Passive House Institute has released a climate morphing tool for use in examining future climates and building resilience. I’m particularly fond of this approach which simply takes an increased summer temperature and increases the dry bulb temperatures throughout the year. After working with more detailed analysis from Meteonorm (which we use for detailed analysis including hygrothermal modeling) and other future …
28 February 2019 The Gisborne Herald: Real Health Difference
“I remember a young family who had about seven children, who told us they would often be taking a child to hospital at least once a week, due to the house being freezing cold.” For those folks not lucky enough to live in New Zealand Gisborne is in the North Island of New Zealand with nice warm summers. News like …
27 February 2019 Warm Healthy Homes Related Blogs
With the government finally raising the standard for existing homes in an attempt to lower the horrible health impacts for tenants of cold homes there has been quite a bit of media. I’ve also personally witnesses cold new build homes as well – typically because I was invited to look at them by their new owners who don’t understand why …
26 February 2019 Scoop: New Rental Housing Standards put improving health outcomes
“There is clear evidence to support minimum standards for indoor temperatures” “Housing quality has a tremendous impact on our health and wellbeing.” Content by Scoop.
21 February 2019 The Fifth Estate’s Willow Aliento: Passive House and Three Deep Dives: Phil Harris, Erwin Boermans, Daniel Kress
Good responses and ones I’ve heard in New Zealand as well. Change our building code in NZ to be equivalent to Passive House in a stepwise fashion; allowing the industry to predict and follow along and then, once we have this in place, moving on to other sustainability measures. I’m fairly certain that the hydronic heating / cooling comments are …
20 February 2019 Stuff’s Virginia Fallon: At least 16 years of leaks revealed for Kapiti library now closed due to mold
“At least 16 years of leaks, and months of staff health concerns, preceded the closure of a Kāpiti Coast library due to dangerous mould.Despite visible white mould, dripping walls, rotting carpet and concerns from staff, the library wasn’t tested for toxic mould until November 2018; four months after staff complained of asthma.The library was shut immediately after the test results …
PHPP Version 9.6 has now been tested pursuant to ASHRAE 140
“PHPP Version 9.6 has now been tested pursuant to ASHRAE 140, which qualifies it as an acceptable energy modelling software under a variety of regulatory systems” This means that PHPP could now be used for H1 verification via the modeling method for buildings with interesting glazing ratio’s or other non-standard features. The issue will be that Section G1.6.3 in …
20 February 2019 Envirotecture: South Pacific Passive House Conference 2019
The South Pacific Passive House Conference in Wellington was epic and is going to help move the bar with high performance building in New Zealand and Australia. Andy pulled together a great summary of the conference and PHINZ is going to post the papers so those of you that missed can at least read up on the conference. There were …
TVNZ RENEWSNZ video on Passive House
The video can be viewed at https://www.facebook.com/renewsnz/videos/252930218953512/ “These houses are heated and cooled for the same price as running your fridge. It’s called a passive house, and its secret is simple: insulation.” This video is awesome and very short. Perfectly suited to a general audience. TVNZ really did a great job (Thanks Anna). FYI I was at the Kapiti expoHaus …