What is a Passive House?

The sun is a powerful building tool – by altering a house’s orientation paired with other passive design techniques like quality insulation and ventilation and crafting high performing, airtight doors and windows, we can maximise the sun’s potential within the home. This is followed up with highly efficient heat systems to get every last ounce out of the home. NZ is a developed country with a cold, damp home epidemic – we can make a drastic change for the better with Passive Houses.

Heating Systems

When all else is said and done with the design and build of a Passive House, it’s time to select heating systems. That’s right, our Passive Houses do have heating systems – they are just far smaller and far more efficient than the average NZ home, leading to shockingly low power bills. Thanks to the quality design elements of the Passive House, a small heat pump or boiler is all you’ll ever need to efficiently heat or cool your home.

Breathe Easy

Good quality air leads to safe, healthy homes which is why ventilation is a vital part of the Passive House movement. Our houses often use mechanical ventilation systems to circulate fresh air throughout the house, releasing stale air outside of the home without losing heat.

Airtight Construction

If a building is not airtight, these seemingly small spaces for air transfer have massive implications on the house’s ability to hold onto heat. Warm interior spaces despite cold outdoor weather is part of the Passive House promise, which is why our houses are designed to avoid any air leaks and cracks, gaps and holes. Passive Houses are tested to make sure that their airtight construction is up to the industry’s incredibly high standard.

Quality Framing

To people from colder climates, it’s surprising how cold an NZ home can be – and a lot of this comes down to draughty window and door framing. In Passive Houses, quality craftmanship is essential, and door and window frames are designed and built to stringent standards so that they can live up to their important role of preventing the flow of warm air.

Well-Insulated Homes

Unlike standard NZ homes, floor and ceiling insulation is not enough for a Passive House. Here, every element of the thermal envelope is considered so we can insulate houses in the most efficient and comprehensive way. The type, style and amount of insulation is climate-dependent, so we are not fighting against nature to insulate the home. Using everything from concrete to batts to wool to vacuum insulation material, Passive Houses are heated evenly and to a high standard, limiting heat loss.

Shape and the Thermal Envelopes

Thermal envelopes are a concept crucial to Passive Houses – they are the dividing line between a living space and the environment beyond and include any element that helps keep the living space warm, dry and safe. The shape and configuration of a building is kept simple in a Passive House because this makes the most of the thermal envelopes. The simpler the thermal envelope, the less heat will get lost.

Properly Positioned Homes

Passive Homes harness the power of the sun efficiently through thoughtful attention to the house’s orientation on the land. We consider sunshine and shade in relation to the home, directing principal windows towards the equator to utilise solar power to its full potential. This is a key factor to ensuring that the house absorbs and retains the sun’s heat, staying toasty warm throughout winter and cool and comfortable in summer with little heating required.

What is a Passive House?

A Passive House is one built with an emphasis on energy efficiency, health and comfort. Through careful design, Passive Houses result in houses that are comfortable and dry year-round, yet use less energy than standard-built homes. Passive House technology uses and applies the physics of energy to create healthy homes with small ecological footprints.