Energy Efficient Building Options

How can we achieve a warm, healthy, energy efficient home for you and your family?

Energy Efficient Building Options

How can we achieve a warm, healthy, energy efficient home for you and your family?

Create a comfortable and healthy living environment, where saving costs is a bi-product of comfort and well-being.

A warm comfortable home with great air quality, and ‘even’ temperatures throughout can be achieved by applying some key principles as part of a comprehensive design and build process.   These key principles originate from Passivhaus.

  • Insulation
  • Airtightness
  • Thermal Bridges Addressed
  • High Performing Windows
  • Mechanical Heat Recovery Ventilation System

 

 

Our aim is to find that ‘sweet spot’ through achieving the best performing home for your unique set of circumstances.  This includes your budget, your site constraints, and your family’s priorities.  So, whilst all our homes incorporate these five key principles, we offer three distinct levels.

 

Level 1 – Energy Efficient Home (built to high performance principles).

Level 2 – Energy Modelled High Performance Home.

Level 3 – Certified Passive House (international certification).

 

Factors affecting the level you choose:

  • Strict versus more flexible performance requirements
  • Level of testing and measuring desired
  • Budget
  • Site constraints and family build priorities.

More Detail on Our Options:

01.

Energy Efficient Home

02.

Energy Modelled High Performing Homes

03.

Certified Passive House

Level 1 - Energy Efficient Home

  • This level still delivers a home that performs well above the minimum building code, providing you with warmth, comfort, healthy air, and energy efficiency.
  • The same principles are applied as a passive house but there is more flexibility in certain areas of the design due to factors such as budget, site, or homeowner priorities.
  • At this level your home is neither verified through certification, nor is it tested and measured through PHPP.  This is important to understand if you are aiming for a specific performance level
  • It remains vital to use a design build team who know what they are doing, and avoid risky compromises.

Energy Efficient Home Examples

Lyttelton

SIPS Energy Efficient Home

Hanmer Springs

SIPS Energy Efficient Home

Cashmere

High Performing Energy Efficient Hill Build & SIPs

Level 2 - Energy Modelled High Performing Homes

  • Performance benefits are maximised as the key design principles are all intrinsically linked, plus energy modelling (PHPP) is undertaken at the concept stage enabling qualified decision making around indicated performance outcomes.
  • The information obtained from PHPP can have significant benefits. It predicts how your home will perform and suggests areas of the design that could produce a better outcome, enabling informed decisions. PHPP starts around $2500 + GST.

Compared to our Energy Efficient level: Energy modelling is undertaken and an opportunity provided to tweak your design from the information obtained.

Compared to a Certified Passive House: The best performance within your constraints is aimed for, as opposed to the prescribed set of energy demands and the verification process required for passive house certification.

Energy Modelled High Performing Home Examples

Rangiora Show Home

SIPs Home Designed to Passive House Principles

Bowenvale Ave

SIPS Non-Certified Passive House

Cust

SIPs Home Designed to Passive House Principles

Level 3 - Certified Passive House

  • A Certified Passive House (Passivhaus) is the ultimate in high performance home
  • It must meet the strict international criteria for a ‘Certified Passive House, including heating and cooling loads below 15 kWh/m2 per year, and 10 W/m2 at peak demand.
  • Certification is undertaken by the International Passive House Association (iPHA) involving testing, measuring and validation of performance. Energy modelling is completed using PHPP (Passive House Planning Package).
  • Due to the strict criteria, the cost of achieving certification is a lot higher.
  • The iPHA also offer an international ‘Low Energy Standard’. This level still prescribes performance levels and energy demands on a building, but they are lower than that of a fully ‘Certified Passive House’.
About PHPP/Energy Modelling
Strowan

SIPS Certified Passive House Plus

Passive & High Performance Principles

– Find out more about the key elements in our builds.

Our Portfolio

– Be inspired with our previous homes.