238: Building Passive Houses

Wayne Dyet of WD Homes loves building Passive Houses

Wayne Dyet learnt about how things work as an aircraft engineer. Knowing how things fit together and attention to detail were important attributes for the job. He later turned his attention to building and started an apprenticeship. Now specialising in building Passive Houses, Wayne hasn’t looked back and is truly enjoying what he does.

Wayne’s break into Passive House came from a Dunedin connection with the team at Architype. Wayne describes one of their showcase homes, which has featured on Archipro, as a “high-end house with big windows and a stunning view”. It also happens to be a Certified Passive House.

On the topic of big windows and sliding doors, Wayne say that as a builder, he’s often at the mercy of the quality of the joining. He was very please on this particularly project to achieve a preliminary Blower Door door test of 0.3 ACH and a final result of 0.4. This is below the maximum allowable for 0.6 ACH for a Passive House.

The first successful Passive House project with Architype has led to more, says Wayne. Having a positive relationship with mutual trust is key to winning more rewarding work and producing great outcomes for clients.

Building a Passive House

One of Waynes tips for a successful build is to fix things straight away, as they come up. “Be of the mindset that you get things right, now”. He avoids creating a big list of things to come back to, as is common practice for a lot of builders.

Building Passive Houses is Getting Popular

Wayne is seeing some encouraging trends in the market. He says, “you can still have a gorgeous home”, but people are redirecting some of their money towards performance features rather than just ‘bling’.

Wayne says that any builder who has built high-end homes can successfully build a Passive House. “You have to be very accurate”, he says. The attention to detail required for fine, high-end home building is a similar skill set to building Passive Houses.

WD Homes

WD Homes is a family run home building company based in Dunedin, New Zealand. After doing a few Passive House builds, Wayne now chooses to specialise in this work.


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