Do buildings need to be certified?
"Even if you finish the build, it's not too late to certify."
That's what Emilia Iacovino from Detail Green tells builders who've completed high-performance homes without formal Passive House certification. But should you wait that long? We sat down with Emilia, one of Australia's leading Passive House certifiers, to understand whether certification is just another layer of bureaucracy or if it delivers genuine value for builders and clients investing in high-performance homes.
Meet Emilia Iacovino
Emilia's path to Passive House certification wasn't conventional. Starting with architecture aspirations, moving through electrical engineering and spending two years working with automotive in Japan, she eventually found her calling certifying high-performance homes in Australia. Her diverse background brings a unique perspective to ensuring buildings deliver promised comfort and energy efficiency. She’s now also one of only five certifiers in Australia.
Her engineering foundation combined with international experience means she understands both the technical requirements and practical realities of achieving Passive House standards in Australian conditions.
Why Certification Matters
Certification isn't just bureaucratic red tape. It's verification that buildings perform as designed. Emilia explained that with energy costs climbing and efficiency expectations rising, certification provides assurance that homes will actually deliver promised performance.
The value becomes clear when you consider the alternative: discovering performance gaps after construction when fixes are expensive and disruptive. Certification catches issues on paper where tweaking designs is straightforward and affordable, ensuring what's promised in design translates to built reality.
Without certification, you're essentially trusting that everything was designed, specified and installed correctly with no independent verification. That's a significant risk for clients investing in high-performance homes.
Dodging Common Pitfalls
Emilia detailed common mistakes in the design and certification process. Manual shading calculations, incorrect climate file selection and inadequate documentation trip up many projects. New tools like DesignPH are making these challenges more manageable for both designers and certifiers, but expertise still matters.
Climate file selection particularly impacts project assessment. Using inappropriate climate data can make designs appear compliant when they won't perform as expected in actual conditions. Having properly documented data before construction begins is essential for avoiding costly corrections later.
From Blueprints to Brick and Mortar
Early design reviews provide the biggest value. Emilia emphasised getting projects lined up for certification before construction starts prevents headaches later. This requires collaboration between designers, certifiers and builders with open communication to solve issues before they become expensive mistakes.
The certification process isn't something to tack on at the end - it's most effective when integrated from project inception. This allows design optimisation while changes are still easy and affordable to implement.
The Real Wins of Passive House
Why not just add solar panels and batteries instead of pursuing Passive House? While renewable energy matters, the real value lies in how the house is constructed. Comfort - consistent temperatures, good air quality, humidity control, elimination of drafts - is what makes Passive House genuinely exceptional.
Solar panels generate energy, but they don't address fundamental building performance. A poorly performing house with solar panels still provides inconsistent comfort and requires significant heating and cooling energy. Passive House addresses the building fabric first, then adds renewables for maximum effectiveness.
The Adoption Hurdle Down Under
Passive House hasn't become standard in Australia due to the difference between voluntary and enforced standards, yet countries with government-mandated higher standards see wider adoption. Australia's building culture favors established methods, meaning progress requires effort from both consumers and builders willing to push beyond minimum requirements.
We talked about how cultural resistance to change combined with lack of regulatory drivers creates slower adoption than countries where high-performance building is mandated rather than optional.
Why Certification Delivers Value
For builders considering Passive House, the question isn't whether certification adds work (it does). The question is whether that verification provides value to clients and protects your reputation. When homes don't perform as promised, lack of certification makes it harder to identify where things went wrong.
The growing wave of certified Passive House projects in Australia shows that despite challenges, builders and clients increasingly recognise the value of verified performance. Certification isn't just about a plaque on the wall - it's about accountability, quality assurance and delivering homes that genuinely perform as promised for decades to come.
LINKS:
Connect with Emilia:
Website: https://www.detailgreen.com.au/
Connect with us on Instagram: @themindfulbuilderpod
Connect with Hamish:
Instagram: @sanctumhomes
Website: www.yoursanctum.com.au/
Connect with Matt:
Instagram: @carlandconstructions
Website: www.carlandconstructions.com/
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[00:01:06] Matthew: What's the ramen like?
[00:01:10] Emilia: The ramen, it's delicious. All the food is delicious. They are very food centric country. And it's really interesting when you read reviews of restaurants though, they don't review the food, they review the service. So it's service and food. And if they're gonna complain about something, they usually complain about the service.
[00:01:30] I,
[00:01:30] Hamish: Is that, is that because the food is always so good?
[00:01:34] Emilia: it is 90% of the time really good. We've, we've had one experience where the food was ordinary, but it wasn't bad. It was just not good. So I think the standard is so high for food. yeah, it's incredible. And it's much easier to eat healthily here too when you're on the go, because any convenience store, all the supermarkets, they've all got pre-prepared [00:02:00] meals.
[00:02:00] Which are always your 3, 3, 3. They're always a really good mix of carb, protein, and vegetables, so you can really, you don't have to cook if you don't want to,
[00:02:12] so
[00:02:12] Matthew: so
[00:02:12] you're not picking up a kebab
[00:02:14] Emilia: good. Which I love. 'cause big pardon?
[00:02:16] Hamish: going to, I, I'm, I'm going to, um, I'm actually gonna Japan next, and I'm so excited to.
[00:02:24] Emilia: Yeah, it's a fantastic place to visit too. which is quite, quite different to living here, but yeah. Um,
[00:02:32] Hamish: Yeah. So, so we probably should, uh, we should probably should introduce our guest today. we have Amelia and Amelia, I'm gonna get you to pronounce your last name. I remember last time I tried to
[00:02:42] Matthew: Can I have a go?
[00:02:43] Hamish: but
[00:02:44] Matthew: Is it Yao?
[00:02:46] Emilia: perfect.
[00:02:48] Matthew: Is that right? Am I actually Perfect.
[00:02:49] Emilia: Yeah. that's right. So it, it actually in English,
[00:02:52] Matthew: going guys. I'm done.
[00:02:55] Emilia: My, my name is Emily Jacobson, so, uh, that's what translate. So the yakov is Jacob and Eno is little one or son of, so it's, it's an uncommon southern Italian name. But 'cause the southern part of Italy had a lot of migration across from, uh, middle East.
[00:03:15] And so
[00:03:16] Matthew: Down through Pulia or Calabria or whereabouts,
[00:03:18] Emilia: from actually bus la Kata. Yeah, it's down where the heel and the toe meet. So
[00:03:24] Matthew: So that, that's like now let down near lecture kind of on the other side of, yeah.
[00:03:29] Hamish: there is, there is a reason why we have Amelia on today. Um,
[00:03:33] Matthew: about food.
[00:03:33] Hamish: and myself, Matt and myself, have both been, you know, um, had a business relationship with Amelia for a long time because Amelia is one of Australia's one of four. Certifiers
[00:03:46] one of Five
[00:03:46] Certifiers. Yeah. Certifiers. Amelia, do you wanna tell who, what is and why we're, it's not about Japanese.
[00:03:58] Emilia: we could, we could [00:04:00] do a whole separate podcast on that. Um, yeah, so, I currently work for Detail Green with Luke Plowman, who's also another of the passive house service of fires. One of Australia's first, and Luke's the one, the person why I ended up working in passive house. And, um, becoming a certifier.
[00:04:21] So I started when I, when I was in high school, actually, I wanted to be an architect and my mom said, oh, there's no jobs for architect. Be an engineer. And I'm like, what's an engineer? She's like, oh, they build bridges and buildings. And I was like, eh, could be good. I was a huge Lego fan as a kid, so it sounded pretty good.
[00:04:43] So I did engineering and I ended up actually doing electrical engineering and then ended up working in automotive for 10 years on electrical and electronic systems. And then I was actually, we were, we in, and in that time we lived in Japan for two years. So I, I was transferred with Ford, uh, worked on a project with Mazda Car for China.
[00:05:09] Um, for the China market, which was an excellent experience. And when I came back from that time in Japan, we decided to renovate our place 'cause we'd been living in an apartment in Japan and, you know, it gets really, really hot and humid here and really cold. And I was warmer in Japan than I had been living in Australia and came back to Australia to, uh, you know, 1970s, single brick, brick veneer, single glazed house.
