High-Performance Homes: The Simple Basics

Building a high-performance home involves integrating key principles that optimise energy efficiency, comfort, and durability while reducing running costs and environmental impact. Our approach focuses on several essential pillars, ensuring our clients receive the most value from their investment.

The phrase "high performance home" is quickly becoming the most overused, misunderstood, greenwashing term in the construction industry. We wanted to set some basic parameters for this term as we don't want consumers getting confused thinking they might have a high-performance home when they don't.

Building and designing a high-performance home is like baking a cake. You need a perfect recipe, the right ingredients, and strict attention to detail at every step. If you miss one crucial part, the cake will collapse, be inedible, or simply fail to rise.

In a high-performance home, every single element is a functional, non-negotiable part of a single, integrated system. If you omit the airtightness layer, your insulation fails. If you omit mechanical ventilation, your sealed-up, insulated house will suffer from moisture damage. You must include the entire recipe, or the house will fail to perform to its potential, leading to high bills, poor comfort, and potential durability issues

The High Performance Home recipe.

Like a cake, the ingredients are vital!

The "recipe" begins with the Thermal Modelling and Passive Solar Design, acting as your master plan to optimise energy efficiency and comfort, and get free solar energy. To prove your recipe worked, the home must be tested and checked (including blower door and thermal imaging tests) to verify the performance aligns with the design specifications. To us, this is where a high-performance home starts and finishes. If you're not doing this, you're already setting your home up to fail.

So what are the components of the build we need to worry about?

  1. Thermal Modelling

  2. Passive Solar Design

  3. Water Management

  4. Airtightness

  5. Insulation

  6. Quality Windows and Doors

  7. Mechanical Ventilation

  8. Thermal Bridge

  9. Solar Panels

  10. Tested and Checked

  • We run all our projects through the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP), which is a top-notch tool for getting very accurate data on the build's performance. This allows us to make sure we're optimising energy efficiency and comfort. Plus, we can cross-reference performance with the cost of changes, ensuring our clients are getting value for money.

    • It’s a great tool for reducing the running costs of the home.

    • It ultimately helps in reducing the environmental impact of a home.

  • This relies on principles of physics and the local climate to fine-tune the building's energy performance.

    • We need to make sure our homes have the correct orientation relative to the sun so we can get free energy into the home.

    • The design must use solar heat gain to provide free energy.

    • It also helps to reduce the need for artificial lighting.

  • 'Water kills buildings', so we pay close attention to stopping bulk water. We use a quality vapour-permeable barrier with all joins taped, working alongside a ventilated cavity.

    • We use the correct external membranes and tape them correctly.

    • A Water Resistive Barrier (WRB) is a great tool for moisture management.

  • Achieving a cracking airtight quality is crucial for a high-performance home, minimising outdoor air infiltration and reducing energy losses. We aim for less than 3 Air Changes per Hour (ACH) when tested with a blower door, with all new builds needing to achieve under 1ACH.

    • It enhances building durability by reducing exposure to moisture and air infiltration.

    • It limits outdoor pollutants like pollen and dust from entering indoor spaces.

  • The insulation must be continuous. The thickness is determined by the modelling.

    • Ceilings: Minimum R6.0.

    • External Walls: R4.0 in a new home; aim for around R3 in a retrofit.

    • Foundations: Minimum R2.5 in your slab (including around the perimeter), and R5.0 if you have a timber subfloor.Item description

  • We look for windows with U-values <2.0. This means minimum double glazing with high-performance glass and warm edge spacers, most likely in uPVC, timber, or aluclad frames

    • They maintain indoor temperatures, which lowers energy costs.

    • They are designed to optimise solar heat gain for passive heating in winter while keeping things cool in summerItem description

  • In a super air-tight home, mechanical ventilation helps us take back control of the air. We usually install a centralised Heat Recovery Ventilation (HRV) unit—or an Energy Recovery Ventilation (ERV) unit up north.

    • It helps filter out the bad air outside, leading to great indoor air quality.

    • It reduces the risk of moisture build-up, preventing condensation.

    • It recovers the heat in the house, cutting down on your heating requirements.

  • Reducing thermal bridges enhances energy efficiency by reducing heat transfer.

    • It prevents condensation and moisture problems.

    • It improves occupant comfort by maintaining consistent indoor temperatures.

  • Going all-electric helps improve indoor air quality as there is no internal combustion. Electric appliances are also generally more efficient than gas.

    • We prefer all-electric appliances, preferably with a CO2 heat pump for hot water production and solar panels.

    • This helps in the reduction of the carbon footprint of the home.

  • Solar panels cut down electricity bills by generating renewable energy on-site.

    • They lower the carbon footprint by utilising clean, renewable solar energy.

    • When paired with a battery, they can reduce grid dependence and increase energy independence.

    • Solar panels are a technology, and you shouldn't be relying on them to cut your running costs

  • Verification is vital to ensure the building's design, construction, and performance all align with the specifications.

    • This includes a blower door test.

    • We do a thermal imaging inspection of the insulation.

    • We also check glazing components and take photo evidence of all stages of the construction.

    • We test windows are installed correctly by hosing them down

    • Documenting through photos and evidence to prove construction meets design

High Performance Homes Examples in Melbourne

High performance to us is not new; we have been doing it for years before it was cool. Not all of our projects seek Passive House certification in Melbourne, so we refer to them as High Performance projects. We have strict criteria for what high-performance homes mean. All of the above boxes must be ticked to define it as a high-performance home, so we know our clients can sleep (comfortably) knowing that they are getting what they paid for. Check out some of our high-performance homes, and more coming soon below

Rupert High Performance

West Footscray

Maribyrnong High Performance

Ascot Vale

Chatfield High Performance

Kingsville