Carland Constructions

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Carland Constructions

Licensed residential building and construction company, specialising in renovations and extensions in Melbourne and the Inner West

High performance + Passive House builder specialising in healthy architectural homes in Melbourne
4 x certified passive house completed

Healthier, Optimised, More Comfortable
Built responsibily and simply built better
We build homes that just feel better

11/06/2026

Usually im complaining about winter, but I won’t lie living in a passive house is making it easier.

Anyway here is a complete photo dump of what has been happening on and offsite. We have smashed through a fair chunk of the demolition at our Queen Retrofit and cleaning up all the bricks to be reused again.

We also are about to get out of the ground at our Belhaus project with so keep tuned for a fair bit happening soon there as we build out 7th passive house!

We also spoke last week at a retrofit event held by the Passive House Association. Whilst we do build a lot of new homes, retrofitting is the key to uplifting the existing housing stock, and whilst Passive House might not be the full answer, it is a major part of it.

10/06/2026

Most skylights fail twice. Once with water. Once with heat. The water gets the attention. The thermal failure just quietly costs you every single day.

A standard skylight frame sits outside the insulation line. It conducts cold straight into the building. In winter that means condensation on the inside, a cold spot in the ceiling, and a heating system working harder than it should to compensate for a detail nobody thought about properly.

We pulled ours apart and rebuilt the entire frame. Insulated it properly. Treated it as what it actually is. A pe*******on through the thermal shell of the building. Not a feature bolted on at the end.

A skylight done right lets light in. A skylight done wrong lets winter in too.

07/06/2026

Do we want 1.2 million crappy houses?

Jesse Clark from threw that out early and it landed like it should. Because that’s the real question sitting underneath every housing target and every “we need more supply” headline.

More homes is not the win if we’re locking in decades of mould risk, discomfort, and expensive fixes. We got into moisture management, building envelopes, energy codes, and why getting the basics right consistently beats any new product or trend.

Now for anyone that knows of Jesse, he’s probably one of the smartest people in the industry, and someone we should be listening to when it comes to durability of buildings.

🎙️ Episode drops Monday — available on all podcast channels and YouTube. Make sure you tune in.

03/06/2026

Retrofits are harder than new builds. That is exactly why we love them.

A new build gives you control from day one. A retrofit makes you earn it, especially a double brick 1980s home.

We have almost finished most of the demolition and really there hasn’t been to many surprises (we will get to why that’s the case in a second).

Now the whole idea is to turn this home into one that’s going to perform a lot better than it originally did. There were so many big holes in the existing roof and brickwork that there were rats nests everywhere, and a fair bit of water damage from existing roof leaks. So yeah the bar has been set pretty low.

Now retrofitting CORRECTLY is hard. It requires some complex conversations around thermal, air and moisture movement so we can renovate it correctly. We are using heaps of our learnings from our Rifle Range Passive House, and whilst this house might not be going for certification, we are throwing a fair bit of effort at it to improvement.

But why are there little surprises. Well it’s because our pre construction process is pretty dialled in. We got to know this project very well before we even set foot onsite. We knew insulating it was going to be hard so we spent the time trying to find the most appropriate method. We knew airtightness was almost impossible, even for us, but we knew this project in so much detail that we had thought through most of the problems before we even hit site. Also working with again does make out life a lot easier (Good design partners make hard buildings possible. Simple as that)

The industry steers people toward demolition because retrofits require a level of skill most builders do not have. We are not interested in the easy answer. We want to do the hard thing and prove what is actually possible.

02/06/2026

How do we detail our window to cladding junction?

Well, every build is different, and every style of architecture and type of cladding creates its own challenges. But it’s all about protecting the structure and keeping water away from the structure. That’s the number one principle on our projects: send water down and away from the home.

On this project we have .windows and working with cladding.

Like in all of our homes, we make sure our windows and claddings are detailed to deal with water. Why? To give the home the best chance of survival so it can last for multiple generations.

So take a look and let us know what you think

01/06/2026

Most Australians accept that running the heater all day is just part of winter. It is not. It is a building problem disguised as a weather problem.

A home built to the minimum standard was never designed to hold heat. The walls are thin. The insulation is average. The gaps are everywhere. The heater runs constantly and the warmth disappears as fast as it is made. And the homes being built right now have exactly the same problem. The standard has not improved. The build quality has not caught up.

The industry will tell you that building better costs more. And upfront it does. But that argument conveniently ignores what poor build quality actually costs - in energy bills every month, in maintenance every year, in a home that is expensive and uncomfortable to live in for the next three decades.

Building to the minimum is not a cost saving. It is a cost transfer. The builder saves money. The homeowner pays for it every single day they live there.

It is time to lift the standard. Not because it is the fashionable thing to do. Because it is the only responsible way to build.

28/05/2026

Steel frames are not going away. We know that. The industry is built around them, the supply chain is optimised for them, and the price point makes them hard to argue against at the volume end of the market.
We still think there are better ways to build. But if you are going to use steel, at least do it properly. Because the way most steel-framed homes are being built right now is not good enough and the people living in them are paying for it every winter.

