126: Jessica Allen – Climasure

This transcript was generated automatically and corrected with AI tools, but it has not been reviewed by a person. It contains errors, including misspelled names and misheard technical terms, and speakers are not identified. Don't quote from it without checking the recording.

Intro and news (00:00:00)

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Passive House Podcast brought to you by Passive House Accelerator, a catalyst for zero carbon building. For news, inspiration and connections from all flavors of Passive House, check out Passive House Accelerator.com. Sign up to receive regular updates about events, get your technical questions answered and contribute to the community forum. There's loads of free information for experienced professionals and people just starting out on their Passive House journey. We hope to see you at one of our construction tech or weekly global.

[00:00:31] Passive House showcase webinars. In the meantime, here's this week's Passive House Podcast. Welcome to the Passive House Podcast. I'm Matthew Cutler-Welsh, coming to you from Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, in New Zealand, and I'm Zack Semke coming you to you.

[00:01:01] From Seattle, Washington, on the Salish sea. It's nice, it's quite calm weather here at the moment, but we are bracing ourselves for a cyclone. Possibly the calm before the storm, but right after you just got walloped by a huge rain event too. Yeah, rain event which is already looking like a larger insurance total bill than the Canterbury earthquakes over, wow, a

[00:01:33] decade ago, probably just because of the number of houses and the size of the population here and right. You know, some of those houses are in pretty, quite nice. Well, what were? Quite nice places with views which tend to be on high ground above water and have been very prone to slips. And and then there are other places.

[00:02:03] You know, at the at the other end of the scale, that have suffered a lot of flood damage and that's going to carry on for a while. That's sort of drops off the news cycle, but there's a lot of people out there that I think are going to have quite long processes of discussing with insurance companies and massive disruptions of having to move out of their house and then organize getting things rebuild and replacing all the damage. Finish is just a a really

[00:02:34] massive event in someone's life. Yeah, no, kidding, your house is such an important thing. It's, yeah, just very disruptive, yeah. So, yeah, we'll see how things crack literally there. Lots of people watching this thing develop over in the sort of north of New Zealand and the Pacific and, yeah, modeling its path and and keeping a very

[00:03:05] Close eye on where it does track and and where it makes landfall. If it makes landfall in the top of New Zealand, so scheduled to be here around Sunday hour time, so around about when this podcast comes out. So we'll see. We'll see how things go. Yeah, well, we'll be. We'll be pulling for you all. Yeah, thank you all. Right, well, we've got a great interview to get into this week with someone from my hometown, again in from South

Sponsors (00:03:37)

[00:03:37] Australia, up in the hills and adite. But before we get into that little bit of news but oh, perhaps we should thank our sponsors before we get into that as well just want to give a quick shout out to our supporters. Absolutely a big thank you to our founding sponsors. 475 High Performance Building Supply backed in architects: Glavel foam glass gravel, Minotair, all-in-one hvac and dehumidification units. Mitsubishi

Intro and news (00:04:07)

[00:04:07] Electric Trane HVAC US, Partel, ROCKWOOL North America, Sto Corp and Zola Windows. Also thanks to our champion sponsors, Ikon Windows and doors, Intelligent Membranes, PROSOCO and Source 2050. And thank you to our stakeholder partner NYSERDA, the New York State energy research and development authority. So I just checked my google alert for Passive House and got a notification.

[00:04:39] That the world's first Passive House hospital has just opened. That's very exciting and I think it's going to feature prominently at the international Passive House conference I believe in vbot on March 10th and 11th. Well, as it should, because this is in Frankfurt, which is not far from bo b. It's just kind of a very short train journey if you happen to be on a fast.

[00:05:09] Moving German train. So this project I remember this being talked about quite a while ago because it's a it's a pretty big project as any any hospital would be 79,000 square m at the cost of 200 60 million euro. It's going to have space for up to 675 beds and also four places for a day clinic and, yeah, it's quite.

[00:05:39] Exciting because it is the first full Passive House hospital and and clinic to be certified and that I can imagine that in the detail there's quite a lot of complications and be really interesting to dive into that around, particularly around things like airtightness and tightness and ventilation and also all the you know hospital is one of those places where you do really need to keep things at a constant temperature and control the.

[00:06:09] Humidity. So it absolutely makes sense. But there I can imagine there'll be some technical challenges in achieving that. Some of the results, well, what they? What this article is saying about the efficiency of the building is that the typical consumption for this type of building, built sort of mid last century, would the estimate would be around 500 kilowatt hours per square meter.

