Basham Building

Basham building has a fixation for perfection. This isn’t just on how to build something that looks really striking with amazing craftsmanship. It is also an obsession to build a dwelling to the highest performing building standards in the world.

Basham building is your only local qualified passive house tradesman in the nelson/ Tasman region.

This is really significant because it shows we walk the walk as well as talking the talk.

We have the most amazing technology available in the world today, yet it’s incredible to see that here in New Zealand we are still building to such low and primitive building standards that we were 40 years ago.

We believe it’s simply not good enough to build a brand-new home here in New Zealand that needs several heat pumps to keep it warm or cool all year around. It is absurd that people will happily spend $400-$600 per month on heat pump running costs.

You should not need to throw an extra thick duvet on the bed in winter because your brand-new house is cold in winter.

There is a better way – passive house building standards.

We were introduced to the passive house concept while watching an episode of grand designs on television. This sparked an inspiring journey to find out more and see what all the fuss is about.

We have lived in warm and comfortable homes in America, great Britain and Europe – why can’t we build them here in New Zealand?

No one we spoke to locally had any idea on what passive house standards were. The concepts were really foreign to majority of people.

Realizing that we can’t be the only people trying to build better performing houses, we set about bringing ourselves up to speed. The educational journey involved going to passive house conferences around the country, meeting inspiring industry leaders and eventually receiving German marked qualifications as a certified passive house tradesman. You can see these qualifications on their international website.

We are now not only able to talk the passive house talk with you, we are also very excited to be creating our very own certified passive house here in nelson that you can visit and prove we are not a bunch of frauds. Watch the space as it is a first for nelson!

Passive housing advantages

• High levels of comfort
• An amazing indoor comfort and feel (no cold windows, doors or spaces to touch)
• Consistent fresh, filtered air circulated throughout the entire dwelling (great for asthma or hayfever sufferers)
• Superior structural longevity (mould and moisture free)
• Condensation free windows and doors
• Extremely low heating and cooling costs (despite rising energy prices)

Being a time poor person, I love the idea of coming home to a house that sits at a comfortable 22-24 degrees all year round.

• No lighting dirty, unhealthy fires late in the evening in a desperate attempt to try warm the house up in the middle of winter.
• No lying awake in the middle of a hot balmy summer’s night all sweaty because the house has over heated and cannot cool down.  
• No hay fever due to having fresh, clean and filtered air circulated throughout the house 24/7 via a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery.

All the while the home is consuming hardly any energy and therefore has minimal running costs.

Almost sounds a bit good to be true? – well the certified passive house performance standard achieves exactly this. Passive house was originally developed by geniuses in Germany and the system is adapted to local environments all around the globe. We can achieve passive house performance with five essential pillars.

• Exceptionally high levels of insulation
• Thermal bridge free construction
• Well insulated windows and doors
• An airtight building envelope
• Ventilation with energy recovery

All of these combined give a building unparalleled healthy levels of comfort with very low energy consumption.

 The beauty of the passive house standard is that it is simply a performance-based standard. You can design your project to look however you fancy. By combining your desired style of house, with proven passive house planning package (phpp) software, we can then make sure your house will perform as good as it looks.

Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

If you consider having a warm comfortable home the most desired option, or you’re environmentally conscious, or you’re planning to retire and want financial comfort knowing you have a house with low running costs, then passive housing is the option you’ve been looking for.

There are many, many questions and miss conceptions when it comes to what a certified passive house is.

We simply invite you to join us for a brew and let us fill in all the gaps and skepticism you may have (contact details above)

Basham building started the passive house journey to help the people of nelson, who like us, want the better option of having a comfortable, healthy and sustainable home.

You will be wonderfully reassured to learn that your next project can be achieved to the highest worldwide performance standard possible and enjoy unrivalled comfort.