“Each newly built house that that only just meets our meagre Building Code potentially leaves the new and successive owners living in uncomfortable, unhealthy conditions. “ “Having proper ventilation is essential to creating a healthy home. Removing moisture-laden air improves air quality, making the home healthier and easier to heat. Our older pre-1990s homes are full of gaps and are …
30 January 2019 Wellington. Scoop: Overheating in your new home – yes you should check
High performance homes are designed to use the least amount of energy possible to keep the occupants comfortable and healthy. We carefully select the windows their shading and details of how they are installed down to the specific coatings on the glass. This produces homes that use almost no heating but in the summer time do not overheat excessively. Unfortunately, …
29 January 2019 Scoop: Insulation boost means more warm dry homes
Good to see after all the research that has been done about poor quality of housing impacts on health that the government is up to speed. Now we need to: 1. at least build the new stock so it is healthy as well and, 2. change the building code so new homes are designed and proven to be warm healthy …
29 January 2019 Boston Green Ribbon Commission’s Miriam Wasser: Boston aims to be carbon-free by 2050. Here are 5 takeaways from a new report
NZ is in the lucky position to already have a significant ~80% of our energy from renewables. Given that and lacking a full engineering analysis city-by-city report we can tell our NZ cities to focus on these three things: 1. Maximum energy efficiency in buildings – we don’t have to call it Passive House (or Passivhaus) but it will look …
22 January 2019 The FIfth Estate’s David Thorpe: Graphene stars in Passivhaus retrofit of Victorian townhouses
Great article but horrible title. The wonder material graphene is added to the paint as an anti-cracking additive. Neat but totally doesn’t impact the performance of this Passivhaus. Also great to hear of more UK projects that are being delivered at market rate cost. I’d love to have seen some discussion on how they dealt with the thermal bridging back …
19 November 2018 The Green List’s The Fern: These Redfern apartments will change your life, and save a motza
Ouch. “Even for supposedly sustainable houses and apartments. The rating tools are good he says, but their problem is “too much greenwash”, not enough post-occupancy evaluation, and an almost “criminally” low standard of compliance. Result? (And he’s seen this with his own eyes) clients in highly rated green housing call the architect after they’ve moved in to say they are …
2018 December 01 Build Magazine’s Manfred Plagmann: Mould, occupants and house condition
Air control layers are critical to warm healthy homes. Paying for a second brand new roof on a building should not be common to homes or commercial buildings. More ventilation can help with controlling moisture under the roof cladding but if there is no air control layer at all in the ceiling ventilation is not always enough. “We have recently …
23 October 2018 ArchDaily: Sri Lanka Passive House / JPDA
Certified Passive House is not only for cold climates but that is still where you find most of them. This Certified Passive House Factory is located in Sri Lanka which is a hot monsoon climate. The design team focused on heat gain reduction but still had to deal with the very high local humidity and internal loads of running a …
Passive House Classes Explained: Classic, Plus and Premium
Honest and fair net zero buildings Sometimes you need to explain complicated technical topics in a very simple way. Like how you would speak to your 95 year old Italian grandmother, Rita, who grew up before TV was a thing. How the hell do you explain Passive House. Better make it simple or she will ask again in about …