Build better houses to solve dry year energy problem

Newsflash: using less energy is better than generating more of it. I know that seems obvious given the cost of new electricity generation schemes but it’s even more significantly beneficial to reduce peak heating demand because of New Zealand’s big dry winter problem. The University of Otago’s energy programme is producing valuable work, and its latest paper by Michael Jack …

Simple timber buildings are ripe for retrofits

This Canadian retrofit project is encouraging: it’s an old timber-framed and clad building with single-paned glazing in timber frames. Built in the 1850s, it’s older than the New Zealand homes built from the same materials. Regardless, it’s this kind of construction that offers the best retrofit potential in New Zealand—even better if they are two-storey like this Nova Scotian example. …

DefignTalks podcast talks operational energy

The first episode of a new podcast for architectural designers launched this week, and its first guest is Sustainable Engineering Ltd’s principal Jason Quinn. Hosts Glenn Murdoch and Casey Curtis kick off by considering operational energy (really, operational carbon) and ask, how big is the problem? As we design more durable buildings, does the balance between operational and embodied energy …

The Heights Whare keeps gathering attention

Newly certified LEB The Heights Whare has been featured in an extensive two-page (broadsheet) story in the Otago Daily Times. It can only be read online by subscribers (the ODT is the last independently owned major daily in the country and doesn’t give away its content) but these pics of the layout show the attention lavished on this terrific project. …

Bader Ventura is a certified Passive House project

Oddly, this write-up about Kainga Ora’s Bader Ventura project doesn’t make it explicit that the building did achieve Passive House certification. You can read a detailed case study by Sustainable Engineering here—our team certified this project and provided lots of technical support. The result is all the more impressive because Passive House performance wasn’t a focus from the very beginning …

Design Passive House for your individual client

Should Passive House designers be doing more to design buildings that avoid summer overheating? This article from mainstream business magazine Forbes considers Bahnstadt, a Passive House district in Heidelberg, Germany. The story quotes residents who were struggling to stay comfortable as summer temps soared in 2023.  The two residents have different motivations for living there and different experiences of their …

Replacement cycles should inform climate change mitigation policy

It’s curious there is so much public discussion about electric vehicles and why and how we should ‘flip the fleet’ … and so little about buildings. Yes, we need to move people and goods in far less polluting, carbon-intensive ways. But decarbonising buildings is even more urgent and the graph below shows why, in a compelling and easy-to-grasp way. Replacement …

Choose the right heat pump

Source: Coming in from the cold: Heat pump efficiency at low temperatures, Duncan Gibb et al. 2023 This graph from a recent European academic paper shows air-source heat pump performance in mild cold climates in Canada, China, Germany, Switzerland, the United States and the UK. The red dashed line showing average COP is not the important takeaway from this graph. …

Passivhaus Playbook a great free resource

The latest book from APHA is the Passivhaus Playbook and it’s great. I love the focus on the team and a successful process. The publishers describe it as “a nine-step pathway that covers everything from funding to design coordination and supply chain to storytelling … [providing] a process for a technically feasible, buildable, cost-effective Passivhaus approach to new buildings in …