[00:06:40] Per year and the design of this one is predicted to be around 150 kilowatt hours per square meter per year, and that's including oil heating, cooling, hot water, electricity and ventilation. So a massive saving. They're saying that it cost around that cost, which sounds pretty big, of 260 million euros. It was about 6% additional cost.

[00:07:13] To get it to Passive House. So a little bit of a bigger upfront investment, but with significant ongoing savings and hopefully better, healthier conditions as well, which is kind of what you want in a hospital, no kidding, and for folks who are interested in hearing from the designer of this hospital back in episode 40, so this: we did an interview, Mary and Ilka. Mary James and Ilka Cassidy did an interview with Petra Wörner, of Wörner.

[00:07:46] Traxler Richter, the architecture firm that designed this hospital, so we'll include a link to that in show notes so you can check that out. That was a interview back in may of 2021 and they had just passed their airtightness test at that at that point and had a 0.13 air change changes per hour at 50 Pascal, so well below the necessary threshold, beating the necessary.

Interview: Jessica Allen (00:08:19)

[00:08:19] Threshold by a significant margin for Passive House certification. Nice, yeah, so looking forward to hearing more about that. But interesting and worthy note that it's just opened. Yeah, no kidding, all right, well, let's get into this week's interview. So back this side of the world. I caught up with Jessica Allen a couple of weeks ago. Jessica lives in South Australia.

[00:08:50] Where I grew up and it now works for alongside Jackson Digney. Now Jackson hasn't featured on the Passive House Accelerator before, but he probably should. I've. I've caught up with Jackson when I've visited my parents back in Adelaide and he lives up in the in Hondorf in Adelaide Hills and has built a couple of passive houses in Adelaide and that's quite a.

[00:09:22] Significant thing because Adelaide is a very temperate climate. It's quite warm, so convincing people that airtightness is a good thing in those conditions is not necessarily easy and it's very much a right at that early stage, early adopter stage still in that part of the world. So it's really cool to see Jackson now with a a couple of homes to show people. I think they've got a show home now as

[00:09:53] Well, and it's a common story where a builder embraces Passive House in a market where there aren't many suppliers of wraps and high quality windows and and things like that, and one thing leads to another, and and Jackson realized that it's easier for him just to start bringing that stuff in and making it available to the rest of the market. And that's how Climasure was born: to provide some of those products but also the expertise into

[00:10:24] That local market in South Australia and that's where Jessica comes in. She is the technical manager of Climasure and she's very passionate about education as well as serving that growing market and and building interest in all things: Passive House, airtightness and and high performance building. She is a Passive House designer herself and and has a lot of

[00:10:57] Experience in the sustainability and energy efficiency field and also, kind of like myself, is interested in the health of buildings as well. So anyway, yeah, like I said, I caught up with Jessica and asked her sort of how she got into this field. So I hope you enjoy this and we'll we'll catch up after the show, after the interview. [00:11:28]. All right, well, good to chat, Jessica, I have a. I always like talking to people in South Australia. Having grown up there, I feel I feel very attached to the place. Give it. Can you give us a bit of an idea of where you are and what it's like? Hi, maty, how you going? Thanks for having me. I am currently based in

[00:12:01] Adelaide in South Australia. So the office that I work in is in the hills, Adelaide Hills in Hondorf, which is a cooler climate than the Adelaide plains. Where I live is on the Adelaide plains, near the coast, so at the moment it's, I think it's about 32 degrees today and sunny. There's no wind, which is but oh, it's very pleasant, but warm. It's been very.

[00:12:32] Windy the last couple of days, so Adelaide's quite variable. You know we can have four seasons in one day here, as you would know. So you know you've always got to take, you know, your jacket and a brolly just in case the weather turns if you go out. But you can also, this time of year, midsummer, you can also stay above 30 all night long and and get up to 40 during the day and get quite unbearably hot. I have, I can recall, a couple of

[00:13:04] Nights where it was sort of 35 40 degrees at midnight. That doesn't happen too often, though it usually gets. If it's going to be a really scorching hot day, it's usually mid 20s during the overnight, which is still uncomfortable to sleep in. Yeah, those extreme overnight temperatures, yeah. The other defining feature, I guess, is the dryness. Er, and yes, they really dry, do you?

[00:13:35] Know what the average rainfall is there. I just remember it being very low. Yeah well, I looked up some bomb stats today, just this morning, just to but sort of get some information, and it says 36 mil is the average rainfall across the year. Does that sound about right to you, 36 mil? The numbers I've got are 36 m per.

