| 89 T T Virginia Wright Designed for health and comfort Good design is the first principal of a passive house. Theca Architecture ARCHITECTURE When establishing his Christchurchbased company, Theca Architecture, in the early 2000s, architectural designer Glenn Murdoch already had a keen interest in building sustainably, a movement in its infancy, and he knew that was where he wanted to make his mark. “I had a basic knowledge of what a sustainable or more energy-efficient building might mean, and I was looking for a means of assessing what I was doing,” Glenn says. “In the late 2000s, I came across the passive house standards, which used good science and had been proven in practice across the world as a valid way of going about energy-efficient building.” By 2010, Glenn was one of the first certified passive house professionals in New Zealand, and has worked ever since to make any of the builds he’s involved with as close to the passive house standards as he can. “Everyone talks about energy efficiency and airtightness and other technical stuff, but what passive housing actually does is put warm, dry, comfortable, healthy buildings on the ground with extremely low running costs.” He points out that in New Zealand we generally look only at the capital costs of building a house, not at the cost of ownership. Unlike, for example, the way we look at cars where we also think about fuel efficiency and the overall lifetime cost of it. “Passive houses have more stuff in them, so obviously will cost a bit more, but if you run the numbers they’re cheaper to build and own than a standard code-compliant house. The running costs are so much lower that it more than offsets the increased mortgage costs,” Glenn explains. Good design is the first principal of a passive house, or of any house, and for Theca it starts with an efficient shape and form with a focus on orienting the glazing appropriately for the site. They know, for example, that putting a lot of windows on the west side of the building means overheating problems for whoever lives there, which has nothing to do with insulation and everything to do with design. Theca recently completed a Lifemark Standard, 9-star Homestar and certified passive house on a pre-determined building platform for a commercial architect in Christchurch with little residential and no passive house experience. The views, mostly to the west of its Huntsbury Hill location, meant carefully designing windows and doors to capture the views without risking overheating in summer. As Glenn says, “A house being at 40 degrees is just as uncomfortable as a house at 12 degrees.” To avoid this, they included big overhangs to the west on the mid-century design, with its low-pitched gable roof and cladding that combines brick and timber. From the driveway to the deck to the front door there’s no step, and all internal access and design allows for future use of wheelchairs, none of it difficult to achieve with careful design. “It’s simply a question of good detailing and good construction, with the builder a key part of its execution,” says Glenn. In 2011 when Lochie the Builder arrived in New Zealand from Ireland where he’d been building for 10 years he was surprised to ind relatively low building code standards, especially for insulation and joinery, he explains. “We stopped using aluminium joinery in the 70’s in Ireland because of its thermal conducting properties, but here everyone still uses it due to its a ordability and aesthetics.” Coming to Christchurch after the earthquakes he spent a few years building conventional homes before working with a builder who specialised in architectural, high-performance and Passive Houses. Building those homes for a few years brought Lochie a whole new level of awareness. “The science around Passive Houses blew my mind, the geeky side of it, I’d been building architectural homes for years but inding out about all that literally changed my life. I now know that you can actually build quite an a ordable high-performance house with a simple design and material choices, but you need to have a relationship with the builder and the architect from day 1, because with all our experience we know how to keep the costs down,” he says. It's about simply shaped buildings, high-performing windows and insulation, rather than complex shapes and fancy roo lines, and Lochie believes that you can build a premium house relatively cheaply if you keep the design simple. As people’s awareness increases about the bene its of having a high-performance house he expects they’ll be more prepared to sacri ice space for quality of life, and build a smaller house that’s really energy e icient, which is exactly what he would like to do for his own family home. Lochie’s a certi ied Master Builder, a quali ied Passive House tradesman (an internationally recognised quali ication), and a member of PHINZ (the Passive House Institute of New Zealand). He o ers open book pricing with everything itemized and margins made clear, he explains. “It’s like a trust thing for me and it’s about open communication. A irst meeting with clients is like going on a irst date, you have to make sure your values are aligned because the relationship could last a year or more. I’ve built lots of houses but what I love to do is build people’s homes. That’s what I like about high performance houses because people aren’t building them to lip them or sell them.” If it’s a Passive or high-performance house it brings additional satisfaction, but Lochie loves building because he likes creating things, and he especially likes creating a house that people will love to live in. Meet Your Passive House Expert Certified Passive House Expert in Canterbury Quality, Sustainability and innovation We are dedicated to creating high performance, healthy homes specifically designed for you and your family. A licensed builder in Christchurch for over 20 years, we have extensive experience in the design and construction of high-performance, healthy homes, from passive house principles to advanced building techniques. We’re committed to sharing our expertise and improving the quality of homes. In designing a high-performance house, knowledge is everything. CONTACT US 021-277-4992 info@lochiethebuilder.co.nz lochiethebuilder.co.nz
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