Building a new home with gardens, grandkids and sustainability in mind is a big and ambitious adventure for these retired teachers, Jan and Landon.

HOME Method members, Jan and Landon, are currently working on the design of a new passive house with their architect and builder.

Their design goals include creating a sustainable home in a beautiful and functional garden that helps them have a fantastic lifestyle in their 70s and beyond. And that also provides space to share with family (including their grandkids).

Listen to the episode now.

Hello! This is Episode 338, and in it, I’m speaking with Jan and Landon about the new home they’re planning to build on an amazing site in Sydney’s north.

Jan and Landon are a super interesting couple with a really interesting project. 

For starters, they’re both 73 years old as they embark on this ambitious project of building a new home.

They’re selling their home of 39 years, and they’re moving to a different part of Sydney to build their new home. However they’re building on a site they have a lot of history and connection with, as the block they’re building on has been in Landon’s family for over 70 years.

Jan and Landon are designing and building their home as a passive house, and they’re working with a Passive House builder that uses prefabrication to manage the quality, consistency and timeliness of their projects. 

They’re currently in the design phase, and their architect and builder are working together collaboratively with them to assist with decision-making and cost management as the design develops.

Jan and Landon have a lot of insight to share about how they researched and interviewed their architect, how they developed and presented their brief, and how they gained confidence that they’d found the right architect, and overall team, for their project.

We also talk about their design approach to create a home that will suit them at this stage of their life, and for the lifestyle they wish to lead in their home.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW.

Before we jump into my conversation with Jan and Landon, let me share some info about their timeline.

Jan and Landon joined HOME Method in January of 2024, and we recorded this conversation in September of 2024, when their design process was underway.

One thing that was clear to me in this conversation: As retired teachers in their 70s, Jan and Landon have an incredible wealth of experience in learning and information acquisition. This clearly informs the way they research their project, how they use HOME Method, and how they’ve developed their project files and organise their learning overall. 

Staying organised in your project, with all the research, learning and information you gather, can be super challenging – especially as a project can span over years and years. 

So, it’s awesome to hear how Jan and Landon are managing this in their project with their expertise and experience. 

Jan shares some super helpful tips about how she’s staying on track and overcoming her nerves when making big decisions too.

Let’s hear from Jan and Landon now.

This is the transcript of my conversation with Jan and Landon about the design of their new passive house.

Amelia Lee
Well, Jan and Landon, it is so awesome to have you here. I’m really looking forward to us having this conversation on the podcast, because you guys are at the very early stages of your project, and so I think it’s a really good opportunity for us to dive into some of the concerns and questions and deliberations that you have at this point. And also, I think, because of what your project is about and the life goals that you’re wanting this project to achieve for you, I think you’re going to have some really interesting things to share as well. So before we jump into talking about the project specifically and where you’re at and what you’re dealing with at the moment, can I just get you to share a little bit about who this project is for, who you are, who your family is, and, I suppose, understanding how this project fits into your overall life. Yeah, that sounds fantastic. And I think it’s really lovely that you’re thinking about all of those different dimensions of who’s going to potentially be coming and staying and visiting and those kinds of things as well. Because, obviously, it serves you very well in thinking about what the brief is and what you’re going to make at this time.

Jan
Well, Landon and I are both retired teachers, and we’re both 73 so it feels like we’re probably older than a lot of people starting out on a project, and it was certainly something to consider. And a few people have said, “My goodness, you’re brave.” Anyway, so there’s only the two of us, except we have our 21 year old grandson, Tom, living with us, and he’s going to university. We have a daughter who lives in Auckland with her family, and they come over to visit, of course, and a son and his family who live up on the outskirts of Sydney. So we become the centre point of family get-togethers, and people come and stay. At the moment, we’ve also got a adult grandson in Melbourne, and so he comes up as well. So that’s the family that will converge on this new house. And we’ve also got other extended family and friends who are quite looking forward to us moving up to the Northern Beaches and being near the sea. So I think we’ll have lots of visitors. We want it to be a welcoming place. But for us, Landon’s a painter, and he wants space to do all his painting and printing work. We want space to be apart and together. So that’s an important part when we did our design brief and what we needed… Space for all our books, space for we want. We like cooking. So cooking food’s an important part of our life. So they were important considerations for us.

