TVNZ RENEWSNZ video on Passive House

The video can be viewed at https://www.facebook.com/renewsnz/videos/252930218953512/

“These houses are heated and cooled for the same price as running your fridge. It’s called a passive house, and its secret is simple: insulation.”

This video is awesome and very short. Perfectly suited to a general audience. TVNZ really did a great job (Thanks Anna).

FYI I was at the Kapiti expoHaus <link to our case study on this house> in Waikanae for about two hours and that was edited to a few seconds of video. I suspect Emma Osmundsen from Exeter Council in the UK spoke for quite a while as well.

About the only bit I didn’t like was Anna’s throwaway comment on these being ‘something only baby boomers can afford to build’. We didn’t take the time to discuss this but most folks use initial purchase price as a proxy for affordability and that is not correct. It is one of those easy but wrong biases. Total monthly cost of ownership is a much better metric and shows that it is cheaper (often). And this still doesn’t capture a significant amount of the buildings value. As Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman points out in the video, the health care costs for a single hospital visit can pay for a lot of insulation.

Visit TVNZ‘s website.