Home Style Green

Peter Olorenshaw has been developing his passion for passive solar design for over 21 in Nelson, one of New Zealand's sunniest spots. While has does practise architecture elsewhere, like his designs, he prefers to keep it local. http://homestylegreen.com/114 http://www.peteroarchitect.co.nz/

How do you find the right products to build a net zero, LEED certified, Living Building Challenge, or simply a healthier, more sustainable home? Standardising product information and storing it all in one, easy place was the reason why GreenWizard was started. It's a Building product management solution to help you find sustainable products. http://homestylegreen.com/113 https://www.greenwizard.com/

What's the link between durability and sustainability? Brett Little explains that there's no point in building a zero energy house, if it only lasts a few years. The Green Home Institute is focussed on empowering people to make healthier and more sustainable places to live. Working closely alongside the the USGBC, the Green Home Institute offers services to help with LEED for Homes Certification and other third party verification provides to help prospective home owners meet their sustainability goals. http://homestylegreen.com/112 http://greenhomeinstitute.org/

Andrew Stephenson has always seen architecture as a unique opportunity to turn people's dreams into reality.  Living in a luxury bus with a family of five, and studying permaculture, has given Andrew some great inspiration for multi-function spaces and features. He now incorporates this thinking into his designs to make stylish and sustainable homes.  http://homestylegreen.com/111 http://www.bellstephenson.co.nz/

How do you make a power plant in the middle of an urban setting, look interesting and attractive? And what's that got to do with designing sustainable homes? Peter Hogg and Toby Reed are award winning, Melbourne based architects and I spoke with Peter about why he does what he does.  Be sure to check out there website for more about their recent projects, including the spectacular Precinct Energy Project in Dandenong. http://homestylegreen.com/110

Marnie Oursler used to sell houses. Now she designs and builds them and runs a successful company doing so. What I found most inspiring talking to Marnie, was that she knows how to have fun while creating a spectacular home. http://www.marniehomes.com/

How do you make a house sustainable? Talking to the team at Sustainability House would be a good start.  Sustainability House believe that all buildings should aim to have low embodied energy, use energy efficiently, generate electricity, collect and recycle water, be passively thermally comfortable and provide safe indoor air quality. Sounds reasonable.  But how do you do it? I spoke to Business Development Manager, Mark Clayton about their services and the growing demand for sustainable buildings. 

Green Tomato Energy, based in Hammersmith London, is another example of a company fulfilling a fantastic need. They help people get set up with renewable energy technologies and they provide advice on low energy and Passivhaus building design. http://homestylegreen.com/107 http://greentomatoenergy.com/

Wally is a wireless water leak detector, and temperature and humidity sensor for your home. As CEO of SNUPI Technologies, Jeremy Jaech told me, this isn't particularly sexy, but it could be really valuable.

What is a blower door and why would you want to use one? We've discussed the benefits of airtightness previously. In this episode, we're jumping straight in to look at the blower door and airtightness testing.

Net zero homes, tiny Houses, 'Cargotecture', pocket neighbourhoods and straw bale homes. Matthew Swett likes to experiment with design. He's also an incredibly thoughtful and award winning architect.  Matthew Swett co-founded Taproot Architects, LLC in 2001 with his wife and business partner Sarah Birger. Together they operate an integrated architecture and landscape design firm on Whidbey Island.  Prior to starting his own practice, Matthew researched and developed sustainable design guidelines for Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum; pioneered cluster development and pocket neighbourhoods with Ross Chapin Architects; and served as a founding member and co-director for the Solar Information Center at the University of Oregon. http://homestylegreen.com/104

Derek Ward's strength is the science that connects good design with good performance. Clioma House specialises in 'airtightness and effective insulation'. They help bridge the gap between the drawing board and the construction site.

Matthew Vande and partner Amy Musser created Vandemussser Design to help with 'the technical side of building green'. They found a great problem when they moved to North Carolina - builders who wanted to do right thing, but didn't know what the right thing was. Matt, Amy and their team now help builders and their clients to find the most cost effective and easiest way to make energy efficient buildings. They help builders to avoid a costly 'trial and error' approach. http://homestylegreen.com/102

Paul Testa lives in beautiful Sheffield in the UK. He introduced me to the concept of 'vernacular construction' - designing and building to the local conditions.  Is the Home Style Green Podcast turning into the Passive House Podcast?  http://paultestaarchitecture.co.uk/ Thanks to NUDURA for supporting Home Style Green: http://energyefficientbuilding.co.nz/

It's episode 100! In this week's special show, I turned the microphone around to hear from past (and future) guests, listeners answering the question "What would you do to make a better place to live?"

As a founding member of PassivHaus Main, I should have guessed that Chris Corson would be pretty passionate about why and how we should build better homes. A quick look at EcoCor's website suggests they are a good place to start for achieving a practical solution to a sustainable home. I caught up with Chris to talk about prefab, Passive House and Passion!

So, you've decided you'd like a really good home. One that's comfortable, healthy and energy efficient. That's great, but unfortunately it's not (yet) standard practice. Hopefully you can find a good designer to help (try this list if you like). But you'll also need some good, non-standard products. This week I spoke with Ken Levenson about how 475 can help you achieve a high performance home.

Three years ago, John Donovan built a demonstration log house on his property in Waitakere. The images in a recent newspaper article caught my attention, as did the mention of 'eco' and 'efficient'. So I tracked John down to get his thoughts on sustainable building with logs. And we talked about pyramids...

Phase change materials and how to add thermal mass to light weight buildings. After learning to build cob houses, Chris Brookman now supplies some very cool, modern clay and timber material products to building industry. 

The Homestar Mandatory minimums are a series of benchmarks that have to be achieved in order to progress up the Homestar scale. They're important because if they are are not achieved, your score will be held back. So what are the Homestar mandatory minimums, and how can you achieve them?