Question 1

What is a high-performance home?

Accepted Answer

A high-performance home is one designed and built as an integrated system — airtightness, insulation, glazing, thermal bridging control and ventilation all working together — rather than a collection of individually compliant components. The result is a home that's measurably more comfortable, healthier and cheaper to run than one built to minimum code.

Question 2

What makes a home comfortable?

Accepted Answer

Comfort comes from how well airtightness, insulation, thermal bridging, glazing and ventilation are designed and installed together — not from compliance alone. In several of the South Australian homes we've tested, we've seen minimum code requirements met on paper while the house still has cold rooms in winter, overheating in summer, condensation and poor air quality, because compliance is a floor, not a guarantee of comfort.

Question 3

What is Passive House?

Accepted Answer

Passive House (Passivhaus) is the world's most rigorous voluntary building energy performance standard, built on five principles: superinsulation, airtightness (0.6 ACH50 or better), elimination of thermal bridging, high-performance glazing and heat-recovery ventilation. We've supplied and commissioned MVHR and heat pump hot water systems on several Certified Passivhaus builds across South Australia, including a Passivhaus Plus display home at Mount Barker.

Question 4

Do I need triple glazing for a high-performance home?

Accepted Answer

Not necessarily — double glazing with low-e coatings and thermally broken frames performs well in most South Australian climate zones, and the right choice depends on orientation, shading and your specific performance targets rather than being a fixed rule. Triple glazing becomes more relevant for Passive House certification or particularly exposed sites.

Question 5

What is thermal bridging?

Accepted Answer

A thermal bridge is a path through the building envelope — steel framing, slab edges, balcony connections, window installations — where heat moves much faster than through the surrounding insulated fabric. Thermal bridges create cold internal surfaces where condensation and mould can form, even in a home with plenty of insulation elsewhere.

Question 6

Why is indoor air quality important in a high-performance home?

Accepted Answer

Sealing a home's envelope for energy performance also traps whatever is inside it — CO₂, moisture, cooking fumes and pollutants — unless mechanical ventilation is designed in from the start. Good indoor air quality isn't a side effect of high performance; it has to be actively designed for, usually with MVHR.

Question 7

How do I reduce condensation in my home?

Accepted Answer

Persistent condensation is almost always a combination of high indoor humidity and cold internal surfaces (often at thermal bridges), rather than a fault with the windows themselves. Reducing moisture at the source, improving ventilation and addressing thermal bridging together is what actually resolves it — our calculator lets you check your own dew point.

Question 8

How much insulation do I need?

Accepted Answer

More insulation isn't automatically better if it's poorly installed — gaps, compression and missing sections can dramatically reduce real-world performance regardless of the R-value specified on the plans. Insulation also does nothing on its own to control air leakage or fresh air supply, so it needs to be considered alongside airtightness, thermal bridging and ventilation, not in isolation.

Question 9

How do I choose a heating and cooling system?

Accepted Answer

In a high-performance home, system size matters more than system type — an airtight, well-insulated envelope needs far less heating and cooling capacity than a standard build, so the usual approach of sizing to a “typical” home oversizes and wastes money. Evaporative cooling in particular doesn't suit airtight construction.

Question 10

What's the difference between Passive House and Passivhaus Plus?

Accepted Answer

Passivhaus Plus builds on the standard Passive House requirements with an additional on-site renewable energy generation target, typically met through solar PV — meaning the home doesn't just use very little energy, it also generates a meaningful share of what it does use. Our Mount Barker project is a Certified Passivhaus Plus display home, built to demonstrate the standard is achievable in Australia with locally available materials.

Question 11

Can any builder build a high-performance home?

Accepted Answer

Airtightness, thermal bridging control and ventilation design require specific detailing knowledge that not every builder has experience with — it's less about the trade and more about sequencing, products and quality control on site. We work directly with builders and designers to help get these details right from documentation through to testing.

High-Performance Homes & Passive House