Landon
Yeah, and we like gardening too. And so there’s quite a big garden that we get to look after, and hopefully it looks after us.

Jan
The very strange thing, people come and say, because we’re selling our house, “Are you going to downsize?” And we say, “Well, not exactly, not really.” But yes, it’s not going to be a big house that we’re building.

Landon
Yeah, the house we’ve got at the moment is quite modest. And the interesting thing is that we would like, in a way, to recreate this house at the other place. So those are things that we’ve been a bit surprised about, that’s what we bought into.

Amelia Lee
How long have you been where you are now?

Jan
39 years.

Amelia Lee
Oh, wow. So this is a really big shift, isn’t it?

Jan
It’s enormous. It’s enormous. And trying and get the house ready for sale and getting rid of stuff has been enormous as well. And I mean, the things that we like about this house, the compactness and its connection to the garden, we can create over in the other place, but it’s going to be bigger, which is sort of interesting. But anyway, that’s not a lot bigger.

Amelia Lee
Can you talk us through what the project is? So you’re moving to the Northern Beaches and building a new home, and can you tell us a little bit about, I suppose, what that’s about? And then just that comment about it’s going to be a bit bigger compared to your existing house, what the decision making has been about what kind of house you’re going to build, where you’re going to build it?

Jan
The thing is that Landon grew up in Narraweena, on a very big lot of land, a big block of land. The house was built in 1952 and his parents bought the vacant block of land next door so that they wouldn’t be built out. And over the years well, first of all, it became the paddock, and they kept sheep on it. And then, it became part of the garden, and so it’s on a separate title, and the land and the house is still in the family. So just two brothers and the wives. And we’re going to have the block of land, and we’re going to build in the garden that Landon grew up on. And so, I grew up near the sea too. So for both of us, we want to be near the beach again. So the house is going to be Passive House, and it’s going to be on a slab, going to be on one level. We want it to be something that was going to be easier for us as we got, I have to say, even older.

Amelia Lee
It’s a state of mind, Jan.

Jan
Amelia, one of the funny things about this is because we’re designing the house to suit our old age, is that we’ve been focusing on what we might need when we’re older and maybe frailer, and it’s been a bit of an existential crisis, because I don’t want to be living in the future of this is what we might be like, but that’s what’s happened occasionally. I’ve been too much focused on where we’re possibly going to be, but it will be helpful to have a house that suits us.

Landon
But having said that, there’s a woman across the road who was there when I was a kid.

Jan
She’s just turned 100 this year, and she’s still looking after herself. So maybe we’ll dodge a bullet.

Amelia Lee
It’s absolutely fantastic. How big is the block of land?

Jan
1300 something square metres.

Amelia Lee
Oh, wow, that’s great.

Jan
It’s a battle axe block flat facing east, so the long boundary is north, and on the other side, on the southern side is the old house, and it’s on 2000 plus square metres. So it was a huge lot of land, really unusual, I think, for the Northern Beaches these days.

Amelia Lee
Yes, very much so, absolutely remarkable. Yeah, fantastic. And so, you talked about thinking into the future, thinking about what this house may potentially need for you to be able to age in place and have an enjoyable lifestyle too, can you talk through some of the things that as you’ve been embarking on this project, because you also touched on the fact that your ages, and the fact that people have said that you’re brave… I think it’s really interesting. My mum is turning 80 next year, and she’s been renovating houses as long as I can remember, and particularly since we left home in our 20s. She’s gone on to buy properties, do them up, and she loves it, because it’s kept her really active.

Jan
I think that’s one of the things that feels like tackling a project, like, this is exciting and it is a bit of an adventure, and there’s such a huge amount to learn and know and understand. It feels like it’s probably good for our brains, good for anybody’s brains, except when it becomes stressful and worrying. But yeah, it’s an exciting thing to do, really, and we have to not listen to other people saying, “Why would you do that now? It’s such a lot of work.” And we think, well, we’re such active people. Why not?

Amelia Lee
And my mom’s experience has been the same thing, people have been saying to her, “Why? Why would you bother?” And she’s like, “Because I actually really enjoy it.”

Jan
You get a lot of pleasure out of it, yeah.

Amelia Lee
Yeah. Can you tell me about some of the things that you have been nervous about as you think about tackling this project and making this home a reality?