[00:14:06] Per month, so not annually. So, yeah, it's about 400 mil a year. Yeah, about, it's about 400 mil a year, which is staggeringly low. Yeah, we, you know, we, you get that in a day where I'm here in Auckland, 36, 4, 40, 40 MM. Yeah, so you, and I guess, as well as that rainfall, the relative humidity is also generally pretty low, it's not.

[00:14:36] Not tropical heat, it's a. It's pretty dry conditions because you got you're. You're right next to a big desert, basically that's right. We get all of that dry, dry from up north. The relative humidity is only about 60 65%. So yeah, it is pretty dry here. Go for a run and you throats like, yeah, people can't handle humidity and so Adelaide is home.

[00:15:06] Is it always? Did you grow up in ad you come from? Come from there. Yeah, I was born here, lived here for the first 10 years of my life with my family and then we moved around a bit with my father's work. He was a civil engineer and he worked for a number of years up in Queensland up far, far north, and so I've lived in a few Queensland towns, central queensland up in the tropical north, for a little while, central Queensland as

[00:15:37] An adult, with my, my own family and now back in Adelaide. We came back to Adelaide and we've been based here for quite some time now, just, you know, to be near, be near everyone else. Yeah, so yeah, Adelaide is home, but I have moved around a bit. And what do you tell people when they ask you what you do? I actually find it a little bit hard to explain because I can't just say I'm a lawyer and everyone knows what that is.

[00:16:07] I sort of say I've sort of whittled it down to: I consult on high performance building. That's about as succinct as I can make it without going into detailed explanations about airtightness. And is there generally a followup question to that? The people want to know building is, or they just no, they walk away. Oh, that's interesting. Blank mostly. That's cool. Yep, what does h? What does that mean for?

[00:16:39] You in the context of where you are in South Australia? What is? How would you define high performance building anything above building code right now is high performance to the, to the, to the public here. I worked for a number of years in building code compliance, energy modeling and I I've seen firsthand the weaknesses in the modeling and the weaknesses in translation to site and knowledge gaps and all sorts of things, which is why

[00:17:10] I am working in this space. You know the Passive House high performance space now. Yeah, so I think any anything that is over and above what the building code requires, you know, is considered high performance. People, that which is a relatively low stars is high performance. Yeah, it's a pretty low bar in terms of the Australian

[00:17:41] Building code it is, I understand it is but correct. The Australian building code is working hard. The last iteration from last year will come into play in September this year after its transition period, and there have been some major changes in the residential code. This code change but there are still a number of gaping holes and the biggest change I think is

[00:18:13] The condensation stuff. We finally paying attention properly to condensation management and builders are being held to account for that. Yeah, so that's it's. It's a big step forward, but there's also there's still a big education gap as to what that actually means. Yeah, well, we'll get into that, but first want to go back a step and talk about how you got into being a.

[00:18:47] Consultant for high performance building. How did that come about? Well, I have been around. As I mentioned, my dad was a civil engineer. I've been around engineering and and construction my whole life. I didn't actually take this path. I didn't turn it into a career until after I had my children, so I was a late starter. I thought I might like to design houses, so I started a diploma of building design here in.

[00:19:17] Adelaide about 10 or 11 years ago, and then the first sustainability subject I hit changed my trajectory completely. I stopped caring about how building looked and my main concern was how they worked. So from there I got a job doing the energy modeling that I mentioned. I did that whilst I was studying and and my and had my family, and then came air.

[00:19:48] Air, airtightness, and then came Passive House. So you know, I had sort of got to know how the energy modeling for the building code here worked, yeah, and became: I wanted better. You know you're going to, you know I just there's a better way to do it. If you get it right at the start, then it just seemed to me to be: if you, if you have the knowledge, then you can get it right to start with, instead of you know, doing the absolute minimum.

[00:20:20] And thinking that's enough. I'm guessing airtightness wasn't a major part of your diploma course. Not at all. I I came across airtightness testing because somebody I worked with did it, and as soon as I found out what he was doing I said to him: you know, I want to be, I want to help you. And then he left the company and there a couple of changeovers, but then I ended up with the service as my respon. My main

[00:20:50] Responsibility in that role and and was that something that you, you had to push for or was it being asked for? Probably a bit of both. There's definitely, although the majority of the industry, majority of the construction in Australia and in South Australia is building code only, buing code level minimum compliance. There is a sect, there's a, there is a pocket of the.

