What is ‘house burping’? The viral trend gaining prominence in Australia
It’s too early for dictionaries to declare the word or phrase of the year, but “house burp” has emerged as an early contender for 2026.
In the first two months of this year, the term trended on Google, and lifestyle influencers have posted extensively on Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms about what it is and why you should do it.
Most of the content is aimed at the northern hemisphere, where climate and building standards are different and the seasons are reversed. So what is a house burp and what does it have to do with Australia?
Simply put, it means opening your windows to let in fresh air without compromising energy efficiency. This isn’t something Australians have traditionally had to think too much about because most of our housing stock isn’t airtight.
“Most of us live in a fancy tent and let you in no matter what’s going on outside,” says the book’s author, Tim Forcey. My Efficient Electrical Home Manual.
But as we increasingly heed the call to make our homes more energy efficient with full electrics and better insulation, burping homes should also be on the agenda.
The social media trend started during the northern winter, which is generally warmer than average but experiences bitterly cold temperatures. Since homes in Europe and North America are often tightly closed to stay warm, it is recommended to open windows for a short time each day.
Allowing fresh air into the home removes carbon dioxide that accumulates in the air, as well as volatile organic compounds from off-gassing from carpets and furniture.
In Germany they call this “lütten”, meaning ventilation. When it’s really cold and the windows are left wide open for only five to 10 minutes, this is called “stoβlüften” or shock ventilation. In France it is “aérer”. Europeans have been doing this for centuries, and it is reportedly a legal requirement in many lease agreements.
Americans decided to call it the “house burp” and the name helped it go viral. Europeans responded with posts mocking Americans for “discovering clean air.”
Importantly for Australians, clean air is equally important in the context of combating rising urban temperatures. Energy efficiency experts say the best way to keep a home cool in the summer is to keep windows and doors closed with blinds or curtains during the day to prevent hot air from getting in. However, when the outside temperature drops, it is time to open.
The house burp really comes into its own in the context of electrification and energy efficiency home improvements. The basic premise of electrification is that you replace gas heating, hot water and stove with efficient electrical appliances, turn off the gas connection and then make sure the house is well insulated by sealing vents and cracks in the house. Ideally, the home would also be powered by rooftop solar power.
Forcey says the biggest causes of drafts are chimneys, evaporative cooling vents in the ceiling and old wall vents. Wall vents were originally essential safety features for homes with open fireplaces, he says, and they continued to come in handy when homes switched to gas heating or cooking because gas use pollutes the air inside the home.
All-electric homes need to plug these small leaks when any gas supply goes out, Forcey says. A reverse cycle air conditioner (or electric fans and space heaters) can keep the house cool or warm, but they’ll have to work harder if there’s draft.
Better insulation will save you money, but at the cost of ventilation. This makes the house burp all the more important – though Forcey’s preferred term is stoβplease.
“Draft rehearsal puts you in control,” says Forcey. “We replace uncontrolled air leakage with controlled ventilation. Most of the time, that means opening the windows a lot at appropriate times. But if there’s a lot of smoke outside.” [or it’s humid]”You don’t need to open the window.”
Forcey followed this playbook for his 1904 weatherproof shed at Sandringham, Melbourne. He has devices that measure carbon dioxide in his home, and he detects that carbon dioxide increases during the night while he sleeps. When he first gets up, he opens his windows fully and closes them again after 15 minutes.
By doing this first thing before heating or cooling your home, you will avoid wasting energy. The short duration means that the thermal mass of walls, floors and furniture loses energy only from the air, as it does not have time to heat or cool.
Other times of the day may also work; Many Australians know the joy of opening the house to enjoy the cool change at the end of a hot day.
Sydney-based electrification advocate Sarah Aubrey has a double-brick federation house in the inner west. He sealed all the gaps and put insulation strips around the doors and windows to make them airtight.
“You have to be aware that when we define ventilation or venting, it is something you can manually control,” Aubrey says. “A hole in your wall is not ventilation, it’s just a hole in the wall, but you can manually control ventilation by simply opening doors and windows.”
During the summer months, Aubrey is conscious of turning on the house at the beginning of the day before the weather gets warmer, or at the end of the day when the weather gets colder.
It will ventilate the house for shorter periods of time in winter and there is a carbon dioxide monitor in the living room.
mechanical ventilation
The alternative to a belching or leaky house is mechanical ventilation.
Susan Chan, her husband and their three children moved into a newly built house in Putney, Sydney, with four bedrooms, a study and a craft room almost two years ago. Designed by architect Nina Still, the house has Passivhaus certification, meaning it meets high standards for energy efficiency and thermal comfort.
Still Space Architecture’s owner says the house is insulated and sealed, though. The windows are open, but even when they are closed, there is a constant flow of fresh air from the mechanical ventilation. Before entering the house, the air is filtered, dehumidified and its temperature is adjusted.
“It is truly a pleasure to live in this house, which is extremely comfortable in terms of temperature,” says Chan. “We don’t open the windows very much during the summer months, except when the night temperature is cooler, causing all the warm air to escape during the night.”
If the house gets hot, it can cool it down with its own solar panels and the home’s battery-powered air conditioner. The family opened the house for Sustainable Home Day last year.
Richard Stokes also uses mechanical ventilation in his flat in a former 1970s office building in Melbourne’s Parkville.
The renovations, which will be open to the public for Sustainable Home Day on May 17 this year, included fully insulating the floors and walls, adding double-glazed windows, adding reverse cycle air conditioning and electrifying everything.
“[Opening the windows] It would be a great thing to do, but like many apartments in the city, it’s right next to the main road,” says Stokes.
Controlling humidity
Another advantage of an airtight home with mechanical or manual ventilation is that it allows you to control the humidity inside the home. High humidity and condensation are a big cause of health problems and mold.
There are sources of moisture from inside the house. One of these is inevitable; moisture released by occupants’ exhalation.
The other is preventable; Drying laundry on clothes hangers, radiators or old-style clothes dryers all release evaporated moisture into the air. Forcey and other electrification advocates recommend energy-efficient heat pump dryers. Of course, hanging clothes on a clothesline outside is an option for many people.
But house burping alone cannot control humidity, because the air outside itself can be humid.
Relative humidity is expressed as the ratio of the moisture in the air to the percentage that the air can hold; When it reaches 100 percent, it will fall as precipitation. Warm air can hold more moisture than cold air, and global humidity has already increased by around 7 percent in parallel with 1 degree of warming.
Research from 1986, Known as the Sterling study The gold standard on this issue still says that the best environment for human health is 40-60 percent relative humidity.
Australia’s coastal cities are mostly higher than this. The average annual relative humidity at 9am at Melbourne’s Kew weather station is 70 per cent, but in June this can be as high as 80 per cent. Brisbane Aero is at 65 per cent annually and peaks at 70 per cent in June, while Perth Metro is at 63 per cent and 80 per cent in July.
Sydney’s most humid months are summer. At Sydney Olympic Park the annual average is 66 percent, with the highest months being February and March at 72 percent.
Forcey, who suffers from allergic rhinitis, regularly runs a dehumidifier in her bedroom. He found that running it for four hours in the winter would pull a quart of moisture from the air, home structure, and furniture.
Aubrey also used a dehumidifier in the winter. However, since it is expensive to operate and emit heat, he prefers the dry mode of his reverse cycle air conditioner in the summer months. Aubrey says it uses about a third of the electricity to achieve the same effect as cooling.
Aubrey struggled with damp and mold problems during Sydney’s post-pandemic rainy years. “We never had mold because we closed everything and did all the draft rehearsals,” he says.
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