Eco Design Advisor

With the weather heating up, a couple of our senior scientists shared a few tips with RNZ on how to keep your home cool this summer! Check it out: https://ow.ly/EBX150UkuNk

Great to see EECA’s new Home Energy savings calculator to help inform people of their options. I meet people all the time that think bottles gas is cheaper than electricity in our area. It will be good to have a tool to show them otherwise.

It was great to have you there Damien!

Being at the Eco Design Advisor Conference (Retrofit for the future) in Christchurch today was a fantastic opportunity, and I had the pleasure of networking with numerous construction industry professionals. Many thanks to the School of Built Environment - Massey University (College of Science) for funding this scientific trip for me.

It was brilliant to have you (Andrew E.) at the conference! great to see so many smiling faces!!

It's great to have Formance on board as a Gold sponsor for our Eco Design Advisor conference tomorrow! Come along and see some of their products and have a chat with them. https://lnkd.in/gKmHVuPB

We are lucky to have Mike Casey talking to us about Electrification of Everything at upcoming housing conference. Mike is an orchardist in Central Otago who believes he has created the world’s first fully electric farm. He has electrified 21 machines on his farm and in his home and powers them through New Zealand’s national grid, as well as through his on-farm renewable system. Mike’s here to discuss capital and operational costs, pay back, and tell the story of how he made it all happen and why he is never going back. Transparency is the key to building trust, and you will get a truly authentic story with all the ugly bits included. Mike is now the CE of Rewiring Aotearoa, a New Zealand charity dedicated to electrifying millions of fossil fuel machines in New Zealand as fast as possible. Why? It's a Win-Win. Everyone saves money, and everyone saves emissions. We now just have to figure out how to make it easy.

We are lucky to have Stephen McNeil from BRANZ speaking on his warm roof research work at our conference next week. Stephen McNeil is a Senior Building Physicist at BRANZ. His research covers ventilation, airtightness, moisture issues and indoor air quality of New Zealand homes. Stephen has worked closely with the Fraunhofer Institute of Building Physics over a number of years, contributing to the development to the WUFI suites of software, and has extensively benchmarked it against experiments in BRANZ experimental buildings – with a particular focus on air carried moisture. His current interests lie in improving the building stock in NZ to reduce the burden on the health system, while mitigating the risk of unintended consequences in terms of moisture and overheating. He is a regular contributor to BRANZ Build Magazine, and author of a number of scientific publications in international journals and conferences. In his talk he will cover the retrofit process of fitting a warm roof to the ventilation test building at BRANZ. Key data from measurements of the systems performance will be presented, comparing both wintertime and summertime to the previous roof structure. He will also explore the effect of warm roof structures on ventilation system performance and the impact on moisture risk in roof construction.

Vicki White is a Senior Research Scientist at BRANZ (Building Research Association of New Zealand). She is an experienced social scientist with proficiency in both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Vicki’s expertise includes delivering and analysing national housing surveys, including the BRANZ House Condition Survey and Household Energy End-use Project 2 (HEEP2). Prior to coming to Aotearoa New Zealand, Vicki was a Research Project Manager at the Centre for Sustainable Energy, in Bristol, England. Her UK research focused on modelling and understanding the impacts of energy and climate change policies on consumers. The Household Energy End-use Project 2 (HEEP2) is a national study of energy use and conditions in New Zealand homes. The study is collecting detailed data through a combination of in-home monitoring, surveys and accessing retailer data. Over 750 households are taking part in the national study in some capacity. An additional 40 homes are being monitored in Canterbury as part of a co-funded study of Code-compliant and high-performance dwellings. While data collection is ongoing, as households are monitored for 12 months, all fieldwork and surveys have been completed. BRANZ will present further details about the data being collected and share some initial insights into sample characteristics, occupant behaviours and attitudes towards energy use.

It is great to have Andrew E. from NZGBC as our keynote speaker at our upcoming conference on Retrofit in Housing. Andrew is a qualified economist with more than fourteen years’ experience in the built environment. Working for consultancies, associations, government and built environment charities, he has a wealth of knowledge in housing, market mechanism, advocacy and the construction supply chain. Andrew joined the New Zealand Green Building Council in September 2016 as Chief Executive. The NZGBC is the country’s leading not-for-profit for the sustainable built environment. As well as exemplary research, the NZGBC oversees Homestar and Green Star the award winning certifications for New Zealand homes and buildings, and NABERSNZ, the tool for confirming performance of offices in use. https://lnkd.in/gKmHVuPB