[00:21:21] Industry that does want high performance, and there's not that many people providing these sorts of services, particularly airtightness testing, so those that want it know who to come to right, and so there is an influx of work that comes in without us going and looking for it, but there's that's. You know, there's a a large element of preaching to the choir in this high performance industry. You've got all these people that love it and want to talk about it's. That's great, but they're already on board. There's really

[00:21:53] It's the rest of the industry that you want to talk about it with. So you, when I tell people what I do and they just kind of go blank, you know it's. It's a real indicator as to what the level of knowledge is out there. And yeah, you know you can't do better if you don't know better, yeah. So yeah, I try to encourage those sorts of conversations, yeah, and, and how does that generally go? Because, as we talked about, it's relatively pleasant for a good chunk of the year in Adelaide and around south australia. So

[00:22:25] How do you convince people that it's worthwhile keeping the outside and keeping the inside more controlled? That is a challenge I've had. I've had conversations with people who are high up in this industry and they look at me blankly when I, when we talk about double glazing and they say why would you double glaze a window if it's going to be open and it's it's such a common question, you know people are like why?

[00:22:56] Would I have an airtight house. I hear the birds outside, so it's it's a frustrating conversation to have and the fact is you're not really catering to 50 or 60% of the year. That's pleasant. You're catering, or what? Whatever the percentages are. You're catering to the extremes. You're catering to the really cold nights and the really hot days, which are very uncomfortable, and heat waves here in 40° for 3, four, five days.

[00:23:27] In a row, they are dangerous. Yeah, to some people. Yeah, so it's. It's not about whether or not it snows it. If you're in the Adelaide Hills, it is freezing. If your house is not well insulated and and it's leaky. If you're got a western facing coastal house, at 4:00 at in the height of summer, it is roasting it's. We still get really unc comfortable.

[00:23:58] Here, and there's a lot of we get. They're really hot and they're really cold, yeah, here in here in Adelaide. So there are plenty of extreme conditions here that require much better performance housing in order for occupants to be comfortable. And are those situations is that a case for airtightness or do people see that as a case for better insulation and bigger air conditioning systems? They all, they think it's air conditioning straight away, you know, and yes, straight away, I've heard. I

[00:24:29] Overheard, not even work-related conversations. I was at a friends party and they it's been so hard and you know air conditioning because they don't. Like I said before, if they don't know better they can't do better they. There's no sort of understanding that you can actually make a building perform better by building it better. Solar panels and air conditioning is the solution. Yeah, most people go straight for so it's. It's just.

[00:25:01] A the status quo? Yeah, really, are there limits to what airtightness can achieve, though, in that type of environment and, and I guess, by extension, Passive House? You, it is a warm climate still. You have those cold conditions as well, but you, there are predominant these long periods of when it is quite warm and, and uncomfortably dangerously, even hot. Yes, corre, are there limits to what airtightness can provide in those?

[00:25:33] Circumstances. I think there are limits. Of course. Airtightness is one element. It's the basis of all high performance housing, as you are well aware. If you don't have an airtight home, it doesn't matter how well you insulate it, you're going to be. The inside temperatures are going to be compromised. Yeah, so airtightness is one of the things that needs to be done properly, you know, you know.

[00:26:05] There's five pillar of Passive House. They are applicable to all housing, not just passive, certified passive houses, and airtightness is more. It's airtightness is actually in my travels I found it's. It's equally about controlling air temperature as it is about health, or probably more about health. So it's about controlling the indoor air quality, the humidity and the health of the building itself, as well as the health of the occupants. Yeah

[00:26:36] Making sure that indoor humidity and and relative humidity and dew points are controlled. Yeah, you know the, along with all the other elements of insulation and thermal bridging and whatnot. It's one of it's. It's like a recipe of a recipe. Yeah, so tell us a bit about Climasure, what is Climasure and what' you get up to? The Climasure is a primarily we sell Pro Clima building membranes, the

[00:27:08] Pro Clima membranes for residential and commercial construction. The company was started a few years ago by a gent named Jackson Digney and he owns Enduro Builders who are a Passive House builder in the hills and've had. We have spoken Jackson. There you go. Yeah, he's. He's well known around Adelaide for what he does. He's the best at what he does in this in this part of the world and he's very open with how much he he shares his

[00:27:40] Knowledge he. You know we both go around visiting builders and and showing them how to do what he does as standard. So Jackson started Climasure as his knowledge grew, how knowledge of this airtightness and Passive House stuff kind of grew concurrently. He was a client of mine in my old, my previous role, and we were sort of learning at the same time, and he applied all of these principles to his building company and once he came upon the Pro Clima membranes he was like

[00:28:10] Well, I want to. I want more builders to do that, more builders to use these products. So I'm going to sell them, I'm going to become a distributor and because he's he was very busy with Enduro Builders, he got me on board to run Climasure uhuh. So I brought all of my energy modeling and consulting, airtightness, hygrothermal analysis, all Passive House, all of that interest and then brought it over with me and then we've grown it since I started.

