Forrest Street Passive House 2024

Forrest Street Passive House

Welcome to our Forrest Passive House (which is being featured in next month’s Sanctuary Magazine). It’s a home that costs nothing to run due to our solar panels and filters the bad air from the nearby west gate bridge, which has some of the worst air quality in Australia.

The clients have been living in this home for a year now, so they have been able to experience both summer and winter in the home and will be able to explain how they have never turned on their heater!

It’s unique because everyone is starting to understand what a passive house is, but there is little information from client feedback about living in it.

Since this home is just about to be featured, we are hoping people will have a ton of questions to ask us about the design, build, and lived experience. It’s a great chance to pick the brains of experts in the industry and showcase that sustainable homes can be inclusive and look beautiful.

But let’s talk about some facts behind this home:
– this home sits at .41ACH @ 50pascals, 3860% tighter than the average Australian home!
– all of our windows are triple-glazed uPVC
– the heating demand for this home is 13.9kWh/m2a
– the cooling demand for this home is 7kWh/m2a
– we have R9.0 ceiling, R5 wall and R5 floor insulation
– we have installed a Zehnder Q350 HRV for mechanical ventilation
– 6.6kw solar has been installed on the roof
– this is the first Passivhaus in Melbourne’s Inner West
– these are not hypothetical numbers; this is something that is tested and proven!

Very few homes rival the level of detail in this home. From taping complex junctions to thinking about airtightness with every decision we made challenged us in so many ways. We believe this is the ultimate form of a sustainable home.