How do you build a Passive House that supports aging in place, whilst balancing your budget and other project goals?

In this conversation, HOME Method members, Jan and Landon share their real-life experience navigating design, budget, and collaboration while building a sustainable, future-ready home.

Listen to the episode now.

Hello! This is Episode 367, and in it, I’m speaking with HOME Method members, Jan and Landon, about their new home and granny flat that they’re building as a Passive House in Sydney’s north.

Jan and Landon were first on the podcast back in Episodes 338 and 339, where we learned about them selling their home of 39 years, to move to a different part of Sydney, and to a site that’s been in Landon’s family for over 70 years.

Jan and Landon have specific goals for their project. They’re both in their 70s, so they’re considering how they can age in place well, as well as create a home that’s in alignment with their sustainability and lifestyle goals.

And they’re retired teachers so they’re amazing learners and have really embraced their project preparation and management with a fantastic, proactive methodology using the content of HOME Method. 

This is their first project of this scale, and it’s incredibly exciting they’ve moved to the house on the neighbouring lot to where they are building, and work has started on site for their project.

The last time we caught up, we discussed how they found their team, and how they set up a collaborative process with their architect and builder, and got going on their design process. 

We discussed the priorities for their design, and the qualities of the site, and we also talked about how their builder uses a particular pre-fab panel method to construct a passive house. 

If you haven’t heard the first part of Jan and Landon’s project journey in those episodes, I’d highly recommend checking them out. You can find them here:

• Episode 338 >>> Gardens, Grandkids, and Sustainability: Building a new home, with Jan and Landon
• Episode 339 >>> The Granny Flat Dilemma: Custom, PreFab or Kit, with Jan and Landon

In this episode, we catch up on how they’ve travelled with their design, their budget, and how the collaboration has continued on their project. 

You’ll get to hear how their team has worked together, what their role has been, and what’s surprised and what’s challenged them along the way. 

It’s a fantastic opportunity to hear about their project progress as we go into all the details in this update.

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. 

We recorded our first conversation in September, 2024, when their design process was underway. And the conversation in this podcast was recorded in July 2025… 10 months later.

As this conversation unfolds, I’d love you to notice a couple of things that I think will be super helpful for you. 

Listen out for:

• how Jan and Landon are talking about the value judgements they’re making to determine where they’ll save or spend their budget
• how they’re checking documentation, reviewing schedules, to ensure that what’s being included and priced reflects what they want to include
• their discussions about how valuable the builder’s early estimates and price points were in enabling them to make informed research, decisions and selections. 

Let’s hear from Jan and Landon now.

This is the transcript of my conversation with Jan and Landon about their passive house design and budget lessons, as their new build project progresses.

Amelia Lee
Well, Jan and Landon, I’m so excited to have you back here and updating us on your project on the podcast. It’s going to be super exciting to understand what’s going on, where you’re at, and anything that you’ve been particularly navigating since the time that we last caught up. I’m wondering if you can just share with us, to kick off, where are you at now in your project journey? What’s happening at the moment? What are you navigating? What are you dealing with in terms of your project process overall?

Jan
Well, where we’re up to in the project is that we’ve got the footings and the blockwork done for the back part of our house. Maybe I should just explain that we have two buildings in this project. So it’s a long, thin battle axe block, and the granny flat studio and carport building is at the top of the block. So as you come down the driveway, that’s what you see. And you drive into the carport in that building.

Jan
And the house is a little further down the block. And so the part that’s been done at the moment has been the earthworks for the lower part of the block that needs blockwork to get the slab up to the right level. So we finished that part, and the next part will be whatever’s needed for the footing for both the granny flat building and the first part of the house, so that all the slabs can go down at the same time. So, that’s where we’re up to.

Amelia Lee
Oh, that’s so exciting. So, you’ve got a lot to update us on then, in terms of when we last chatted and where you’re at now. So this is going to be a really fantastic conversation. And so, if you can just talk a little bit more… I’d be curious to understand how the design process has gone to get you from where our last conversation was, where you were formulating what the floor plan was going to look like.

Amelia Lee
We had a lengthy conversation about what methodology of construction to choose for the granny flat, whether to buy something off the shelf, or to design it and constructed in keeping with the Passive House style of the home that you were building. How has that design process developed to get you to this point to be starting on site?

Landon
I think we decided that if we got something from a different source, that would look like a pimple on a pumpkin or something like that, or could look like. And also that, although it might seem cheaper at the time, that the additional works associated with it may blow out that cost.

