-3C – barely insulated house and no heating. The cost of electricity and line charges in that area is wild but so is running a unflued portable propane heater inside your home. “The house has a heat pump, but Jack and Sylvia, both 82 years old, can’t afford to use it.” “In May, the cost for their lines exceeded the …
4 July 2019 NZ Herald: What it’s like living in a home with no insulation: Condensation, mould and large power bills
“Six months ago I moved house and didn’t think too much about the state of insulation and heating in our new rental home. It was the middle of summer in humid Auckland and the 1950’s weatherboard house seemed to retain heat well. The landlord enthusiastically pointed out the heat pump – while only briefly mentioning there was no insulation as …
02 July 2019 Scoop: Doctors welcome rules making insulation the norm in rentals
“Installing insulation in a house can have a 6:1 cost benefit ratio for the very young and the very old – these people are our most vulnerable, and they spend the most time indoors,” said Dr Jeff Brown, NZ President of the RACP and a paediatrician at Palmerston North Hospital. “I see young children ending up in hospital suffering from …
02 July 2019 The Spinoff’s Elle Hunt: Renting isn’t about ‘surviving’ or ‘enduring’ – it’s about having a warm, dry home
“One of the barriers was a lack of knowledge about the home’s defects, or “believing the property [was] in better condition than it objectively is”. That’s easy enough to do – when you don’t live in it. The paper’s authors suggested that tougher laws might be enough to force the necessary improvements, and that’s what this Healthy Homes legislation sets …
29 June 2019 Otago Daily Times’ Kim Dungey: Homely as it gets
Great article on the Hawera Passive House build that is the first in New Zealand to target the Passive House Premium build. We are looking forward to reviewing the final documentation and, if they meet the standard, awarding them the first Passive House Premium certification. Great team with a well designed home and we wish them well. View Case Study …
28 June 2019 RNZ: Family desperate to leave freezing HNZ home
“It just feels like you’re camping outside, that’s what it is,” she said. She said the small lounge heater provided by HNZ – the home’s only heat source – did nothing to warm it, and was too expensive to run. The family open the windows every morning to help air the house out – but that also means the cold …
28 June 2019 Passive House Accelerator’s Bax Ingui Architects: Passive Retrofit: A Systematic Approach
Measured careful and structured approach to internal insulation retrofits for historic facades. It can be done but it needs to be done well the first time (or done over again soon). From an engineering and science point of view the insulation on the exterior is much easier. These particular retrofits work with interior insulation as the intermediate floors and roof …
28 June 2019 Stuff’s Libby Wilson: Kiwis ‘accept less’ from homes, passive house builder says
View Waikato expoHaus case study Title says it all – if what you want from a house is cheapest you are legally allowed to build than you should expect the least legal performance. It doesn’t have to be that way but that is how it works. Content by Stuff.
Peel Passive House have just published an Appliance Modelling Guide for Certified Passive House Projects
See: http://www.peelpassivehouse.ca/resources.html “This study explores the Canadian and European energy standards for household appliances that are modelled for Passive House compliance in PHPP for residential buildings. An excel tool PHPP Appliance Input Calculator has also been developed to help PHPP Users extract data from EnerGuide or ENERGY STAR appliance labels and calculate an input that can be used in the Electricity worksheet of …