Landon
Well, we got interested in being a Passive House, and there’s so many constraints to build a Passive House, or to build it so that it’s a sensible way of building it. So instead of having a lot of nooks and crannies and corners and courtyards, things like that on the outside, to make it a reasonable way of building, you’ve got to reduce the corners. So we are ending up with a very box-like structure, which wasn’t what we expected. We wouldn’t normally have done that, especially 30, 40 years ago. We would have wanted to have couple of windows for room, etc, etc. But it’s also a logical way of building. So that’s an attractive thought as well.

Jan
And it’s not all that boxing. One of the things we stuck to our guns with was we wanted to have our indoor, outdoor area and veranda. And in the end, it’s become almost like a U or C-shaped house, U-shaped house, enclosing veranda. So the veranda’s got three sides to it, and corners. I mean, one of the things that the builder said to the architect told us, she was telling him what we wanted, because there’s a lot of backwards and forwards between the two. And she was saying, “This is what they want.”  

And eventually, he said, “Just tell them that they can’t have everything they want.” Which is true, of course. People can’t have, but we’ve got most of what we want, and it’s just that it took us a while to get our heads around what these. There were the restraints about the simplicity of a build and also about because he does prefabricated panels, they come in fixed sizes… varying sizes, but fixed sizes. So in order to make it efficient in terms of cost, we also had to fit into that.  

So they were unexpected things to us, and it took us a while to get our heads around, and while you say we’re in the early stages of our project, and we are, feels like we’ve been doing it forever. And it’s only since probably beginning of February, but it’s a long time just to get where we’re at. But also, there’s a lot of other things happening.

Amelia Lee
And I can imagine your learning curve has been very steep, so that also can feel like when you’ve had to immerse yourself in it for a period of time and upskill yourself at a rate of knots, then yes, it can feel like you’ve been doing it a lot longer than you have.

Jan
I sort of thought that we would be further ahead. But it’s really because every time our architect gives us the next stage of another concept plan or whatever, we actually need enough time to think it through and talk about it and nut it over. So we’re the ones probably that are stretching out this period of time because, I guess, we just want to make sure – that’s what we learnt in HOME Method, while it’s on the paper, it’s not going to cost you anything as such. Do it now and put the time in now. But we’d love to be a bit further ahead, I think.

Landon
But also, selling this house we’re living in, that’s taken us a lot of a lot of work has gone into things organised here

Amelia Lee
Yeah, and I can imagine too, just mentally and emotionally letting go of a home that you have that much history with also would be a really big processing kind of activity for you personally, and figuring out what you’re going to take to the next home versus what you’re going to hand on or pass on in some way.

Jan
It has been big. What’s made it a little bit easier is that we’re going to be moving into Landon’s old family home, and we’ll be there for however long it takes for the plans to be finalised and for the house to be started. And we love that place. It’s too old and too not too old. It’s too big for us as at our age and quite draughty, five bedrooms. It’s a leaky house in terms of air. So to move into that place, it also feels like home. In fact, we’re quite lucky. I mean, we’re extremely lucky to be able to do that. So we’re giving up this, but we’re also gaining something that’s familiar. And we know the community well. We know our neighbours over there. We’re known in the local shops. So it doesn’t feel as bad as it would be if we were just selling and going somewhere that we weren’t familiar with. 

Or didn’t have a connection to. 

Amelia Lee
Oh, it’s so exciting. I’m just so excited for you both in terms of what’s ahead for you.  

Just as a curious question, how long have you two been together?

Jan
About that time.

Landon
39 years.

Jan
Yes, that’s right. Landon came into my life just at the time that I bought this house after a previous marriage.

Amelia Lee
That’s amazing.

Jan
It is. He’s been fabulous with this house. There’s so much in an old house to maintain and look after it. Well, we’ve loved it, haven’t we? We’ve really loved this.

Landon
Yeah, we’ve done a few renovation-type things in various places. And I’ve got a German former brother-in-law and I helped him build his rammed earth house at one stage. And he’s one of the reasons that I’m happy with the Passive House, because he was a builder in Germany, and, like, simplicity was his byword, to just keep things as simple as possible and functional. So that was good.

Amelia Lee
And has that been your exposure to Passive House? What led you down the Passive House route in terms of making that choice?

Landon
I think it’s everything that you read, things you think, well, that’s logical.

