Hugshaus 2025

Hugshaus

Hugshaus is an on-going retrofit of a 1967 brick veneer home in Canberra for my family to enjoy a comfortable and healthy home. The home has been modelled using the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) to accurately guide decision making in which retrofit steps are most effective in achieving a healthy home and guiding where money is best spent at each stage of the retrofit.
Hugshaus aims to serve as a demonstration of what can be achieved in a retrofit of the typical Canberra existing housing stock leveraging the PHPP as a design tool to clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of any change
This energy model of the retrofit must then be used alongside knowledge of the heat and moisture risks associated with making changes to an old building.
The PHPP calculates the energy required to maintain the temperature of the entire home above 20oC in the winter and below 25oC in the summer (or any temperature that you choose). This is different to NatHERS that has various temperature set points for different spaces in the home that are fixed assumptions.
The cost to heat and cool the whole home to these temperatures is $4,775 for the existing home and $1,227 for the retrofitted home (based on use of a heat pump with a COP of 3 and $0.30/kWh of electricity).
At this time the walls have had insulation blown in to achieve a continuous insulation of R3.3 and has (existing) well fitted R2.0 ceiling insulation. Underfloor and ceiling top up insulation will happen before winter.
Hugshaus is now all electric and has had the power supply upgraded to 3 phase for planned solar and EV charging capacity for our two cars.
The initial ventilation strategy (aside from opening windows as weather permits) is use of a continuous extraction fan in the bathroom. The effectiveness of this is to be monitored with air quality monitors. A later plan is to add a dedicated mechanical heat recovery ventilation system to the house.