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

27/08/2026

Over 3000 photos on one house.

That is what it actually takes to certify a Passive House properly, and this is only a snapshot of the ones from Pigeon Passive House in Yarraville. Membrane laps before anything covered them. Window installs showing exactly where the frame sits within the insulated line. Tape at every pe*******on. Slab edge insulation before the pour. Service cavity depths. Airtightness continuity at every junction that matters.

None of it is visible now. All of it determines whether the home performs.

The reason we document like this is not the certifier, though it certainly helps when the assessment comes around. It is that once the plasterboard goes on, the only proof that what was designed was actually built is the photos you took before it disappeared. A blower door report tells you the number the home achieved. It cannot tell you whether the insulation was installed correctly or whether the airtightness layer is genuinely continuous behind the wall.

This is the level of documentation we produce on every single project, not just the certified ones. Most builders would look at 3000 photos and see a waste of time. We look at it and see the record that lives with this building for as long as it stands.

None of these photos are beautiful. They are just the ones that matter.

26/08/2026

Everyone loves to tell us our walls are too expensive. They are wrong, and here is why.

Yes, a 140mm stud costs more than a standard 90mm stud on its own. If you stopped the maths there, you would think we were adding cost. But that is not how a building works. Because those deeper, stronger studs let us carry structural loads that would normally require a steel column. And once you start substituting timber for steel, the numbers flip. In nearly every case we have done it, the 140mm framing has actually saved money across the project, not added to it. Fewer steel members, less engineering, less labour handling heavy steel on site.

Then there is the other complaint. The one about losing space. Framing at 140mm instead of 90mm adds about 100mm to the outside of the building. That is it. One hundred millimetres across an entire home.

If you are genuinely worried about losing a single square metre on a whole build, you might be a little too precious. Especially when that extra depth is what lets us pack in nearly double the insulation and design out the thermal bridging that makes standard homes cold.

25/08/2026

Steel is the default answer in Australian construction, and it is costing homeowners more than they realise.

Almost every home relies on steel to hold up the structure over big openings. Garage doors, large windows, open plan spaces. It is the standard solution and most builders never question it. The problem is that steel is one of the most conductive materials you can put in a wall. It pulls heat straight out of the home in winter and drives it in during summer, and it is extremely difficult to insulate around properly. Every steel member becomes a highway for heat to bypass your insulation completely.

On this build we took a different approach. Using an engineered timber portal frame system, we were able to carry the same structural loads with large timber members instead of steel. The engineering stacks up, the strength is there, and it removed a significant cost from the project at the same time.

The bonus is what it does for thermal performance. Because our external walls are framed at 140mm and the portal frame sits at 90mm, we have the depth to wrap rigid insulation around the outside of the frame. That means no cold bridge cutting through the wall and consistent insulation across the whole building envelope.

This is the part of building better that nobody sees and everybody feels. It does not show up in the finishes or the photos. It shows up in a home that is cheaper to build, holds its temperature, and looks after the people inside it.

Better outcomes do not always cost more. Sometimes they just take a builder willing to think differently.

20/08/2026

Queen High Performance retrofit is moving along and this is where we are at.

The frame is coming together nicely and we have started getting wood fibre board onto the roof. This is actually the first time we have used this product and we are already big fans. External insulation on a roof is something we feel strongly about because it keeps the insulation layer continuous, it sits outside the structure rather than within it, and it deals with thermal bridging in a way that internal insulation simply cannot. Wood fibre does all of that while also managing moisture intelligently, which on a retrofit is not a nice to have, it is the whole point.

We are also starting to work through the airtightness detailing, which on a retrofit is always the most demanding part of the process. Every junction, every pe*******on, every connection between old and new has to be thought through carefully before anyone picks up a roll of tape. On a new build you design the airtightness layer from scratch. On an existing building you design it around what is already there, and that requires a different kind of thinking entirely.

This is the stage of a retrofit that does not photograph beautifully but sets up everything that comes after it. Get the airtightness detailing right now and the blower door result looks after itself. Rush it and no amount of insulation makes up for what you missed.

More updates to come as this one progresses.

18/08/2026

Building better costs more. Let us be honest about that.

There is no point pretending a high performance home is the same price as a standard one. It is not. Doing things properly, the airtightness, the insulation, the windows, the ventilation, all of it costs more up front than the bare minimum the code lets you get away with.

But here is what nobody tells you. The cheap home is not actually cheaper. You just pay for it later, and you pay more.

You pay for it every quarter when the energy bills come in for a home that cannot hold its temperature. You pay for it when the mould appears and you are trying to work out where it is coming from. You pay for it when the moisture that has been sitting in the walls finally shows itself and the repair bill lands. And the worst part is that most of these problems cannot be fixed without pulling the finished home apart, because the fundamentals were locked in the day it was built.

There is nothing worse than spending good money down the track to fix bad building. Ripping out walls to add what should have been there from the start. Paying twice for something you could have done once.

Spend it at the start, where it goes into the bones of the home and quietly pays you back for the next fifty years. Or save it at the start and hand it all back later with interest. That is the real choice.

Ready to build it right the first time.

11/08/2026

Would your home actually pass?

High performance is the most overused phrase in Australian construction right now. Every builder is using it and almost none of them can tell you what it actually means. So we defined it properly.

For us, a home is not high performance because it has good insulation or nice windows. It is high performance when twelve separate things are all true at once, working together as one system. Miss a few and the whole thing falls over, and the person living there ends up with a home that was sold as one thing and performs like another.

An airtight home with no ventilation is a problem. Great insulation with thermal bridges everywhere is a wasted opportunity. It only works when every category is handled together, which is exactly why so many homes that claim to be high performance are not.

We have built enough of these homes now to know what matters and what gets overlooked, and we have put everything we have learned into a guide that breaks down all twelve.

If you want it, comment PERFORMANCE below and we will send it straight over.

10/08/2026

Your insulation is only as good as the gaps around it.

Most Australian homes are insulated the same way. Batts pushed into the cavities between the timber or steel studs, sheet goes on, job done. And on paper that looks fine. The problem is what happens at every single stud, every rafter, every junction where the frame interrupts that insulation. Those framing members conduct heat straight through the wall and around the insulation completely. That is thermal bridging, and in a standard wall it can rob you of a huge amount of the performance you thought you were paying for.

External insulation solves this in the most direct way possible. Instead of only filling the gaps between the frame, you wrap a continuous layer over the outside of the entire structure. Every stud, every rafter, every connection point that would normally be a weak spot is now sitting on the warm side of an unbroken blanket of insulation. The heat has nowhere to escape because there is no longer a clear path through the frame.

On this build we are using wood fibre board to do exactly that. We did not have the rafter depth to hit the performance we needed from within the roof alone, so we brought the insulation to the outside and went over the top. It is rigid, it is water resistant on the outside while still letting the structure breathe from within, and it goes on both walls and roofs.

This is one of the most effective things you can do to lift the real world performance of a home, and it is barely used in Australia. It should be everywhere.

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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