[00:28:41] With Jackson just over a year ago. Yeah, so, and so you say that you you're selling and distributing, but I I get the sense that it's it's more than just selling product. Yeah, where we're now, before I came on board there was certain an element of consulting, but I think I me coming on board has brought a much stronger consulting element to this company. So there's, you know, airtightness consulting. Hygrothermal analysis.

[00:29:12] PHPP and, just you know, passive design information, anything that's thermal bridging analysis, anything that's building performance related, we can help with. So, yeah, it's not, we don't, we're not just a distributor. Yeah, it's super exciting that there is a market for that now, even though it's small and and is you know, a handful of people doing it. The fact that it's justified a a position and to grow a company around that as a primary service.

[00:29:42] Is super exciting. It really is. And there is, like I said, a pocket of clients who really are like. We've got some builders who only use the Pro Clima membranes. They're really, they want to do the right thing from the start. They high performance builders. And then we've got other clients that come to us who just want a house that's not Passive House but near Passive House. You know they want a better performing building and you know it's.

[00:30:14] Always fun working people well. It looks fun. You've got awesome post and people should check those out. Yeah, always makes good photos putting a, a fan in a in a door and and turn on. But you've got some other great social media posts that I've seen over the last couple of years of visiting building sites, so definitely check those out. But tell me about the hygrothermal and and also thermal.

[00:30:44] Bridging. Is that something that's growing in demand? Yeah, so hygrothermal definitely, because that's just coming to the building code. So here in Australia the condensation management clauses require they first up require a vapour permeable membrane in the colder climates. The newest iteration of the building code requires a vapour permeable membrane in the Adelaide plains as well. I think it's from climate zone four, five, six, seven and eight. So we've got eight climate zones, 1 through to eight.

[00:31:16] I'm pretty sure it's four, five, six, seven and eight now require a class 4 vapour permeable membrane to control condensation and the. That's the dts requirement. It's a performance solution that requires a hygrothermal assessment using a program called WUFI, which is a German program that's been used for 30 years over in Europe to determine a mold growth risk. It does other things as well, but we primarily use it here for mold growth risk and you can model a wall or a roof system and sort of input climate data.

[00:31:49] Input, like the wall, buildup, any risk factors, orientation, blah, and it will give you a number between one and six and that is the mold risk. So in the building code you have to receive a three or under in order to pass the performance solution. So if you can't prove that your wall or roof system has has got low mold growth risk, you can't build it. And will that be for all? Is that for all building types in those climate zones?

[00:32:22] That is for yes, sorry, all building types, no, only residential, and I think I don't. No, not, it's not not required for apartment buildings yet class two, right. So a class building in those zones, yeah, and that's that's pretty massive, right? I mean, that's a big change in the requirements of the building code. I mean, we talked about how they're pretty. It's a pretty low bar to be above the building code, but having that in there is a pretty

[00:32:56] Significant achievement. I I spoke with Jesse Clarke last week, I know has been instrumental in campaigning for about a decade now get those things into the building code and yeah, it's. That's also really exciting to see that sort of change at that level. It really is. It's sort of stand up and take notice, same as airtightness terminology coming into the code in 2019. Yeah, it's, builders are on notice for sure that this building

[00:33:28] Stuff ain't no joke and they need to be aware it's. The challenge that I think they're coming up against is how they actually get the information. There's no cpd for builders or carpenters or plumbers, so they're finding out as they go, hopefully not when it's too late, when they're, you know, being well. And the other thing that we talked about, yeah, last week was: it's not

[00:33:59] Just those builders and the designers, but it's also the consenting authorities and the councils and whoever. Who, the who, the regulators? Do you get a sense that they know what they're going to be looking for or have any ability to check those standards? Generally speaking, no, they don't understand energy. I attended a lecture at TA when I was doing my studies and it was a certifier and he got to the energy section.

