Summary Several Heat Recovery Ventilation (HRV) systems available have HRV performance data for the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) but do not have Energy Recovery Ventilation (ERV) performance data. Knowing the performance is important for designing Passive Houses. A simple scaling is suggested to provide a first approximation. Method Looking at the PHPP version 9.3 example file we can set …
Hygiene Criterion applied to a thermal bridge
PH certification criteria requires that a minimum surface temperature be achieved. Steps: 1. Determine the exterior temperature to use – call this the Hygiene External Temperature. This temperature can be any value lower than the internal temperature. I typically use 0 °C as the Hygiene External Temperature and 20 °C as the interior temperature but this is only a matter …
05 July 2018 Opinion’s Jessica Berentson-Shaw: KiwiBuild risks embedding wealth and housing inequalities
“It is feasible for people in government to ensure the next generation of children has more choice.Building standards need an overhaul. We are lagging behind other similar countries.Mr Twyford should be informed by open source energy-efficient housing systems like the passive house standard.It is a system that lends itself to prefabrication on a large scale, and has been used in …
03 July 2018 Australian Passive House Association: A zero-energy home is not as challenging as you might think, with the right toolkit
In this article, Clare Parry from the Australian Passive House Association points out how it’s really a simplicity introduced by Passive House that allows these homes to easily meet zero-energy by focusing on the basics of the envelope. “The Passive House standard is a proven methodology for achieving homes that have minimal operational energy requirements and provide a high standard …
06 June 2018 Stuff Piers Fuller: A tenth of New Zealand houses not fit to live in, health researcher says
I met Dr Pierse at University of Otago’s Public Health Summer School on the day of the release of the World Health Organisation’s International Housing & Health Guidelines (25 February 2019). This was nearly the same day that the Healthy Homes Guarantees Act was released. The research that went into the WHO International Housing & Health Guidelines was incredible – …
27 May 2018 Wanganui Chronicle – Home is where the heart(and the heat) is by Rachel Rose
I think the epic quote from this article could be paraphrased as “Your brand new home might still be cold, damp, and bad for your health”. I think that’s a pretty epic statement – and unfortunately accurate. You just bought a brand new home and a few months later there is mould and the power bill is actually a bit …
23 April 2018 Stuff’s Will Harvie: The applied science of super energy-efficient Passive Houses
“Building a super energy-efficient Passive House requires careful planning, design and applied science. “ “It’s just a house,” says Glenn Murdoch, design director at Theca Group. “There’s nothing special that you can see. The only thing [visible] is that the windows and doors are different.” And the other thing you don’t see is the +90% energy savings on heating or …
10 April 2018 South Pacific Passive House Conference
If you missed it, the South Pacific Passive House Conference in Melbourne this year was a fantastic conference. We participated through leading a workshop on advanced PHPP the day before the conference on Thursday as well as attending the conference on Friday/Saturday and participating in a keynote presentation on the last day of the conference (along with Clare Parry, Luc …
06 April 2018 Superhome Movement’s April Newsletter
At the request of the Superhome Movement, Sustainable Engineering Ltd. has put together a technical proposal to build the mathematical model underlying the cool Superhome housing performance dashboard. “Superhome housing performance dashboard project is gathering momentum and the project team is coming together. This is a really big task with lots of research input as well as technical and IT involvement. …