I love it when architects are genuinely curious about construction, even more when they get hands on. Auckland architects Sophie Hermann and Julie Chrystall signed up for two days of installer training at Pro Clima’s training hub and were also onsite for the blower door testing at Seaward House in Auckland. That was Space Division’s first Passive House build.
“We understood more by being there when the blower door test for Seaward House happened, it’s a big deal!,” Sophie said. The firm then worked on two more certified Passive House designs concurrently, for which they also carried out the Passive House design. One of them was Taupaki House, this month’s case study. This was the first time the builder (Rusa Construction, also in this case the client) had constructed a home targeting Passive House certification.
“Installing the airtight membrane is a big deal on a Passive House site: it’s do or die in terms of hitting the airtightness targets. We realised showing up to install it would be an interesting exercise for our team. It also meant we shouldered some of the risk of getting the airtightness up to standard. The form and scale of this building seemed manageable,” said Sophie.
She and Julie had been nursing an ambition to get on the tools with Intello since the Pro Clima training. Their client was amenable. So then the entire team at Space Division turned out to do the job.
“It was a huge learning curve for us. It wasn’t the most complex of designs, but on the first day we faced a couple of pretty tricky details with the Intello. That night I stayed up sketching details, while Julie made a little physical model. We both wanted to nut out how to do this before having to do it while up a ladder 2.4m off the ground,” she said.
“Turning out to do the work was super helpful for us thinking through future designs and the kind of detailing that is needed and the best way to do it. It also left us with a huge appreciation for how hard the physical work is!”
Their hard work was rewarded with a preliminary blower door test of 0.32ACH. This project is exemplary for the attitude and diligence shown by both the construction team (see the case study) and the designers, for whom Passive House was a relatively new concept.
See also this piece by Jason Quinn about how it’s appropriate for responsibility for meeting the standard to be shared between Passive House designers/architects and construction teams: Six clauses you should add to your Passive House construction contract