[00:34:32] Of his talk and he said: oh, this is a really specialized area. You know we rely on the consultants, so they'll get a report, they'll look at who wrote the report, they'll go. Yep, I trust Matthew Cutler-Welsh to do the right thing. I would you know they rely on the consultants and the specialist knowledge around them. I don't that's. That is a generalization. There might be some out there who who do get it better than others, but in my experience generally

[00:35:03] Speaking, the certifying authorities don't understand energy really at all and it's complicated, it's not easy to get it's, you know, and they their main priority is making sure that a house doesn't fall down or burn down. Whether or not it's comfortable is lower on the priority list to a, a council or a certifier than it is to the occupant. Yeah and build, so yeah, where do you see things going from here? So that I mean that is some

[00:35:34] Significant changes, but you still got some pretty big challenges. You got cost of materials and shortage of labor and you just changing e economic demands. But where do you see things going, say in the next three years, in that higher performance building? What do I say it going? Where do I see it going? Or where would I like it to go? Where would you like it to go? I?

[00:36:07] Think I you can't put the cart before the horse, so I think I know this is a really slow trickle in this industry, so I don't have any huge expectations. But what I would like and there going to be another code change in the next three years as well, so it'd be good to see some form of mandated as-built audit process like airtightness testing. It seems like a no-brainer to use that. We just need more airtightness testers to do the work.

[00:36:38] Yeah, or you know, there's currently some movement in the n? Her space where air infiltration targets are looking at being used in the models energy models so that's a verifiable outcome. Yeah, to verify the house is actually going to perform the way it says it's. You know the designer says it's going to. The other thing I think I would really like to see is better sort of awareness at the education level for designers and architects. So you know you get.

[00:37:09] Architects coming out of uni who don't know anything about. They've done one subject on the orientation of the sun. Yeah, and that's it, so that I would like to see designers and architects have more integrated education on this stuff, whether it's Passive House or b testing or you know anything. Really I've been trying to. I've done a couple of that sh at tapes. I went to see the Adelaide

[00:37:41] university architecture director a few years ago. It's kind of hard to get into these spaces. Their programs are step, but it would be great to see students coming out of these institutions with a better understanding and then, where the information spread, really begin, yeah, well, and you take your experience as an example. You, you hear it, you hear something at the right time and it changes the course of their career potentially, if they can see that, hey, there is actually a better way and a

[00:38:11] Verifiable way of proving that, the quality of what they produce. So, yeah, I think you're right, education certainly a key element to that. Yeah, I mean a lot of architecture students go into that because they're arty, they like, they like, yeah, pretty things, but I think it's it's still important that they understand how what they're designing actually functions when it's built. Yeah, absolutely yeah, you, you got some numbers there.

[00:38:43] On Passive House in South Australia. Yes, so we have. Currently we have one certified Passive House and that was built a good was over 10 years ago. That house was built, yeah, and nothing much has happened up until. We've had a bit of a explosion, if you want to call it that explosion of passive yeah, of passive houses. In the last 12 months, we've gone from one in the last decade to four. What three more about to be?

[00:39:15] Sort of finished, about to be certifi, certified, and another one that's being built, so that's in the sort of cbd hills area. And then there's another one in Waloo that's just being started now. Their frames are going up this week I think and another one that's about to come across my desk for some modeling. So that's four, five, six, six or seven, yeah, passive houses going on at the moment in South Australia, which is significant. It's a small number but it's.

[00:39:47] Significant growth. Yeah, in one year, yeah, a very short period of time. And it's not a massive place, you it's. It's not a Sydney or a Melbourne, so you, that is significant. And underneath that there'll be a lot more that are not necessarily certified but are going down a sort of more airtight and and higher performance following the same strategy, but maybe not just getting official certification. Yeah, there's lots of that.

[00:40:18] Every house that Jackson builds with Enduro Builders, every house that team builds is high performance, and there are a couple of other builders in Adelaide that we work with that are the same. So, yeah, the high performance industry is certainly alive and well. Yeah, that's awesome and yeah, I plan to keep it, do my part to keep it all humming along, and I'm sure, I'm sure you will, and you know Jackson deserves a lot of credit for that, and

[00:40:48] And and we talk a lot on the show about the value of sharing that knowledge and and seeing colleagues as just that and rather than competitors. And you know, sharing that information with other builders, I think, is proving that it's a successful strategy. You don't have to keep all this stuff to yourself, because there's more than more than enough to go around, and having other people do buildings to a similar standard is beneficial for everyone. So you, I really appreciate Jackson's

[00:41:19] Efforts in that space. You know, doing simple things like inviting bu people around pre-lining so they can see the all the membranes up and see how well it's well it's performing at that sort of partial complete stage I think is a really powerful marketing tool as well as an education tool. So, yeah, look, and and to you as well, the. I think the stuff that you're you're posting does help to spread the message and I I think it's great the work that you've been involved.

