Home Style Green

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 confirms my belief that Passive House coming to Asia is going to make an impact in Australia and New Zealand.

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 buildings. At the 2019 Passive House Conference in Heidelberg, Paul shared some of his learning from over 30 years of airtightness testing. https://homestylegreen.com/190

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 enjoy not what we have to do, but what we get to do.

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 funding platform Birchal, they're inviting everyone to join the movement.

When Prof. Dr. Hartwig Künzel was studying Chemical Engineering, his father was a scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute. Hartwig followed in his father's footsteps after becoming interested in the preservation of heritage buildings. He soon discovered that he could apply his engineering training to diagnosing the moisture problems that occurred after buildings were insulated.

Terry Brennan literally wrote the book on managing moisture for improved indoor air quality. He is a lead author of a landmark 2013 Environmental Protection Agency book titled “Moisture Control for Building Design, Construction and Maintenance” which has since become a standard reference document in the industry in the US. In November 2018, Terry visited Australia as a keynote speaker for The Building Designers Association of Australia (BDAA) and Australian Institute of Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Heating (AIRAH). We took this opportunity to bring Terry to New Zealand for a short visit and workshop at the pro clima HUB, where I caught up with him for a chat about building science, mould and how to build better.

Tedd Benson refers to stick framing as pretty basic shelter. It went up almost overnight, but the legacy continues as a 'worse form of building that then become a standard'. Today, Tedd runs Bensonwood, Unity Homes and Tektonik. He is a passionate about combing the skills and values of traditional craftsmanship with cutting edge technology to make better places to live.

In Episode 145 I spoke with Dennis Dowling of DCD Construction. On the episode, I talk with Annabelle Numaguchi who has a PR and marketing background. Why has Annabelle recently become a Homestar Assessor and what is her vision for DCC Construction? Find out in this episode of Home Style Green. http://homestylegreen.com/177

Bert Sarkinnen has been building homes since he was 16, firstly alongside his Father who was also his teacher and mentor. Along the way Bert fell in love with the craft and beauty of timber framed buildings, so much so that he created Arrow Time Framing to specialise in this type of construction. As creators of beautiful, high quality buildings, Arrow Timber Framing is now 'the enemy of ugly'. In this conversation, we discuss the importance and value of a craft, how being encouraged to makes mistakes helped Bert to learn, and the challenges of building a business.

The Headwaters in Glenorchy, just 45 minutes drive from Queenstown is a magical place and now home to another Living Building Challenge project. I caught up with lead consultant, Tricia Love recently to discuss how she got involved and what the Headwaters is all about. The Headwaters doesn't aim to re-invent the wheel. It is however a leading example of how we can learn from what's being done overseas and contribute our own expertise towards a positive effort of creating better places to live, work and play.