“For those who don’t know, the New Zealand Building Code is the minimum standard for a new building in New Zealand. Just read that again slowly….”the…..min…i…mum…standard”!” “The true answer is stick to the basic fundamentals and buy the best basic fundamentals you can to build your new house. Use well-conceived and constructed design and detail, get the building built by …
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“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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