[00:41:50] In. So, thank you, h, keep up the good work, right, I look forward to seeing see more posts. No worries, thanks, and and hopefully next time I'm in Adelaide I'll get to go and visit a few certify passive houses. Yeah, do it. There's, we've got. We've got enduros at the minute and there should be a few more. So, yeah, you're welcome anytime. Awesome, thank you very much, Jessica. Appreciate it. All right, thank you very much. Bye, bye.

Host discussion (00:42:22)

[00:42:22] And that was Jessica Allen, who is the technical manager of Climasure, based in South Australia. What you think, Zack? It was excellent. I it was a great kind of onew punch from Jesse Clarke a couple ep episodes ago, and then and now Jessica Allen, and I recall Jesse talking.

[00:42:58] About that journey that started from kind of his recognition that there's this cascade of intervention in buildings right that starts with insulation and then to moving to airtightness and then to vapor and moisture management. And he talking about, you know, the work in Australia on the Australia Energy Building Energy code rules where you know he thanks in part to his advocacy work there, the building code in.

[00:43:28] 2019 engaged with airtightness and now the next step is to is to work on moisture management and condensation. And then very similar kind of story from Jessica, where she's, you know, starting with well, first starting with designing buildings, thinking about the way that buildings look, and her, what did she say? She said she, she stopped worrying about how buildings looked and and started caring about how they work. Yeah, and so that's that moved.

[00:43:58] Her to energy modeling and then this introduction to airtightness and then to Passive House. Yeah, so there a obviously kindred spirits there. Those two yeah. And we have this thing we've talked about Nat quite a lot: the national h energy rating scheme, and that's where a lot of people start out because it's required now. But then people, once they dive into that and if they' done any energy modeling outside of that or get into any building science, they sort of pretty easy to

[00:44:31] Get a little bit disappointed, I guess, by the rigor of naters. I mean it serves a purpose. It's not easy to have a, a system that required for all housing. That's going to be really robust, but people if they, if they learn about building science, they really want to get into more detail on it. You know they lead to things like PHPP and and Passive House and, as you say

[00:45:01] That. Then there's this growing frustration about how far behind the national construction code, the NCC, in Australia and and likewise here in New Zealand building code, just they're fairly archaic in terms of some of their requirements. So yeah, Jesse Clarke has made a lot of progress in that area and it's a relatively small network work. I've seen plenty of social media posts of Jessica Allen heading along.

[00:45:33] To the building physics forum and catching up with people like Jesse and and Sean Maxwell. Dan Jacobs, who who airtightness. Airboss. Dan, who's a great person to follow on Instagram and around social media. Who's, who's a amazing German c traveling around Australia teaching people how to how to do airtightness, which is similar to what Jesse,

[00:46:03] sorry, Jessica Allen does. She's also definitely worth checking out on Instagram and Climasure and and on social media channels does some great posts of all the houses she visits and various airtightness tests that she's around for, and it's really great to see that starting to take off in South Australia, where it's it's still just very early days in that journey. Yeah, I was I struck by this.

[00:46:38] Requirement that is being applied to more and more buildings in Australia sounds like demonstrating low mold risk and that score around mold risk and the use of hygrothermal analysis and and WUFI I mean. Those are important steps and ones that I think that you know Washington State energy code could learn from. So it's while I know it's.

[00:47:09] Frustrating. There's also like that's, that's a big deal. It is a big deal it's, it's going to be really inter to see how that, how that plays out. I mean, it's really impressive to have the actual end goal as the requirement there, yeah, which is the reduction of mold risk, as opposed to saying you have to have you r3 in your walls or r six in your roof. You know, you know a very prescriptive method. It's more well this

[00:47:40] Is how it has to perform. You need to demonstrate that this is not going to happen now. There's definitely some hooks in there, particularly with all the variables that there are in WUFI, and that's something that those involved with things like the building physics forum are really pushing the industry to have: standardization around the assumptions that you make when you're doing WUFI models, because that's that's the only way to get consistency.

[00:48:10] Otherwise if there's a risk there that if a if a designer or a building owner doesn't like the result, they just go to a different eng model until they get the result that they're after. So it's still early stages in that industry and there's a lot of work to be done to educate but also to standardize and and make those protocols consistent across all energy models so that we're getting some good.

[00:48:41] Results, but it's. It's a really positive step. It's it's really great to have that acknowledged and and the other thing I really liked about that is that it really highlights the health aspect of why it's important to do design well, because the energy savings is there. It's really important, but it's it's never going to be as significant as Europe or North America, where you're getting months of near zero degrees.

