A green future...or not?

In what may be my last post I will look to the completion of the grounds, which has just commenced, and present some of my views on how Passive Houses should be part of mainstream building in NZ.

The landscapers have been hard at work converting the front garden of our house into something manageable, supporting biodiversity appropriately to our landscape, and creating a flat platform for my G Scale railway! The Council have encouraged us to plant our berm and recommended the species we should use.

How the main area should look (not with fence)- this is a neighbour's one!

The berm before planting

The bank will have spreading native creepers

Another Maori Princess pohutukawa to attract the tuis

Planted out today the main bit to the right starts soon

Getting the stepping stones in place for all the walkway walkers

There may be few finished photos when the plants have grown, so watch this space!

So what of the future....?

Tomorrow I am off to the Passive House Institute Conference, as a guest. I would like to hope that all the participants are truly energised by the possibilities of making Passive Housing mainstream in NZ.

The article below struck me, as a futurist, as being quite bold but often that is where we have to start to gain attention. Try it out to see what the view of the Green Building Council is.

Homes of the Future

I see the whole end to end supply chain, and marketing of homes, needing transforming in NZ to a point where passive housing has such a positive ring to it that it becomes the natural choice of any Kiwi, whether buying, renting or investing. We have a large number of the components for Passive Houses already made here, but they will need their manufacturing processes altering to suit a Carbon Zero future. We have fine architects and designers who can envision the various types of passive buildings needed in our society, viz:

• One off " trophy"homes
• Apartment blocks
• Clusters
• Hotels
• Motels
• Schools
• Hospitals
• Little houses
• Social housing, etc

We have most of the trades that passive houses need to meet certification, however we are missing many required people and skill elements in the volume they will be required

• Passive House certified LBPs
• Passive House certified Electrical, Data, Plumbing and Ventilation Technicians
• Passive House auditors
• Building Companies with good capital, building systems and processes
• Building Suppliers who can prefabricate core modules of a Passive House, economically
• Council Inspectors who understand the Passive House building system
• Passive House Project Managers

Above all NZ needs now, immediately, a clear Carbon Zero based Building Code that suppliers, Councils, clients and LBPs can fully comprehend and manage throughout the house's lifecycle.

The KiwiBuild concept is a chance for the Passive Housing Community to shine, at least at a demonstration model level, but it will need strong advocacy, leadership and commitment from all the existing players to help strive for the common good.

A red letter day perhaps?

Normally having a post box installed would not be the occasion of a blogpost, but as part of our covenant was to have something appropriate and different we decided that having one clad in the same cladding as the exterior would be appropriate. We designed it and bought the letterbox parts many months ago, but could not get any interest from the builders in doing the work.

Recently we got a recommendation from a landscaper to go to Proline Engineering Ltd in Paraparaumu. This little Company specialise in aluminium and steel work and were only too happy to give it a go.

The resultant letterbox is now firmly esconced on its plinth and is now awaiting its first delivery!

                              Fred from Proline completing the installation on a freezing cold day

                                                         Anyone want to write to us ?

Enjoying passive heating and living at last !

So here we are some 5 weeks after building handover from QBuild. The last weeks, were as in any build, somewhat chaotic, especially so as we were away with friends around the country for much of the month beforehand. It was pleasing that the good weather continued allowing Mike and Stu to substantially complete the deck. We had all our curtains and blinds up the day before moving in, and fortunately our move from storage into the house was not as traumatic as 3 months before- although one case is still missing!

The QBuild office team did a good job of getting most of the final bits and pieces together to achieve Code of Compliance with 7 mins to spare, but we are not at all happy about the guttering and downpipes and still see that as falling way below the expectations for a well designed and installed system. Response by the subbies has been nothing short of abysmal!

We are still trying to come to terms with some of the complexities of a modern software controlled lighting system for the main area- the cost of being on the boundary of fast developing semi commercial systems ! Maureen will rejoice when she can control her kitchen lights without going to an app on her phone !

The balancing up of the Zehnder and the ventilation system is progressing. The system has a lot of bells and whistles which we are trying out. It performed very well the day it turned to an icy 6.7 deg C outside, generating a cosy 21 deg C internally with no additional heat. When the heat gets up past 26deg C outside on a warm Autumn day however some additional "purging" of the heat has been necessary to keep energy use conserved. This is a key aspect of design that needs more consideration at the early stages of a project. It is great getting up in the morning and feeling so warm, let us hope this continues throughout the winter- if we get one !

Being of a somewhat engineering bent Robin has been trying to see what information systems he can implement to get a total control of the household energy use- it appears that NZ is somewhat behind many other countries in energy management information systems- suggestions welcome ! Certainly the first month's electricity bill has been well within expectations which is a good sign.

We are now in our 60 day defect period so our next report will detail the sorts of things we found, and how the builder has dealt with them.