[00:05:39] And I went, oh, this is so cold. This is terrible. I need to do something about it. So we decided to retrofit our house. And while I was doing that, I was kind of really disappointed in the lack of information around about how to make a house comfortable and warm. Just didn't really seem [00:06:00] part of why you retrofitted, uh, houses in those days.
[00:06:05] And a friend of mine was doing a master's of engineering in renewable energy and energy efficiency, and she said to me, oh, you'll love this, Amelia. It's all about what you wanna know about how to reduce your energy and et cetera. And so I enrolled in that and really liked it. Did that. And um, so then I tr I started working in energy efficiency, uh, doing consulting, retrofitting, industrial commercial buildings and really enjoyed that.
[00:06:36] That was great. And I really did through that course, develop a belief that energy efficiency should be done before renewable energy. That, that efficiency first philosophy. And, then I took a break. Michael had long service leave, so I took a break and we spent some time traveling around with, uh, two little kids and.
[00:07:01] then after that I was emailing Luke about portable houses because a friend was asking about them when prefab, and he and I said, oh, I'm gonna look for a new job when my youngest starts primary school, which was the next year. And he said, ah, I just signed a contract to do some energy audits. But I need some help.
[00:07:20] Can you come and do them with me? So I started working with Luke, doing energy audits. Um, and then he said to me, oh, do you wanna learn how to do Nat her assessments? I'm like, yeah, sure. And then he said, I think you might be really interested in this passive house. Here's this book about it. So he gave me a book.
[00:07:39] He said, it's all about energy efficiency. You'll love it. And I read the book and I went, ah, stuff, the energy efficiency. I want a house that's 20 to 25 degrees all year round. I wanna get rid of the UGG boots, I wanna get rid of the winter dos. And you know, the pajamas I have. Summer pajamas, autumn pajamas, spring pajamas, winter pajamas.
[00:07:59] And it's [00:08:00] just crazy the amount of stuff to keep yourself warm inside a house to keep yourself at the right temperature. So I was like, yeah, this is good. And so then I did the passive house designers course. So I actually started working on phpp. First learning how to use them. And then I did the designers course.
[00:08:19] So, which is not the way most people do it. And then, but as soon as I did the designers course, I was like, no, I wanna be a certifier. Because to me, a certifier is, is a similar role to an energy auditor. You're, you know, you are looking at things, you reviewing the data, and you are looking for opportunities, and you're looking for things that don't look right.
[00:08:39] Um, and you are helping people. So when you're doing energy audits, you're helping, particularly, we work with a lot of small to medium, uh, businesses, keeping them in business by reducing their operating costs. So I really like that aspect of that. I also am coming from automotive where you had a product that was, you know, 50,000 or a hundred thousand dollars.
[00:09:04] And the amount of testing we did on those products, every single one that was manufactured was tested. And I thought. That's what you need in houses. If you are building something that's a million dollars or 500,000, a million dollars, 2 million, you've gotta be testing that product. What are you doing to verify that product is actually delivering the specification?
[00:09:24] That's being designed to, and there are so many people involved in designing and building a house. It's a huge team. There's so much knowledge in this to get to the end point and have, you know, not use that knowledge or not follow that knowledge to me is a missed opportunity. So that's what I also really like about passive house is that it is really valuing all those inputs.
[00:09:50] It's, you know, I check the structural drawings, I check the architectural drawings, I check the materials that are gonna be used. And yes, [00:10:00] there is some limited, you know, it does reduce flexibility in that. If you've said you're gonna use this product. You need to use that product, but you can say, oh, I can't find that product.
[00:10:10] As we know, Hamish, the project we worked on, we had one particular supplier of windows that we intended on using and there were supply issues, so we changed to a different window supply. And you know, that just meant that there was a communication involved. And that's the
[00:10:25] biggest thing is that there's a lot more communication.
[00:10:28] Anything that changes needs to be checked to make sure what impact that is doing. And the client knows then that show those changes are happening, but that they're still going to get that the product that they're paying for.
[00:10:43] Matthew: So I want to go back to when you get a project to come across your desk
[00:10:47] Emilia: Yep.
[00:10:47] Matthew: and you are like, you are looking at certifying it. We have someone like Cameron who has done all the original documentation on this, and you can't get involved in that side of the passive house because you are, independent.
[00:11:00] Essentially
[00:11:01] Emilia: Correct.
[00:11:02] Matthew: what do you start to look at first? Like where do you start?
[00:11:06] Emilia: So we look at the data that has been entered into the passive house planning tool to check that it matches the supporting documentation. So Cameron, or whichever passive house designer is leading the project. So they're the lead, we are the support. They will take the information that they're given from architects, uh, mechanical services engineers, um, structural engineers, and they'll put that information into the planning tool and into the 3D modeling tool.
[00:11:44] We check that that information matches because we are all humans and it's very easy to make an error when you're putting in a lot of data. So we, we check that the right climate file has been selected. We checked that [00:12:00] the geometry matches the geometry of the 3D model matches what's on the drawings. We check that the specification of insulating layers, matches the architectural drawings and window specifications match what comes from the supplier and, AC and hvac, that they match any information from the supplier.
[00:12:23] So it depends what we review depends at when we are reviewing the project. So for some projects we would do an initial review, that's just the geometry and the shading and the climate. That's it. and then we'll do a subsequent review when you've defined things like the suppliers for Windows, HVAC layout, et cetera.
[00:12:49] Matthew: And this should all be done before we start on site just to make, no, not Preferably. It needs to be done. If you're going for certification or even thinking about it before you get on site,
[00:13:01] Hamish: I mean, what of approval, you, you just. I mean, and, and I'm, and I'm learning this from all, from my experience, right? You, you, you want to know that it's on track to get certified before you start. Like you, you have the tools to do it, so why not do it where it's costing you the least amount of money at the very beginning of the project.
[00:13:20] Um, can I just, just, just, just to confirm, there's, there's two people, you know, in that kind of certifi and designer space. I just want to clarify for everybody that these are two different people. So you've got the designer who's working with you and the design team, and then you've got a certifier who's almost the, what do we
[00:13:42] call
[00:13:43] them? the, person that is the, the, they're the examiner. They're the examiner,
[00:13:47] Emilia: Yeah, basically we, we are like a building surveyor, so we just work on the design side of it and limited to the passive house aspects of it. So we don't [00:14:00] review any NCC compliance aspects that is all up to the building surveyor. So we are not, it's a parallel review process. It's, it's not taking over that role.
[00:14:11] Matthew: so I've got two questions here. So you said that the, the person who's doing the PHPP, the passive house planning package, they make mistakes at times and you've gotta go through and pick them up. Now, cam has given me a few really tricky questions for you later, and
[00:14:30] Emilia: He's not keeping them for the, the meet the
[00:14:32] Matthew: I wanna know what cam mistakes CAM has made in the past that we can make other people aware of.
[00:14:39] To, um, maybe not make these mistakes in the future. And also are there any other big mistakes you've seen along the way? And part two to that question is like, what happens if you make the mistake as well and don't pick up on it? What happens there?
[00:14:54] Emilia: Yes. All very good questions. So, commonly made mistakes. The most common mistake that was made in the past was errors in calculating manual shading. It was really complicated. So when I started there was, as a designer and um, and as a certifier, initially there was no 3D shading process for passive house.
[00:15:23] So you had to do these complicated equations inside an already complicated Excel sheet
[00:15:30] Matthew: and.
[00:15:30] manual shading is when we are relying on the client to pull down an external bind.
[00:15:35] Emilia: Oh, no, sorry, sorry, sorry. Um, that's additional shading. Sorry, I should clarify. So in the, like, in Nat has assessments, you draw up the model and you put in surrounding buildings, you draw in the surrounding buildings to see where you're gonna get the sun onto the building and, and into the windows and et cetera.