Landon
So, we ended up going with the architect designing an addition. I mean, a different way of doing it, and the builder building it also in the same process as the Passive House, but we’re not going to have it certified as Passive House.

Landon
Just because it seems to be redundant to do that.

Jan
After we spoke to you when we did our last podcast recording, I noted in our diary that we had, in that same afternoon, rung the architect and discussed this whole granny flat thing, and both she and the builder were both quite clear about the issues that were involved. And she, as Landon said, was very worried that it would look different and that wouldn’t tie in with something that was going to look rather lovely.

Jan
And the other thing was, and the builder was most keen on explaining this, that everything we saw, there were thermal bridges, and that we were going to have not the same level of comfort in that building, and there is a chance that one day, one or both of us might end up in that place. So it didn’t make sense. So that’s the way we’ve gone.

Amelia Lee
Awesome. And the house itself, how have you found that that design process has gone to get you through to construction?

Amelia Lee
Has that been fairly straightforward for you in terms of locking in the floor plan and navigating all of that design process with your architect?

Landon
Well, it’s had many iterations. I think the one that we normally looked at is number nine, but since then, there’s been about six more.

Jan
Yeah, they’re little variations.

Landon
And like Jan says, the block is very long and thin. It’s actually a normal-sized block, but because it is very long, it looks thin. The process has been great, actually. So it started off being a very long house, and we’ve brought it back a little bit together.

Jan
And I think the fact that it’s a Passive House, we probably might talk about it a bit later, but it does have some restrictions on design, unless you want to spend a lot of money. You can do anything with Passive House if you want to spend the money, but we had a budget, so yeah, it’s been a process, and I think it’s been fine.

Amelia Lee
Should we talk through some of that stuff now, actually? Because I often hear that the simplest Passive House to build is the rectangular prism. The less turns and twists that you have in a Passive Home, the less you have to be super detailed about managing thermal breaks and all of those management of the building envelope. And as you say, you can have anything in a Passive House outcome, it’s really just a case of what budget you’ve got. I know that when we first spoke about Passive House on the podcast, it was a few years ago, and we were talking about the Owl Woods Passive House. And it’s a Passive House that Talina Edwards did that has got a lot of projections and a very interesting building form. But then certain things came with that in terms of making that building form a Passive House-certified home.

Amelia Lee
You’ve taken the approach that you wanted to keep the design simple, and I know too that you also had some other goals in terms of accessibility, making sure that this is something that you guys can age really well in place, that it’s going to suit you, whatever your physical abilities might be. We’ve had conversations in the HOME Method group where you’ve been chatting about the standard of Liveable Housing Guideline, what standard you were going to build to with that. And I think your architect was initially looking at Silver, and you were saying, “Where did you need to upgrade that from a design point of view?” And asking other Homees about widths of hallways and how they might have designed bathrooms.

Amelia Lee
Can you talk through some of that? It might be in a distant memory now, given that you’re starting on site, but I’m curious, thinking about navigating that through the iterations and staying… I know, working with clients, what can be tricky is keeping people on track with that simple form. Because you can find that very quickly you go, “Oh, let’s just push this bit out here, because we might get that, and we’ll just expand this.” And the next thing you know, you’ve stepped the building envelope all over the place. So keeping it to that simple pavilion form whilst navigating all of those other things, what have you seen play out in that design process for yourself?

Jan
Well, we did push something out in terms of our bedroom. And we also had to negotiate with the architect about the width of the hall. And of course, every time you we push the hall width out, which meant the bedroom beside it became smaller, so then we had to push that out.

Jan
So those things for accessibility did have a cost involved, but we had to stick to our guns. So, we mightn’t have the 1.2, what is it, 0.2 wide hallway? I think we’re 1.1. The bathrooms, well, certainly the ensuite is bigger than what would be normally okay, because we needed to have room for whatever might possibly come in the future. So those things have a cost, and that’s not so obvious. It’s not as lovely as having some beautiful finish, for example, but it was important, and that was what was in our brief. And in fact, we did have to say to the architect, we had to remind her about it. We chose not to have a two-story house. I mean, I’d love to have a two-story house. With this old house that we’re in is two-story. We’re just next door to our building site, and the stairs are really steep and so on. But I love being upstairs, because you get lots of sun and so on.

