Eco Design Advisor Conference: Retrofit for the Future

ECO DESIGN ADVISOR - HOUSING CONFERENCE!

The Eco Design Advisor Conference is back! With strides made in Insulation standards for new builds our attention shifts to the elephant in the room - Our Old Cold & Drafty Housing Stock. The focus of the 2024 Eco Design Advisor Conference will be Retrofit for the future!

Verney Ryan from Kāinga Ora will be our MC for the day (some of Verney's work - here, you may also know him from his private consulting work, Beacon Pathway, lecturing at the University of Auckland or training at Home Performance Advisors).

• Andrew Eagles – CEO NZGBC
• Matt Maule - Programme Director Kainga Ora - Building a Programme to Retrofit - in action, at scale
  • The quality and performance of many of New Zealand’s older homes are well below current code and standards and so the case to retrofit is clear, but why aren’t more people doing it? Kāinga Ora made a case to retrofit its older state homes and bring them into the modern era, which is producing great outcomes for our tenants. This programme has grown from humble beginnings, to producing a consistent and reliable programme delivering over 850 retrofits annually. This presentation will outline what Kāinga Ora did, how it did it, what challenges were faced and overcome, and what lessons were learned in the course of creating, developing and sustaining this work. It also hopes to explore some of the opportunities in this space and make the case to collaborate and coordinate to improve even more of our housing, faster, cheaper, and better.
• Nick Robertson - Business and Economic Research Ltd (BERL) - Overseas retrofit programmes, lessons for NZ and the economic impact 
  • What is the current state of New Zealand's housing stock, what can we learn from successful retrofit schemes at home and overseas, and what impacts could a large scale national deep retrofit scheme have on the ecomomy and wellbeing?
• Damien McGill - Healthy Home Cooperation - Bringing EnerPHit to town
  • With housing affordability at front of mind how can we rationalise deep retrofit decisions to get the best value for money? How are these budget decisions going to impact the long-term comfort, energy efficiency and running costs of the finished project? Damien will be sharing his experience in retrofitting a 2003 three unit townhouse building that he owns, lives in and rents out.  The presentation comes in two parts. Part 1 - Using the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) to energy model the building to define, then test drive energy efficiency measures. Part 2 - Looking at the economics of the energy efficiency measures chosen, by calculating the payback periods of the upgrades based on the energy savings. 
• Kim O'Sullivan - University of Otago - Getting indoor temperature 'Just Right' with insulation and deep-retrofit to reduce energy hardship. 
  • Energy poverty affects an estimated 16 – 30% of households in Aotearoa New Zealand. Drivers of energy poverty in Aotearoa NZ include inefficient, poor-quality housing, and low building standards compared to other countries, as well as heavy reliance on electricity to power our homes. Insulation and deep-retrofit provide opportunities for reducing energy, climate, and health impacts of housing. Dr Kimberley O’Sullivan will outline the health impacts of indoor temperatures that are not “just right” with results from energy poverty research undertaken in Aotearoa NZ exploring “too cold” and “too hot” housing. 
• Steve McNeil – BRANZ - Retrofitting warm roofs
  • In this talk we will cover the retrofit process of fitting a warm roof to the ventilation test building at BRANZ. Key data from measurements of the systems performance will presented, comparing both wintertime and summertime to the previous roof structure. We will also explore the effect of warm roof structures on ventilation system performance and the impact on moisture risk in roof construction
    
• Mike Casey – Rewiring Aotearoa - The Electrification of Everything
  • Mike is an orchardist in Central Otago who believes he has created the world’s first fully electric farm. He has electrified 21 machines on his farm and in his home and powers them through New Zealand’s national grid, as well as through his on-farm renewable system. Mike’s here to discuss capital and operational costs, pay back, and tell the story of how he made it all happen and why he is never going back. Transparency is the key to building trust, and you will get a truly authentic story with all the ugly bits included. Mike is now the CE of Rewiring Aotearoa, a New Zealand charity dedicated to electrifying millions of fossil fuel machines in New Zealand as fast as possible. Why? It's a Win-Win. Everyone saves money, and everyone saves emissions. We now just have to figure out how to make it easy. 
• Gareth Gretton - EECA - The costs and benefits of deep retrofit – How does it stack up for $s and carbon?
  • EECA and NZGBC commissioned eCubed, Concept Consulting and RDT Pacific to undertake a detailed study of the costs and benefits of deep retrofit. Three levels of deep retrofit were considered for four typical NZ housing typologies across four NZ climates, hence a total of 48 retrofit scenarios, and associated costs. Benefits from reduced electricity supply costs and improved health outcomes were assessed for four different heating scenarios, which thus produced a set of 192 benefit (and hence cost-benefit) scenarios. In the majority of these cases there is a net cost to the retrofit – the exceptions being when the house typology is amenable to a lower cost retrofit, and there are more significant health benefits to be gained from improvements to an underheated house. The study also considered the trade-off between the embodied emissions of the building materials and electricity grid emissions as projected over the next 30 years.
• Bob Burnett – Bob Burnett Architecture - Post quake broad oaks super-reno
  