[00:15:54] How much solar gain you're gonna get, uh, both in summer and winter. So for the passive [00:16:00] house planning tool, uh, initially you had to, you didn't draw anything up. So initially when the tool was developed, it was just an Excel sheet and you used the architectural drawings to put all the information in. So the shading information you put in, like the adjacent buildings, you would actually put that in as an equation.
[00:16:26] That was seriously complicated. Really complicated to learn how to do that. And that was the bit that always took us the longest to review and where the most commonly made mistakes were.
[00:16:39] Matthew: Is that like a tree? Is a tree, an example of that?
[00:16:41] Emilia: yeah, like a tree. A tree, yeah.
[00:16:43] A existing building. Existing building in
[00:16:45] Hamish: your other buildings building. Yep, exactly. Exactly.
[00:16:49] And is that, is that just, just to confirm now, that's done in design pH in like a sketch up file?
[00:16:54] Emilia: that is now. So that is now designed pH and that has made a huge difference because the shading is more accurate and it's faster for the designer and it's faster for the certified to review. So it's a huge improvement. Like design pH has really shifted the whole passive house planning process to a new level.
[00:17:16] It's, it's. Been great. And there's actually some additional changes that have just come out recently, which actually relate to shading as well. because one of the other major issues was picking the right climate file. So there are, the passive house institute in Germany has approved CLI climate files that you use.
[00:17:38] So they're ensuring that they've got sufficient data behind them to be accurate. And there are some locations, particularly along coastal Victoria, such as the Mornington Peninsula, where there are multiple files that you can pick. And it's not necessarily just what the closest file [00:18:00] is, the closest location.
[00:18:01] So it, it can be about the topography of the location, the altitude of the location. That's really important. So picking the right climate file. Is is one of the other ones that, that's probably still the most important one.
[00:18:16] Matthew: And
[00:18:16] these are past client fi client files. They're not, they're not based on the future of what might happen. They're based off, because I know Nat, hers is set from ages and ages ago, isn't it? So when we talk climate, false and nat, hers versus climate false or passive house. What's more accurate?
[00:18:32] Hamish: Well, I, I was just gonna, just, just, uh, and it's relating to this question too, Matt, because climate files are one thing. In, in PHPP you are probably referring to climate zones
[00:18:43] Emilia: So the climate data in general across both passive house and Nat Hers is there, is got the same issue that it is all using historical data and as we know, recent climate is not quite like it used to be. So You know, the NATHA data, I'm not exactly sure when they limit it, how far back they go.
[00:19:09] Matthew: it's probably from late, the 18 hundreds, isn't it?
[00:19:12] Emilia: probably passive house has a limit on how far back, because they actually have a tool for certifiers to use when there is this conflict about which file, which, which data file should we be using. There is actually a tool we have to do some further assessments on different data files and pull in bomb data to actually make a comparison for specific sites
[00:19:33] Hamish: Bureau, bureau of Meteorology for those who aren't understanding
[00:19:36] Matthew: just released an awesome update to their app too.
[00:19:40] I've got a question though to follow with this. 'cause I'm, I've just spent my second night in my new passive house and we talk about that, the shading
[00:19:50] Hamish: A show off. Matt.
[00:19:51] Matthew: I, know just drop, drop the Neck Ground designs
[00:19:53] Hamish: I, I,
[00:19:54] woke. I
[00:19:54] Matthew: soon by the time that this is aired on tv.
[00:19:57] Hamish: morning, Amelia.
[00:19:58] Matthew: Um, yeah, I
[00:19:59] Emilia: Don't [00:20:00] worry. I got that. Yes. I,
[00:20:01] Matthew: Um, I didn't have that. It was nice. I woke up and it was 20 degrees. The, uh, first time in a long time, that's happened without a heater, so actually ever, but I'm digressing. So my house now is obviously gone through the modeling and the shading and the water's put around from around me. If my neighbor decides to build something that's double story that affects my north face glazing is my house no longer a passive house.
[00:20:26] Emilia: Oh, very good question. The certification is at that point in time, so whatever happens beyond that point in time is out of the scope. Like with any type of assessment, there is boundary conditions and so. For a passive house, it's at this point in time, the same as Nat hers. It's at this point in time. So the same in Nat, hers.
[00:20:50] You, you have to model what is there. Um, you, if there are empty blocks in both passive house and Nat hers, you have to put something on the empty blocks. So if there's a new housing estate, there's an assumption that there's gonna be houses next to you. The assumption is always, it's a, you know, for Australian that it's always a double story house that's built next to you.
[00:21:10] So you, you and you often take the house that you are building and plop that onto the surrounding properties. So you do have to take into account future building for new estates. But yeah, it is depe dependent on what's there. The same with trees. So Natters, you don't model trees at all in passive house.
[00:21:31] You do have to model existing trees. You can't model trees, new trees that are being planted. So any new landscaping that's done as part of a new build. Is not in the scope
[00:21:41] because you don't know what's gonna be planned. Pardon?
[00:21:45] Matthew: We had a tree that got us across the line on the project. It was killing us. And
[00:21:49] Emilia: Yeah.
[00:21:50] Matthew: People who originally ran the numbers, had made a few mistakes, um, and assumed some things that were totally irrelevant. And it was looking like we might not get to [00:22:00] certification level on 15.5.
[00:22:02] And then one day the clients woke up out the back and the back tree that was killing everything was getting chopped down by cancel, and then just dropped their heating demand by a huge amount. And we passed.
[00:22:12] Emilia: That is.
[00:22:14] Hamish: so, so it was, so, it was, it, was it, was it stopping? Uh, solar. Solar
[00:22:20] Matthew: Yep. Yep.
[00:22:21] It was completely shading everything to a point where we had, we even got Cam involved to find any little issues with it. Um. The file that was originally produced at the start, and this is why we go back to what we said, get the project approved before you get to site. They ran the PHPP on like the concept plan, never touched anything, changed.
[00:22:41] The windows didn't change, change, installation, didn't do anything, didn't tell anyone. The other thing is they changed the color of the house from black to white, which made a huge change as well on the performance. Um, and the same as the roof. And then that just completely killed the project. And we ended up getting it
[00:22:58] certified.
[00:22:59] Hamish: disclosure, we're not advocating for people to go on trees down if it means that you're failing your PPP.
[00:23:07] Matthew: I was at the time. Um, but not,
[00:23:10] Hamish: Well.
[00:23:11] Matthew: but we didn't know this was gonna happen. It was like, oh yeah. cool. Um, I was, got the plaque on the
[00:23:17] Emilia: Look, so I think, and, and that actually, so exactly that situation is why you do want things reviewed early because. The certifier would've picked up that what was in the PHPP wasn't what was in the drawing set and said, these don't match. You need to adjust all these. So it is not our job as a certifier to change everything.
[00:23:38] We do assist if designers are finding, not quite understanding what they need to put into a particular section or what's relevant or what's not relevant, we can assist them with them. But it's up to the designer to fix their PHVP. So in that case, we, we have a checklist, and on that checklist it would've been exterior color doesn't match, you know, check, check [00:24:00] this, and it would've been listed as a review item.
[00:24:02] Matthew: A lot of those
[00:24:02] Emilia: So that, that it actually totally brings you back to that because Yeah, and because in that case, you would've gone, okay, this tree's not getting enough. We we're blocking everything. We've tried everything else. What else can we do? And yes, you're absolutely right, Hamish. It's a lot cheaper to spend hours in the design stage fiddling around with numbers on paper than it is at the construction stage trying to like go, oh, can we put some extra insulation in?
[00:24:30] Where have we got space?
[00:24:31] Matthew: Ask Dylan about that. Didn't he have a few issues towards the end of his.
[00:24:35] Emilia: yes. Yeah. And, and that, that is a really good example of a project where both the passive house designer and the builder, it was their first project. they, you know, they did everything, all the certification work was done post-construction. They're both now on subsequent projects. And, you know, we are getting a, and I'm reviewing some of those projects before we go into construction or earlier.
[00:24:59] So, so, yeah.
