PHOTO: JASON DORDAY/STUFF Engineer Philip Ivanier and his wife Carolyn built New Zealand’s first passive house seven years ago. They still manage to keep power bills to around $50 per month all year – they charge two electric cars overnight and their power is supplemented with solar panels.
It’s 7.34am on Sunday morning and the temperature in Glendowie is 5 degrees, but inside the first passive house to be built in New Zealand, it’s a balmy 20 degrees – with no heaters running.
It’s the seventh winter that the children in the Ivanier family have run around inside the house in tee-shirts and shorts.
And it’s the seventh winter where the power bills are no more than any other month of the year – usually around $50, because the family does use an oven and a clothes dryer at times, and they charge two electric cars overnight. But they also have solar panels to supplement their electricity use, and a hot water heat pump.
READ MORE VIA STUFF