Jessica Eyers is joining Sustainable Engineering Ltd in 2023. Jessica needs little introduction to New Zealand’s Passive House community as she has been a certified Passive House designer for nearly a decade. Jessica’s arrival will further increase the company’s capacity to carry out Passive House design and take on large and more complicated projects. Jessica will bring valuable insight as …
Grand design at Tapu more than meets the eye
Stuff’s ranking of this season’s homes featured on Grand Designs is of course highly subjective and arguably not particularly useful. Sustainability did feature as a criteria but frankly was a bit token. Rainwater tanks are hardly an optional sustainable upgrade when town water supply isn’t available. Predictably, our team puts the Watterson Residence in Featherston in the #1 spot. We …
Renewal of your PH Designer/Consultant or PH Tradesperson Qualification
We’re often asked by accredited PH Designers / Consultants and Tradespersons how to renew their qualification. For PH Designers / Consultants there are two ways to renew your qualification: By documenting a Certified Passive House, EnerPHit retrofit (or Precertification) or PHI Low Energy Building for which you have done the PH design work in a special technical report format and …
“Grand” Passive House project in spotlight
Great to see certified Passive House performance getting some prime media coverage. It featured on Grand Designs this month, which was then written up by Stuff. It’s a large home in Featherston, designed by one of the owners, and looks fantastic. The owners got stuck in on the construction side too; it was a great effort but had to be …
Q&A on Passive House on Today FM podcast
Sustainable Engineering principal Jason Quinn featured in a long segment on the Design & Build Show. The interviewers did a good job of raising lots of the misconceptions that linger about the Passive House methodology. Hopefully Jason dispelled them. It was great that Ngā Kāinga Anamata got discussed at some length. The image above will take you to the second …
It’s not just about the money
Here’s a nice round up from Stuff, who talked to people living in Dunedin’s Toiora High Street co-housing development, which is certified Passive House. Stuff has covered this project well and it’s great that journalist Colleen Hawkes went back to ask how residents were liking their new homes after a year of living there. The answer? Very much indeed. The …
New video focuses on Fletcher’s LowCO project
It’s not often our work features in video format so it was fun to see Newsroom cover the LowCO (low-carbon) homes by Fletcher Living. Sustainable Engineering has been involved with this project for the past two years, working on the embodied carbon modelling and consulting on the finer points of energy modelling. Some novel questions have emerged! For instance, we’ve …
No Passive House aquatic centre for NZ: yet
Australasian Leisure Management magazine has published a great article on Passive House aquatic facilities by Alex Head from Architecture HDT Christchurch and Sustainable Engineering’s Jason Quinn. As Alex explains, “aquatic and recreation facilities are known for their extremely high cost of ownership, a result of their significant staffing and extremely high energy usage—the highest energy use intensity of any public …
Toxic mould condemns $17m mansion
It’s rare to hear about building failures as owners of properties that require remediation often want it kept very quiet. As the new owner is the local council, which claims it bought it for the land, this case made headlines locally. The property at 516 Frankton-Ladies Mile boasts a five bedroom, copper-roofed house sprawling over 440m2, plus additional 320m2 of …