Let the Ice Box Challenge Sydney Begin!

The latest Ice Box Challenge started yesterday, February 21, 2022, in Sydney’s Martin Place, one of busiest hubs in the Australian city’s Central Business District. The Ice Box Challenge is a public installation and contest that clearly demonstrates the benefits of Passive House design by placing equal size blocks of ice in two boxes. One is constructed to meet local building regulations. The other is built to meet the more rigorous performance standards required for Passive House certification by the Passive House Institute. After two weeks, the boxes are opened and the amount of ice left in each box is measured, thereby revealing how well each box passively kept out the heat.

Visitors will have a chance to speak with members of the Australian Passive House Association (APHA), the group who is putting on the event, to learn about Passive House design and what additional benefits the standard can offer in terms of health, comfort, and energy savings. They can also enter to win some great prizes by guessing how much ice will remain at the end of the contest on March 3, 2022. People from all over the world (that includes you) can also enter to win (see link here) or just monitor the progress by checking out the latest views from the boxcams.

To learn more, check out APHA’s Rachael Alden’s interview with APHA CEO Paul Wall, as well as the two teams behind the boxes, Eclipse Passive House and Gaea Architects.