Dunedin

This new Dunedin City Council social housing block of 10 units for older people was built to certified passive house standard - the first of its type in New ...

“In a multi-unit building, each unit is individually blower door tested and the average result is used for certification purposes. “The further issue with units is that no party wall system currently available is designed to create an airtight barrier, so re-engineering is required. This provides hot water for a third of the cost of traditional electric cylinders, while also freeing up space in each unit for the tenant. “Due to earning passive house certification status, the project was exempt from the Healthy Homes regulatory requirement for heat pumps. The 10-unit project was designed by architect Tim Ross of Architype in Dunedin, who says the council wanted “warm, dry, safe and comfortable homes that would form a small community on the site”. “Most of the time no heating will be required. “In the end, we settled on structural insulated panels (SIPs), heavily insulated roof framing, and fully insulated concrete floor slabs. “Our response was to replace the previous nine homes with ten new units. Each unit is warmed as needed by a single panel heater on a thermostat. A new project by the Dunedin City Council proves it’s possible to carry such a sustainable build through to social housing on a tight budget. Each of the two buildings contains five fully accessible one-bedroom pensioner units. In other words, they build to their own budget, and if that means their home is a little smaller than it might otherwise have been, so be it.