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 …
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 the old H1/AS1 etc are no longer acceptable. I’ve included the new schedule below. It’s more complicated because some parts of the upgrade were pushed back a further six months. …
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, a DesignPH model. About a third are using the course to help them develop a client’s design, while others are working through personal projects. Feedback from students has been very …
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 Guide to include enforceable air tightness testing requirements for all its new buildings. Permeability targets are defined in the guide. All buildings must be tested for airtightness according to ISO …
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 …