The technical overview for the NZ Green Building Council Energy and Carbon Calculator for Homes is now available. The guide was put together by me and NZGBC’s Sam Archer. It’s a free download, available here, plus there’s general information about the guide here. We developed the first version of ECCHO in Excel using PHPPv9 as the engine, then Sam Archer …
Primary Energy Renewable (PER) is misunderstood
How PHI calculates eligibility for Passive House Plus and Premium certifications seems to be unclear, even to some experienced Passive House designers. There are many factors that impact the amount of energy generated by a specific renewable energy system on a day-to-day basis. But none of that matters for PH Plus or Premium certification. It’s about Primary Energy Renewable. And …
Short stays in Passive House homes in Aotearoa New Zealand
I’ve been describing the features and benefits of Passive House buildings for years but even my best words can’t convey as much as directly experiencing it with all your senses. The international Passive House Open Days are a great chance to have a first look but an overnight stay would be a far more complete experience. What vast majority of …
Visiting The House, a giant NYC Passive House housing complex
There’s so much to see in New York City, including lots of certified Passive House buildings. Here’s another side trip I did during last year’s family holiday. The House is a 26-storey apartment building on Roosevelt Island, housing 352 rental apartments for Cornell Tech students, faculty and staff. It was the world’s largest certified Passive House building when it was …
Keep designPH up-to-date to avoid Passive House certification hitches
Passive House designers: do you know what version of designPH you are using? It’s important you are using, if not the latest version (2.2.24 at time of writing) then 2.1.15 or later. Otherwise your shading factors may not be accurate. We identified this issue last year and issued a brief advisory in our November email newsletter. Here’s the background explainer …
Help coming for PHPP heat pump worksheet
Every Passive House designer who has modelled in PHPP10 knows what a pain it’s become to enter heat pump data. To solve this, we’re developing a heat pump webinar with a whole lot of building physics behind it. (Save the date: 5 March 2025, 12.30 – 2.00pm) PHPP9 allowed standard data to be used, but PHI changed that with the …
What’s to like in the MBIE H1 consultation document?
After painstakingly researching, consulting on and citing improvements to thermal performance in the NZ Building Code for years, MBIE was directed by its incoming minister to investigate rolling back changes. Chris Penk cited anecdotes from a couple of Tauranga group home builders that more insulation was causing overheating as his rationale, all while banging on the housing shortage drum. In …
Owl Woods: complex form, superb Passive House performance
This Australian Passive House home is such a stunning departure from a simple rectangle and a great example of how complex forms can still be extremely energy efficient. It goes to show what energy modelling at design stage can achieve. Congratulations to all our Australian Passive House colleagues who brought this project to fruition back in 2019. The design didn’t …
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 …