26 October 2018 Passive House Plus’ Kate de Selincourt: Performance gap much smaller for passive homes, research finds

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 …

The Four Control Layers – Fundamentals of Building Science

The Building Enclosure and the Four Control Layers   Understanding of the building enclosure and the four control layers that make up the building enclosure is vital to understanding how the building enclosure will perform Enclosure The building enclosure is what separates the inside environment from the outside ‘natural’ environment. This includes everything from the paint on the outside of …

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 …

March 2016 Organic Magazine’s Low Energy Homes

This article features our Director, Jason Quinn, there was a lot to condense into this article. The one additional comment he wishes had made it into the article was that most new homes built in New Zealand to the current building code are unhealthy due to inadequate ventilation resulting high moisture levels and often times mold. Yes, That’s a brand …