  • The challenges and opportunities with a complex high-end hill home deep reno. The 2011 earthquake made the near new (2008) award winning, eco home uninhabitable. In 2021 a deep retrofit was carried out in conjunction with earthquake repairs/strengthening.  This is a story of this home and Bob’s journey/progression and continual improvement of high-performance design and building techniques. First and foremost a detailed analysis of the building, including the airtightness and thermal bridging, condensation risks etc was undertaken. Interventions included a warm-roof, external insulation, triple-glazing, retrofit of heat recovery ventilation, Solar panels shading and, rainwater harvesting etc.
• Jon Davies –Pro Clima - ParkaWrap in practice
  • 79% of NZ walls have little or no insulation. Parka Wrap is a system of overlaying new materials on existing walls in order to thermally improve buildings, increase comfort and reduce energy demand. Waste reduction and simplicity of site Quality Assurance were unexpected outcomes of the practical testing and subsequent case studies.
    
• Sally Blackwell – Beacon Pathway - Personalised Advice: Enabling the Enablers
  • Eco Design Advisors, and other aligned practitioners, play an important role enabling positive change at the household level, in both new and existing homes. In this presentation Sally will share insights from recent research Beacon Pathway conducted in partnership with ANZ Bank, Te Herenga Waka | Victoria University of Wellington and Kaunihera a-rohe o Ōtepoti | Dunedin City Council. The project took a customer-centred approach to trialling an intervention that connected the bank’s new build customers with a home performance expert (an Eco Design Advisor or another independent expert) who provided personalised advice. Sally will also reflect more broadly on changes to the advice landscape since the development of the Eco Design Advisor service in 2006 and potential opportunities and enablers for the sector.
    
• Vicki White – BRANZ – Household Energy End-use Project 2: Update and early insights
  • The Household Energy End-use Project 2 (HEEP2) is a national study of energy use and conditions in New Zealand homes. The study is collecting detailed data through a combination of in-home monitoring, surveys and accessing retailer data. Over 750 households are taking part in the national study in some capacity. An additional 40 homes are being monitored in Canterbury as part of a co-funded study of Code-compliant and high-performance dwellings. While data collection is ongoing, as households are monitored for 12 months, all fieldwork and surveys have been completed. BRANZ will present further details about the data being collected and share some initial insights into sample characteristics, occupant behaviours and attitudes towards energy use.

We will be having some panel session through the day to cover some of the big questions around deep retrofit!

We look forward to seeing you there!

The following day you can join the Superhomes Bus Tour to visit some great examples of high performing Christchurch homes and discuss your learnings- https://events.humanitix.com/superhome-bus-tour-xutqtr25  

CPD points: NZRAB - 60 points and ADNZ/LBP CPD 6 points  

Travelling

Here are some quick tips to keep the planet happy as you attend this conference 

• If flying please offset carbon of your flight (AirNZ and Jetstar offer the option as you book) 
• Travel into Christchurch CBD using the bus - Home | Metro Christchurch (metroinfo.co.nz) 
• Book  accommodation within walking distance of venue 
• Look at your accommodation’s environmental strategy, e.g. Qualmar 

Nearby Hotels

Fable : https://www.fablehotelsandresorts.com/hotels/fable-christchurch?utm_source=googlebusinessprofile&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=Google+Business+Profile
The quest: https://www.questapartments.co.nz
Hotel 115: https://hotel115.co.nz
The Ridges : https://www.rydges.com/accommodation/new-zealand/latimer-christchurch/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gmb
Ibis : https://www.christchurchnz.com/see-do/accommodation/ibis-hotel-christchurch
A little bit different:
The Christchurch City Hotel : https://www.christchurchcityhotel.co.nz ( this one if very new)
The muse : https://www.christchurchnz.com/see-do/accommodation/ibis-hotel-christchurch (refurbished but construction work next door)
The heritage hotel: https://www.heritagehotels.co.nz/heritage-christchurch > 20 % of if you book 28 days in advance

EARLY BIRD PRICING - EXTENDED

Please note the ticket prices will go up after the 31st of July 2024  on the 16th of August 2024

Thank you to our Gold Sponsors

Thank you to our Silver Sponsor

Thank you to our Bronze Sponsor