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I’m helping to set up a session of hands on builders to each speak for 5 minutes at the next Passive House Conference in Wellington (9th and 10th of February). The concept is to have some real hands on discussion from folks actually building Certified Passive Houses rather than all the talks being from design folks. You would all be speaking together …

This well written article reminds us that buildings in Australia (and NZ as well) are a large contribution to our CO2 emissions and we have the skills needed to significantly reduce that and at the same time save occupants on their energy bills with increased comfort. So if we have the skills and everyone benefits when we build Passive House …

I was a bit disappointed reading this brief workshop report as the conclusions are very cautious. It started strong by reviewed some epic keynote points like ice free summers at the North Pole by 2030 (12 years away by my math) and the need for negative carbon emissions to stay below 2 degrees increase. Then went on to how industry …

This article is great. The author actually gets the obvious limitations built into this government act. Even if NZ chose the top option of all those offered we wouldn’t have guaranteed warm healthy homes. They would be better but not much better … unless someone pays the tenants (large) heating bill. One issue I think is missing is that new …

I’m glad to see that this is finally out for public comment. Although this article focuses on Rental Housing I see these issues with owner occupied and brand new housing as well; And yes these are new homes built to meet NZ Building Code. The high performance building industry needs to comment as a whole on what will actually fix …

The discussion document is great and offers several options but in my brief look thus far, none of the options considered would make 99% of rentals warm healthy homes. The options are focused on small low cost interventions that will improve the situation. That makes sense for MBIE and the politics of the situation but without examining what would actually …

This is an excellent summary of the MBIE proposed discussion document and the options proposed. I know how bad NZ buildings can be in terms of basic moisture management and insulation but even the ‘high’ options seem inadequate to fix the problem entirely. These will certainly improve rentals but seem not able to actually make them warm healthy homes unless …

This has some great speakers and should really push high performance building forward in Sydney. I’d especially like to hear the breakfast panel discussion on “transitioning to a zero carbon building and construction sector” and how to make that happen be affordable and societies obligations to make it so. Great speaker lineup with the conference theme of Building Responsibility: Aiming towards …