Free thermal bridge modelling training

If you’re working on Homestar V5 projects, this free webinar is for you. (It’s also ideal for all those newly qualified Passive House designers!) Sustainable Engineering’s Jason Quinn is teaching an introduction to thermal bridge modelling on 23 February. Jason is the author of PHINZ’s High-Performance Construction Details Handbook: he knows thermal bridges inside and out.  The hour-long lunchtime webinar …

New thermal performance data for NZ timber window profiles

Consulting with building component manufacturers to help them make good products even better is a favourite activity for the Sustainable Engineering team. Lunds Joinery, a highly-regarded family-owned company in Timaru, approached us to do some window calculations for their standard timber profiles.  Lunds incorporated the fRSI calculations and Uf data into a new publication, the LJT Timber Window Guide, which …

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 …

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 …

Leadership needed in NZ educational sector

New Zealand got underway with Passive House before our Aussie mates but sadly we’ve been thoroughly surpassed in the last couple of years. We have no Passive House projects to rival the scale and ambition of Monash University’s Woodside Building for Technology and Design. The striking five-storey building is a “living lab” for IT and engineering students and researchers, deliberately …

Energy-efficient builds increase sales price: Aus study

I’m often asked for data on the price premium a certified Passive House would command compared to the same house built to the legal minimum requirements of the New Zealand Building Code. It’s hard to know as the numbers are so small and Passive House homes so rarely come onto the market. So far they have been rarely built with …

Join US expert on marketing PH to homeowners

I’m looking forward to this seminar on how to effectively market Passive House and encourage those working on and designing Passive Houses to attend. This Zoom seminar is hosted by the Passive House Academy New Zealand on 29 June 2021 at 11am. It features John Oppermann, a US real estate agent (and executive director of the Earth Day Initiative), who …

Worthwhile training course: next week!

I highly recommend attending the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors’ training day in Auckland on 20 March. You’ll hear about Kāinga Ora moving to low carbon building at scale, MBIE’s Building for Climate Change programme and see the latest on the High Performance Construction Detail Handbook. I promise it’ll be PH through and through. All the details, including how …