Home Style Green - Sustainable Design and Building
21 Upcoming Events Red Tape and the Value of Being Green

I'm a sustainable homes expert and I want to create healthy, efficient homes that don't cost the Earth.

This week, I answer a couple of listener questions about the cost effectiveness and red tape associated with building green. 

Following up on last week, I also discuss if concrete slab edge insulation is important in a hot climate for keeping cool.

Upcoming events mentioned in the show:

You can find me at:

Thanks to James Schramko over at Superfastbusiness.com for recommending Auphonic. I've tried it out this week with this episode. Can you tell the difference?

Direct download: 21_Upcoming_Events_Red_Tape_and_the_Value_of_Being_Green.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:36pm NZDT

20: How to Insulate a Concrete Floor Slab

Why should you insulate the edges of your concrete slab? 

I was amazed when I discovered how much of the heat loss from a concrete floor can occur out the side of the slab, as opposed to down into the ground under the slab. 

It's as much as 80%. 

That means that most of the heat loss (the energy that you're paying for) goes straight out through the narrow bit of exposed concrete around the edge at the base of the house.

Why is this so? Well there are two main reasons and I go into a bit of detail on the blog. Check out http://homestylegreen.com/insulated-concrete-floor

In this podcast we talk solutions. I interview Craig Lonsdale, a Quantity Surveyor with Maxraft. 

Maxraft is a great solution for insulating the whole of a concrete floor, not just underneath. 

http://maxr.co.nz/

Other resources include BRANZ: http://www.branz.co.nz/cms_display.php?sn=123&st=1. Check out their Bulletin number 552 'Edge insulation of concrete floor slabs'.

Please take two minutes to give the show a rating over in iTunes. I'd also love it if you could write a quite review: https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/home-style-green/id513213105

For comments and questions, write to me: comments@homestylegreen.com

Cheers,

Matthew Cutler-Welsh

Direct download: 20_How_to_insulate_a_concrete_floor_slab.mp3
Category:Insulation -- posted at: 10:35pm NZDT

Ingo Ratsdorf is a registered architect with Babbage Consultants based in Auckland. 

Having grown up and been trained in Germany, Ingo is very aware of how poorly most New Zealand homes stack up against international standards. 

When Ingo and his family were hunting for their dream renovation project, they were continually overwhelmed with the size of the job they saw. It seemed each house they looked at would need far too much work to bring up to a level of quality and comfort that would satisfy them. 

And so it was that they ultimately realised they would have to build from scratch.

Listen in to our conversation as Ingo explains the inspiration and challenges of building and completing (almost) their dream in Riverhead.

He shares some sound advice for anyone looking at start a building project. 

This podcast is best accompanied by a great slideshow of the build available here on slideshare:

http://www.slideshare.net/IngoRatsdorf/riverhead-passive-solar-design-house

I hope this finished product will be an inspiration for your project!

The inspiring  book Ingo referred to and which I also highly recommend for anyone interested in design, 'Cradle to Cradle' can be found here: http://amzn.to/VVbBBr

Direct download: 19_Riverhead_passive_solar_design_house.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:42pm NZDT

How do you build a code 4 house for the price of code 3? And how do you get industry to solve the problem themselves?

Richard Buchanan is an Associate Director at BRE and Founder of Green Building Consultancy Ltd. I met Richard recently inside a LinkedIn group during a discussion about housing affordability. 

It turns out that while we're all looking around for policy solutions and government intervention here in New Zealand, the UK building industry has already figured out how to build better homes, for less. And they did it by collaborating together. 

Richard explains what a Code 3 and a Code 4 home is and describes the aimc4.com project that successfully helped the industry produce more efficient and healthier homes, without any additional upfront cost.

Some links that Richard mentions in this episode include:

Direct download: 18_How_to_Build_to_Code_4_for_the_Price_of_Code_3.mp3
Category:Building -- posted at: 10:06pm NZDT

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