We were recently talking to someone who had built a relatively new home through a fairly standard construction process. Like many homeowners, they assumed that because the house was brand new, double glazed and built to modern standards, it would naturally deliver the comfort and efficiency associated with high-performance homes.
But after living in it through winter, they were surprised by how quickly the house still lost heat overnight once the heating turned off.
The home itself was not badly built. In many ways, it was significantly better than much of New Zealand’s older housing stock. The issue was more subtle than that.
It was the growing realisation that “new build” and “high performance” are not always the same thing.
The difference between compliance and comfort
Many homeowners hear terms like H1 compliant, double glazed and fully insulated, and understandably assume that means the house will naturally maintain stable indoor temperatures with very little heating.
But building compliance is ultimately designed around minimum legal requirements, not necessarily around achieving premium thermal comfort or very low heating demand.
As a result, a home can absolutely comply with modern standards while still:
- cooling down quickly overnight
- feeling cold near glazing areas
- requiring more active heating than expected
Without anyone necessarily doing anything “wrong.”
The lived experience surprised them
One of the things they noticed most was how much colder the areas around the large ranch sliders felt during winter mornings.
The house used double glazing, but the joinery was not thermally broken, and like many large slider systems, it was not perfectly airtight either.
During the design process, these details simply did not seem particularly important at the time. Like many people, they assumed modern construction standards would largely take care of comfort automatically.
Looking back now, they said there are probably decisions they would think through differently around glazing, joinery specification and airtightness. Not because the home failed, but because they now better understand how cumulative building performance actually is.
Many thermal decisions are difficult for homeowners to evaluate
For architects and builders, these trade-offs are usually well understood.
Most people working within the industry know that building performance is shaped by dozens of smaller decisions working together, including orientation, thermal bridging, shading, glazing ratios and envelope detailing.
But for homeowners navigating a build for the first time, these decisions are much harder to fully evaluate, especially when balancing budgets, layouts, aesthetics and overall build costs all at once.
Without prior experience, many people simply do not know where spending additional budget will genuinely improve long-term comfort and where it may not.
Large glazing areas are a good example
New Zealand homes increasingly prioritise openness, natural light and strong indoor-outdoor flow, and understandably so. Architecturally, these spaces can feel fantastic to live in.
But glazing almost always performs worse thermally than a well-insulated wall, particularly when large aluminium framing systems are involved.
Even relatively small decisions, like whether joinery is thermally broken or how airtight large openings are, can noticeably affect comfort once people begin living in the home through winter.
That does not mean these design choices are “bad.”
It simply means there are performance trade-offs involved that many homeowners are not fully aware of during the design process.
Expectations around comfort are changing
Homeowners increasingly expect homes to:
- stay warm for longer
- require less heating
- maintain more stable temperatures year-round
And many assume modern homes already do this by default.
Sometimes they do.
Sometimes they do not.
And often, the difference comes down to the accumulation of many smaller design and construction decisions rather than one obvious issue or one “bad” product choice.
The takeaway
The conversation around high-performance homes is becoming more nuanced across the industry.
It is no longer just about whether a home technically meets code.
Increasingly, it is about how the house actually feels to live in once the owners move in, turn the heating off overnight and experience their first winter in the space themselves.
If you’re planning a new build and want to understand what contributes to a truly high-performance home, our team can help you explore the options and performance considerations available.
