Building design, construction and renovations

Designing for the sun is the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly way to heat New Zealand houses. "Passive solar design" refers to the use of the suns energy directly for the heating and cooling of living spaces.

Insulating your home will save energy and provide a healthier and more comfortable indoor environment. The heat captured from the sun or generated by your heater needs to be stopped from escaping through walls, ceilings and floors.

The 25 priciples of Ecological Building and Design: Ecological, Biological, Spiritual and Social

Your House as Part of an Ecosystem: siting the building, earthworks and site modification, choosing your building materials, the construction process, energy use, water and wastewater, general waste.

You can save yourself money and reduce your impact on the environment by considering resource use and waste generation during the design phase of a building project. Waste minimisation is about a change of attitude and common sense, rather than new technologies. Often waste minimisation options cost nothing to implement and give benefits strai...

It can be difficult to assess exactly how sustainable a product is and which materials are preferable to others. Often we have to rely on manufacturers’ information, which can be biased and incomplete. This chapter aims to bring some clarification to the issue. It outlines some tools that can help you to choose your building materials, but the i...

Timber is the primary building material in New Zealand. It is relatively cheap, the building code makes designing with timber easy, and builders know timber frame structures are “Core business” for New Zealand builders. Although other materials are now more commonly used for some building components - aluminium for window frames, fibrous cement...

Many surfaces in the average home are painted - furniture, walls, ceilings, wooden floors, exterior cladding, roofs. Paints have been used for centuries to make surfaces more attractive, easier to maintain, or to protect them from the elements. Paints and finishes can extend the lifetime of some materials, such as weatherboards, dramatically. ...

Earth is an ancient building material that is still used in many different ways with about half the world’s population still living in earth buildings. But earth building is not a phenomenon only of the Third World. In France, about 15% of the population live in earth walled houses. In some regions of Australia over 20% of the houses are built ...

This is a sample video clip from http://www.buildinggreentv.com exposing the myths of straw bale building / insulation.

This is a sample video clip from http://www.buildinggreentv.com explaining why radiant floor heating is eco friendly.

Energy efficiency means more than just cheaper fuel bills, firstly and most importantly our homes need to be a healthy place to live. The World Health Organisation (WHO) states a residential house needs to have a minimum air temperature of 160C, a building that is colder over long periods will have various problems such as condensation, damp and...

Adobe is a natural building material composed of sand, sandy clay and straw or other organic materials, which is shaped into bricks using wooden frames and dried in the sun. It is similar to cob and mudbrick. Adobe structures are extremely durable and account for the oldest extant buildings on the planet. Adobe buildings also offer significant adva...

Passive solar building design involves the modeling, selection and use of appropriate passive solar technologies to maintain the building environment at a comfortable temperature through the sun's daily and annual cycles. As a result it also minimises the use of active solar, renewable energy and especially fossil fuel technologies. Passive sola...

Straw bale, in most situations, makes an excellent building material. The main benefit of straw bale construction is the high level of insulation it provides. This insulation is achieved because of the thickness of the walls (around 45cm) and the trapped air inside which makes a poor heat conductor. Straw bale houses are generally constructed as...

A rammed earth house is constructed using a mixture of earth, gravel, sand, silt and clay. The mixture is placed between framework forms and then rammed using a mechanical rammer. Once the mixture is fully compressed, the framework is removed leaving the completed rammed earth wall. The thickness of the external walls is normally around 30cm, but i...

Passive solar construction is a very attractive design philosophy as not only does it save energy, but it also reduces dampness and condensation, improves sound insulation, increases the durability of building materials and makes the home healthier. Passive solar construction uses the sun to warm the house. Heat is absorbed into the buildin...

The concept of ‘eco-housing’ is being developed in some areas in New Zealand. The main principles of the scheme include: Integration of the buildings and neighbourhood with the site. Design for energy efficiency and natural climate control using passive solar design. Building materials and components chosen with regard to energy content, tox...

More than six litres of household paint is sold each year for each and every person here. That's a lot of paint particularly as much of it is left sitting in paint containers and ends up in landfills. There are lots of ways you can reduce this burden on the environment... here's some ideas to get you started: Reduce, reuse and recycle Buy Env...

