Purpose of this Healthy Home Design Guide

The purpose of this document is to provide a step change pathway to help designers and industry professionals bridge the gap between the current Building Code and the solutions required to achieve healthy, resilient, durable, comfortable, affordable, low carbon homes.

We are keeping things straightforward to follow and easy to implement. The guide presents solutions required by providing design options in a BASE, BETTER, BEST format.

The guide is intended to ensure that projects are planned, designed and executed on the basis of super standards, design principles, aesthetics, function and universal design.

This is intended as an industry reference document. A condensed version will follow to educate the consumer about the importance of Healthy Homes and assist them to make more informed decisions to aid better outcomes for their families.

This online version of the Healthy Home Design Guide is a living document and will be updated regularly to reflect improved technology and methods.

A systems thinking approach is applied with holistic integrated design-driven thinking. An important focus is the design standards that are deficient in the New Zealand Building industry. The guide provides an alternative solutions.

This is not a rating tool. This is a design guide with Base Better Best step change recommendations that bridge the gap between Code minimum and International best practice.

What is a HEALTHY HOME

What is a Healthy Home? Such a simple question but can you answer it?

The short answer to the above question is high indoor environment quality (IEQ).

IEQ is determined from four key metrics:

● Thermal comfort

● Visual comfort

● Acoustic comfort

● Indoor air quality

This guide shows you how to design a home that can deliver in all these areas.

The Superhome Movement goes further. We take a holistic approach, considering systems thinking, resilience and durability, along with humanist considerations like universal design and landscaping. Afterall, housing is about people!

Step Change Targets; Base, Better, Best

The Healthy Home Step Change provides a pathway to suit preferences due to project constraints, such as the budget for the build (capital cost), balanced with the desired ongoing running costs for energy and maintenance costs etc. (operational cost).

The targets are not static and can be adjusted over time as industry understanding and confidence improves.

A HEALTHY HOME is defined as one that at least meets or exceeds the minimum “BASE” standards in this document.

Achieving the Base level will ensure superior indoor environmental quality, with the home being warmer, drier, more airtight, more energy efficient and friendlier on the environment than a new home constructed to current New Zealand minimum standards.

For a full design summary refer to Healthy Homes Design Matrix.

Verification of a Healthy Home is determined by ongoing performance monitoring. Modelling, Monitoring & Measurement.

What is a SUPERHOME

A SUPERHOME is one that at least meets or exceeds the “BETTER” or “BEST” requirements of this guide.

SUPERHOMES should be created by a project team with ideally at least two Superhome movement participants. https://www.superhome.co.nz/who/

Superhome participants are knowledgeable innovators engaged in appropriate Continued Professional Development (CPD). As a result, standards, methods and techniques are continually evolving and improving.

Healthy Homes Design Matrix

The following table is an example of the summary of desired outcomes at the end of each section. As you navigate your way through each section, you can highlight your choice in these tables and this will auto-populate your personal Healthy Homes Design Matrix in Chapter 4. The matrix can then be used to help inform the design brief and budget preferences. (Auto population available for Superhome participants only).