Kāinga Ora’s first Passive House pilot project was a great milestone but we knew far more was in the works and today we are happy to be able to share the news. Ngā Kāinga Anamata, previously known as the Five Systems Project, is five three-story apartment buildings in Glendowie, all designed to reach Passive House performance. Sustainable Engineering Ltd is …
Passive House subdivision in Christchurch blazes a trail
Interesting perspective here on materials from an experienced builder of certified Passive Houses. Peter Bielski of Ethos Homes is a fan of panelisation—in a shed on site, in the case of the ambitious and inspiring 11-home Passive House neighbourhood he is currently involved with in Christchurch. His post lists the reasons why he likes prefab timber panels and prefers them …
ALL certified PH builds in NZ have been written up
Here’s a handy short cut to case studies on all certified Passive House projects in New Zealand to date. Phcert.nz will take you to the Sustainable Engineering website’s case study section. The case study initiative began with my book, Passive House for New Zealand, in 2019, which included case studies up to the award-winning Kowhai House. Once the case studies …
PHPP10 launched
Update [June 2022] PHPP10 is now available in English. In case you hadn’t heard, PHPP10 was released at the 25th International Passive House conference in Wuppertal last month. That’s the good news. The catch is, only the German-language version is out yet, so technically it’s PHPP10.0DE. The English version isn’t expected until around Easter next year. Now I don’t read …
Why bigger is easier
There’s still lots of talk about the cost premium to build a detached family home to the Passive House standard and how much that premium is. Let’s not overlook that it is much easier for large buildings to meet the Passive House performance targets. The physics is easier and that usually means it costs less too. I like to use …
We won’t get to zero carbon without energy efficient homes
It’s great to see this piece in popular media, outlining research that shows that, like the rest of the world, New Zealand’s path to a zero carbon future requires homes that need nearly no power for winter heating. The Passive House standard is measured and verified in New Zealand as needing 90% less energy to heat both new homes and …
Kāinga Ora will drive Passive House uptake across the whole building sector
Kāinga Ora’s announcement of its first Passive House pilot project, the 18-unit Bader Ventura apartment building in Mangere, Auckland, is receiving a lot of attention with stories running across national media*. Jason Quinn believes this project will provide world leading social housing quality. But he says the more significant achievement is Kāinga Ora’s carbon continuum commitment, which lays out the …
Airtight building resources
Here’s an excellent resource on planning, training, mocking-up and doing QA on an airtight building project. It’s very graphical and has great links to even more resources. There’s video as well for those who like moving pictures. Haven’t heard of ZEBx? No surprises, it comes out of Vancouver, that northern beacon of best practice for zero-emission and high-performance building. In …
Homestar V5 a huge improvement
The just-released Homestar V5 tool is going to lift the performance of homes using the NZ Green Building Council (NZGBC) rating system because the PHPP software is now the engine under the hood. We’re super-excited, just as you’d expect from building science geeks! We’re also a bit proud, because the Sustainable Engineering team was involved in developing the improved tool. …