Our first visit to a passive house was the eHaus showhome at Waikanae designed by eHaus and built by QBuild Ltd. One of the first ideas we had to comprehend was of the style and nature of the windows and doors in such a house and of the concept of the "passive core" of a house and the non-passive elements. At Waikanae the garage is used as QBuild's offices and it is non-passive, one then enters a tight seal door into the rest of the "passive core" house. This element is quite critical in the design as it means that anything non core really has to be at one end or in one corner, or it will become unworkable. So in our concept the garage is also non core and is at the Southern end.
Having established this design factor the next element is maximising the layout with respect to the movement of the sun. EHaus advised us at the onset that depending on the design specification adopted we may have too much heat coming in with this layout and may have to have external shading to lessen its effect, so we judiciously limited the number of large windows facing our main view of Kapiti Island, but this changed over the evolution of the design. Lesson 1- go for what you want to happen, not what you might fear will have to change!
As part of our first meeting with Ehaus' principal, Jon Iliffe, he took us to his own passive home just outside Whanganui. Some of the features we saw there have been incorporated in our own home- light sensors in key areas, effective water heating systems, solar generation etc, so it is always worth looking at the learning lessons from others. Jon's home has been awarded a Passive House Institute's prize.
Next time we will cover what you need to tell your passive house designer before he/she starts work!
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