Wunderbar Passive House – We are not a company and don’t build houses. We are just a young couple wanting to inspire others. Join us in our journey of building our home that will be energy-efficient and warm with small ecological footprints.

Manufacturer – Izodom 2000 Polska

Posted on 30. December 2024 by Team Wunderbar

As a part of our building journey and closing off the year 2024, we would like to start sharing more about the products and businesses we worked with and that supported us.

We want to begin with an international company Izodom 2000 Polska (www.izodom.pl) established in 1991. This is the main structure of our house and is called ICF (Insulated Concrete Formwork). The Izodom walls require no thermal insulation, and provide a building with no thermal bridges, which is fast, resistant to moisture and fungi growth, and durability lasting over 150 years. The technology has a certificate of the Certified Passive House Components issued by the Passive House Institute in Germany.

Cheers to the year 2025!

A sign of life, 15 months later . . .

Posted on 20. August 2024 by Team Wunderbar

At the bottom of hopelessness and life-threatening hurdles in our passive house-build journey, we want to believe there are a mountain of opportunities. We are still alive and closer to finishing. We wanted to share a small glimpse of our house and the beautiful moment caught on camera today.

It’s a pity that we couldn’t find the pot of gold as folktales tell.

Could we promise that we will be back? No, and if we do, we will not be the same. Soon the tales of our unexpected journey will be brought to daylight the good, the bad, and the ugly ones.

As for now, we enjoy this rare moment of beauty and hope.

Richtfest celebration

Posted on 7. May 20237. May 2023 by Team Wunderbar

The roof shout (Richtfest) is considered a long-standing tradition and milestone in construction.

We celebrated it and hope that smashing traditionally a glass will turn off some of the bad luck and negative experiences with our building journey. There is still some work to be done until we can finally move in and share more to help others have a smoother building journey.

2nd Open Construction Day – Roof Shout

Posted on 29. April 2023 by Team Wunderbar

Our next open Passive House Construction Day is on 6 May!

We celebrate the completion of the next construction stage – the house envelope and roof shout! 😀

Here is the link to register on Facebook: https://fb.me/e/6xfcv38Bp

We hope you can be inspired and build a passive house that is energy-efficient, warm, and lasts for generations.

We look forward to seeing you there!

1st Open Construction Day

Posted on 23. September 2022 by Team Wunderbar

Are you interested to consume up to 90% less heating energy than a conventional house in New Zealand?

Come check out our passive house during construction in Orewa this Saturday (01 October 2022)

Here is the link to register on Facebook:

https://fb.me/e/2b9Rrd8Ij

We hope you can be inspired and build a passive house that is energy-efficient, warm, and lasts for generations.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Retaining walls have been passed by Council

Posted on 27. March 202227. March 2022 by Team Wunderbar

Our two retaining walls have been passed by Council, hitting the 2nd milestone of our building journey!

The first of 2 Izodom New Zealand containers will be on site this week. The foundation earthworks and slab for our house are about to begin.

Watch out for our next post for the first open construction day, coming soon.

Spatenstich

Posted on 1. February 20224. July 2022 by Team Wunderbar

We hit a milestone in our building journey!

Today we had our traditional “Spatenstich” (ground-breaking ceremony). Nevermind the sandals

Our constructors are passive house specialist Izodom New Zealand, building for passive house certification and Homestar 8 or above. Keeping wastage to the minimum is one of the many sustainability goals.

We look very much forward to driving up week by week to see the progress of our beautiful home.

Ground-breaking ceremony is very close now

Posted on 15. January 202230. January 2022 by Team Wunderbar

Due to Covid-19 Pandemic, the Auckland border further delayed things but the construction fence is up and the first delivery of goods arrived on site this week. Containers from Europe are in transit as well.

Final preparations are underway and the long-awaited official ground-breaking ceremony is very close now.

Bring it on!

Webinar about consenting our passive house windows in New Zealand

Posted on 26. November 202130. January 2022 by Team Wunderbar

We hope it will help the industry to reduce delay, cost and speed up processes for future builds. Most importantly cost-savings to the end-customer in New Zealand.

Our window system (Gealan) with external shutters (Aluprof) is very common in Europe (60+ years) but yet relatively newish to the New Zealand market. There is always room to improve.

If you missed getting to see the webinar from Passive House Institute New Zealand about consenting our passive house windows with Sang Architects and August Millard or would like a rerun please find the recording and downloadable slides here:

https://passivehouse.nz/2021/11/26/consenting-passive-house-windows-webinar-a-success/

The beginning of construction is near

Posted on 23. October 202130. January 2022 by Team Wunderbar

We had to experience another winter in our owned leaky apartment unit. Bought the unit in 2016 and never imagined that the apartment complex built in 2009 would be part of the famous New Zealand leaky housing syndrome. The worse is that even now such poor quality homes are still being built, partially due to a lack of pride in delivering a genuine quality work/product to the end customer.

The good thing is that it will be remediated in 2022 (currently scheduled for April 2022) but the bad thing is that we might be homeless while waiting for our new home to be completed.

We now have the long-awaited Building and Resource Consent. More concerns about some practices and attitudes in the building industry but we will share some of them at a later stage. We want to celebrate this milestone for now. Thank you to everyone who was involved up to this stage so far.

A few more days to go before commencing earthwork activities on site. Stay tuned and let the construction begin!