[00:25:00] So
[00:25:00] Hamish: we all, we all, we all need to start somewhere, right? Like, I, I
[00:25:03] am, you know, definitely the sum of the times that I've made mistakes, you know, and, you know, you, you, you. You, you brought up the issue that we had on one of our projects, which, uh,
[00:25:13] you know, through a whole, whole range of reasons, you know, bang, smack in the middle of COVID man, like, you know,
[00:25:21] and Yes.
[00:25:22] Emilia: Oh, it was so
[00:25:23] so any excuses for my decisions, but, you know, you, you kind of just focusing on putting one foot in front of the other
[00:25:29] Hamish: during
[00:25:29] that Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:30] Matthew: Did it get certified in the
[00:25:31] end?
[00:25:33] Emilia: it did. energy,
[00:25:34] My hair went.
[00:25:36] Hamish: Yeah,
[00:25:37] Emilia: My hair went gray. Getting that over the limit.
[00:25:40] Hamish: yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so set up. But, but you know what I, I, I do wanna, I do wanna sort of draw attention to the importance of having a really great relationship with your, um, passive house designer. We've got a, passive house project under construction at the moment, which we had modeled in [00:26:00] pre-construction and it was passing No problem.
[00:26:03] It's under construction at the moment. We actually noticed. During the window install that the big sliding doors were actually projecting out. We couldn't bring them into the building any further. And that the, the doors were one, one of the double stackers was actually outside, just outside the thermal envelope.
[00:26:23] And I'd say not all of the glazing, but some of the glazing. And thankfully my team picked it up and said, hang on a minute, something's wrong here. So we actually went back to Elsie and said, Hey, we really think we need to do a thermal bridge analysis on this. And as it turned out, because of that thermal bridge, we were actually outside of the heating demand by just a little bit. Now, luckily, we managed to get it across the line from insulating around the doors, just with some 25 mil XBS. And we also. Uh, insulated the service cavity inside and it got us back over the line.
[00:27:03] you don't want to be making those decisions on the fly because it's just unnecessary stress.
[00:27:09] Now this is a really, that we're not talking a compact form home, like one that really, you know, lends itself to passive house. It was a double story with angles and lots of different surface area. Like it's a small compact building, um, challenging I guess surface areas, which aren't great for passive house projects.
[00:27:30] You want a nice compact block on block kind of form. This one isn't that, but we've got a great on team, on site and we've got a great relationship with designer. So, you know, even if the. I guess I'm bringing this up to show that even if you do model it in pre-construction, you still need to be making sure that you're actually nailing it along the way.
[00:27:50] And if you do see any issues, bring it up straight away because you don't want to get all the way to the end and then find out that you're failing. We, we were lucky we'd hit that point [00:28:00] where we'd actually, we, we could go in, insulate it and we're, we're well within criteria now.
[00:28:05] Emilia: and that's another point, like, so if you are reviewing it before construction and you are keeping your. The passive house planning package up to date, the PHVP up to date. Then when you are during construction and there are things like this, it's easy for the designer to say what is the impact of this?
[00:28:21] But if the designer's only done an initial assessment and it hasn't been updated and it doesn't match the construction drawings and it hasn't been reviewed, then whatever happens during construction, the designer would have to bring the entire PHPP up to the construction level, whatever specifications to be able to assess that one little change.
[00:28:43] So having that PHPP at construction level reviewed, okay, everything is good. Then it makes it really easy for when these situations arise and these situations will arise, things will happen. And so being able to talk to your passive house designer about that, and the same with the passive house designer to the certifier.
[00:29:02] So I get emails saying, oh, we've, this has come up. I've got one from Cameron. That's something that's come up with NCC compliance, which means they need to change something on the passive house assumptions, you know? And we are working through that now and that's easy to do because we are right at just pre-construction, but everything is up to date.
[00:29:22] So we can make this one little change and Cameron can say, this is the impact. And I can see there's this error coming up, this comfort issue area. Can we get a um, exemption from this because of this, this, this. So yeah. So that's the other thing that designers can do is they can come to certifiers at any point during the time the certifiers already on their project and the certifier knows what's going on.
[00:29:46] They pull up and they say, this is this error, there's this issue. Is this allowable? And so we do that right from the start. So with the whole climate locations, we can go as a certifier, we can say, you need to use this [00:30:00] file, or if we don't know whether that's the right file, we can go back to the PHI and.
[00:30:05] This, I've done this review. These are the two climate files. I think as a certifier, they should be using this climate file. can you agree with that? So I can tell a
[00:30:16] Hamish: you, you mentioned PHI before and I just wanna clarify, um, and this probably circles back to something that Matt brought up before. So, PI is passive, uh, passive house institute. In Germany. Germany. Um, and Matt actually asked a question before about what happens when you make a mistake as the certifier
[00:30:34] Matthew: Yeah. She skipped over that one, didn't she?
[00:30:36] Hamish: she.
[00:30:37] Yeah, and look, every, we're all human. We all
[00:30:39] make mistakes.
[00:30:40] But you know, the beauty about the beauty about a certified building is that we're testing in pre construction, Amelia or whoever the certifier is, making sure that it complies in
[00:30:50] Emilia: yeah,
[00:30:51] Hamish: as, as per the construction documents. As builders, we are building it as per plans and making any updates and changes along the way, getting it tested by the designer, making sure it's still complies At the end of construction, we're giving you all the documentation, including blower doors, including the HRV certification, including all the acs, et cetera, et cetera, and a hundred thousand pictures. You are then saying, yes, it complies, but the last check, and this is, this is the brilliant part of it, you are then sending it off to PHI and then they're verifying it. So if we look at all the checks that go along the way, and then if you compare that to dare I say a seven star rating, which is just their seven star, no one's checking that.
[00:31:37] And then you sign something in of it saying you before you build as well. Like just how robust that process is means that what was actually being designed, if it gets certified, you as a client knows, well, uh, assure, assure can be that your building is going to perform as documented because of all of those fail [00:32:00] safe processes along the way.
[00:32:02] Emilia: Correct. That's right. And when a certifier first gets their qualification, they become a certifier in training. And the PHI review every single one of their submissions. So I think about the first
[00:32:18] Matthew: My project was one of
[00:32:19] Emilia: of mine. Yes, yes, that's right. So they send me back a list of questions. If there's things that they, there isn't sufficient information to be clear or there is an input error, they will send it back and it needs to be resolved before they will issue the certificate.
[00:32:38] There's also, if there's something, we have a project which doesn't have an exhaust and a supply in a particular area, they're going to use. Have cross ventilation through a door. So instead it's gonna have to have an exemption listed on the certificate. So there are also things that they will issue the certificate, but with a caveat that there is this and you need to pay, in this particular case, need to pay attention to the risk of, of
[00:33:11] Hamish: Just so you guys know, Juniper is going to join us in this podcast. Now, my um, my youngest, my youngest daughter, Amelia, I don't know if you know, but
[00:33:20] we,
[00:33:20] Matthew: She's talk, she's talking early. She is fourth
[00:33:23] Hamish: we've had a little, had a, had a little girl. She's about to come in and I'm about to get, she's about to get strapped to me and I'm gonna
[00:33:29] Emilia: Wow.
[00:33:29] Hamish: a walk 'cause we're having this podcast.
[00:33:31] Matthew: Um, Amil. Amelia,
[00:33:32] Emilia: a
[00:33:32] great
[00:33:32] idea. Amazing. Amazing what you can do. Congratulations, Hamish, you and Matthew both.
[00:33:40] Matthew: Living the dream.
[00:33:41] Emilia: Uh, is this your, um, one for the country? Hamish, your third?
[00:33:46] Hamish: Wait, there's one for the country here?
[00:33:48] Yeah.
[00:33:49] it's my third. Um, a little girl this time. Uh, and uh, she's, um, I'll show you. Here she is, everybody. [00:34:00] Juniper
[00:34:01] Emilia: Oh
[00:34:02] Matthew: Oh, she's getting, she's growing.
[00:34:04] Emilia: Very cute.
[00:34:05] Hamish: Yeah, she's growing. She loves her.
