Home Style Green

Jo Woods and Shay Brazier have been saving money on power since they moved into their Zero Energy House . At the same time, their home has been drier, healthier and warmer in winter than most New Zealand houses. Now Shay is continuing to help others achieve similar savings and benefits by looking into the feasibility of solar and energy efficiency technologies for building products via his new com...

John Dupra is changing the way people select and buy hardwood flooring. His story about the creation of Revel Woods offers some valuable ideas about how others might bring the building industry into the age of e-commerce. Rather than a product-based sourcing method, Revel Woods now applies a project-based method to come up with viable solutions for their customers to choose from. Revel Woods asks...

John and Nikki decided to put all their energy and attention in the home they've created. John gave up the idea of an office in Auckland and saved substantial city rent in the process. Now, rather than having an empty and sterile show home in a remote location, they have their own comfortable home, that's already drawn some attention. And their home is the base of their new venture - a prefabricat...

In 2001, Lindsay Schack and Lindsey Love both started a Masters of Architecture at Montana State University. A decade on, the two friends created Love Schack Architecture together, from their respective home towns in Montana and Idaho. Love Schack Architecture combines Lindsey Love's experience and passion for natural materials, with Lindsay Schack's Certification as a Passive House Institute-US,...

After working as a Building Surveyor for over thirteen years, Nick Gaites is now turning his attention to the positive work of designing really awesome buildings that shouldn't need to the services a surveyor down the track. Nick has become a Certified Passive House Designer.

In 2003, thermal performance requirements for residential buildings were added to the Building Code of Australia for the first time. The initial performance requirement was 4 Stars in the National House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) as simulated using the benchmark software AccuRate. In 2006, the requirement rose to 5 Stars, then to 10 Stars in 2010. This all sounds great. The increasing rating r...

There's a new building enclosure consultancy in town. They're called Oculus and they've got a a great philosophy as well as a lot of international experience. I caught up with James Raimondo, a Senior Building Enclosure Engineer at Oculus to learn a bit more about the engineering and science of what they do.

Within the Passive House Institute in Darmstadt, there is a small group of people dedicated to coordinating the efforts of over 20 Passive House Affiliate organisations around the world. This group is the the International Passive House Association (iPHA). Giorgia Tzar is the head of International Communications for iPHA and I caught up with her following the Passive House Conference in Heidelberg...

"A lifetime of healthiness achieved through housing" is the mission statement of Phoenix Haus. What would it take to get an operation like this up and running in New Zealand?

SIPs - Structural Insulated Panels are pretty much what they say they are. Why aren't more designers and builders using this way of building energy efficient, warm, dry houses?

Jessica Grove-Smith has a Masters degree in Physics from the University of Sussex, UK. She's studied in Australia and Spain, done volunteer work in Africa and India and completed an internship in Denmark. She wanted to do something meaningful with her knowledge of physics, and in 2008 Jessica began another internship, this time at the Passive House Institute in Darmstadt. Now she's a Senior Scient...

Camilla Novotna always knew she wanted to build her own timber house. It was just a question of when and where. Despite not having a formal architecture or building background, Camilla has now done a lot more than design her future home. Along with her sister Pavla, she has created Ecokit - a prefabricated building system offering energy homes that can be put together by anyone.

International attention on Gaobeidian is set to increase up to October 2019 when Windoor City along with Passive House Institute China will host the 23rd International Passive House Conference. I spoke to the Head of International Cooperation at Windoor City, Peter Lee recently. Among other topics, I asked Peter about the perception we have in the West of 'Made in China'. My discussion with Peter...

After he won the Inaugural Passive House Slam during the Heidelberg Passive House Conference in March this year, I sat down with Marius Şoflete to talk about how he's inspiring people to build better places to live. Marius has a contagious enthusiasm which he's using to make Passive House fun!

The first New Zealand Passive House was completed in 2012. Since then, about 20 more individual private houses have been Certified using the internationally recognised standard. Now, New Zealand is about to get its first Certified Passive House Cohousing project and Tim Ross has been involved almost right from the start.

Paul Jennings needed a project for his dissertation on fuel poverty in the UK when he came across some charity work funded by the then 'Greater London Council'. This was back in the 1980s. Not many people had heard of Blower Doors, but a team from the suppliers in Canada were willing to travel to the UK to train people on how Blower Doors could be used to help diagnose energy and health issues in...

Everett Norris always wanted to build his own house. As a boy, he also assumed that he'd own his own house. This sounds simple enough, but the reality is that home ownership is becoming more like Everett's naive childhood dream for many New Zealanders. Everett now helps people achieve the dream of home ownership by teaching them how to build their own Tiny House.

Paul and Pascale have created Park Homes for people like themselves. They were first time home buyers in the New Zealand market and they wanted something that would be worthy of living in for several years. Houses built to the current code are not up to this standard and so they created the change they'd like to see.

I wanted to have Dolores Davis on the show because she's running a company that values the art, the privilege and the responsibility of building. Here in New Zealand, the evidence that a building boom doesn't guarantee success in the industry, is all too common. Just as we can learn building methodologies from around the world, we can also learn successful business practices so we can continue to...

Where do you go to get beautiful, high performance doors and windows, made in New Zealand?

The term 'airtight' conjures up fears of hermetically sealed boxes. In this episode, I discuss what exactly airtightness is, and why we need it.

Jason Quinn used to be a NASA rocket scientist. Now he's New Zealand's one and only Passive House Certifier. He's just published a book summarising the first 24 Certified Passive Houses in New Zealand. http://warmhealthyhomes.co.nz

In 2012 Ben Adam-Smith founded House Planning Help to collect and share all the information he started to learn on the way to designing and building his own home. His mission is to encourage people towards the "...houses we should be building in the 21st Century." Six years on, Ben and his family are enjoying their very own Passive House.

Sam Rogers thinks we've reached a tipping point where more people are seeking high performance homes and are willing to invest a little extra for a much better result. Sam and his team at Land Homes are on a mission to make high performance homes mainstream.

Felicity and Marc Bernstein met at architecture school in Germany and have been working together since. During the last twenty years they've worked in Germany, Arabia and Australia. They now want to use modular design to bring high performance, zero-carbon homes to the masses. Felicity and Marc have recently launched Hütt - Tomorrow's House Today to achieve their vision. Through the crowd equity f...