Josefine Watterson’s Featherston home has just received certification but already it is doubtless the nation’s best known Passive House home, thanks to being featured on Grand Designs. Josefine is the owner, architect, Passive House designer, project manager and joiner, a noteworthy number of hats to wear. She deserves congratulations on a very high-performing build that came in on time and …
Jessica Eyers moving to Sustainable Engineering Ltd
Jessica Eyers is joining Sustainable Engineering Ltd in 2023. Jessica needs little introduction to New Zealand’s Passive House community as she has been a certified Passive House designer for nearly a decade. Jessica’s arrival will further increase the company’s capacity to carry out Passive House design and take on large and more complicated projects. Jessica will bring valuable insight as …
Q&A on Passive House on Today FM podcast
Sustainable Engineering principal Jason Quinn featured in a long segment on the Design & Build Show. The interviewers did a good job of raising lots of the misconceptions that linger about the Passive House methodology. Hopefully Jason dispelled them. It was great that Ngā Kāinga Anamata got discussed at some length. The image above will take you to the second …
New PH design process course is humming along
The first cohort of students in the Practical Passive House design process course are more than halfway through. Everyone in the group of 16 recently completed their first big assignment, a DesignPH model. About a third are using the course to help them develop a client’s design, while others are working through personal projects. Feedback from students has been very …
No Passive House aquatic centre for NZ: yet
Australasian Leisure Management magazine has published a great article on Passive House aquatic facilities by Alex Head from Architecture HDT Christchurch and Sustainable Engineering’s Jason Quinn. As Alex explains, “aquatic and recreation facilities are known for their extremely high cost of ownership, a result of their significant staffing and extremely high energy usage—the highest energy use intensity of any public …
NZ’s first EnerPHit wins architecture awards
Congratulations to Terry Bryers and the construction team for winning a fistful of awards: the Auckland/Northland/Coromandel Supreme Renovation of the Year award, the Renovation Over $1.5 million category, and a Gold Award. According to the Stuff write up, “While the house retains its original concrete structure, it looks and feels completely different. The judges described the renovation as “incredible” and …
Coromandel Passive House: small, off-grid and tracking for Premium designation
The North Island is finally on track to have its first Passive House Premium home. Steven Hughes’ small but perfectly formed house in the Coromandel Peninsula has passed pre-construction review. That’s the first and most important hurdle to clear for certification. The Sustainable Engineering certifiers have reviewed all the documentation and analysis and have given an independent assurance that if …
New option for PH design training launching
New Zealand needs more Passive Houses—and other buildings heading in that high-performance direction. That requires more confident and skilled Passive House designers. Sustainable Engineering is launching a totally new training option in October, in order to familarise qualified professionals with the practical processes for designing Passive House homes. This is the process developed at Sustainable Engineering based on scores of …
What does NZ’s first deep retrofit teach us?
New Zealand’s first certified EnerPHit project began back in 2019. A very expensive and complex undertaking, it’s taken three years to complete. Sustainable Engineering’s Jason Quinn got involved not as the certifier but the Passive House designer—unwillingly at first, he says. But the owner impressed him with his commitment to going the whole way and fixing the problems at the …