This past March at the Passive House Conference in Munich, Germany, I had the opportunity to meet with Dieter Herz of Herz and Lang. One of the founding members of a very experienced & prestigious passive house design consulting firm in Europe. During our discussion and later in his presentation, I was a bit surprised at the level of emphasis he …
15 August 2018 The Guardian’s Bob Ward: Planning regulations overlook heat – so developers build death traps

“Heat deaths are preventable. No more excuses: we need better regulation and guidance to stop unsafe housing being built” If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail. If you do not model and understand how a building is going to perform. To predict overheating, to understand it, and fix it before it is built. Then don’t be surprised …
13 August 2018 Otago Daily Times – Warm and Cosy Homes Essential for Everyone
This article from the Otago Daily Times is pretty shocking. It’s amazing to feel the scale of the problem when you think about one-third of all the hospital missions due to poor quality housing. If it is even close to accurate that’s an outrageous amount of money. Think how much we save on health care and misery as a society …
05 July 2018 Opinion’s Jessica Berentson-Shaw: KiwiBuild risks embedding wealth and housing inequalities
“It is feasible for people in government to ensure the next generation of children has more choice.Building standards need an overhaul. We are lagging behind other similar countries.Mr Twyford should be informed by open source energy-efficient housing systems like the passive house standard.It is a system that lends itself to prefabrication on a large scale, and has been used in …
03 July 2018 Australian Passive House Association: A zero-energy home is not as challenging as you might think, with the right toolkit
In this article, Clare Parry from the Australian Passive House Association points out how it’s really a simplicity introduced by Passive House that allows these homes to easily meet zero-energy by focusing on the basics of the envelope. “The Passive House standard is a proven methodology for achieving homes that have minimal operational energy requirements and provide a high standard …
27 May 2018 Wanganui Chronicle – Home is where the heart(and the heat) is by Rachel Rose
I think the epic quote from this article could be paraphrased as “Your brand new home might still be cold, damp, and bad for your health”. I think that’s a pretty epic statement – and unfortunately accurate. You just bought a brand new home and a few months later there is mould and the power bill is actually a bit …
2016 August 1 Prefab NZ: Unipod Open Source Bathroom Pod

This is one way to save a considerable fraction of build costs if it is done at scale. Of course, I’d argue for putting those savings into a better building envelope designed/built to Certified Passive House levels. Content by Prefab NZ.