Jan
We’ve seen it on some Grand Designs. And we also subscribe to Sanctuary magazine. And yes, we’ve been really interested in the concept of sustainable housing for a long time, but we hadn’t actually had it in our heads as a focus when we started. But when we chose the architect, and that’s probably another story, that’s when she was explaining to us how she worked side by side with this Passive House builder, and it made so much sense. And I love the way they work together.  

There’s a lot of communication going backwards and forwards, and I think that’s been very important. And communication with us, of course, with him too. So even though the plans aren’t up to a point where he can do detailed costing, but as soon as something changes, she consults him, and he then says, “Well, if you do it that way, that’s going to cost a lot of money.” I think that’s when he said that, “Tell them they can’t have everything.” I so enjoyed that comment because it does amuse me.

Landon
That’s quite good to have people telling you that it’s going to be too much money. That’s better to hear that than to have been led along and faced with a huge bill at the end of it.

Jan
Or not be able to go ahead with something. So yeah, we’re doing it hand-in-hand with them, builder and the architect.

Landon
Well we haven’t yet signed a contract with the builder, but we signed a contract with the architect. Yeah, so we see him quite frequently, and that’s good.

Amelia Lee
Fantastic. I’m keen to hear a bit more about that team, and also about the prefab component, because I think that’s really interesting. But I’m wondering if you can just talk through when you were thinking about this home, and the kinds of ideas that you had for what you wanted to create… What was important for you from a design point of view? And then, I suppose, what led you to choosing this specific architect to help support you in those design choices?

Jan
Well, I think we were interested in a sustainable home. We wanted a home that would meet all those criteria of sustainability. Well, we both wanted a place that was sunny and light, terribly important to us. And the block allows it in that we’ve got the long north facing side. We wanted it to be integrated with the garden. And I wanted to be able to look out and see birds and water and all that sorts of things. So we’re thinking, we wanted a garden that is full of biodiversity. And so those things just lead so closely together. And we wanted that universal design to help us age in place if we needed it. 

The architect did say a couple of times, “You know, if you have stairs, it’s really good for you.” And yes, I know. She’s got a 90 something year old dad who’s still going up and down stairs, I believe. But it only takes one thing for that to change, and we didn’t want something like that to mean we could no longer live in the house. We wanted to be, even if we were really frail, even if we were in a wheelchair, we wanted the house to still be usable by us so that we could stay there as long as we can. So that was an important thing.

Landon
I think we’ve had a long history of understanding passive solar.Like, we knew about orientation and things like that. That made it easier for us, I think, to start on the process. And so basically, that’s been an important consideration, even though the Passive House would probably also allow…

Amelia Lee
It can accommodate a less than ideal orientation, yeah.

Jan
Yes. And the other thing that was really from a design point of view, which the Passive House made possible, was to have a house that was really comfortable no matter what the weather. Now, the house that we’re in, the front of the house, which faces south, is freezing in the winter. And in fact, it’s cold today. And we’ve taken away all the heaters because of open house. Suddenly, we found ourselves freezing this morning when we were getting ready for this interview. And we want a house that, if it’s 45 degrees outside or freezing cold outside, that will be comfortable. Because, I think, when you’re really old, as I understand it, that you find it harder to regulate body temperature. So it seemed to be an important factor in having a house suit us as we became really old.

Amelia Lee
Have you thought about long term accommodation for, say, a live-in carer or anything like that? Has that been a part of your thinking?

Jan
We see the granny flat as being a place that is very flexible. It can be used for anything. At the moment, we have a granny flat here where we are, and it’s been many things over that nearly 40 years. It’s been for visitors, it’s been for children doing the HSC. It’s been, now, for grandchildren. We’ve got another grandson who’s hot on the heels of Tom. He’s a cousin, and he wants to come. So Tom’s got to watch out. Tom wants to move with us. It’s a rather nice thing to be our age and have your grandchildren still want to live with you. It’s lovely. And I think that the idea of having a granny flat that could possibly be used for a carer is a good idea. Or even for, for example, a young teacher or a nurse or whoever in the area needs accommodation because they’re working. Just to have somebody around, not to look after us. Having a granny flat, even here, makes it almost communal. And it’s a lovely feeling to have a sense of there are more people around, not necessarily under foot, but around. And so having a granny flat means we have the option, if we needed to do that. Or if one of us was left on our own, then a family could move into the house, and we could be the actual granny in the granny flat. So just gives us lots of options. And I think both the architect and the builder questioned why we wanted one. Maybe it’s a fashionable thing to have. To us, it’s something really important. So we’ve dug our heels in for that one.