[00:49:11] Celsius and and there's this you know you're trying to wean off I mean Australia. They do have coal for a lot of their energy supply at the moment, but there's there's just not as much of a driver for pure energy efficiency savings. So I think having that emphasis on health and reduction of mold is a really positive state. That just a little teaser. I just recently had the chance to

[00:49:43] Interview Dr Wolfgang Feist, of the founder of Passive House Institute, which was a real a privilege, and one of the things we were talking about was for people to maybe not prioritize energy efficiency and you know wondering why aren't we more, why can't we be more, even more successful at kind of elevating energy efficiency? And I was talking about well, you know there's that notion of negawatts that never really caught on, that Amy 11'S coined that term so that the no, you know the

[00:50:15] Notion that there are these energy services that energy efficiency provides. So maybe because it's it's not, then it's not a less than, but it's like this is a positive thing, and and he Wolfgang said something to the effect of: yeah, but it's not really the right way to think about it, because we're not. We shouldn't think of energy efficiency as competing, for example, with solar energy or these other, for these form, the other forms of clean energy, but instead be thinking about the

[00:50:48] More holistic, human benefits of building better, and so I think it gets. It gets to exactly what you're saying there about. You know, and this it's not yeah, leading with health and the building durability, increasingly, climate resilience and human health all those things are special benefits that better building brings. I look forward to that one. It's going to be good in lead up to pive conference in Germany, yeah, so

[00:51:19] Fun is Wang gonna be? I believe so. I. I you know. Actually I didn't ask him, I, I just made the assumption that he'd be there. But you know, he has made this shift, which we touch on a little bit, where he's handed the leadership reigns to a team of managing directors there, so he technically doesn't have to. I. I can't imagine him missing that conference. He'll be, he'll be. There was close. Why? Because the a lot of the workshops are in Darmstadt as well the day prior to the conference. As

Announcements (00:51:50)

[00:51:50] Well. So it's all. It's all pretty close, awesome. So well, we've got that coming up. Any any other items that we got coming up? Events? Yeah, so on the Passive House Accelerator live program, this coming week we have a project showcase edition of the show, so it's going to be the fifth street Passive House modeled and measured performance. This is a a project in Boise, Idaho, designed by Scott Yribar for

[00:52:22] Skyler Swinford and and kind of gced I think by Skyler, his own house, really interesting data that they'll be sharing about the modeled and measured and where it matched and where it didn't and and why, and then. So that's on February 15th in North America, really early in the morning, February 16th for you, and then on February 22nd we have a construction tech edition of the show and it will be Six Kane, the first EnerPHit plus certified.

[00:52:53] Commercial building in the United States and that's presented by Norm Horn and Gary Moshier. And then we alluded to the Passive House, the international Passive House conference in vis boden on March 10th and 11th, with project tours on March 12th. We are going to be there, Matthew and I and Mary and Michael and Ilka and Jose Sosa, the host of the one-on-one show. We all be in v spotting, we'll be.

[00:53:23] Doing a bunch of podcast interviews there, so I want to give a shout out to the folks who are underwriting that series and making it possible. So a big thank you to Ikon Windows and doors, Intelligent Membranes, Innotech Windows + Doors and Pro Clima. And also we are hosting co-hosting the Passive House exhibition party along with Passive House Institute at the conference, and that is being underwrite written by generous.

[00:53:53] Support from Rool Blas, USA and ers sign I we. There's also the Phius retrofit summit. That happens later in March, so we'll we'll do a link to that as well in show notes and we're going to be producing that's a three-day event. The Tuesday and Thursday evening events are produced by Phius and then we're doing a kind of tag-on Wednesday evening event produced by Passive House Accelerator in.

[00:54:24] Partnership. I think that's it for now. That's. It's a lot and, yeah, how those new format lives going oh, they're going really well. It was really fun, for example, to see the 101 session that Michael Ingui did 10 steps to designing your first Passive House. We had an audience of 250 people there and lots of lots of new folks, people posting on instagram of you know photo of their

[00:54:54] Office watching in the conference room. So I think that I know the change has not been great for folks down under, so apologies for that, but we are recording everything and that's right. You always catch up y? Yeah, very good, all right, well, thanks for that. Lots coming up. Definitely check all that out. Don't forget you can always sign up and and see either those recordings, but also sign up for newsletter so you stay in touch and up to speed with everything at the passive.

[00:55:26] House accelerator and we'll be back again next week on the Passive House Podcast. [00:55:56]. Oh, oh.o