking myself for not taking my borescope on site. What is a borescope? A camera on the end of a long cable, with a light, that lets you take a photograph. It comes in a big case with a screen on one side and a long cable with the camera on the end. You feed it in and move it into the subfloor or roof space, like a little worm, and take a screenshot. It also has a side camera with a light for awkward angles.

1:05:15Could you estimate insulation thickness with it? The resolution is not brilliant, and it depends on the lighting. You may be able to tell there is insulation, but it is very difficult to tell the difference between R2.5 and R5 — you should be able to tell that difference, and you need a measurement. That is why I have the smaller tape measure — you can get it in through a wall vent, get some scale, then get the borescope in and take a photograph. It also attaches to a selfie stick, so you can send it up rather than your iPhone. Could you take a downlight out and use the two together? Not really supposed to do that — there is twelve volts on that side, that is an electrician's job, and you risk damaging something.

1:07:00You call yours a borescope; I will say I bought a cheap one, an inspection camera. Mine does not do the bendy — you bend it into place and hope you have not turned it upside down, all manual — but different ways to do the same thing. Stick it through a floor vent to see if there is anything under there. I stuck it through an exhaust fan, which is maybe a touch dangerous if somebody switches it on, but I am trying to quantify things rather than go straight to the defaults. Establishing the thickness of things is one of the biggest challenges. How much? Mine was about $200; Andrew's was $39.99. Mine does not do the bendy.

1:08:46A lot of that is built into AccuRate Enterprise already. When you put the year in, it predetermines the defaults — you either select what is there or select default, and it applies it, so you do not need to remember what default applied for what year in what jurisdiction, because they are all different. But you have to prove what year the house was built, if it was after insulation requirements came in, or after five-star or six-star. You still need that evidence to use a default.

1:09:32Some other defaults, like heating and cooling, have a series of steps to follow first. Is the unit on the GEMS database? If not, work out efficiency from the labels — power in, power out. If not, the next step down. There are six or seven steps before you can say "unknown". It makes things more rigid and takes away the potential laziness of not getting the information. There are a lot of sources — the Australian Gas Association database for gas appliances, the GEMS database, energyrating.gov.au. But sometimes you cannot find it. I had an Americanised unit I could not get data for, and ultimately worked all the way down the list to "gas ducted, but other than that I know nothing" — and even selecting gas ducted has four or five options before "unknown". The defaults are good, but not an easy way out.

1:11:16I could see if a house was built within the last ten or fifteen years, and you default based on the time it was built, how things could be substantially different given area correction factors — it could wildly swing the existing-homes star rating. Have you done a comparison on your own house? Yes — NatHERS for new homes, and existing homes. My house is a bit over two years old, done under a six-star rating at the time by another assessor, and I am confident in their result. It was 6.1 stars. Out of curiosity I modelled it in HERO and ran Whole of Home, which came in about 110 or 111, because I have a huge amount of solar — though I still get bills, so it is not net zero. In existing homes it came up at 6.2 stars, a tenth of a star improvement, and Whole of Home at 101, fairly close.

1:13:00One of the other houses was built early 2000s, in an estate that required a five-star rating when four-star was standard, so it came in as five-star. I did not have the original documentation, so I used defaults for some of it. I entered the year, because we had a building permit as evidence — the year it was permitted to construct, they changed that terminology. It would have been five stars under the older Chenath, and it came in at 4.7 stars, so I was confident that was similar enough. The 0.3 could be attributed to the age difference, the software difference, and the defaults applied. Whole of Home did not apply back then. It is a five per cent error, so I can work with that.

1:14:52We did a comparison with a house in New South Wales, where we knew all the data required in the existing house and simulated it in the new-home software, and were confident it came out the same — though that was further down the track, once faults were corrected in AccuRate and MagicPlan. So now it would be pretty accurate, depending on the assumptions. It is always the assumptions. If we know all the details, it runs pretty much the same; it is the assumptions that throw it out.

1:15:32Thanks for the conversation tonight. Nothing is particularly set in stone, so it is good to go through what we do know and can talk about — a good opportunity for anyone thinking about NatHERS for existing homes to hear how things are progressing. That wraps up this episode of The Rating Room. Thanks for joining myself, Matthew and Andrew as we uncovered another corner of the NatHERS world. Your thoughts, comments and questions are important to us — leave a message on the NatHERS Assessor Network Facebook page or a comment below on YouTube. Until next time, keep rating.