Jan
But we didn’t want to build something that, at some point in our future, we might not be able to access part of the house. So, we’ve made choices. And I think the architect, to her credit, she was saying, “But you’re so fit and healthy,” and we are. “And going up and down stairs is good for you,” and it is. But we also know you only need to have a fall, and then you can’t access that part of the house. She had a fall, by the way, and I think it gave her an insight that sounds incredibly condescending, and we love our architect, but she said, “I think we might put a handrail on our little outside deck,” which doesn’t quite need it in terms of its height, but yes, we’ll have a handrail.

Jan
So all those things have been interesting to negotiate, and I did send a text to her yesterday just to say, “Did you remember to put in the construction drawings about having the potential for adding handrails and things in the bathroom? We don’t want them now, but we want to be able to do it.” And she said, “Yes,” she’s done it. So yep, we’re on our way.

Landon
And as it is, there are steps down the back. The block we’re on slopes very slightly, and so there’s steps at the back and steps at the side garden. And also, there’s a couple of steps up to the granny flat level, but you can also access that through the garden on a more rampy type of way.

Jan
And we can get out of the carport, out of our car, and into the house without a step. So, we will be okay should we become frail and incapacitated. Not a plan, but just in case.

Amelia Lee
Can you remind me what’s actually in the main house and what’s in the granny flat in terms of the overall layout?

Jan
Well, in the house, we have two bedrooms, our main bedroom with a walk-in wardrobe and an en suite, and a spare bedroom, which is quite smallish, and we have a room we call the multi-purpose room, and it is multi-purpose. I think of it as my study. It’s also going to have a sofa bed, and it’ll become a third overflow bedroom at some point, if we need it. And it’s also a bit of a music room. So it’s got our piano. It’s quite big-ish. So we’ve got that. And then we’ve got kitchen, lounge room, dining room in an L-shape, and all of that is like a C-shape around an outdoor room. So that’s where we had the extra corners. We just needed it. We wanted to have an outdoor room, so our lounge room and dining room and our kitchen and our bedroom, all impose that little outdoor area.

Amelia Lee
Lovely. And then what’s in the granny flat?

Jan
The granny flat has one bedroom. It’s only 42 square metres. It’s only small, but it had to have, which I didn’t want, but it had to have a little laundry, which seemed ridiculous. But anyway, it’s got a little bathroom, minuscule laundry, a bedroom, and a lounge, kitchen, open area, and it leads out onto a bit of a little terrace where we can have outdoor chair, table.

Landon
Terrace on the north side.

Jan
It’ll be lovely. It’ll be very nice.

Amelia Lee
And it sounds like the main house is doing a really lovely job of maintaining that indoor outdoor connection from so many different areas within, which is a great way to experience that site as well.

Jan
We hope so. And there is also, at the back, a deck that actually connects up to the outdoor area around the corner. And that won’t have a roof, but it will have a pergola and vines and things. So we’re hoping it’s going to be okay. We think it will be. We can imagine it, but you never know till you see it.

Amelia Lee
Well, what I love about this process and what I see time and time again, is because of the preparation and the learning that you’ve done, and how you’ve implemented that in the selection of your team, and then working with your team proactively, and all of the questions that you’re asking along the way, and all of the intentional thinking that you’re doing along the way, the joy of this is that when the home is finished, it actually exceeds your expectations.

Amelia Lee
So it’s this thing of, “We knew what it looked like, but we didn’t expect it to look this good.” So, I have an inkling that that’s actually what’s going to be the outcome.

Jan
I hope so. I mean, our daughter was here not very long ago, just this week, and she had a look at the work that’s happened, and she said, “Just be prepared that first of all, you’re going to think it’s not big enough. And then they’ll put the slab in, and you think, my goodness, that’s huge. And then the walls will go up, and you’ll think, oh my God, those rooms are tiny.” And she said, “Then they’ll do all the plaster work and painting, and you’ll think it’s enormous again.” So I thought that was very helpful. She’s just been through it with the renovation, you see.

Amelia Lee
Oh, fantastic. Yeah, it’s very true. The sizes are strangely deceptive as it’s moving through its different stages of construction.

Jan
We’re pre-warned.

Amelia Lee
Fantastic. And so you’ve talked a bit about your budget and working to maintain your budget. How tricky has that been through the process of design? And I suppose, working with your builder to have that input and that knowledge as you navigate the design process, and testing against the Passive House requirements, what’s that look like, your management of your budget through all of this?

