Kara’s last tradies course

It was the end of an era last week, when Kara Rosemeier taught her last CET (certified Passive House tradesperson) in Auckland . Knowing Kara, hers will be a very active retirement and it’s a staged process. Kara will run one or more Certified Passive House Designer courses in 2025 before Sustainable Engineering assumes responsibility for all Passive House certification …

Passive House buildings still need heating

Here in New Zealand climates, people living in certified Passive House homes need to turn the heater on sometimes. To me as a building scientist and Passive House certifier, this is a blindingly obvious statement. But when a well-informed friend was grizzling about having to run heating in late May in their new Passive House, I had to think about …

H1 insulation requirements are not expensive

How much cost does upgraded insulation required under the revised H1 add to a new build? Much less than anecdotal figures bandied about in the media, according to some solid research released last month.  “EBOSS and New Zealand Certified Builders (NZCB), with design input from Architects Designgroup Stapleton Elliott (DGSE), teamed up with quantity surveying firm YourQS to put real …

Wellington Passive House meet up

The Wellington chapter of PHINZ is hosting a social event on 3 December at the Southern Cross hotel. No presentations or talks, just a relaxed drink with friends and like-minded people. If you’re interested in Passive House (either as a professional or a home owner), this is a great chance to chat to architects, designers, tradies and other homeowners. The …

The independence of Passive House certifiers

Jessica Eyers was the architectural designer and Passive House designer for this month’s featured case study, a groundbreaking prefab straw home. Jessica ran her own architectural design company from 2012 to 2023, when she wound up the practice and we welcomed her to the Sustainable Engineering Ltd team. The independence and impartiality of Passive House certifiers is absolutely vital. The …

To advance Passive House, stop myth-busting and start reframing

Presentations by Jess Berentson-Shaw from The Workshop were a highlight of this and previous year’s PHINZ conferences. She offers science-based advice on how the Passive House community can most effectively influence the adoption of a building standard that creates warm healthy buildings and solves a lot of social problems. In 2019, when she first delivered a keynote address, I’d just …

Why new H1 requirements impact rammed earth construction

The improvements introduced in 2023 to the H1 Energy Efficiency requirements of the New Zealand Building Code have implications for those wishing to build their homes from some natural building materials, in particular rammed earth. Rammed earth has featured in some high-profile architectural builds in recent years, like the NZIA 2023 award winner in Otago pictured above. Rammed earth has …

PHINZ conference highlights solutions to NZ winter energy problem

PHINZ’s annual conference has just finished in Wellington—it was a great weekend and a welcome opportunity to catch up with colleagues-friends.  The programme dived deeply into carbon emissions and how to slash them—embodied as well as operational emissions. Various presentations reinforced a series of important facts: Net zero targets/emission caps can’t be met without significantly reducing the total carbon associated …

Highlights from NZGBC Green Property Summit 2024

I attended the NZGBC Green Property Summit this month. Several presentations stood out. The first was by Sam Archer, who spoke immediately before the Minister of Climate Change—Sam sure put that opportunity to address the minister to good use. He was quite blunt about the missed opportunity for the building sector to contribute to our internationally agreed CO2 reduction and …