[00:34:09] Matthew: Why is PHPP on a spreadsheet? Surely someone's come out with a proper program that can like identify half these issues. Like the passive house community is quite smart and I feel like
[00:34:18] what X Excel is a great tool. to, that brings us to Easy pH, and also I didn't get to tell you about design pH, the recent changes, which are actually SketchUp changes. So SketchUp has this new tool, a geolocation tool,
[00:34:32] so Cam, just before we start, cam has said Easy PH is superficial, rubbish.
[00:34:39] Emilia: So Cameron is an engineer like me, and he loves his detail like I do, and he likes things to be as precise as possible, which I do too, but I'm a realist and that equals more money. So by using Easy Z pH, it reduces the workload for designers, it reduces the workload for certifiers, and you're still getting a certified product.
[00:35:12] And it is only allowed to be used for single family homes and duplexes and only for, classic and plus. So if you're still going for premium, you have to use the full PHPP and if you are doing any commercial buildings, so you gotta do all
[00:35:28] Hamish: What is easy? What is easy,
[00:35:30] Matthew: wait. Isn't premium just more solar though? You just got a bigger solar system?
[00:35:33] Emilia: For plus
[00:35:35] Matthew: Yes. A for premium? No, no, no, no. So for, no, no, no. So for premium, the certifiers have to review a whole lot more data. We have to have like, so every single little bit of electrical appliances needs a data sheet and we have to have it, right? It's, it is a, no, we, it's actually triple checked. So it's, it's another level of checking.
[00:35:58] Emilia: So when you submit a [00:36:00] premium to the PHI, they will review the entire project, no matter how long you've been a certifier,
[00:36:06] that, that is like
[00:36:08] Matthew: If I had two premiums, look at this.
[00:36:11] Emilia: So
[00:36:13] Hamish: How's the flex on Maddie? I reckon I've got two premiums.
[00:36:15] Matthew: No, I, I don't. Maybe I don't.
[00:36:19] Emilia: I've,
[00:36:19] Hamish: for a walk on my treadmill to get Juniper asleep, so if I'm walking, that's why.
[00:36:24] Emilia: I've, I've been a designer and a certifier on premium, on a premium project. And yeah, this, it's a lot more work on both ends, both from both the designer and the certifier side.
[00:36:37] So, um, yeah, exactly. Plus, plus is actually relatively easy in Australia because we have such great, uh, energy production from, from pv.
[00:36:48] So, going back to design pH with this new geolocation tool, so all designers out there, open your sketch up, go in and find your geolocation tool. You put your GPS data or the site address in, it downloads your entire, all, all the, all the geolocation data. So you can put your, including the orientation of the site and the altitude so you can do everything you need to do for passive house in terms of your location.
[00:37:22] Your altitude, your direction of site comes in automatically. There's no having to get confused between a site survey, which uses true North versus grid North versus other. There's like three different types of north. So all passive house designers, I'm now using that to check all projects that are coming in, and I'm saying to all passive house designers use this tool.
[00:37:47] It also has a huge advantage for sites that are in, in developed areas that there is a 3D import of existing buildings. So designers [00:38:00] no longer have to draw up all the adjoining as neighboring houses. They all come in things like, um, water tanks come in, sheds come in. Just anything that is a 3D item on those sites are automatically pulled in.
[00:38:16] Hamish: So,
[00:38:16] is that, is that being pulled in from satellite imagery? Is that, what is that? Is that how it's all working? Yeah.
[00:38:21] Emilia: Yeah. It's amazing. It is amazing tool. So it's like it will cut another huge amount of time off designers load and certifiers because I can see that all the surrounding buildings are already there. I don't have to go and then check on Google Maps and check this and check that it's there. And the orientation's correct.
[00:38:44] And with the GPS data, it automatically also, because you've got the design pH tool built in there, selects the right climate file. The climate file that PHPP say you should use if you have
[00:38:57] an
[00:38:57] Hamish: Matt, what? Matt, why doesn't, why doesn't, why doesn't Ken like this?
[00:39:02] This
[00:39:02] Emilia: no, no. So we can use this on normal PHPP. So this works for normal PHPP as well. This doesn't, this you can use across normal PHP. This, this tool just came out like last month. This is a brand new tool. So Cameron probably hasn't started using it yet. I don't know if I've
[00:39:19] Matthew: Were you all excited when this tool came out? Were you just like, woo, new tool?
[00:39:23] Emilia: Like, well, it was, I have to give, where credit is due is actually my colleague Paul Gray.
[00:39:29] He's the one, he, he does, a lot of design work and he's the one who said, Luke Amelia, there's this new tool. It's so cool. So he actually showed it to us.
[00:39:38] Hamish: Se it, se it seems like, it seems so, it seems so obvious. I'm just gonna circle back to something really quickly that you said earlier on. Like you, you said that you weren't interested in just, you know, putting solar panels on, you know, and all that kind of stuff. 'cause you were, you were, you were all about, um, actual comfort and the fabric of the home.
[00:39:57] Why not just put a bunch of solar on and put [00:40:00] batteries on and just run your ACS all the time?
[00:40:02] Emilia: because that doesn't really make you comfortable. Like, it makes you cold or it makes you hot, but it's not comfortable. Like it doesn't get rid of drafts,
[00:40:12] it doesn't get rid of condensation. It doesn't improve air quality. Yeah, exactly. So while there's, and there is those two things that, that, the comfort is not just the temperature, the comfort is things like humidity.
[00:40:27] The comfort is things like air quality, not falling asleep at two o'clock in the afternoon because
[00:40:33] there's no fresh air in the, in the room you're in. it's not sitting by a window and having to put an extra blanket on because it's single glazed glass. Like, it doesn't matter if your heating's pumping out, if the window is cold and you're sitting next to the window, you will be cold.
[00:40:49] That's
[00:40:49] Hamish: is exactly, this is exactly, what I wanted you to say. This is exactly
[00:40:53] what I wanted you to
[00:40:53] say.
[00:40:54] And, and, and look, I don't wanna discredit the fact that, so solar and batteries, in my opinion, are important
[00:40:59] Matthew: they're a
[00:41:00] Hamish: because,
[00:41:00] Emilia: so important.
[00:41:02] Hamish: you know, it's technology and, and honestly, your, your home, even if it's a passive house, is still going to use electricity.
[00:41:09] It's
[00:41:10] still
[00:41:10] gonna
[00:41:10] use energy just a hell of a lot
[00:41:11] more.
[00:41:12] Emilia: absolutely.
[00:41:13] Hamish: And people are also putting pools on. But people are also putting, um, you know, they're having EV chargers, so they do, you know, solar and batteries. Are an important part of a passive house, but I just love the fact that you just talked on the comfort.
[00:41:27] Matthew: So, so, so
[00:41:28] Amelia, passive house
[00:41:29] premium is that net positive energy.
[00:41:33] Emilia: Correct,
[00:41:34] Matthew: and then plus is zero energy building.
[00:41:37] Emilia: correct.
[00:41:38] Good. Are you, you're checking on my definitions.
[00:41:43] Matthew: I've got, I've got Gemini
[00:41:44] Emilia: have to reread the
[00:41:45] Matthew: net zero. building for building services Energy. Energy generated roughly equals total energy consumed. So why isn't that then done, say a year and a half post occupancy to see if they're producing more or [00:42:00] less.
[00:42:01] Rather than based off data That is hypothetical. 'cause passive house isn't very hypothetical. It's all about the data. Why aren't we looking at like premium
[00:42:10] or
[00:42:10] Emilia: you, do put in, you do put in, there is a tab for PV and you have to put all the data in for the PV system. So there is an assessment. the PV technology is so, it's really old now. I mean, it's stable. You know exactly what you're getting outta those panels, the data sheets, are accurate.
[00:42:32] so you, you don't really need to say, ah, yeah, let's check that the PV system is actually generating as
[00:42:40] Matthew: energy.