If you are in the area and want to come and see what "passive living" is all about you are most welcome.

Ponga Downs from across Lake Ngarara

Stu admires the view as deck progresses

Deck towards Kapiti Island

Dining area

Lounge area

Street view

Some of the hidden issues with going "passive"

Now that we are getting to the "pointy" end of finishing the core building construction and moving onto the decorative finishes side, it became apparent that there are clashes with some building elements and the core basis of a passive house.

Three areas have presented themselves thus far, and there may be more still to come ?

a) Plumbing mixers-  we had selected a plumbing mixer about 6 months ago for our shower/bath. When the plumber came to fix it this last week he found that there was a very small walling gap in which to locate the main part of the mixer, which would have meant the surround protruding some 40mm in front of the tiles!! After a lot of chasing around suppliers an alternative was found but this was a different design so all our matching tapware for the bathroom had to be changed to match- so much for planning and purchasing items in advance !

b) Ceiling speakers- our sound expert was advised by the builder during his pre-wiring that what he intended to do in the ceiling would not be permitted as it breached one of the Intello barriers. He had to hunt around for a technical solution which eventually came in the form of a special accoustic box.

http://www.dynamat.com/architectural-home/architectural-home-dynabox/


A 432 x 305 rectangular hole is cut in the ply above the speaker, into which the Dynabox is inserted and leveled to the top of the GIB. The speaker cable is fed into the box though a tight grommet, and the sides of the box are sealed with your black adhesive tape. Once the GIB goes and the speaker hole is cut, a bead of silicon or glue goes around the edge of the hole, sealing the box to the top of the GIB. The speaker can be later installed with a minimum of sound or air leakage into the roof space above.


c) Recessed cabinets- in our ensuite we had thought to have the bathroom cabinet recessed into the interior wall, until we found that it was a bracing wall and the recessing permitted is very limited. Whilst not entirely a "apssive" feature it does show that there is a need for a stage in the final architectural design where special fittings should be discussed and any modifications made to accommodate these.


We have had the first passive air test the other week, which "passed" but showed that some elements, e.g. the thermally broken aluminium front door, had more leakage potential around its hinges than was expected. 

The house has been "gibbed" and the plasterers are now in starting work so the shape of the rooms is now a lot more defined, so we have done our own check this week to ensure that our plans for where furniture would go will work- seems to be OK !

Ventilation connections

Kitchen walls

Mike and Garry place ceiling gib

Getting all the basics right!

Building anything, on time, to the standard and on budget is pretty difficult, I know because for many years I have managed various projects or been heavily involved in bringing some pretty big ones to completion, in many different countries. Its not easy....and neither is building a passive house in NZ.

Right from the start in this project Maureen and I were determined that we would do all the planning up front so that there were no changes...of our own making, as we went along.

I don't know how building companies ever make a profit in NZ- well Fletcher Building showed us this year size does not matter either !

I am beginning to lose count of the number of key project items that have been wrong, either wrongly estimated, wrongly delivered, damaged in transit etc. There is one major item that has been wrong at least 3 times !!  If this would have happened in the international oil industry we would have told the supplier to go and find other customers! But this is NZ, and supplier choice is limited- perhaps that is one of our major problems - we don't have either enough competition, enough skilled workers or the size is too small?

The other key area that needs a huge boost is communication- especially reading or comprehending detailed documents. In an industry dominated by many small players, with many individual subcontractors this is not just a possible risk- it is an ISSUE.

Despite all this Mike and Gary are doing a fantastic job, as you can see, with over 50% of our new aluminium cladding now on the house, and looking very smart. The key quality of a professional LBP has to be patience- Mike has it in buckets ! So a very good piece of advice would be - meet your builder before the build and check out his or her ability to handle the many supply chain errors that will occur on your job. I also recommend you keep a list of these errors.

Horizontal Ultraclad

Our new door, eventually!!

Starting the rear cladding

From across the road

The tricky bit- getting the first window right!

At last a sliding door in place

View across the Lake

A very tricky bit of cladding by the front door

A roof over some of our heads ?

This last week has seen the roof being partially installed, the roofing company got their quantities wrong for the first delivery so it won't be finished according to schedule! We have got 0.40BMT Q-Deck long run coloursteel in Windsor Grey colour.

A white coloured underlay goes under the metal profile roof, then sheets are screwed down onto the roofing timbers.

The barge boards for suspending the coloursteel guttering were then put in place.

More pictures when it is finally completed!

Going vertical

We had an inspection of the house on our return from Australia (in the rain) where there had been progress with the Solitex vapour barrier installation and all the sealing of the concrete on the outside with special polystyrene.

The scaffolding was all in place and a start had been made by the roofer with some of the flashings. The wire under the roof was also in place.