Landon
But the problematic thing is that if that were to be Passive House two, because it’s such a small thing, it seems like an overspend to get it up to Passive House standards. So these are decisions we have to make. We don’t know whether or not it will be a Passive House.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, and we can have a bit more of a chat about that, because I know that there’s lots of different ways that that granny flat could be delivered. And when you’ve got a larger block, you have a little bit of flexibility about that. You’re not trying to squeeze it on the back of a 500 or 600 square metre block, where you’re very constrained. So yeah, we can definitely have a bit more of a chat about that. I’m curious how you’ve chosen the architect that you’re working with, and then how they’ve set up.  

They’re obviously doing a really fantastic job of working collaboratively, and you’re getting that understanding, which is so critical in a Passive House, right? I mean, it’s what we teach inside HOME Method for any project, and doing that pre-construction involvement of the builder. But in a Passive House, I find that it is significantly impactful to have the builder involved and giving you that feedback. And then now, because you’re talking about the builder using prefab components, I can imagine it’s even more critical. How did you go about choosing the architect, and then that relationship coming to fruition, and then seeing, I suppose, how you’ve navigated that? And then from there, if we can start talking about the prefab components, I think that would be really awesome.

Jan
Well, in January, I was sitting down in the old house over at Narraweena, and I thought, we’ve got to bite the bullet. So I sat down and went through on Google to look for architects who were into sustainability and so on. Environmental issues were to be part of the character of their business. And I came across one, and I thought, okay, I’ll start with her. And we had spent a lot of time on our brief. And just to say, that was a wonderful process to go through. We really, really loved doing that. And we sat and talked about that for days.

Amelia Lee
And using the Brief Builder inside HOME Method?

Jan
Yes, we had that.

Amelia Lee
Like a guide? Yeah.

Jan
I can’t remember, I know that some people have done 40 pages. I thought ours was about four or five. Well, I thought architects will never want to read this stuff. 

So I rang her and had a really interesting conversation. And she seemed pretty spot on in terms of what we were wanting. And I said, “Can I send you the brief?” So yes, I sent her the brief, and she rang back quite excited. Quite excited is probably not the word, but she’s very enthusiastic and said, “I’ve read it, and I’m really interested. I think we might be a good match.” So by some fluke, she was really just up the road, so that was an interesting thing. So we invited her down for a cup of coffee, and I said, “If you come, do you mind? We want to interview you.” I didn’t say we’re going to use Amelia questions from HOME Method but I had the pages printed out. Poor woman, what it was like walking into. It was a bit unexpected for her, right?

Amelia Lee
Good on you, Jan, because it’s so important to have those conversations.

Jan
We sat around a big old table in the kitchen with cups of tea or coffee and muffins, and I said, “I’ve got all these interviews questions. Do you mind if we go through this?” She said, “No, no, that’s fine.” So off we started, and we went through them all. By the end, she was nearly falling off a chair. She was so tired. They’re such good interview questions, and they helped. And there are a couple of things she wasn’t sure about, which she was quite upfront about, I forget what they were. And she said, “I’ll get back to you”, or I’ll whatever it was. And in the process, she talked about her relationship with the builder, the working relationship, of course, and how they’ve been together in terms of working together for a long time. But they’d only been doing the Passive Houses for the last few years, and they’re both certified. And she was explaining how closely they work together. 

And she said, “If you want, I can put you in touch with the owners of the last two buildings that we’ve done, I’ve put you in touch with the builders.” Well, to our surprise and slight consternation, we just felt we needed to go with that. And I think I might have even put it as a question somewhere whether just choosing one builder, one architect, without going through the others, is this a very good idea? And in the end, that’s what we did. And we really haven’t regretted it. Except the only time was when we got slightly bogged down with, oh, we might be able to do that because this is Passive House. But we’re gaining so much more, and that was just a learning process, I suppose. So that’s how we got our architect. All the others didn’t even get a look in.

Amelia Lee
But you put her through her paces and you did your due diligence.

Jan
Maybe it was the wrong way to go about it.

Amelia Lee
No, I think it’s excellent. Yeah, I think what you’ve done is really, really worthwhile.

