Circular Project

Your smart comfort specialist

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Everyone deserves a healthy, comfortable, energy efficient and affordable home.

Circular Project specializes in smart comfort.

Whether you’re on the couch watching a game, having friends over for dinner or in bed with a book, you should be comfortable and not have to sweat or shiver. Many families in New Zealand spend about $2,500 a year heating or cooling just one room, and still reach for an extra blanket on winter nights. We believe it doesn’t have to be that way.

Unlike others who push costly products with limited results, we focus on finding where your investment delivers the greatest value and return. While more insulation or expensive windows are sometimes a great investment, they aren’t always the answer. Often, smarter solutions—like improving how you heat your home, choosing better materials, adding a skylight or right-sizing shading devices and windows—achieve greater comfort and efficiency. In quite a few cases, the right choices even reduce construction costs.

Each home is different; the orientation to the sun, the shading around the building, the type of materials used, your way of living, your available budget and design of the home all have a big impact on how comfortable and expensive your home is to keep. All of those factors can significantly change where what product is useful. At Circular Project, we specialize in analyzing your home and tailoring solutions that keep you comfortable year-round—without breaking the bank.

Our experience and capabilities range from social homes, low energy/ high efficiency homes, eco homes, off-grid homes and passive homes.

Our Services

Thermal Comfort

  • Better insulated homes are great, but many overheat far too much or do not save as much in heating as advertised. We help by analysing each room of your home. This helps you understand when and where to increase insulation, add shading or size your windows to make sure you are comfortable at home and don’t shiver or sweat. Click here for more info.

  • A space with good natural light feels warmer and larger. Whether you have tall neighbouring buildings, internal offices, glazing restrictions or you are thinking of adding a skylight, we can assess the actual impact and help right sizing windows and putting them into the right spot. Click here for more info.

  • A new german study showed that most heat pumps perform around an efficiency of 2.5 instead of the advertised 4 or more. A big reason for that is the sizing is wrong. We can help by letting you know room by room how many watts are the required heat output of your heating system. Click here for more info.

  • While some homeowners spend less money on heating, they often have to make up for it in additional cooling costs. We can help by designing shading, for example, roof overhangs, louvres, shading sail or just a good old tree planted on the right spot. Click here for more info.

  • The internet is full of promises of product suppliers claiming how much money you can safe on triple glazing, more insulation, air tightness, mechanical ventilation and many more. The truth is, it always depends. On our house, for example, rightsizing windows and changing the way we heat plus a skylight meant lower energy costs than most homes with much more insulation and triple glazing. We analyse different options and let you know which one is the best for you, your values and budget. Click here for more info.

  • A house works as a system. The way we heat, store heat, get fresh air, light, deal with toxins and moisture and heat our hot water or charge our car/ bike depends on multiple factors: the architecture of the home, your values and budget, materials used, insulation in it and shading. We can help by making sure it all works together.

  • Have you ever wondered how much you could save on heating by changing where your window is installed, how your steel beam is installed or check out how much more a certain construction details costs in heating compared to another? We can do that analysis for you.

Energy Audits for Commercial Spaces

  • Spending too much on energy in your office/ practice/ showroom? We can help check where the energy goes and what could be done to lower your energy costs.

Compliance Services

  • Wanting help with H1 compliance? We can help and do the calculation method for you.

  • The modelling method for H1 is the only method that looks at heat gains, heat storage, heat losses and internal heat gains. We are experienced in residential and commercial building H1 certification. In commercial buildings the calculation method can only change the wall and window R-value, often increasing construction costs. With the modelling method we can change the insulation value on every component, helping you find the best way to meet H1 commitments, have the building perform at least as well and often save on construction costs.

  • Zeus is the ultimate calculator if you would like to do the calculation method for H1 compliance by yourself. It tells you in real time while you change insulation levels if you pass. More importantly, if you fail, it also tells you what you need to do to pass for walls, floors, roofs and windows.

  • As we put more insulation into our walls and have homes more airtight, condensation/ interstitial condensation within the framing and insulation is becoming a more critical detail to pay attention to. We use ISO standards to assess interstitial condensation.

  • Are you unsure if a room gets enough light? Has the local council asked for a daylight analysis? We can help you analysing the spaces and make, if necessary, adjustments to ensure each room gets enough light.

  • Do you have a slab with many piles penetrating the insulation? Using a special mix of insulation products for your slab or your slab has simply not been modelled? We can help you by creating a model for your slab and calculating the R-value for it. All of our calculations and models are based on ISO and H1 standards.

Get in touch

Our Tools

Testimonials

“Having worked with Michael for over 5 years, we find his reports an invaluable addition to our process of design, cross checking and testing. His reports provide us with much more information than is typically available to us, which means our design assumptions can be blacked up by real modelled data. Any design oversights can be identified and corrected, allowing our clients to move to the next stage of documentation with confidence.”

— Mitchell Coll Director of Fabric/Registered Architect

“A real pleasure to work with Michael on our strawbale house. Our only regret was that we didn’t engage him earlier in the project.”

— Mary & Bob Fulton Our Happy Clients

“Circular Project provides invaluable services for understanding how a building is expected to perform, which allows for decisions to be made during the design on the areas of priorities for our clients, with full understanding of what the end outcome will be.”

— Mark Todd Director of Feldspar/Project Manager

 “We’ve collaborated with Michael on a range of projects — from a compact coastal bach designed with generous roof overhangs for summer shading, to a large, light-filled home where vented skylights, sliding sun screens and considered landscaping all work together to create a comfortable, energy-efficient environment. His practical understanding of passive design principles and energy modelling adds real value to every build.”

— Wulf Borrmeister Director of Borrmeister Architects/ Registered Architect / ANZIA

“After listening to Michael speak passionately at a home design evening about some of the small changes that have a big impact on everyday New Zealand homes we knew we wanted to work with him when designing and building our own home. 

The advice and knowledge Michael shared with us reinforced some decisions we had already made and steered us toward some options we hadn’t considered. Michael’s data, experience and a genuine desire to see us make the best choices for our situation was the best investment we made during the design phase. We are happy to report that years down the track we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Michael and his approach to anyone undertaking a build or renovation project.”

—Joe & Jane ‍ Extremely Happy Clients

Let’s work together

Whether you're in the early planning stages or deep into a project, I’m here to support your team with clear, actionable advice.

Let’s connect and build something that stands out.

Fill out the contact form and tell me a bit about your project — I’ll get back to you shortly to discuss how we can collaborate.