88 | BUILDING Bruyere Limited: House of the Year Awards Kim Newth Supreme renovation visually stunning Describing the renovation as “incredible”, award judges observed how the significant project had turned an original two-storey plastered block into a true passive home. Overlooking Auckland’s spectacular west coast at Piha is a beautifully renovated home that ranks in the 2022 Registered Masters Builders House of the Year Top 100 and won the National APL Sustainable & Environmental Excellence Award. Transformed with a Sang Architects design, this is a visually stunning home inside and out yet much of the budget for this 344sqm renovation project went into features that cannot be seen. Meeting rigorous German sustainable building standards, it is the first PassivHaus-certified EnerPHit renovation in the country. Completely gutted and rebuilt by certified PassivHaus builder Bruyere, the home retains its original concrete structure but is so much more healthy, warm and comfortable inside. Describing the renovation as “incredible”, the judges observed how the significant project had turned an original two-storey plastered block into a true passive home with new insulated claddings and a new roof added, along with a new ventilated, heat-recovery, filtered-air system. As well, they acknowledged the accurate workmanship evident throughout, especially in the timber joinery and flooring, and cedar tongue and groove ceilings. For Bruyere, this leading-edge sustainable home renovation embodies a passion for high quality building that performs as well as it looks. In the Auckland/Northland/Coromandel region, the project also won the 2022 House of the Year Supreme Renovation of the Year, Regional Renovation over $1.5 million and a Regional Gold. “For us, winning the Master Builders’ National Sustainable & Environmental Excellence Award with this project is really significant,” says Terry Bryers, owner and founder of Bruyere Passive Homes Ltd. “It’s a fantastic boost for the Passive House approach. Even though this has been in Europe for a long time, people here are now telling us we’re at the cutting edge and that this is where future building standards are heading. “As a builder, I’ve noticed that there’s more and more interest generally in Passive Houses. We ourselves have just started a brand-new Passive House build at Matakohe. The wider industry is taking note and the Government is starting to get into this too with new insulation requirements coming in and exterior joinery standards now being reviewed.” Interestingly, the original brief for this award-winning renovation was much more limited in scope compared to the final specs. The owner had wanted to upgrade window joinery, kitchen and bathrooms, add an extra guest bedroom and boost internal insulation. However, the project grew once the linings came off and mould was discovered growing in the flat roof cavity and inside faces of external blockwork walls. “The owner had previously lived in mouldy student housing in Melbourne that had affected his health. As soon as we got inside the flat roof space, we could see the rafters were all mouldy. That’s when we started talking about the need for a full renovation aiming for Certified PassivHaus EnerPHit standards to stop this recurring and to create a healthy home without condensation and mould.” As this would be the first renovation of its kind in New Zealand, Terry sought out the expertise of Jason Quinn, founding director of Sustainable Engineering Ltd, who “crunched the numbers” and advised insulating the whole outside of the building (using an insulated plaster system) and putting on a warm membrane roof above the existing roof. “This put the building’s dew point on the outside surface of the building instead of inside the fabric of the building – it makes a huge difference.” Passive House certified timber-aluminium joinery with high performance double-glazed low-E, low-G-value glass was installed, with joinery, wall, roof and floor components all having a high level of airtightness. All the home’s existing plumbing and electrical wiring was removed and replaced with efficient, high standard systems. The home features a host of other precision features that mark it out as a super high performer on sustainability and healthy living.
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