Home Style Green

I wanted to have Dolores Davis on the show because she's running a company that values the art, the privilege and the responsibility of building. Here in New Zealand, the evidence that a building boom doesn't guarantee success in the industry, is all too common.

Just as we can learn building methodologies from around the world, we can also learn successful business practices so we can continue to enjoy not what we have to do, but what we get to do.

Where do you go to get beautiful, high performance doors and windows, made in New Zealand?

The term 'airtight' conjures up fears of hermetically sealed boxes. In this episode, I discuss what exactly airtightness is, and why we need it.

Jason Quinn used to be a NASA rocket scientist. Now he's New Zealand's one and only Passive House Certifier. He's just published a book summarising the first 24 Certified Passive Houses in New Zealand.

http://warmhealthyhomes.co.nz

In 2012 Ben Adam-Smith founded House Planning Help to collect and share all the information he started to learn on the way to designing and building his own home. His mission is to encourage people towards the "...houses we should be building in the 21st Century."

Six years on, Ben and his family are enjoying their very own Passive House.

Sam Rogers thinks we've reached a tipping point where more people are seeking high performance homes and are willing to invest a little extra for a much better result. Sam and his team at Land Homes are on a mission to make high performance homes mainstream.

Felicity and Marc Bernstein met at architecture school in Germany and have been working together since. During the last twenty years they've worked in Germany, Arabia and Australia. They now want to use modular design to bring high performance, zero-carbon homes to the masses. Felicity and Marc have recently launched Hütt - Tomorrow's House Today to achieve their vision. Through the crowd equity funding platform Birchal, they're inviting everyone to join the movement.

When Prof. Dr. Hartwig Künzel was studying Chemical Engineering, his father was a scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute. Hartwig followed in his father's footsteps after becoming interested in the preservation of heritage buildings. He soon discovered that he could apply his engineering training to diagnosing the moisture problems that occurred after buildings were insulated.

When Prof. Dr. Hartwig Künzel was studying Chemical Engineering, his father was a scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute. Hartwig followed in his father's footsteps after becoming interested in the preservation of heritage buildings. He soon discovered that he could apply his engineering training to diagnosing the moisture problems that occurred after buildings were insulated.

Terry Brennan literally wrote the book on managing moisture for improved indoor air quality. He is a lead author of a landmark 2013 Environmental Protection Agency book titled "Moisture Control for Building Design, Construction and Maintenance" which has since become a standard reference document in the industry in the US.

In November 2018, Terry visited Australia as a keynote speaker for The Building Designers Association of Australia (BDAA) and Australian Institute of Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Heating (AIRAH). We took this opportunity to bring Terry to New Zealand for a short visit and workshop at the pro clima HUB, where I caught up with him for a chat about building science, mould and how to build better.