Congrats! Building a Passive House is a great idea. The Passivhaus Institute in Germany sets the standard, globally, for homes that are super comfortable to live in, and super cheap to run. I’m working on owner building a certified Passive House and I’ve done years of research on this topic here in Perth, Western Australia.
I was just tapping out a few text message recommendations to someone who’s looking into this, when I realised I should maybe put a blog post together, so here you are! My learnings so far about who can help you build a certified Passive House in Perth. I feel like there’s a lot of greenwashing out there, but these are a selection of people who, as best I can judge, are very much the real deal. I’ve got no affiliations with any of them, this is just my authentic ten cents.
I-Smart, Luke Kellet & Carlos Acuna
The company that has built the most certified Passive Houses in Perth, as listed on the Passive House Institute’s database, is I-Smart, owned by Brian Guinan, who hosts the excellent Sustainable Builders Yak podcast. I’ve visited several houses Brian has built, either fully certified Passive Houses, or just built to Passive House principles, and they’re beautifully done. I’ve not heard anyone say a bad word about the service he delivers.
Brian’s first certified Passive House was a gorgeous blue weatherboard house in North Beach in 2018. Here’s some more info about it on the Australian Passivhaus Association website. This was a collaborative project with Carlos Acuna, the homeowner, who is an engineer by background, and wanted a really comfortable and energy efficient house. Carlos is now also a Passive House Consultant, able to help you create a Passive House. Brian has since built certified Passive Houses in East Vic Park, Halls Head, and Wanneroo , with more on their way. Luke Kellet is the designer who has designed a number of these lovely houses.
Ben Caine & Trueline
Ben Caine, the architect behind Leanhaus, has also been busy in this space. A beautiful small home he designed for himself in Scarborough is on the Passive House database, and Ben has kindly supplied the gorgeous photo below from that project, as well as the one at the top of this page.
I haven’t seen that one in the flesh, but I have visited four other projects of Ben’s, some of which I believe are on their way to certification. Each is very different, very beautiful, and clearly extremely well thought through. One of his clients told me it felt like hers was the only house the team was building, the quality of their attention to her build was that good. Trueline builders have built a number of these, and I’ve had a couple of great chats with Blair Slack-Smith from their team, who is super passionate and knowleageable about all this.
Roger Joyner
The first certified Passive House in Perth was in 2015, led by architect and Passive House Consultant Roger Joyner. And it looks like Roger was also involved, as the Passive House Consultant, on a 2023 entry to the certified database, this house in Nedlands, which looks like it was led by Ewart Leaf, an architect based in Victoria, and built by Evans Builds.
Passive House principles
So those are the seven certified Passive Houses in Western Australia according to the Passive House Institute’s database. I’m pretty sure this is an incomplete list, I’ve seen other houses that I’m told were certified, but not yet added to the database, which is an additional process apparently.
There’s also a much wider phenomenon of people building ‘to Passive House principles’ without getting the certificate, and some very high-quality energy-efficient homes are definitely being built that way. Why would you not choose to certify? It comes down to cost. I think this can be quite frustrating for the builders, architects and consultants, because I hear it can be hard to find a client willing to invest the extra cash to obtain the certificate. There is a lot of consultancy and fees needed to get that piece of paper, which can add up to $15-25K of purely paper-based costs, and not everyone can see the value. Typically people are building their forever home, and don’t see the point of the certificate.
For myself, I’ve already owner renovated five properties in the UK, at least three of which I thought at the time were my forever home, so I’ve got an eye on resale value, even though currently I am thinking that this build will be my forever home! And I tend to think that a used Mercedes is likely to do better on the resale market than a used car that I assure you I built to Mercedes principles. And I say that partly because it can be that, when you ask someone why they didn’t certify, first they tell you that the piece of paper was pointless, then they start listing some of the further investments they would need to have made to achieve all the criteria for certification.
Also
So that’s a roundabout way of saying that, even though the teams above have delivered the Western Australian certified Passive Houses on the database, there are a lot of other people out there doing amazing work in this space, who may have the capabilities to build a certified Passive House, may already be doing that with others, and may already be delivering lots of great Passive House principles homes.
People I have met and been impressed with in this category include Timo Bleeker from Idealings Architecture and Marco Tassi from Eco Homes.
Passive Solar
And just in case you’re mixing up passive solar design with certified Passive House, then the Passive House peeps will be having heart attacks to see me writing this, but just to recommend Griff Morris at Solar Dwellings as the king of Perth passive solar homes. This can be a halfway house, in terms of price and performance, between standard construction and a full Passive House build.
The Passive House design process is very rigorous – the building physics for your home’s design will be calculated in detail, giving confidence that the building will perform as expected. It’s surprising how much a rule-of-thumb approach can be quite risky in terms of producing a genuinely comfortable house. But, Griff has built dozens of solar passive design houses over the years, I’ve visited a few and they do appear to be significantly more comfortable and more energy efficient than Perth’s standard construction.
HOWEVER, just to be clear that this is nowhere near the level of comfort and energy efficiency that a certified Passive House will give you. If you find standard Perth construction reasonably comfortable, you will find one of Griff’s homes a really nice step up. But, if you want the reliable level of year-round comfort that is the norm for modern houses in Europe and North America, combined with low energy bills, then Passive House is the solution.
Busting some myths
A few questions that pop up a lot at Passive House open days:
- Does a Passive House have to be timber frame? No. That is the method most often used in Australia, partly for cost-effectiveness. But Passive Houses around the world are regularly built using all different building materials. The Passive House criteria define your building’s performance, not what it looks like or what you build it with.
- Are you allowed to open the windows? Yes. Assuming the external air temperature is beneficial. I don’t even know where the myth comes from that you are not allowed to open the windows in a Passive House. It’s nonsense.
- Is Passive House applicable in this climate? Yes. Genuine comfort and low running costs are applicable everywhere.
- Double glazing doesn’t work in this climate? It is correct that double glazing doesn’t stop the sun heating up your house. That is not the purpose of double glazing. If anyone spins you a yarn about this, I would see that as a red flag. Your house design would not be able to achieve Passive House certification if it would allow the Perth summer sun to hit the glass of your windows. Your design will need to shade your windows from the summer sun. Your double glazing will then fulfil its purpose of reducing the heat conducting back and forth through your glazing, between the internal and external air, helping to keep your inside temperature where you want it.
- I can’t afford a Passive House? For sure, Passive House construction is more expensive than standard construction – standard construction is the cheapest building you are legally allowed to build. Achieving airtightness, adding insulation, and using double glazing all add some costs. But your budget can be managed by building smarter instead of building bigger. For example, you could trade a home theatre that will have dust bunnies blowing through it all of the time that you’re hardly using it, for a level of comfort and economy that can spark your joy 24/7/365.
Let me know if you have other questions, and I’ll see what I can do to add them in, or create a new post. Long live the myth-busters.
Owner build?
I’ve written this article for all the people who are interested in getting a builder to build a Passive House for them. I think I’m the first person to try and owner build one in Perth, and I don’t think I’ve come across anyone else yet in Australia who’s done it themselves, outside of construction industry professionals.
If you’re thinking about owner building one yourself, there’s plenty more that I’ll be happy to share, just get in touch.
Good luck!
Enjoy. Every Passive House owner I’ve met ABSOLUTELY LOVES living in their house.
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Photo credit for main image: Abbetthaus – Certified Passive House | Image supplied by Leanhaus architects | Photography by Jody D’arcy