ecoMaster

About us

ecoMaster is an Australian thermal energy-efficiency retrofit company co-founded in 2004 by Maurice and Lyn Beinat, and by its own account was one of the very first businesses of its kind in Australia — giving it one of the longest-running, most clearly documented sustainability track records among the companies reviewed for this research. The company's own published history describes its origin story in detail: after years of living comfortably in Europe, the Beinats moved to a freezing, 1.5-star-rated home in Gisborne, Victoria, that was emitting almost double the national average of household carbon emissions, and were told by a builder simply to 'suck it up' rather than fix the problem. Unwilling to accept that answer, they built their own heat chamber and hired a cool room to independently test every insulation product on the market, developing their own library of temperature-performance data over three months of testing, before retrofitting their own home to a 7.6-star energy rating with near-zero heating and cooling costs and zero carbon emissions — a project that became the seed of the company.

From that starting point, ecoMaster developed a range of proprietary retrofit products, including architectural-quality draught proofing, secondary glazing, and retrofit wall insulation, after finding existing market offerings to be poor quality, ineffective, overpriced, or wasteful (such as discarding perfectly functional single-glazed windows). The company's core service today covers assessment and installation of underfloor insulation, roof insulation, wall insulation, draught proofing, and secondary glazing for existing Australian homes, aimed at making houses more comfortable in weather extremes, more resistant to bushfire smoke infiltration, cheaper to run, and lower in carbon emissions; the company also sells DIY retrofit products directly to homeowners through its ecoMasterStore.

ecoMaster's sustainability credentials have been recognized repeatedly over two decades: CEO Lyn Beinat won the HIA GreenSmart Professional of the Year award at Parliament House, Canberra, in 2009 — the first time an Australian green-retrofit business received a national industry-peak-body award — and the company has since won 'Business of the Year' and 'Innovation and Enterprise' awards from the Northern Business Achievement Awards (selected from over 12,000 eligible businesses across six Victorian councils), plus the Hume City Council Sustainability Award in consecutive years. The company states it has helped more than 20,000 Australian homes become more thermally efficient over the past 20 years, and it co-founded the not-for-profit retrofit organization 3EA.com.au (the Energy Efficiency and Electrification Alliance), which focuses on scaling thermal retrofits for low-income and social housing.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, ecoMaster shifted its face-to-face assessment and installation divisions to two independent operators (My Cosy Castle and ThermaHome) so it could focus on supporting DIY customers through its online store, and it has since published hundreds of instructional videos on its YouTube channel, which has surpassed 1.5 million views, alongside a series of paid 'ecoMasterClasses.' ecoMaster's collection point is Unit 14, 1 Bell Street, Preston, Victoria 3072 (ABN 80 003 592 069), and the company can be reached through the contact form on its website; it maintains Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest profiles.