Home Style Green

Denise Martin has been involved with many of Aotearoa's Passive House projects. As one of the most experienced blower door testers in the country, she's been involved with verifying a range of residential and commercial buildings both in New Zealand and Australia.

I caught up with Denise to chat about how she got into building science in the first place and some of the challenges and opportunities facing the building sector in New Zealand. We also discuss the building code, energy modelling, thermal performance and air tightness.

If you don't already, I highly recommend following Denise on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn.

I found it confronting listening to Tova O'Brien's guest this past week as she described the experiences of staying in motel emergency accommodation with a young daughter. From my relative privilege (of choosing the right parents and having things turn out ok for me so far), I find it hard to imagine being in this situation. But it's the reality for nearly 6,500 people across Aotearoa, half of whom are children. 

This is an emergency, and the problem is complex. The solution will require more than simply building more houses because the underlying issues are more complex than that.

Related to this is a proposal from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to review the building consent process in New Zealand. This is something I'd like to look at in more detail because we must get the balance right.

In 2023, MBIE sought public submissions in response to an options paper on a review of the building consent system. This week MBIE published a summary of the 270 submissions received.

At the other end of the spectrum, I caught up with Jonathan Holmes about living in a Certified Passive House Premium home and working on assessing the embodied carbon in our buildings. 

Other links for this week's podcast episode:

• Jonathan Holmes on LinkedIn
• Holmes House, Sustainable Engineering
• Hawea Flat, Home Style Green

Be sure to register for Reimagine Buildings '24

Last week, February 22nd rolled around. This was a significant date in the Cutler-Welsh household thirteen years ago when our house was located close to the Avon River in Christchurch. While it was a life-changing day for us, life has gone on. We ultimately lost our recently renovated home in Richmond as a result of the Canterbury Earthquakes, but many lost so much more. 

What would a moratorium on consenting new buildings in known floodplains, tsunami or fire risk areas, look like? How would the resulting plummet in land values impact the economy and further inflate the cost of housing?

But if not now, when? The risks are likely to get higher and ultimately we have to ask ourselves if we're prepared to keep making our stop-banks higher or retreat to higher, less shaky ground.

There are fundamental gaps in what the New Zealand Building Code covers and how well it covers the aspects that are included. These reasons should be enough to justify using standards like Passive House or Homestar to go above and beyond the building code.

In this series, I'll be looking at reasons why it's better to ask about the value and risk minisation resulting from higher performance standards rather than focussing only on perceived upfront cost. 

As I draft this episode, there's a chorus of cicadas outside my window. The sun is shining and there's a faint breath of a breeze. It seems calm where I live, here in a relatively leafy part of Tāmaki Makaurau. 

But all is not calm everywhere in Aotearoa today, Waitangi Day 2024.

There are not many new ideas in the building industry. The basic concepts have been around for a while. 'High-performance' products and design details that might be described as 'innovative' here in New Zealand are likely to be standard practice somewhere else.

With building his experience in Europe and Scandanavia Richard Eden is well placed to help New Zealand builders do things better. He can often be found teaching builders around the country how to do a good quality install of good quality windows.

Brad Wills is Director: Strategic Customers & Programs at Schneider Electric. Based in Tennessee, he has three decades of experience with the organisation. We discuss the diverse range of products and services now offered by Schneider as well as the exciting opportunities for smart metering, microgrids, onsite battery storage and more.

In 2007 when Kim Feldborg arrived in New Zealand he was surprised at how cold and inefficient the houses were, despite growing up in much colder European climates. Originally from Denmark, Kim has built houses in Greenland, Norway, Germany and England. He now enjoys life in a Certifed Passive House he built himself in Taupō.

Richard Houghton now lives in a very good, healthy home. But that wasn't always the case. Along with Simon Cator from Pro Clima NZ, we discuss Richard's journey in designing and building an energy-efficient SIP home just outside Auckland, New Zealand. 

Zola Rose has a vision for regenerative housing as a solution for improving communities and sustainability. She brings diverse and international experience to Aotearoa New Zealand where she now calls Nelson her home.

Real estate has long been used as an investment and a means of making a profit in New Zealand. Zola explains how this has tended to undermine the values that we should otherwise associate with where we live. Housing should protect, shelter and foster community, but we've tended towards the commoditisation of housing.

There are solutions that can help provide better housing and helping people implement these solutions is the basis for Zola's social enterprise.

https://www.commonground.net.nz

Darren O'Dea is a self-confessed building physics nerd. Along with co-founder David Carroll, he has helped to create Speckel, a platform for designing low carbon, healthier, durable and energy-efficient buildings. Having proven popular with architects and consultants in Australia, Speckel is now available in New Zealand. Find out more at https://www.speckel.io/

Sabine Schoenberg is co-founder of the Smart Healthy Green Living network, a collection of videos and streaming content on everything from tiny homes and carpentry to interior design and gardening. Through her network, Sabine is promoting the 'Do One Thing' campaign to help everyone take a step towards living a more sustainable life.

My third conversation with Simon Cator in our series on the control layers of a well-performing building envelope. In this episode, we cover the why and how of airtightness.

Following my previous chat with Simon Cator we continue our discussion about how to construct a good building envelope. This week we're focussing on keeping the weather out. We cover the benefits of a monolithic membrane instead of a microporous one, the importance of being resistant to water while maintaining permeability to vapour, and how to keep everything connected.

Casey Curtis shares tips on how and why to create airtight buildings, the benefits of mid-build open homes, and using collaborative design to create the right house on any given site.

Michael Rubino is an educator, author and an expert in mould remediation of homes. In this interview he shares his journey and some tips on how we can make our homes a better, healthier place to live.