Author: Matthew Cutler-Welsh
-
106: How to Prevent Water Damage with Wally
UPDATE July 2016: Check out the new features being added to Wally Wally is a wireless water leak detector, and temperature and humidity sensor for your home. As CEO of SNUPI Technologies, Jeremy Jaech told me, this isn’t particularly sexy, but it could be really valuable. On the contrary, I think the implications of this…
-
105: What is a Blower Door?
What is a blower door and why would you want to use one? Thomas van Raamsdonk is a home performance expert. He’s also an expert educator and can often be found touring New Zealand and Australia talking with design professionals, builders and clients about the virtues and techniques of better building. During his career of…
-
104: Architecture in Harmony with the Earth
Can you imagine meeting someone at university with similar interests, falling in love with them, then starting a practice together offering complementary design services to provide beautiful, functional architecture in harmony with the Earth? Sounds pretty idillic. And it’s what Matthew Swett and Sarah Birger have done to create Taproot Architects. Throw in the fact that they…
-
103: It’s All About Airtightness
Derek Ward’s strength is the science that connects good design with good performance. Clioma House specialises in ‘airtightness and effective insulation’. They help bridge the gap between the drawing board and the construction site. Call the Experts, Early The sooner you think about how much you want to do in relation to performance, the cheaper…
-
102: The Technical Side of Building Green
Matthew Vande and partner Amy Musser created VandeMussser Design to help with ‘the technical side of building green’. They found a great problem when they moved to North Carolina – builders who wanted to do right thing, but didn’t know what the right thing was. Matt, Amy and their team now help builders and their…
-
101: Vernacular Construction
Episode Foundations (the bottom line at the top) Invest up front in a good designer and you’ll save during construction. Vernacular construction is about designing and building appropriately for the local conditions. For a sustainable home, focus on insulation and ventilation.
-
What would you do to make a better place to live?
It’s episode 100! In this week’s special show, I turned the microphone around to hear from past (and future) guests and listeners answering the question “What would you do to make a better place to live?” What would you do to make a better place to live? Click To Tweet Here’s who we heard from:…
-
Prefab, Passive House and Passion
As a founding member of PassivHaus Maine, I should have guessed that Chris Corson would be pretty passionate about why and how we should build better homes. A quick look at EcoCor’s website suggests they are a good place to start for achieving a practical solution to a sustainable home. I caught up with Chris to talk…
-
How 475 can help you achieve a high performance home
So, you’ve decided you’d like a really good home. One that’s comfortable, healthy and energy efficient. That’s great, but unfortunately it’s not (yet) standard practice. Hopefully you can find a good designer to help (try this list if you like). But you’ll also need some good, non-standard products. This week I spoke with Ken Levenson…
-
Sustainable Building with Logs
Three years ago, John Donovan built a demonstration log house on his property in Waitakere, Auckland. The images in a recent newspaper article caught my attention, as did the mention of ‘eco’ and ‘efficient’. So I tracked John down to get his thoughts on sustainable building with logs. And we talked about pyramids… Te Huia Log Homes…