Jan
And she said that was the best design brief I’ve ever had. I feel like I know you already, and I thought, ooh, there’s one for HOME Method.

Amelia Lee,
That’s awesome. It’s so good to hear. And I’m so glad, because I know that it can feel a little bit sticky to embrace that idea. It can feel a bit like the Spanish Inquisition that you’re sitting down and asking all these questions, but it is so critical for getting that information to then make an informed decision. And I think you’ve learned so much. We’ve talked about this inside HOME Method, a lot of that asking of questions is as much about the information that you get when you ask the question as seeing how the person actually receives and then responds to the question. Now, how open are they? How do they communicate?

Jan
Yes, well, I think she was very open to us asking those questions. And they are tricky questions. They’re probing questions. If you had anything to hide, you wouldn’t be comfortable. And then we did the same thing with the builder. Though we did that on the phone. We had a couple of phone calls with him, and eventually, we met up with him. We went to his factory and so on, where he does all the building of his panels. But he was also very open to talking to us and telling us the last build they’d done took a bit longer, went over. It was an overrun, and there was no covering that up. They talked about what those problems were. It was partly COVID and a couple of other things. But I was happy with their openness.

Landon
He’s very serious. He tells you what it is, rather than what you want to hear.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, that’s perfect. Ultimately, both of them sound like they’re managing your expectations, which is so important.

Jan
Yeah, between them, and what we’ve learned in HOME Method, the whole thing about enoughness and really knowing what you want, and not trying to have what is in the media and so on, I think it’s all helped keep us in a good place, I think, with this build.

Amelia Lee
It’s brilliant. Can you share more about the prefab? I’m interested in why the builder uses it, why you’ve gone down this route, and also how it’s potentially changed the design process. You spoke before about it’s available in particular sizes. So yeah, really curious about that whole exercise and how it’s informing your overall project.

Jan
I’ll start with the thing that made it a really sensible thing for us to do the brief prefab. If you remember, I don’t know what it was like up your way, but in 2022 I think, there were big, huge floods. We had enormous rain down here in Sydney. It seemed to go on for months, and the water with builders stopped, everything stopped. And we had a neighbour up there near our block who was building a brand new house. It was a volume builder, and they got to the point of having a slab put down, and they had the frame up, and then it went for months and months and months standing in the rain, things getting soaked, things getting mouldy. They were tearing their hair out, the owners. It was awful. It just went on for months. And I thought, this is not the way to go. And so when we got to the idea of the prefab, it seemed you can make everything. He will make the panels in the factory, including the doors and windows. So they’re just a bit like Lego or something, you just pop them into place. And it means they can do all that work and it doesn’t matter what the weather is.

Landon
So it’s made that the whole house is measured and it’s worked out on a computer system. Apparently, it’s based on a 1250 square grid. So that’s another constraint on a house. We can’t have an extra 300 mils here and there, which is fairly traditional, I think, with most people building… ‘Oh, this room needs an extra foot.’ But it doesn’t work out like that. So the 1250 square grid is the basis of it. I think it’s to save materials so that there’s less wastage. Everything is constructed in the factory, and that may take three months, depending on delivery of windows and doors and things like that. And the doors and windows have fitted exactly into the panels, and they’re loaded on a truck and brought to the site. And if there’s a slab down, or if there’s some sort of other footings, then that’s all ready. And then the house is just directed. Maybe it’ll take a week to put it up, but then it’s watertight, and so it’s not compromised in any way by the weather during that process. And then the work on site starts, where there’s internal clouding and external cladding and roofing, all of those sorts of things added to it.

Amelia Lee
And so, is the bit that is being prefabbed, the frame with the wrap on it with the windows in it, that all comes and tilt up, gets put together, and then all the wraps sealed on, all of the joints, and then the cladding, the external cladding, still gets on, installed on site, does it?

Jan
Yeah, everything. From then on, it’s like a normal build. Then they’ll come in and put the internal cladding on, and do all the electrical work and all that. And he has teams, he works with people who understand how his system works. I mean, he’s got his own staff, but he’s got subcontractors that know. Very important, I think, in a Passive House, that you don’t have somebody just coming long and punching a hole for wires to go through when it’s all sealed. I think one of the advantages of this method is that it’s so precise that there’s no room for things like cockroaches and insects. And that’s important to us. We live in an old house in Sydney.

