House Planning Help Podcast – Passivhaus homes where cooling is a key consideration – with Andy Marlow

The ‘look’ of a home tells you nothing about its quality

Envirotecture Director Andy Marlow was interviewed for the House Planning Help Podcast earlier this year – which was an interesting and informative conversation! The main theme that emerged with Passivhaus homes in Australia is understanding that cooling is a key consideration (as it’s easy to heat homes ‘passively’ but with a warming climate it is more challenging to solely rely on natural ventilation and shading). Thanks so much to Ben Adam-Smith for the interview.

In this podcast episode, Andy describes the majority of Australia’s houses as “fancy looking sheds”.

With a warmer climate in many parts of the country there is a culture of opening all the doors and windows, and creating a wonderful indoor/outdoor lifestyle! In reality, temperatures are frequently unpleasant as is the humidity and, due to the poor standard of construction, there is no refuge indoors.

In fact most houses in Australia will rely on mechanical cooling via ducted air conditioning units. Because the houses are poorly insulated, the coolth generated often escapes the house, meaning that these systems operate incredibly inefficiently.

Andy also points out that Australia not only builds the largest houses in the world with the national average being 244 square metres (3x the UK average) but also the cheapest per square metre. This poses quite a challenge for the uptake of Passivhaus because it is going to be slightly more expensive than a traditional build which may in turn lead you to reduce the floor area (which many Australians may not be keen to do).

Click here to listen and read more about Andy’s podcast with House Planning Help.