We’d like to congratulate Certified Passive House Fesigner Guy Shaw on his elegant design of this passive house. This elegant design easily met the certification criteria. We are particularly fond of the way the thermal envelope of the building is very simple but the external facade of the architectural looks very convoluted. This is an excellent way to combine the …
Surprise! Australian buildings have very similar problems to New Zealand buildings. They’re finding that mould is prevalent throughout their buildings because they don’t require designing to prevent mould in their building code. Because they don’t design cold spots out of the buildings or sufficient ventilation they have condendation and then mould in their buildings. And as we all know this …
Dangerous overheating in buildings may not be showing up in desktop studies, new research suggests.” “Monitored operative temperatures of up to 47.5C recorded in a highly glazed apartment building in London were not reflected in software modelling of the same building, with temperature peaks in simulated scenarios between 18C and 30C cooler, depending on which weather files were used.” …
This report reviewed detailed test measurements for air tightness and heating loads for passive houses and non-passive houses designed to meet an energy target. From this data the Passive Houses (Passivhaus in the UK) predicted performance matched quite closely to the measurements compared to other non-passive house designed buildings. “Most of the homes were fitted with mechanical ventilation with heat …
“I like to build for people, not for profit”. Quote from Isaac Davidson “If we’ve got a subdivision of 1600 new homes to build, you have to ask is it cheaper to build them to low specifications or build a new power plant, because that is where we are going. You spend 20% more to build each house to an …
Our congratulations to Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman as well. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and hear her important research on the direct relation between really bad housing and bad health in children in New Zealand. The huge health care costs of choosing to build poor quality housing is shocking. And that is just the money never mind all the misery and …
Recently came across the great article on Passive House social housing planned at no extra cost in Melbourne, Australia from early last year. I’m looking forward to hearing about this project and some of the large commercial projects in Australia at the next South Pacific Passive House Conference in February 2019 in Wellington. We’ve two multi-family projects in NZ that …
I’m helping to set up a session of hands on builders to each speak for 5 minutes at the next Passive House Conference in Wellington (9th and 10th of February). The concept is to have some real hands on discussion from folks actually building Certified Passive Houses rather than all the talks being from design folks. You would all be speaking together …
This well written article reminds us that buildings in Australia (and NZ as well) are a large contribution to our CO2 emissions and we have the skills needed to significantly reduce that and at the same time save occupants on their energy bills with increased comfort. So if we have the skills and everyone benefits when we build Passive House …
