Efficiency of High Performance Homes

ArchiPro recently published an article titled “What is a high performance home?”.
Read More Here

This article from Homestar and Team Green Architects talks about why modern homes don't need as much heating under correct design criteria.

Let’s break down what they’re trying to tell us.

• A high performance home excels at efficiently providing a safe, healthy, and comfortable environment for its occupants to live in.

• A high performance home functions exceptionally well without requiring a lot of energy.

What benefits do high performance homes offer?

• High performance homes are comfortable. They have a healthy interior climate that doesn’t require much energy to achieve and maintain an ambient temperature.

• They are warm in winter, cool in summer, and dry all year round. This makes them much healthier, as there's less chance of damp and mould developing.

• These homes do not rely heavily on heaters, air conditioners, or other mechanical methods. This can end up saving money, because the costs of heating and cooling the home are minimised.

4 Key Performance Characteristics

1. Insulation
The central pillar of a high performance home is having great insulation. Whether it's hot or cold outside, a house with high thermal resistance is better able to maintain its interior temperature compared with one that's poorly insulated.

2. Ventilation
Ventilation is key for air in a home to remain clean. The air in a home with no ventilation would soon become stale, as the concentration of moisture, odours, dust and other pollutants slowly build up.

3. Heating
A high performance home is able to maintain its interior temperature far better than other homes.

4. Solar Gain
Harnessing the sun to service a high performance home starts with considering the geography of the site, how light hits it and the local climate changes throughout the day and the seasons.

What’s Our Opinion?

The sooner the building market understands the cost and health benefits, the better our society will benefit. Our thinking needs to change from Architects, Builders and those building.

If you're going to the effort of making your home a high performer, there is a need for Mechanical Heat Recovery Ventilation.

Mechanical heat recovery ventilation swaps the dirty air for clean air, but it also retains up to 95% of the home heating.

This provides a very dry home, mitigates your cleaning, protects your furnishing, minimises your home heating requirements, and saves a considerable amount of money on your power operation.