[00:42:40] use isn't accurate. If we, if we are looking here at like what the client uses, if they start running all these extra things and then charging three or four cars, well now they're not generating more power than they need. So then
[00:42:53] Emilia: Yes, because once again, we have to talk about boundaries. The boundary of of, of passive house is the thermal envelope. So it is the energy that is consumed within the thermal envelope. Yeah, you could, you could try and extend it to everything, but where do you draw the line?
[00:43:13] Matthew: so pools aren't
[00:43:14] Emilia: So, so that's it. Pools are not included.
[00:43:18] If you have a hot water tap outside in your, if you've got an outdoor barbecue area with a hot water tap that is supplied by the same hot water system that the rest of your house is, that is included because it is the system that is su supplying the house. But if you had a separate hot water system for an outdoor kitchen, like an under sink one, that wouldn't be included in the electrical loads
[00:43:41] Matthew: But wouldn't that be with the solar? The solar supplying the house, but it's also supplying the,
[00:43:45] car.
[00:43:46] Emilia: it does, but. Again, there is that definition, and that's where it's
[00:43:52] limited.
[00:43:52] Hamish: Matt. Come
[00:43:53] on,
[00:43:53] Matthew: No, I'm just poking here,
[00:43:55] Hamish: on.
[00:43:56] Emilia: you know what,
[00:43:56] Matthew: I'm, I,
[00:43:57] Emilia: you know, but Matthew, but you, [00:44:00] what you can do as a designer or as a client is ask the designer, say, I intend on charging two cars. I intend on having a pool. Can you add those loads in and tell me what it does? So the tool is so powerful that you can use it to do anything you want. And the same with the client files.
[00:44:20] So the passive house planning package has a option to increase the temperature. So you can put in, ah, actually. This data, this data set is too old. I want all the climate data to be two degrees warmer. What does that do to my design? How do I need to adjust it to deal for two degrees? And there is actually a stress test chart in the PHPP under the summer tab that actually shows you what happens if you don't use your temporary shading, if you don't open your windows overnight, and what happens if the temperature increases.
[00:44:52] So you can look at all of that. There is a difference between how you use a tool as a designer and how you certify. So certification has assumptions built into it. So even what Cameron was saying is, you know, easy, Z pH has more assumptions built in of things that the passive house institute over the last 30 years have worked out, don't really have much impact on single family homes.
[00:45:18] So one of them is hot water pipe distributions. So in the full passive house, PHPP, you've got to draw up a whole picture and calculate exactly the routes and the piping and the lengths of the piping,
[00:45:32] and when they go upstairs and downstairs. Exactly. It's annoying thing to do. It's an annoying thing to review and it really doesn't make a difference.
[00:45:40] Easy pH, you don't have to do that easy pH, you don't have to do the ground sheet easy pH, you don't have to do the electricity tab. Even if you're doing plus, there is a lot less work in it. For things that really have minimal impact.
[00:45:56] Matthew: So Cam said he's always right, so it looks like he's wrong in this [00:46:00] situation.
[00:46:02] Emilia: I, the, the issue is that going, if you are really an expert at using PHPP, you're very comfortable using that tool. And even myself, although talked about how bad manual shading was before design pH came in, even when design pH first came in, I sat, I went and did a course and to learn how to use SketchUp.
[00:46:25] 'cause that's not something I'd used in the past. I came outta that course and went, oh, this is too hard. I can't be bothered learning this. I'm just gonna keep doing manual shading. You know it because, because it is that human psyche of having to learn something new. And that is, you know, one of the barriers to passive house in Australia and anywhere in the world is it something new.
[00:46:46] We have to do something different. We have to learn something. We have to maybe accept that something we were doing was not the best way to do it. So there's a lot of things there that humans have difficulty dealing with, not just in construction, but in every aspect of life and society.
[00:47:05] Hamish: Change is, change is hard. Like, you know, we've gotta, we've got so many other things that we've gotta deal with in life. Like, be a parent, be a husband, be a wife, you know, be a friend. You know, if we add this other complexity into our work life, like why would we bother doing it?
[00:47:23] and, and I know I live in a bubble and I, and I talk to, you know, the three of us sitting here right now are so like convinced that passive house is the way to build really great, predictable homes. I think once people understand it and actually realize that it isn't that hard,
[00:47:40] then, you know, and I think once we get over that barrier and that boundary, I think we're gonna start seeing a lot more.
[00:47:46] But, um, yeah, people just don't like, people just don't like
[00:47:48] change.
[00:47:49] Matthew: ask both of you? Do you think that's the reason why we don't have widespread adoption of passive house in Australia?
[00:47:53] Hamish: don't think it's widely adopted now because, um, it's not mandated. I think the code is, the [00:48:00] code is so bare minimum that people are like, oh, well, we'll just build to code because that's what I've been told is what I have to do.
[00:48:08] Widespread adoption needs to start at that, um, that standard level.
[00:48:13] Emilia: that's right. So obviously when you've got countries where the governments have mandated passive house or code that is very close to passive house,
[00:48:23] yeah, you're gonna have a lot higher
[00:48:26] Matthew: I think Portugal
[00:48:27] practically mandated it.
[00:48:29] Emilia: Yeah.
[00:48:29] And
[00:48:30] Hamish: Mm-hmm.
[00:48:31] Emilia: yeah,
[00:48:32] Matthew: Wow.
[00:48:33] Emilia: and also governments like Ireland has a lot of social housing and a lot of retrofit programs that are government run and they're all being done to passive house because the government's paying for it and they're gonna pay for the running costs.
[00:48:46] So anywhere where you've got, you know, build to rent all of those type, when you've got the developer or the owner forking out the energy bills and the maintenance bills, then you have huge adoption. So when you have a situation where the person who's designing the house and building the house then totally walks away and it's all up to the owner to deal with, anything that hasn't been correctly built or anything doesn't function as intended, and there is no recourse under the legal system, then yeah.
[00:49:17] Why are you going into want, you know, though, the only people who's going going to want passive house in that case of the clients,
[00:49:24] Matthew: Do you know what's ironic is we've got Scotland and pre pretty much widespread adoption of passive house. Then we've got Australia who can't even wrap their head around a continuous mechanical ventilation system at a, at a slow flow rate. Um, and we have to get a performance solution for that because I think that's, that's not acceptable.
[00:49:42] How fucking dumb are we?
[00:49:46] Emilia: Australia, uh, like to do things their way. And I saw this in automotive. So when we were in automotive, one of the first things I got to do was test child restraints. That's exactly what a 20 something year old [00:50:00] wants to do. So anyway, I'm in the car putting all these different child restraints in different, different forward models to, because there was an issue with the tether strap that it would, in certain locations actually end up going between the seat, the division of the seats.
[00:50:16] So, you know, the seats fold and they either split in a 50 50 or a 30 70 split. Depending on how they design and depending on how the seat was designed in those days, a lot of the child restraints just had a single strap in the middle. You put that right where the divider is and the strap would go down, and then the seat wouldn't stay in position.
[00:50:37] Obviously, in an accident, that is not a good thing, so we actually were working on a pamphlet to show parents how to install their child restraints correctly into cars. Now, what had then happened is Europe introduced the ISO fix method and the rest of the world went, oh yeah, this is awesome. Australia went, oh, no, no, no.
[00:51:02] You can have the ISO fix, but you still have to have the tether strap. So in Australia, we have unique child restraints for the Australian market. Now, what does that do? All that does is drive up the price. So customers in Australia pay more for their child restraints. You can't take your child restraints anywhere else.
[00:51:20] If you've been living in Europe and you come to Australia, if you use your European child restraints in your car that has been built to accept those ISO fixed restraints, and you have an accident, you are liable because it's not covered under Australian law. I mean, how stupid is that? Like what is our population like compared to the rest of the world?
[00:51:37] So Australia has this thing about the things we do, wanting to keep doing them the same way we've been doing them because it's our way. But yes, is it the best way? Not necessarily is it the best for society? Not necessarily. So, yeah. And again, yes, it is change, accepting change, and there's always vested interests as well.
[00:51:59] [00:52:00] Anyway. to play. It's like you've got these big companies like trust manufacturers and BlueScope Steel pumping huge amounts of money to get things like steel frames into the CO that we, that suck. that's.
