High performance
A house should be comfortable before it is anything else
Most new homes in this country meet code and are still cold in July, hot in February and expensive to run in both. Code is a floor, not a target. There is a way of building that treats comfort and running cost as things you engineer rather than things you hope for, and we are going after it.
The frame stage - where airtightness and thermal bridging actually get decided.
Where we are up to, plainly
We are members of the Australian Passivhaus Association, and Josh is about to begin the Certified Passivhaus Tradesperson course.
We have not built a Passivhaus. We are not certified, and we are not going to imply otherwise on a website while the association publishes a directory anyone can check. This is an endeavour we have started, not a credential we already hold.
We are telling you anyway, because the reason we are doing it is the same reason we price open-book: the parts of a house that matter most are the parts you cannot see once the plaster is on, and you deserve a builder who is trying to get those right rather than one who has stopped learning.
Our status today
Association member. Training under way. No certified build yet.
What actually makes a house perform
None of this is exotic. It is five things done carefully, and most of it is detailing rather than expensive product.
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01
Airtightness
Most Australian homes leak. Not through open windows, but through hundreds of small gaps around service penetrations, top plates and window reveals. Warm air escapes through them in winter and hot air pours in through them in summer, and no amount of insulation fixes a draught. Sealing the building envelope properly is the single biggest change you can make, and it is a detailing job rather than an expensive one.
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02
Continuous insulation
Insulation only works where it is continuous. A batt stuffed around a pipe, or a gap left at a top plate, is a hole in the blanket, and heat finds the hole. The difference between insulation that is installed and insulation that works is entirely in the care taken on site.
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03
No thermal bridges
Steel and concrete conduct heat straight through a wall. Where structure crosses the insulation line, it becomes a bridge that carries warmth out of the building, and in a cold snap it becomes the cold surface where condensation and eventually mould appear. Designing those bridges out is a drawing-board decision, which is why it has to happen before anyone is on site.
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04
Glazing that suits the orientation
Windows are the weakest part of any wall. Double or triple glazing, thermally broken frames, and the right glass on the right elevation make the difference between a north-facing room that is pleasant in February and one nobody uses. Glazing is also where a budget gets spent fastest, so it is worth deciding deliberately.
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05
Ventilation with heat recovery
Seal a house properly and it needs mechanical ventilation, or the air goes stale and the moisture stays in. A heat recovery ventilator supplies filtered fresh air continuously while keeping most of the warmth already paid for. It is the part people find counter-intuitive: a tight house is a healthier house, but only if it breathes on purpose rather than by accident.
Why it matters here
The Peninsula is not a harsh climate, which is exactly why it gets built for badly. It never gets cold enough to force anyone to take a wall seriously, so nobody does, and then people spend forty years heating a leaky house through a Victorian winter and cooling it through a run of forty-degree days.
Coastal exposure adds its own problem. Wind-driven rain and salt air find every gap in a poorly sealed envelope, and moisture that gets into a wall and cannot dry out is how you end up with mould in a house that is only a few years old.
The upside is that a temperate climate is the easiest place in the world to build a house that barely needs heating or cooling at all. The physics is on your side here in a way it is not in Darwin or Canberra.
You do not have to go all the way to get most of the benefit
Full certification is a demanding standard and it is not the right answer for every budget or every block. But the individual measures are not all-or-nothing, and the cheap ones are the ones that matter most. Sealing the envelope properly, insulating without gaps, and specifying glazing to suit the orientation cost far less than people expect when they are decided at drawing stage rather than retrofitted.
If performance matters to you, say so at the first meeting, before the plans are settled. It is the point at which it is nearly free to design in, and it is the point after which it gets expensive.
Want a house that is cheap to live in?
Bring it up early and we will work through what is worth doing on your block and your budget, and what is not. Same open-book pricing as everything else.