The growing enthusiasm for sustainable construction in New Zealand has rightly brought straw into focus. Its potential as a carbon-sequestering, high-performance insulator is undeniable. Yet the rapid shift from traditional straw-bale building to prefabricated panels has produced a marketplace where engineering rigour and quality vary dramatically. For discerning builders and architects, it’s vital to look ...
Tucked into the Central Otago hills, this quietly high-performing home blends natural materials with the warmth and comfort of passive design. We asked the Froggy Bottom owners to share their experience working with Hiberna Modular—from design ideas and sustainability goals to the day-to-day feel of living in a structural panel home. Here’s what they had ...
Straw, once considered a mere byproduct of agriculture, is rapidly gaining recognition as a sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective building material. Straw panels, in particular, are at the forefront of eco-friendly construction, offering an innovative solution to some of the challenges faced by modern builders. But what makes a straw panel successful, and how are they ...
For us here at Hiberna Modular, Christmas came early when the Embodied Carbon Assessment landed on our desk back in October ‘23. Let Us Explain. Simply put, our goal at HM is to supply New Zealand with warm, comfortable buildings, which are affordable to construct, and lock carbon into the build. Designed to provide New ...
We recently sat down with Ben Eyers, founder of Hiberna Modular, to ask him some short, sharp questions on who, how & why the structural panels are installed on the build site. Read on for all the info. Q: Are the panels available throughout New Zealand? The short answer is yes. They’re available throughout the ...
For most of us living an (intentionally, or not) fast-paced modern lifestyle (even in 1st world New Zealand) – we can find ourselves needing to balance out the stresses of everyday life once we arrive home. It’s no accident that the Dutch concept of ‘hygge’ has risen in popularity globally. For our homes to be ...
Our high-performance panels are the result of over a decade of practical experience constructing, researching, designing and assessing straw bale homes. So we know just how fantastic they are. But unlike in Europe (where similar technology has been gaining popularity for a while now), the huge benefits of building straw structural buildings are relatively unknown ...
If you’re interested in the world of sustainable building like us, you may have heard that there’s a new Licensed Building Practitioners code of ethics in town. The Government introduced this new code of ethics for LBPs back in October 2021, and a year later it is now enforceable by the Building Practitioners Board. The ...
Today We’re Asking: Why Doesn’t NZ Fire Test? This may come as news to you (not to us, as we’ve been in the industry for over a decade now), but the materials we use to build our homes here in NZ are not required (by law) to be fire tested. The NZ Building Code (Clause ...
