Benefits of high-performance housing spread wide

Retrofitting buildings to the EnerPHit standard and designing new ones to certified Passive House levels of performance lowers cost to society and produces lots of co-benefits (ie shared by society...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Jan 2023

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Funding and quality assurance the way to ensure successful energy retrofits

Successful energy retrofits are complex. This should be no surprise: building are complex and fixing one already built is harder than building it properly in the first place. It is...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Jan 2023

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Safety tips and rescue remedies for Passive House design

Allow for mistakes and changes in the course of the design (and build) process. That, in a nutshell, is possibly the best piece of advice we can offer to Passive...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Jan 2023

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The Fave Four according to Stuff

Stuff’s focus on certified Passive House homes continues with a great round up by journalist Colleen Hawkes. She profiles her personal four favourite Passive House projects from 2022. Two are...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Jan 2023

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Healthy Homes Standards: the amendment explained

I’ve been asked several times for information on the New Zealand Healthy Homes Standards and how it impacts high-performance buildings. Te Tūāpapa Kura Kāinga – Ministry of Housing and Urban...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Jan 2023

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Hempcrete thermal modelling info

A residential project involving hemp as a building material is targeting Passive House certification in New Zealand. Hemp is a new material for the Sustainable Engineering team and it’s interesting...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Mar 2026

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SEL provides PHPP support for PHINZ

Have you purchased the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) software from PHINZ and got stuck with some aspects of energy modelling using this tool? PHINZ now has a PHPP support...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Jan 2023

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Better windows start now

It’s disappointing that the c have been delayed further. However, new levels of window thermal performance kicked in last week. So did new calculation methods. As of 3 Nov 2022...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Nov 2022

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New PH design process course is humming along

The first cohort of students in the Practical Passive House design process course are more than halfway through. Everyone in the group of 16 recently completed their first big assignment,...

by Rachel Rose

Updated: Nov 2022

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New Aus Defence buildings to meet airtightness targets

Tip of the hat to Sean Maxwell for his LinkedIn post alerting me to some welcome developments in Australia. The Australian Department of Defence has revised its Building Energy Performance...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Nov 2022

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New airtight resource available from ProClima

ProClima has released an in-depth look at lightweight timber framing construction for walls and roof (and including warm roofs and their hybrids) across the climate zones of Australia. The report,...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Oct 2022

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Thermal bypassing publication a must-read

If you design building assemblies you need to make the time to read this new publication. Thermal bypass—the air movement through and around insulation—has a very big impact on building...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Oct 2022

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Retrofits for energy efficiency must accelerate to meet zero carbon deadline

Imagine: being able to model an entire city’s energy use—or the whole country!—just like you can a single building in PHPP. This is what districtPH does. Bland name for an...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Aug 2022

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Historical insulation levels in NZ

Against the backdrop of all the recent noise about increasing Building Code minimum R-values, let’s look back at how the minimum standard (or typical values) have changed over time. This...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Mar 2026

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Optimal indoor CO2 levels: is 1000ppm too high?

We need to talk about ventilation. Urgently. Specifically, policy-makers and industry need to arrive at an agreed definition of sufficiently ventilated when it comes to the indoor spaces where New...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Jul 2022

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Live counter of NZ’s Passive House projects

We’re very frequently asked, ‘How many Passive Houses are there in New Zealand?’ Well, as of 1625 hours, 11 July 2022, there are: That number is changing rather quickly now...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Mar 2026

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Sweden is on track

Did you know there is a country that has adopted Passive House performance levels in timber framed buildings, sorted the MVHR issues and has quite innovative framing practices we should...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Mar 2026

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Local design and manufacture focused on zero energy building

FMI is a family-owned designer and manufacturer of building components including joinery, glass, facades and cladding, marketed under brands like Eurowood, Nextra, Vetro Raccordi and Fairview. The Sustainable Engineering team...

by Jason Quinn

Updated: Mar 2026

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