The What and Why of Being a Sustainable Builder
What do we do?
We have a passion for bringing sustainably designed homes to life!
We want to build a more energy-efficient, comfortable and healthier home every time we build.
We challenge the norm to chase after outcomes that are inspired by and aim to surpass those that have come before, as we constantly push the boundaries of what's possible.
Four things sit under everything we do. Get these right and the rest follows.
Health first. A home should look after the people in it, every time. Clean, filtered air, no mould, no damp, comfortable in every season. We build for the lungs and the long term, not just the photos.
Prove it, don't promise it. We don't guess that a home will perform. We model it before we build and test it after, with real numbers like airtightness results you can see. Evidence over marketing, always.
Honest from the start. No black box of costs, no surprises down the track. We price early, we tell you the truth, and we'd rather lose a job being straight than win one being vague.
Built to last generations. If a home doesn't last, it isn't sustainable, full stop. We use building science that protects the structure from the inside out, so your home is still performing in 50 years the way it did on day one.
A true Sustainable Home will…
Draw on building science to tell us how to construct our homes.
Be designed to account for the ongoing energy consumption and energy source.
Be a healthy place to live and not have any adverse effects on the occupants of the home.
Limit the negative impact on external systems and environments.
Be resilient and be able to perform at a high level for multiple generations.
Take into account the cycle of demolition now and in the future.
Who do we work with?
We only work with architects, designers and clients who share the same common interests of building better. Just like clients select who they want to work with, we also select whom they want to work with. We do not just take on any sustainable building. We take each project on its own merit, as everyone project has its own unique challenges.
We find that everyone is a “sustainable builder” and “sustainable architect” but is this a non-negotiable for them?
For us, it is!
We just don’t take on any project because it looks fancy and will come up nicely in a magazine. The home must tick all the boxes on our minimum standard checklist! If it doesn’t, it isn’t for us!
For us, we are open that Passive House Construction (Passivhaus) in Melbourne is the golden standard of construction. We believe all homes should be built with this in mind.
What’s Our Future
We promise to build a better home every time we build. We will always look to push the boundaries on what is possible in high-performance homes and Passivhaus construction in Melbourne. We want to retrofit old buildings that require an urgent performance upgrade so our clients can extend the life of the building, we want to learn more about building science, and we want to push the envelope in mixing Passivhaus with architecture in Melbourne.
Actually, we want to see everyone do this.
We'd rather teach than gatekeep
A lot of builders guard what they know. We do the opposite.
Everything we've learned about Passive House and high-performance building, we share. With our clients, with other builders, with architects, with anyone who'll listen. We talk at industry events, we sat on the panel at the Australian Passivhaus Conference, and we tell the real stories behind our projects, including the bits that went wrong and what we'd do differently.
Why give it away? Two reasons, and we'll be honest about both.
The selfish one: teaching keeps us sharp. You can't explain airtightness or moisture management to a room full of people without understanding it cold yourself. The more we share, the better we get.
The bigger one: the Australian building industry needs to lift, and it won't happen if the people doing it well keep quiet. Most homes in this country are still built to a standard that's barely changed in decades. The only way that shifts is if more builders learn how to do better and more homeowners start demanding it. We'd rather be part of dragging the whole industry forward than sit on what we know and call it a competitive advantage.
So if you're a homeowner trying to make sense of it all, or a builder curious about where the industry's heading, come and have a chat. The more of us building homes that actually perform, the better off everyone is.