Solar water heating is generally more economically viable the more people in the household and the more hot water used. This means the more hot water you use, the better your savings will be.

Sheep's-wool insulation Sheep can adapt to many different environments as their wool protects them through hot, cold, damp and dry seasons. Man has also used wool for its protective properties and for the many other benefits offered by the material. Wool's unique advantage, though, is its ability to absorb moisture from the surrounding air, wit...

It is an independent method of assessing the environmental performance of new homes. The Scheme offers new home owners, designers, architects and developers a means by which key environmental issues can be examined, using a rating system

This is a guide to some outlets that sell environmentally friendly wood and wood products. It is not an exhaustive list and will be subject to change as we continue to survey more suppliers but will be a good place to start. The information below should be used as a guide only. We recommend that you use it in conjunction with our selection guide an...

By combining good design with effective insulation, you can collect and store the sun’s energy to provide warmth day and night, throughout the year. Passive heating can slash your heating costs, reduce condensation and dampness, and make your home healthier and more comfortable. Passive heating can be incorporated into new homes, renovations or...

Find the right insulation material for your purpose. A wide range of insulation materials is available - each with different properties and features, and each suitable for different parts of the house. Increasingly, insulation products are available containing recycled material, such as wool, or in fully recycled formats

By using non-toxic products with low emissions, you can make your home healthier for yourself and your family. Painting and decorating makes your home more attractive, and makes walls and other surfaces more durable, by protecting against wear and tear and the effects of exposure to the elements. However, some ingredients in painting and de...

Some materials commonly used inside your home can contain chemicals that can harm your health. Common materials for walls, floors and ceilings include: timber - sheets and veneers including plywood and particleboards/MDF, strip flooring, mouldings, benchtops and architraves (solid timber, melamine and MDF) concrete - polished slabs for floo...

Consumers have one of the most powerful and important roles in addressing illegal logging and related trade. It is difficult for illegal practices to carry on without willing buyers to purchase illegally harvested, processed and traded wood products. We must all play a part in choosing to buy only wood products that are from legal and sustainable ...

The Clovelly House is a three bedroom, south facing semi-detached residence, with in-ground pool and off-street car parking, in Clovelly, an inner city suburb of Sydney, Australia. The house, designed by Kennedy Associates Architects and completed in 2004, was designed to meet the very specific spatial and accessibility needs of the client with ...

This is the sort of energy-conserving future Martin and Liz Irvine have planned for their family when they build their holiday home at Tupare on the shores of the Kaipara Harbour – and by next summer it should be a reality. The Auckland business couple wanted an out-of-Auckland getaway that was energy neutral – or better – for themselves and the...

Video discussing Transition Towns in New Zealand

The answer to the question "Can sustainable, green homes be built in mass production?" led Michelle Kaufmann to found Michelle Kaufmann Designs (MKD), a leading design/build firm that uses off-site modular technology to create contemporary eco-friendly homes.

This video offers an introduction to eco friendly paints - 2 minutes 25s long.

Our immediate environment affects our physical and psychological health. Given that most of us spend around 80% of our time indoors, and a lot of the rest of the time looking at the outside of buildings, buildings are a major part of our lives. Buildings also affect the natural environment, both locally and globally. Gas and solid fuel burnt fo...

We have just experienced – once again – a year of weather contrasts. In New Zealand, it brought floods to the north and droughts to the east and to the south, with Taranaki suffering tornadoes in-between. Insurers lament the costs, increasing by the millions from year-to-year, of damaged homes, roads and infrastructure. Adding flow-on costs to the ...

New Zealand homes have historically been extremely inefficient: 30 years after insulation became mandatory, around 350,000 homes are poorly insulated or have no insulation at all. Many of those are in the Queenstown Lakes District, where many houses were built for summer use only but are now lived in year round. In addition to the insulation pro...

An urban sustainable, ethical and eco-friendly home.

This guide provides builders and homeowners with information on energy and water efficiency, improving indoor air quality and selecting environmentally preferable building materials.

Transition Initiatives are bringing people together out of a desire to explore how we – and our communities – can respond to the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil. We know we don’t have all the answers but we believe we have the innovation to create those solutions. Each transition group networks with their local community on a coordin...