Landon
We do like spiders, well, I do.

Jan
You can’t like cockroaches, so that’s going to be a bit of a difference.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, that’s amazing. And so do you know if that process of building the walls gets started, like, do you know when in the sequence that you can expect that to start? Because I’m wondering if they overlap it, like they start earthworks on site, they start pouring the slab, and they’re building the frame at the same time in the factory to overlay the two processes together?

Landon
It could be like that, yeah. Well, we haven’t got to the working drawings and things like that yet, but everything has to be planned first, because there’s no, “Oh, I’d like something like a powerpoint there.”

Amelia Lee
Yeah, can I change that window size down once you see the site.

Jan
It’s a discipline for us.

Landon
Yeah, it’s good. Because when we were renovating this place, we get a phone call from the electrician, “I’m coming around on Monday…”

Jan
“… tomorrow morning. Tell us where all your powerpoints and lights going.”

Landon
So then we madly had to draw up some sort of plan with no great forethought. So it’s good that everything is going to be really well planned, I think. I think so. I don’t particularly want to do the Grand Designs. “Oh, yeah, let’s make this picture window.” That’s a recipe for disaster, I think. It’s sort of a good thing to do it that way, I think.

Amelia Lee
Well, I mean, we talk a lot in HOME Method about bringing forward your decision making. This approach is forcing you to do that as well. So it’s really great to see those two things in alignment with each other. And you’ve got the tools, and then the support from your own team to be able to understand what do you need to decide, where does it got to go? And then, as you say, Jan, that discipline of sticking to it. Because I think that’s the thing that actually undoes a lot of people, because your project is so long, you can bring forward all of your decision making, but then you can come unstuck when you are then in the throes of it, and you go, “Oh, actually, hang on.” And you start second guessing yourself and not trusting that decision you made when you made it ages ago.

Jan
Yes, I don’t think we’re going to have any of those “Oh, hang on. Let’s change this.” We don’t have that opportunity, because when it goes up, that’s it. Yeah, I think it’s good, it’ll make us work hard now.

RESOURCES

Want to learn more about Passive House? Check out these episodes from Season 8 >>>>

• Episode 9 ‘What is Passive House (or Passivhaus)? | Interview with Daniel Kress of Smart Plus Homes’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-what-is-passive-house-passivhaus-daniel-kress/
• Episode 10 ‘The Client who wanted a Passive House | Interview with David Rhind, Owl Woods Passive House Project’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-what-is-passive-house-passivehaus-homeowner-owl-woods/
• Episode 11 ‘The Architect who designed a Passive House | Interview with Talina Edwards, Talina Edwards Architecture’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-what-is-passive-house-passivehaus-architect-talina-edwards/
• Episode 12 ‘The Consultant who tests and measures the Passive House | Interview with Luc Plowman, Detail Green’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-what-is-passive-house-passivehaus-certified-consultant-luc-plowman/
• Episode 13 ‘The Builder constructing Passive House | Interview with Stuart Lee, Craftsmen Quality Builders’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-what-is-passive-house-passivehaus-builder-stuart-lee/
• Episode 14 ‘The Certifier and an Australian Passive House Pioneer | Interview with Clare Parry, Grun Consulting’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-what-is-passive-house-passivehaus-certifier-clare-parry/
• Episode 15 ‘The Passive House Renovator | Interview with Cameron Munro, Armadale House’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-what-is-passive-house-passivehaus-renovation-armadale-house/ 

Please note: These are the companies I mentioned in the podcast episode. I have not personally used these companies, however they came to mind as Jan and Landon discussed sustainability goals for their granny flats. There are many companies doing sustainable projects like this, so these are only a couple of suggestions. Please do your own research and due diligence.

Passive Prefab (designed by Steele Olney and built by Evan Graham) >>> https://www.passiveprefab.net/

Article on Passive Prefab on The Design Files >>> https://thedesignfiles.net/2024/03/architecture-passive-pod-studio-dot

I also mentioned Arkular in this episode >>> https://arkular.com/

Access the support and guidance you need to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home inside my flagship online program, HOME METHOD >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/the-home-method/ 

Learn more about how to interview and select the right builder with the Choose Your Builder mini-course >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/choose-your-builder

Access my free online workshop “Your Project Plan” >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/projectplan