Jan
It got a bit confusing. There are so many things happening, we’re paying out for all those things, all those people, and then at the same time, we’re trying to work out how much it’s going to cost. And the builder did a preliminary estimate, which we actually found really useful when we did things like do our selections.

Jan
Because we kept things within what his budget was, which was a great help when we went to do things like buy tiles. Because you go into those showrooms with the most beautiful, beautiful tiles, and you just don’t know where to begin. But if you go up to somebody and say, “We’re looking for tiles in this price range.” Instantly he goes, “This is what you’ve got.” Which is fine, because they’re lovely too, but it just took away all that extraneous looking and made our decision easier. So it was really helpful for us, even though that was only an estimate. All the way along, the architect and the builder have communicated with each other and us about costs, and always, the architect consults with the builder when she’s made a change or thinking about something, she’ll check with Darren the builder and say, “I’m going to do this. Has it got a cost implication?” And he’ll say, “Yep, it has. We could do it this way.” And they’ll talk about it.

Jan
So this dialogue has been happening constantly all the way along and with us. And of course, we’ve had to make choices and compromises or stick to our guns, in different situations. And that’s been an interesting process. And I really, really like the way the builder says, “I will say it as I see it, and if I think it’s going to be really expensive, or if I think it’s not going to work in our system of this making the panels, because it’s all been made in a factory…”

Landon
So some of the things, like with the choice of windows and doors, that was interesting, it’s a big saga. Just getting the sizes right, and reviewing the schedules to make sure that what we are expecting was actually written down there for the manufacturer. But we started off with an idea about how we wanted, what we wanted for the front door to be. And we spent hours and hours trying to get the right colour, and then…

Jan
The cost, it blew out. So suddenly, we’re on a different trajectory in terms of trying to choose things. So it’s been constant, always, making decisions.

Landon
But in the end, we were confronted with, well, it’s going to be this much cost, and we chose the cheaper option, and I think that’s made us happy. There’s lots and lots of things that we had to consider. And everything seemed to happen all at once. Like, we had to have our decisions about bathroom and kitchenware sorted by the end of the week. I mean, oh, we’ve been looking around at things, but thinking that we’ve had lots and lots of time to go through it. So we ended up being forced and into it and get our choices and made our orders and things like that. So everything’s basically ordered, kitchenware and appliances and things like that.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, it’s music to my ears, Jan and Landon, because it sounds to me, the fact that there’s basically retaining going in on site, and still earthworks happening, and yet you’ve got these decisions locked away, to me, shows that A, you’re working through a really methodical process, and you’re working with a team who is supporting you in working through that methodical process. Because there are stories of builders calling a client literally a week before, having never discussed it with them before. And then saying a week out, “Oh, look, we need all of your tapware on site next week. Go to this showroom and make all of your selections, because we need them.” Whereas you’ve had the preliminary estimate, so you’ve known the ballpark of what you’re working in, you’ve then been able to filter through your selections. And so even though you’ve had this deadline presented to you, there’s been a bunch of pre-thinking that’s happened so that it’s not all happening in that very short timeframe. And so I love how you’ve been shepherded through this.

Amelia Lee
And it really excites me that your designer, your architect and your builder are working so collaboratively together, because that’s when you start to get the best out of the process. That collegiate sharing of information, that the fact that they’ve been also communicating with you so proactively, that, to me, is a project well done. And so it’s really exciting to hear that that’s been your experience of it. I was just going to say Jan, for the uninitiated, yes, this is a lot.

Jan
I was just going to say an example of how this process has worked. The builder took the design for the kitchen and for all the cabinetry, and gave it to the person he uses for cabinet-making for a price. And it came back hugely, hugely over what he had estimated, like 60,000 over. So we had this really honest conversation. Oh, dear.

Jan
Anyway, we did this on Zoom, only a week ago. And so he said, “Now, this is how much the granny flat kitchen is costing.” And he said, “I think it’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous for a granny flat kitchen. What are we going to change?” So we all talked about what we could change. We did it the same in the kitchen. Okay,, I thought it wasn’t a bad price for a kitchen. But he said, “Because you’re so over in the cost of this kitchen, what can we change?” And so I said, “Well, we can take all those bifold doors that you lift up.” I didn’t care. It wasn’t of importance to me, but there were things that I wanted to keep. For example, in the granny flat, tiny little bathroom, but it’s got the systems in-built.

Amelia Lee
The concealed systems? Yup.

