This year’s hui will be held in Wellington on Sunday 13 June at Victoria University School of Architecture.
Further details and booking information available on our Events page.
All posts by Amy Tankard
Two exciting new developments are in the pipeline, advocating for Passive House to provide healthy and energy efficient new homes.
1. Bushland Park
Bushland Park near Christchurch offers houses that have already been designed to target Passive House certification. The project has been designed by certified Passive House designer Karen Manson, of PHINZ member Meta Architects, and will be built by certified Passive House tradesperson, Peter Bielski of PHINZ member Ethos Homes. This is a fantastic opportunity to purchase your very own Passive House.
Please visit the website Bushland Park for more information.
2. Greenwood Lane
Bellbird Developments, started by Vicki Spearing in 2019, will be providing owners with incentives for building energy efficient homes at Greenwood Lane. Up to $20,000 in cash back incentives are available for those building beyond Building Code and meeting specific Heating Demand figures and airtightness testing results.
Anyone building at Greenwood Lane will be required to model their design with an approved Passive House designer and will help to cover these costs. They will also contribute towards the cost of Passive House certification. Not surprisingly, all sections are already sold!
More information is available on the website: bellbirddevelopments.co.nz
PHINZ and Sustainable Engineering Ltd are well on the way to completion of the High-Performance Construction Details Handbook. (Download a technical draft of the handbook here. 02.06.21 The draft is no longer available as the handbook will be published soon.) Funded by The Building Research Levy, PHINZ and Sustainable Engineering, the handbook will be a valuable resource for design and construction professionals, providing practical tools to exceed Building Code thermal performance minimums. It will also provide consenting officials with a reference when presented with high-performance Alternative Solutions.
This month’s Build Magazine features an article by Jason Quinn of Sustainable Engineering and Elrond Burrell, chair of PHINZ, outlining the need for such guidance, details about the handbook, and its future uses including supporting and informing MBIE’s Building for Climate Change Programme and Building Code improvements. The article is online here: High-performance details | BRANZ Build (buildmagazine.org.nz) and you can download a PDF of it from here.
The Handbook is also featured in a second Build Magazine article, this one focusing on walls: High-performance domestic walls | BRANZ Build (buildmagazine.org.nz)
Kia ora koutou,
In honour of Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, I had a chat to Kiharoa Milroy (Tūhoe and Ngāti Whakaue) about the gifting of our Te Reo name – Te Tōpūtanga o te Whare Korou ki Aotearoa – earlier this year.
Kiharoa explained that he was approached by a member of the board to see if he could identify a suitable name for us, and given some Passive House reading material. A few weeks later, Kiharoa had given a lot of thought to suitable words that described the essence of Passive House, and had hit upon the word Korou which encompassed both energy and vitality. “Energy” felt appropriate because Passive House buildings are energy efficient, and “vitality” too, as healthy buildings facilitate vitality for those who use them. With the word Tōpūtanga meaning gathering or group, and Whare as house or building, the name fell into place.
Kiharoa felt that there could be a few meanings for the phrase Te Tōpūtanga o te Whare Korou, both of which could be appropriate. Firstly, our aim is to gather people into Passive House buildings. Secondly, we want to create groups of “houses of vitality”; we would love to see Passive House buildings everywhere in the community.
Our board member and his colleague loved the name straight away. They pondered it for a while and introduced it to the rest of the board, who thought it was great and suggested the addition of ki Aotearoa.
So, the name was adopted through a ceremony, held online due to Covid-19, with board members conducting a karakia and mihi – Te Tōpūtanga o te Whare Korou ki Aotearoa. Here is a link to the original story about this. We are grateful to everyone who had input into this.
Ngā Mihi Nui
Amy Tankard
CEO Te Tōpūtanga o te Whare Korou ki Aotearoa
