It will be a certified Passivhaus which will not only be a super efficient and comfortable home, but also a project where we see how much we can reduce our environmental impact associated with this build.
The Australian construction industry contributes roughly 40% of the countries landfill. Which is astounding. A Passivhaus can run up to 90% more efficient than a standard built house, so we are going to try to achieve a similar result with our waste management and left over building material disposal.
It is ambitious, as we haven’t tried something like this on this scale, but we feel we want to try to go the full circle with what we offer.
It will be a learning curve in terms of what can be recycled, repurposed or reused, and it will also be a challenge in regards to what is offered by others to facilitate this.
We are currently doing similar on our Coburg project and are finding that some popular and common building materials just don’t have options for responsible disposal.
When building high performance homes it is a fine balance between choosing materials that will perform highly for a sustained period vs ones that may not perform quite as well but be more environmentally friendly.
There will be times performance of a material will be chosen over its environmental impact, but I assure you before this choice is made we will do our due diligence to make sure this decision is informed and the most practical one.
We also consider the VOC impact of our materials when making these decisions. We want our homes to be happy, healthy homes that are also super efficient.
