UPDATE Aug 2023 This project’s final blower door test showed a significant improvement in airtightness, which qualifies the initial commentary made below at the time of the preliminary test. The final result is 0.32 ACH. The project team attribute the improvement largely to the completion of the second layer of plaster. A repair to a tiny air leak in one …
Momentum gathering on multi-occupancy Passive House projects
Architype in Dunedin has notched up another Passive House win, with successful certification of the country’s first social housing units. Our case study notes the challenges that were met with regard to budget and design time and how the designers drew on what they’d learned working on Toioroa High Street, Dunedin’s cohousing development and first multi-occupancy Passive House project in …
New concrete code of practice published
Concrete New Zealand has published a new document, CP01:2022 – Code of Practice for Weathertightness. It’s available to download from the Technical Documents section. Note that this 2022 update is an Alternative Solution (still!) while the details in the 2014 version are Acceptable Solutions according to the New Zealand Building Code. We’re ever so excited to see this published as …
Aus leads way on educational Passive House buildings
A private childcare centre operator in Canberra, Australia had the foresight more than five years ago to build facilities to Passive House standards. Her aim was to build the healthiest and most sustainable childcare centre in Australia. At time of certification Torrens Early Learning Centre was the only privately-owned Passive House educational facility in the world. Windows were carefully designed …
Just a matter of time
I’ve always said: once you’ve lived in a certified Passive House home, you wouldn’t settle for anything less. I’d better change that to ‘once you’ve lived or worked…’ because these motivated young builders at the top of the south live in an old villa but work in a certified LEB office. They built it in part to demonstrate to clients …
Benefits of high-performance housing spread wide
Retrofitting buildings to the EnerPHit standard and designing new ones to certified Passive House levels of performance lowers cost to society and produces lots of co-benefits (ie shared by society and the individuals who live or work etc in those buildings). The issue is, who pays? Right now, the entire cost of designing and constructing incredibly energy efficient buildings with …
Funding and quality assurance the way to ensure successful energy retrofits
Successful energy retrofits are complex. This should be no surprise: building are complex and fixing one already built is harder than building it properly in the first place. It is very difficult to obtain good results with an approach that depends on tick boxes and rules of thumb. An EnerPHit plan is needed, which involves a full energy model—or something …
Safety tips and rescue remedies for Passive House design
Allow for mistakes and changes in the course of the design (and build) process. That, in a nutshell, is possibly the best piece of advice we can offer to Passive House designers. It’s based on the many projects we either design, advise on or certify. In a perfect world, you’ll never need to use the following tips. But as is …
The Fave Four according to Stuff
Stuff’s focus on certified Passive House homes continues with a great round up by journalist Colleen Hawkes. She profiles her personal four favourite Passive House projects from 2022. Two are multi-unit developments. I have to point out that the “biggest certified passive house in the Southern Hemisphere” isn’t correct–not yet. The Lee family’s home in Cockle Bay is still being …