Jan
Concealed. And he said, “Oh, that’s expensive.” And the architect and I both said, “No, we’re keeping it.” Like, that was non-negotiable.

Landon  25:31

Especially since we’d already bought it.

Jan
Oh, yes,

Amelia Lee
But it sounds like it’s been enabling you. I mean, this is the thing, and it’s what I talk to architects and builders about. It’s not their job to figure out what is expensive or cost-effective for you. It’s their job to educate you about what your decisions are costing so that then you can make those value-based choices that are aligned with your priorities and your goals and where you want to see your money go.

Jan
Yes, so it’s been good, and I appreciate his honesty. And I also appreciate his saying, “Okay, I understand that’s important. So in the end, we’re not going to save as much as we hoped, but we’re going to save some.” The other thing was, the architect had designed some really lovely raised garden beds around the edge of our back deck and around the side as it leads towards the covered area. And it would have looked lovely, and it was going to cost 20,000 at least, for some reason. And everything costs more than you ever imagined. And so the builder said, “I know what we can do.” Because, I mean, the other thing is that it had to be engineered, with all that soil and the height and so on. He said, “We could have those blocks that you stack.” And we thought, “Hmm, don’t like it.” I could see the architect wasn’t that keen. And we muddled it over for a while. And in the end, yesterday, I just said, “I’d rather not have it now, to have something like that, it’s just going to look really not the best. I’d rather wait or not have it at all than have it look daggy,” which I thought it was going to look daggy.

Jan
So, we seem to be making lots of decisions, and then we move on and we forget. I mean, this process of getting ready for this podcast, we both sat and talked and read our notes and answered the questions on writing pads and all that stuff, just to get our head around it. And we just realised how much we’ve done and the decisions we’ve made, and more decisions that we’ve made. And it just goes on for months and months, and you forget, a bit like childbirth, in a way.

Amelia Lee
Very much like childbirth.

Jan
All of a sudden, we’re at this point, and you forget what’s happened.

Amelia Lee
And just the remarkable amount that you’ve been able to do and make decisions about, having never done this before. Like, it’s total kudos to you. I know that you say, “Oh, it’s been a lot, and there’s been a lot of it.” But yeah, I hope that in that reflection, you can also be super proud of yourselves in terms of what you’ve been able to accomplish to get to this point, and how well that set you up for what’s going to be happening coming forward. And it’s why we talk about in HOME Method, it’s really important that you keep a paper trail. I know that you guys have got this beautiful red book that you note everything in. I mean, just at the beginning of this, Landon started writing down the date, like he needs to take notes from this podcast episode as well. Like, you’ve got a practice in place that makes you really good project managers, and means that you’ve always got this documentation to go back to because you don’t remember everything, and things are feeling very intense in the moment and very impactful and like life or death almost.

Amelia Lee
30 days, 60 days later, they’re like a blip on your radar. So, yeah, it’s such a fascinating process. So it’s really awesome to hear you share that. And I think, what I hear from what you’re saying is, things like the garden beds as an example. I love that you’re not going, “Look, let’s just figure out how we can dummy it up and make a cheaper version.” You’re actually going back to the core of, “What are we seeking to achieve here? This isn’t going to do the job. We don’t want a poor cousin of what we were seeking to achieve. We’d rather just not have it at all and have a better outcome, rather than trying to dolly it up with something that’s cheaper.” And I think then, when you are making choices to choose, like you’re talking about, Landon, with the lower cost windows and doors, you’re still making those value-based choices from a really intentional place of where you’re going to spend less money versus spend more money, and that kind of stuff, the bifold doors in the kitchen, all of that kind of thing.

Amelia Lee
It sounds to me like you’re doing all the right things in terms of how you’re making those choices with clarity and with confidence. So absolutely love that update.

Jan
I don’t know about confidence. I think you’re over-egging the pudding here. But we muddle along. This is the first time we’ve ever done it. So, yes, confidence, sometimes we are, but we do have the team, we do have the architect and the builder that we can talk to. So that does help.

Landon
And it’s sort of like the Juggernaut, once you started rolling, it just takes you along with it. And, yeah, you do what you do, you do what you can to stay on board. But like, it’s just coming, keep going, isn’t it, until it stops?

Amelia Lee
It does. Alrighty. And, I suppose, you’ve talked about a couple of hiccups or hurdles, has there been anything that’s stood out where you’ve been pleasantly surprised, or you might have a niggling feeling of, oh gosh, did we make the right choice there? Like, has anything like that come up for you as you’ve been navigating it overall?

