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Design the Right Way: This three-bedroom home was designed by Superhome Movement co-founder Bob Burnett. It has a compact footprint and solar panels for the hot water and underfloor heating systems.
“New Zealand building standards are over 20 years out of date; and it’s making us sick. “
That comment from Damien McGill of the Superhome Movement sums up the reasons behind the launch of the Healthy Home Guide on November 24, 2020.
“The problem is compounded by more than 95% of the industry using the current New Zealand Building Code as the standard to target, rather than the legal minimum requirement,” McGill said. Things in the weeks leading up to launch.
David Killick / Stuff
Superhome in Church Square, Addington, is another ultra-efficient home designed by architectural designer Bob Burnett.
The project leader says the guide was expected to take 18 months to produce, but the team did their best to finish it in seven months, despite Covid restrictions. With the contribution of more than 70 professionals from around the country, the guide seeks to banish cold, damp and moldy houses by improving design and construction standards.
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McGill doesn’t sugarcoat why the Guide to a Healthy Home is needed. “We have to stop focusing on rushing the amount of garbage and then having to go back and fix it later,” he says.
“We also have to stop designing 300-square-meter houses with a fourth or fifth bedroom that we don’t really need. Instead, we only need quality; something warm, dry and resistant.
“Money spent on large houses that only meet minimum building standards, requiring considerable heating, would be better spent on building smaller, more sustainable, airtight houses with thermally broken window and door joinery installed in the right place. “.
David Killick / Stuff
The interior of the Superhome in Church Square, Addington, is designed to be cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
The Superhome movement wants our homes to provide the best possible living environments, with homes that “remain strong, sturdy, durable, and size and cost efficient.”
McGill says the guide offers recommendations for healthy, resilient, and low-carbon homes that are easy to achieve and do not require arduous and expensive qualification or certification.
A healthy home is described as one that has a high IEQ (indoor environment quality). This is determined from four key metrics: thermal comfort (temperature), visual comfort, acoustic comfort (noise transfer) and indoor air quality. “
Christel Yardley / Stuff
Ross Brown Construction completed construction on this eHaus passive house in Hamilton last year. First home owners were willing to sacrifice space for energy efficiency.
McGill says that our homes can significantly influence our health and well-being, sentiments backed by Asthma New Zealand CEO Katheren Leitner, who wrote the foreword to the guide and sees it as an encouraging development.
“We cannot continue to run from the shortcomings of the Building Code,” says Leitner. “It just facilitates the continued practice of allowing the worst building that can be built to be made legally, and this makes us sick.”
Asthma NZ’s mission is a 50% reduction in hospitalizations for asthma and COPD by 2029.
“With 87 percent of our patients living in housing unsuitable for human habitation, we are counting on you to help us achieve this mission,” says Leitner going forward. “For every year that we achieve this mission, we will allow the Ministry of Health to spend 500 million dollars in savings to improve our health system, so that we all have access to the medicines and treatments we need, when we need them. Nothing else matters when you can’t breathe. “
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Black Hut Designs designed this Superhome in Parklands, Christchurch. It features a high-performance watertight building envelope, structurally insulated panel (SIP) construction, and a totara cladding sourced from wind-felled trees.
McGill says the guide is intended for a broad audience: people interested in smarter-designed, better-built homes; whether they are industry professionals, architecture and construction students or savvy, technically minded consumers.
The guide is intended as an industry reference document. A condensed version will follow to educate consumers about the importance of healthy homes, to help them make more informed decisions, to help better outcomes for their families. Renovation and construction guides are being prepared.
This online version of the Healthy Home Design Guide is a dynamic document and will be updated periodically to reflect improved technology and methods.
The Superhome Movement will also hold a webinar on Friday, November 27th.
CHRISTEL YARDLEY / THINGS
Despite a small budget, the owners of this Hamilton home built a highly sustainable passive home. (Video first published in October 2019)