So here is what properly actually looks like.

Ditch the thermal break strip. It does not move the performance number in any meaningful way and it gives everyone involved a false sense of progress. It is a sticker on a problem that needs a proper fix.
Insulate externally. A continuous layer of insulation on the outside of the frame is the only approach that actually works. It keeps the steel warm, eliminates the thermal bridge, and gets you to a performance number worth having.

Now a word on materials. You can use XPS for that external layer and it will perform thermally. But here is what you need to understand. XPS is essentially vapour impermeable. Once it is on the outside of your frame, moisture cannot move outward through the wall. The wall cannot dry to the outside. That is fine if you are managing internal moisture deliberately. It is a problem if you are not.

Which brings us to the thing nobody mentions at the point of specification. The moment you wrap your building in continuous external insulation and tighten the envelope properly, you have created a wall that cannot breathe outward. Your building is now dependent on controlled ventilation to manage every gram of moisture your family produces - from cooking, from showers, from breathing, from existing.
That means mechanical ventilation is no longer optional. Not a rangehood and a bathroom fan. A properly designed system that brings fresh filtered air in, exhausts stale air out, and recovers the heat before it leaves. Without it, that moisture has nowhere to go except into your wall cavity. And you already know what happens there.

Build it right or do not build it at all.

27/05/2026

Most people have never thought about what is actually in their water. We had not either, until we pulled the filters.

Five months after installing a whole house filtration system, the state of those filters told us everything we needed to know. Whatever was sitting in our incoming pipes is now sitting in that filter instead of in our glass.

The shift in quality is one of those things that is hard to explain until you experience it. Normal tap water now tastes off. The chlorine is obvious. It is not that the water got worse, it is that your baseline changes and you cannot go back.

We obsess over the air inside a home. Filtration, ventilation, airtightness. The water coming into the building deserves exactly the same level of thought. You are drinking it, cooking with it, and showering in it every single day.

26/05/2026

Eight years ago, telling someone to remove their gas was almost an argument.

Going all electric felt radical. To most builders it still does.

Eight years ago we had to convince people to go all electric. It was a hard conversation. People were skeptical, uncomfortable, and not ready to let go of gas.

Now it is not even a conversation. It just happens. Nobody pushes back. Nobody asks why. The education got there and the industry followed.
We are watching the exact same thing begin to happen with mechanical ventilation and HRV systems.

The same skepticism.

The same questions.

The same resistance to something that feels unfamiliar. And we know exactly how this ends because we have already lived through it once.

The air in this home is the part nobody talks about until they have experienced it. It does not smell stale. It does not feel recycled. You walk in from outside and something is just different, cleaner, quieter, more settled. Most people cannot name it straight away. They just know the house feels better than any home they have been in before.

That feeling is not accidental. It is the result of a system bringing in fresh filtered air on your terms, recovering the energy from the air it exhausts, and maintaining a quality inside that a standard home simply cannot achieve. No open window. No compromise. Just controlled, clean air all the time.

We talk about this constantly because education is the only thing that moves an industry. It moved electrification from a hard sell to a non-negotiation. It will do the same for mechanical ventilation. It is just a matter of time and conversation.

Your home should work for you, Not against you

25/05/2026

We received our Passive House plaque the other day.

That is not what I want to talk about.

Feels like the right time to have it in hand. Melbourne winter is coming and for the first time in my life I am not dreading it.

I know what this house does. I have lived in it. I know that when the I get up at 5.30am and it is 8 degrees outside, it is 20 degrees inside.

No heater cranking before you get out of bed.

No cold side of the room.

No dreading the walk to the bathroom.

You just get up.

That sounds simple. It is not. Most Australians have never experienced that in their own home. They have just accepted that winter mornings are uncomfortable, that the house is cold until you heat it, and expensive until you stop. I used to think comfort was running the heater all day. That was just the norm. That was just what you did. I did not know any different.

Now I do. And honestly, that has made it harder to talk about, not easier.

I have been an advocate for Passive House for years. I have read the data, built to the standard, and explained the physics to anyone who would listen. But since moving in, I have genuinely struggled to find the words to describe what it actually feels like. The data does not cover it.

The certification does not cover it. It is something you have to experience to understand and that is a frustrating thing to admit when you are trying to convince people this matters.

This plaque represents something beyond the certification. It is proof that a home can work for you instead of against you. That comfort does not have to be something you manage. It can just be the way your home feels, all the time.

First winter with this one. Cannot wait.

Ps - pretty happy that in an industry where everyone wants to just meet code we have been able to finish our 5th certified passive house in the last few years (plus many other awesome high performing ones)

Address

Opening Hours

Monday	08:00 - 16:00
Tuesday	08:00 - 16:00
Wednesday	08:00 - 16:00
Thursday	08:00 - 17:00
Friday	08:00 - 16:00

Telephone

+61425854025

Website

http://www.carlandconstructions.com/, https://linktr.ee/carlandconstructions

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