Is Passive House actually worth it?

I’m often asked (usually politely): Is building to the Passive House standard actually worth it? Yes it is, is the unequivocal answer. There’s a brilliant summary paper written by Dr Ürge-Vorsatz and others that is my go-to evidence when I am persuading sceptics. The bottom line is that with current technology, we can build nearly zero-energy buildings almost anywhere at …

Alternative balcony design for low carbon buildings

Global design practice Perkins & Wills has released a beautiful white paper on balconies for buildings concerned with lowering carbon emissions. It considers thermal bridges and overall design considerations. Balconies are a major heat loss junction in multi-storey buildings, second only to window installation details. (Concrete slab edges, where left uninsulated, are also major thermal bridges.) The white paper, according …

Build better houses to solve dry year energy problem

Newsflash: using less energy is better than generating more of it. I know that seems obvious given the cost of new electricity generation schemes but it’s even more significantly beneficial to reduce peak heating demand because of New Zealand’s big dry winter problem. The University of Otago’s energy programme is producing valuable work, and its latest paper by Michael Jack …

Revised ASHRAE standard gets serious on building decarbonisation

ASHRAE in the USA is really focusing on building decarbonisation, finally. ASHRAE Journal March 2024 contains a really readable summary of the changes to ASHRAE Standard 100-2024, Energy and Emissions Building Performance Standard for Existing Buildings. This amounts to a deep retrofit of the standard, which now will address both energy emissions (via Energy Use Intensity, EUI) and carbon emissions …

Simple timber buildings are ripe for retrofits

This Canadian retrofit project is encouraging: it’s an old timber-framed and clad building with single-paned glazing in timber frames. Built in the 1850s, it’s older than the New Zealand homes built from the same materials. Regardless, it’s this kind of construction that offers the best retrofit potential in New Zealand—even better if they are two-storey like this Nova Scotian example. …

10 Passive House design tips for keeping cool in summer

The high temperatures this past summer have served to sharpen everyone’s focus on how to design Passive House buildings to remain comfortable for longer when the temps spike. The team at Sustainable Engineering Ltd is working on detailed energy modelling in order to produce building specification guidelines. We’ve also been thinking about what could be implemented right away: finding the …

Fine particulate pollution is terrible for human health

Today I learned that lymph nodes are heavily impacted by air pollution. This photo shows lymph nodes specifically associated with the lungs and how they are affected by air pollution as we age. It’s gruesome. I already knew fine particulates were bad, but this image has visceral impact and I’ll strengthen the advice I give to clients about how to …

Design Passive House for your individual client

Should Passive House designers be doing more to design buildings that avoid summer overheating? This article from mainstream business magazine Forbes considers Bahnstadt, a Passive House district in Heidelberg, Germany. The story quotes residents who were struggling to stay comfortable as summer temps soared in 2023.  The two residents have different motivations for living there and different experiences of their …