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.