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.

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!

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 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!

Apologies for not updating earlier. It has been nearly a year since our last post.

We now can close our horrendous experience. Click on this link to the website article by Stuff:

“eHaus ordered to pay couple 24000 over quote to build passive house“

We had to take eHaus to the Disputes Tribunal where we could only make a maximum claim of $30K to at least get some money back. Overall, we still made a loss of nearly $20k, not considering the time wasted and stress.

It was, is, and will be important to voice out bad performances especially if the other party does not rectify the issues in an appropriate way.

It might be wishful, but our general belief is that businesses should adopt a mindset of taking responsibility and not charge customers for their own mistakes. Businesses should not blame others. It might be costly in the short-term, but it is an opportunity for further development. Set things right and ensure the customer knows they are valued and have a positive experience which will multiply into healthy success in the long-term.

A national database where you can rate builders would be beneficial. What about Google Reviews? Every restaurant has to accept negative comments so the building industry should be capable of the same.

We are moving forward from this and still determined to build a passive house.