[00:52:11] Hamish: Can I, I just wanna, I just wanna, I just wanna land on something. I know, I know, I know. We're sitting here saying that why isn't this, uh, widely adopted? But what I do wanna say, and maybe I'm gonna be the glass half full person here, Amelia, when you and I first met probably over five years ago when I, you know, five or six years ago when I first started on my journey with passive house, it was so new, I had no fucking idea where to find information.
[00:52:36] Um, fast forward to now,
[00:52:39] like how much information in there, and even if people aren't, you know, there with adopting passive house, yet they know about it and they're familiar with it.
[00:52:48] And, you know, whereas five or six years ago, if you said passive house, people are like. What are you talking about? I've
[00:52:54] got no idea what that is now. You know,
[00:52:56] Emilia: Absolutely.
[00:52:57] Hamish: grant Grand designs this, this, this latest series. There's, I know that there's one coming up very soon, Matthew. And, you know, there was one in the last episode, like it is becoming more known and people are actually, I know people come to us for that solution now, and I think people are starting to realize that they need to future proof their business and future proofing their business includes building better homes.
[00:53:21] Emilia: Yep. Exactly. And, and you know what's excellent about Ryan's project as well, is that it's not your typical home. It's a very, very, very different home that's still
[00:53:32] Hamish: What, what, what about, what about Ryan's project that wasn't typical? Amelia, I've, I've,
[00:53:36] watched it and it,
[00:53:37] Matthew: door on
[00:53:37] Hamish: wildly normal. I loved it. But the way, right, if you're listening, I loved that project. It was so good.
[00:53:45] Emilia: It, it, and, and I was very fortunate to work on that project with Ryan as a designer. So, um, that was a very exciting project to work on. That was interesting to do the, the natters assessment for that project too. It [00:54:00] was quite a complex one from that as aspect as well. So, yeah. So, uh, yeah, it's really good.
[00:54:06] And that's what's really good too, is that we are seeing more and more diversity in passive house projects, both in residential and commercial. So people are starting to see what you can do with it. And going back to the whole steel thing, you can use steel in passive house. You can use concrete, you can use straw bale, you can use hempcrete.
[00:54:30] As we know, you can use any construction methodology you want. It just has to comply. And that's one thing I love about it from, I'm from an engineer. It's like, this is where you have to get to. The, the, you've got a, it is a problem and you need to solve the problem, and how you do it is up to your imagination.
[00:54:47] So it's great. Like it really does allow for just thinking outside the box, which is just great. Just using that creativity. I love to see that.
[00:54:59] Matthew: So
[00:55:00] I got two questions. you know what I I, I would, so Matt, just before you go, because Amelia, I know you're an engineer. I know Scott Stewart is also an engineer.
[00:55:09] Hamish: Cameron's an
[00:55:10] engineer. an engineer.
[00:55:12] Emilia: engineer's, an engineer. I pretty, I'm pretty sure Marcus is an engineer too. Yeah.
[00:55:17] Hamish: Marcus he's probably an
[00:55:18] engineer. He's a doctor as well. He's, he's, he's probably an engineer
[00:55:21] now.
[00:55:21] Matthew: Cams a rocket an engineer next week. Yeah. Cams.
[00:55:25] Hamish: Like, it, it, it, it is like all the, all the people that you know are in that, you know, doing the set. And this, I love about it 'cause I'm very much. I love the idea of it, but I dunno the nuts and bolts of it.
[00:55:36] So I love then like, diving in and listening to people like you and Cam and, and Marcus talk about all the little like stuff in the weeds because I would never be able to figure it out. But I, I get excited how excited you guys get with it and I just love that, that you see as a problem to solve. And I, and I think that's great because we don't, we don't wanna say you can't build like this because it's too hard to get to passive house.
[00:55:59] [00:56:00] Like, we don't wanna put those barriers up. We wanna say we can get here, but we just gotta solve all the problems to get there. So I
[00:56:06] Emilia: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I love the teamwork involved in solving those problems. 'cause you, you can't do that by yourself. You, you need everyone. You need the builders, you need the architects, you need the other engineers. You know? Yeah. Like
[00:56:21] if great clients. You need great, you need great clients who are willing to stand on the edge and jump off and say, this is what I'm demanding for my
[00:56:30] Absolutely. And you know what's really interesting? We are starting to see clusters of passive houses. So in particular, suburbs, when one passive house pops up, another one pops up often like trees or weeds. Either way, people are seeing that they walk past a passive house. They might go to an open day and they're like, Ooh, I'm building, I'm here.
[00:56:49] I'm, I'm gonna build a passive house. And, uh, particularly in, also in climates that are colder. So, you know, Victoria is still the number one spot and Blue mountains a lot of, and, and other parts of greater Sydney area out of Sydney. And then, you know, then we're starting to get to see some project in humid climates, which I really think is the next frontier of, of passive house because humidity just creates all these problems.
[00:57:17] Like amount of money I spent this past Japanese or Northern Hemisphere summer. In buying little desiccant bags to put throughout every single wardrobe and every single drawer. So my clothes didn't go moldy and the air conditioning was running in dehumidification mode 24 7 for months. Months. It's just, just, there is so much cost involved in trying to keep something at the right, uh, humidity and the amount of waste.
[00:57:52] If you don't like, you know, you talking, if your wardrobe, if you closing in your wardrobe get destroyed because of mold, you [00:58:00] hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars to replace your wardrobe. And you know, and I know there's places in Queensland where people running heaters in their wardrobe to stop the mold growing in a hot climate.
[00:58:11] I'm like, so then they're running their air conditioning to keep the house cool. I'm like, hmm. Anyway,
[00:58:17] so.
[00:58:17] Matthew: we should actually get you back for a whole podcast on just human climates.
[00:58:22] Emilia: Well, I don't know if I'm the right person on a Humid Climate
[00:58:25] podcast because I haven't actually. Yeah. Marcus, um,
[00:58:28] Hamish: Um, uh, and, um, and, uh,
[00:58:35] Emilia: Marcello. Yeah, Marcello
[00:58:36] just
[00:58:37] did, yeah. Marcello just did a webinar about
[00:58:40] Matthew: yeah, I might jump on that one.
[00:58:42] Emilia: Yeah. But I think, and yeah, I'm pretty sure Marcus has a project that Luke might be certifying
[00:58:47] Matthew: Didn't you do
[00:58:48] Emilia: in, uh, so maybe the two of them.
[00:58:50] Matthew: didn't you do a PhD on human climates? Yeah.
[00:58:53] Emilia: Yes, he did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:58:55] Matthew: Um, I've got two. I've got two questions to round this out. Should all pat or should all homes be certified?
[00:59:03] Emilia: that's, that's a hard question. I would say with easy pH. Uh, yes. And the good thing is that even if you did your initial design in PHPP. Now your project's complete and you're like, Ooh, actually I would like to see if this is certifiable. You can use easy ZP, you can change to EZP
[00:59:23] Matthew: much does it
[00:59:24] Emilia: in time in design
[00:59:26] Matthew: Like hypothetically, like it's got roughly 10
[00:59:27] grand for Hyper hypothetically. I, so I have certified Australia's first EZP project and it will be on social media soon. Um, the architect is going to upload that and it's gonna go, it's going in the process of being loaded to the P-H-P-P-H-I database. There are only 10 easy PH projects worldwide so far. So we're one of the first 10.
[00:59:53] Emilia: So you talking about things changing, you know, yeah. Five years ago we wouldn't have been one of the first easy pH projects in the [01:00:00] world. I think it was probably, from my perspective, from a certifier, it was 10% saving
[01:00:07] Matthew: Okay. From some time you reckon you spent 10% less on
[01:00:10] it?
[01:00:11] Emilia: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. This was, you know, the designer's first, uh, easy pH it was my first easy pH going all the way through certification.