Jan
We want to talk about the workers so far. Well, I was trying to think what’s been a pleasant surprise. And we both agreed that the quality of the work we’ve seen and the quality of the workers has been fantastic, really.

Jan
I mean, we’ve seen a lot of building sites around us, both where we were living before and now. And often, you think, “My goodness, it seems slapdash.” We suddenly find ourselves being old people saying, “It wasn’t like that in our day,” that sort of stuff. Well, not entirely, but you can just see that things aren’t done well. And the houses you end up seeing look a bit shoddy. And so who we’ve had here, the workers we’ve had here, have been the fellow with the excavator, and the concreters and the people who do the blockwork, and they’ve been so meticulous and so polite and friendly. I mean, we’ve got a bird’s eye view. It’s better than television. We can look out our windows and watch our house being done, and we just marvel at how I think they’re proud of what they do. So I think the builder has chosen some very good subcontractors, and he’s got an excellent site manager or building supervisor, whatever you call him. And he keeps a good eye on what’s happening. And we see him quite a lot when things are on.

Jan
You hope for it, and so a surprise is probably not the right word, but we’re really pleased that this is what we’re seeing. It makes us feel like we’ve chosen well, I guess.

Amelia Lee
And you mentioned, the house is being built from prefab panels. So have the panels already started construction? What’s the process with that?

Jan
They’re in discussion about this, because the windows aren’t going to arrive from Germany until about October, and normally, they wait for that to happen and then they build the panels around them. But because of this time lag, they’re thinking that they might build the panels and then put the windows in.

Landon
Right on site.

Jan
Yeah, or some of them. So this is a discussion that’s ongoing with Mark, the supervisor and the builder, and probably the architect. So we’re not quite sure where that is, but we won’t be in till, I don’t know, March. Yeah, well, over to Christmas. We’re not even imagining Christmas. And you had a question about hurdles and things, and this goes in terms of pricing, again, when they built the trenches for this first part of the work, the structural engineer came and did an inspection. This happened while we’re in New Zealand, by the way. We’ve just come back from two weeks in New Zealand. And he thought the soil was softer than he’d imagined for the design, and he thought, we’ll have to put piers down. So he and the builder had a discussion, and it was decided that the trenches would be made wide in some places, and that cost us an extra $7,000 for the work and for the extra concrete.

Landon
That had probably saved us.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, that would have been considerably less, though, than piering. That sounds like it was a really great collaboration between the builder and the structural engineer to resolve it in a way that was going to meet the engineers requirements, but not blow out your budget considerably.

Jan
Yeah. So that’s happened. The concreters said, with these footings you could put a three story building on. I don’t know how much they know.

Amelia Lee
The structural engineers is the one who has to insure it though. So the concreter can say that, but it’s not their insurance that covers it.

Jan
Anyway, they were impressed.

Amelia Lee
And it sounds like all of your team’s working together really well, as you mentioned, and that your role in it is really clear. And have you felt like that in terms of, you’ve talked about messaging the architect, and saying, “Have you remembered this?” Like, do you feel really supported in terms of how you’re navigating this, and you’ve got these people in your corner keeping you informed?

Jan
Oh, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That’s right. You won’t remember, but when we first had made the selection of the architect and the builder, instead of interviewing lots of architects…

Amelia Lee
I remember, you just got to meet her, and then that was it, wasn’t it?

Jan
We met her and then made that decision. And then she worked with this builder, and suddenly, there we were. And every now and then, not because of anything they did, I just wondered, “Oh, should I have done more?” But really, our decision was the right decision for us. For us, it’s been fantastic, I think. We feel very supported in what we’re doing.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, that’s absolutely fantastic.

RESOURCES

Jan and Landon’s previous episodes on the podcast:

• Episode 338 ‘Gardens, Grandkids, and Sustainability: Building a new home, with Jan and Landon’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-gardens-grandkids-sustainability-building-new-home-jan-landon/ 
• Episode 339 ‘The Granny Flat Dilemma: Custom, PreFab or Kit, with Jan and Landon’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-granny-flat-dilemma-custom-prefab-kit/ 

Passive House episodes on 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/  

Access the support and guidance you need (like Jan and Landon did) 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 

My free ’44 Ways’ E-Book will simplify sustainability for you, and help you create a healthy, low tox and sustainable home – whatever your dreams, your location or your budget. Access your copy here >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/ways