[01:00:22] So obviously there's still a learning curve on both sides. Um, but yeah, definitely, definitely some good savings there. oh, so the other thing is you've got 10 years to certify. So if you built your house and you didn't have the money to do certification, and you know, I understand that if there wasn't the money to get a certifier involved during the design, and you finish the build and you, you're now saving all that money from not paying huge energy bills and you've got some, some, except for the mortgage for the house.
[01:00:55] But anyway, exuding that if you've, if you've got some funds to do certification. You shouldn't think it's too late.
[01:01:02] Matthew: my second last question to you,
[01:01:04] Emilia: Yes.
[01:01:04] Matthew: what don't you like about passive house and what are the pet hates? You have a passive house
[01:01:09] Emilia: my pet hates where a lot of things that you don't have to do in easy pH. So, were really the things that I didn't think were contributing to making a difference. So it was really, yeah, having to ask people to draw up the hot water piping plan, that
[01:01:29] annoyed me. Um, and yeah, so that was, that was my biggest one.
[01:01:35] and I guess, like you said, it is an Excel file. It's not the most user friendly. We know we set up engineers love Excel files. accountants do to anyone who likes numbers, but it's, it's not. So that can be very overwhelming. And so if you, if you are a new designer and you've done your passive house designers course, which it doesn't actually teach you how to use A-P-H-P-P, it teaches you the [01:02:00] theories behind passive house.
[01:02:02] And then you open your, the PHPP up, you'll probably go, oh my God. No. Way too complicated, too many tabs. Can't deal with this. And that's the other thing I like about Easy pH. You, if you open that up, there's only six or something tabs instead of 26 or something. And there is a new tab, which you just follow through step by step.
[01:02:23] And you can tick it off. I can tick it off. It's much clearer. What to do, and it's a lot less overwhelming. So I think that's what I dislike about the passive house planning tool, is it can be extremely overwhelming when you first experience it.
[01:02:40] Matthew: And you've also certified two A building for myself. I think you have two for me. And you've done a few for Hamish as well.
[01:02:46] Emilia: I, well, I, I was a designer on a project with Hamish. I think one of the, one, the ones you've got with Elsie at the moment
[01:02:54] is, is one of
[01:02:55] Hamish: Yeah. In
[01:02:56] Tem Tem Street. Yep.
[01:02:58] Emilia: Yeah, yeah,
[01:02:59] Matthew: yeah.
[01:03:00] Yeah. Who'd
[01:03:00] you have fun more working with Hamish? I.
[01:03:07] Hamish: Amelia And I got to know each other very well during the Hempcrete house, and I think that was, that ended, that ended up being a very, probably more of a passion project for everyone involved to make sure that that one got
[01:03:21] across the line.
[01:03:22] And were you there for the final,
[01:03:24] were you there for the final
[01:03:25] Emilia: shading. No, I, I think I was there for the first blower, the interim one, or maybe it was the final. I was there for one. I honestly can't remember. But that project was a manual shading project. So there, yeah, that was, yeah. And, uh, yeah, definitely.
[01:03:41] I seriously, my hair went gray over that project. it was nothing to do with the age that I was at, and it was definitely the project,
[01:03:49] Hamish: so,
[01:03:51] to answer your question, I'm probably to
[01:03:55] work
[01:03:55] Matthew: Yes, we, we haven't really had to work too hard and too close together though our [01:04:00] projects were pretty straightforward. It was like they're done.
[01:04:02] Emilia: Oh yeah. Yeah. Matthew's projects completely different types of projects.
[01:04:07] Hamish, your project was like a seriously pushing the passive house limits and you know, and working with, you know, hempcrete, you know, not something that's typically used. Matthew's projects are awesome because they are typical family homes.
[01:04:24] They are your timber build your, they're not huge.
[01:04:29] They're, you know, simple stuff. Exactly. And that's what I love to show that, you know, you, you can do this simply and hopefully relatively within people's budgets. So that's, that's,
[01:04:44] what I like
[01:04:44] Matthew: you know
[01:04:46] Hamish: you know what, I think both exist for a reason and I, and I, and I'm gonna say this in, in the right way because I So Tim Street really easy to project, to get certified, you know, no, no problem whatsoever. But I also feel like you need projects like Ryan's and you need projects like the Hemp Creek passive House to push the boundaries to show people what's possible.
[01:05:05] and even, and even Matt's project, the, the retrofit one, like we need people to be doing those projects to show that it's actually possible. 'cause then it makes
[01:05:14] everything else so much easier.
[01:05:16] Emilia: Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's right. I, I totally agree and I, I think that's one of the funnest things about my job is the diversity of projects that I get to see and the diversity of construction methodologies and materials, and there's just so much out there that you can use to build with these days and so many different ways to do it.
[01:05:39] What I'm hoping to see in Australia are some little capsule bathrooms soon. I wanted them 20 years ago after living here last time. I was hoping to be able to find them in Australia, and you still can't, but I think that's the next step in. Getting over uh, water leakage in bathrooms, issues or tiling issues is [01:06:00] getting these prefab bathrooms.
[01:06:02] So just like we build a prefab house in Japan, most of the bathrooms are prefabricated bathrooms and it's a module and they just drop it in. It doesn't have the toilet in it, it's just got the wet area. It is a wet room. It's totally designed to be wet. It's got extraction system, heating system. It doubles as a drying room as well.
[01:06:21] So I can dry the shirts, kids' school shirts in the bathroom when no one's using it obviously. And then I don't have to iron them either 'cause they dry nice and crinkle free. So capsule, capsule bathrooms, that is what I'd like to see coming to Australia and just drop them
[01:06:38] Hamish: New. New, new, new, business. New business opportunity. New
[01:06:41] business
[01:06:41] Emilia: Yeah,
[01:06:42] Matthew: Hamish and I don't need any more ideas.
[01:06:44] Hamish: No, I've, I'm busy enough. Amelia, thank you so much for, uh, joining us today. I mean, I know we, the three of us could just talk forever about, you know, passive house and why, you know, everyone should be building them. So I'm incredibly envious. I'm looking, you know, behind you there and seeing that, you know, very typical like Japanese kind of garden behind you and
[01:07:05] the
[01:07:05] architecture. And am I, am I seeing like straw on the ceiling there as well?
[01:07:11] Emilia: you are this, yeah. We we're very fortunate that we are living in a, a very traditional, it's a half western, half traditional Japanese house. It's built in 1970, so no insulation, single glazed glass, but yes, very, very, um,
[01:07:28] typical. There is, um, I can slide the screens for you if you want. There are the screens,
[01:07:33] Matthew: thought it was a fake background for a while. Oh,
[01:07:36] Hamish: Oh look, there you go. The the rice paper screen. Are they rice?
[01:07:40] Emilia: Yes. Yes. They're, they're called shogi. Um, and they are lovely and they do actually provide an insulating layer, so you do, when I open them up in the morning, the air between the shogi and the glass, the screens and the glass is cold, colder than the temperature in the room, so they're good. What we have learn [01:08:00] though, is that there's two different types of paper and we've got the traditional paper, which is not cat proof.
[01:08:07] So there are lots of little stickers all over it where the cats have scratched it and, but anyway, you just buy stickers, so, and they're cute little flower stickers. So the repairs become beauty, a beauty part of the beauty of the screens. Uh, but apparently between rentals they replace the, uh, paper typical and you can get a, a plastic backed paper, which is designed to be cat proof.
[01:08:32] So they're very much a cat culture here. So there is everything you could possibly want for your cats. Our cats are so spoiled here. Credible.
[01:08:43] Matthew: Thank you
[01:08:43] for
[01:08:43] coming
[01:08:43] Hamish: amazing. Thank you for
[01:08:45] Emilia: no worries.
[01:08:46] Matthew: If you need to get onto you detail Green, uh, Instagram, website, reach out to
[01:08:51] Emilia: Yes, we have a new website actually, so, and it's got lots of links to projects we've been working on. I'm sure it's got links to Matthew and Hamish's projects on there. So,
[01:09:02] yep,
[01:09:02] Matthew: have to give it a checkout.
[01:09:03] Hamish: so much.
[01:09:04] Emilia: Yeah. Thank you for your time.
[01:09:06]