Why Go Green?

Introducing ForeverBreathe™ homes

Foreverbreathe™ homes are designed to improve energy efficiency and lower emissions through the use of materials with a lower carbon footprint and improved airtightness.

Our Foreverbreathe homes provide excellent indoor air quality due to their non-toxic, vapour permeable wall system and construction from natural materials.

Sustainable materials including wool insulation are used in the construction of Foreverbreathe™ homes, helping to create a healthier home for families.

Building a ForeverBreathe™ home is a step you can make toward fighting climate change while creating a much better environment for your family.

What's your motivation for Going Green?

Click your reason on an image below

Energy Savings

Smarter Energy Savings: Built to Breathe, Designed to Perform

Comfort that naturally slashes your power bills.

Our Foreverbreathe homes achieve an optimal 2.8 air changes per hour (ACH₅₀) under blower door test conditions—not too tight, just right. This effectively halves the energy required to heat and cool your home compared to a standard new build compliant with basic NZ building code.

Key Performance Features:

Plastic-Free Moisture Control: We achieve superior airtightness without plastic wraps. Your home naturally manages internal moisture to create a healthier living environment and a longer-lasting structure.

Active Wool Insulation: Natural wool offers much more than a standard R-value. It acts as an active insulation material, absorbing and releasing moisture to regulate climate dynamically—keeping you warmer in winter and cooler in summer. As well as providing an R value, wool insulation in combination with Magnum Board produces 1.8 watts of energy, per square metre.

The 8-Hour 'Thermal Battery': By combining wool insulation with Magnum Board® linings and RAB board, the Foreverbreathe system creates a high-performance thermal delay. This delays external heat and cold transfer for at least 8 hours, stabilising indoor temperatures against daily weather swings and reducing annual heating and cooling energy use by an additional 9% to 12%.

Your Health

A Breath of Fresh Air: Homes Designed for Living Well

Protect your family with clean, non-toxic indoor air.

We spend up to 90% of our time indoors, yet indoor air quality can be up to five times worse than the air outside.

Standard building materials frequently off-gas harmful chemicals, including formaldehyde and other Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).

At Premium Homes, we do things differently. The materials that give our homes their strength and thermal performance are completely non-toxic or extremely low-VOC—right down to the interior paint. If you or your family suffer from asthma, allergies, or chemical sensitivities, your home should be a safe haven, not a trigger.

How the Foreverbreathe™ System Protects Your Health:

Active Toxin Filtering: Rather than adding chemical load to your living space, our materials actively clean it. The natural wool fibers in our insulation capture and permanently lock away airborne formaldehyde.

Built-in Anti-Fungal Defence: Magnum Board® provides structural alkalinity (pH 10) that naturally inhibits mold, mildew, and fungal growth without synthetic chemical treatments.

Allergy & Asthma Relief: By replacing harsh synthetic materials with natural, breathable components, we eliminate common environmental triggers—creating a safer, purer indoor atmosphere for your family.

We measure the air quality in real time of our Foreverbreathe office and our show home. Call in and see for yourself!

No Condensation or Mould

Dry, Healthier Living: Eliminating Condensation & Mould Naturally

Say goodbye to crying windows and damp, cold rooms.

Every day, an average Kiwi family of four releases up to 20 litres of moisture into their home through cooking, showering, laundering, and breathing. In a conventional build wrapped in plastic and non-breathable materials, this humid air travels through the home looking for cold surfaces. Once it hits a cold wall or glass window, it turns back into liquid water—creating ideal conditions for toxic mould and mildew to thrive.

How the Foreverbreathe™ System Solves It:

Vapour-Permeable Walls: Rather than trapping damp air inside your living space, our Magnum Board® linings and breathable wall components allow moisture vapour to be processed and pass through safely without getting trapped.

Active Wool Buffering: Within the wall cavity, natural wool insulation acts as a smart moisture buffer. It absorbs excess airborne humidity when internal levels are high and safely evaporates it away when temperature conditions change.

Free Thermal Energy: As natural wool absorbs moisture, it triggers a completely natural exothermic reaction—releasing subtle heat back into the building envelope. This keeps your home drier, warmer, and significantly easier to heat.

Resistance to Effects of Climate Change

Photo: Courtesy RNZ

Built to Withstand: Resilience Against Fire & Flood

Future-proof your home with materials more suited to withstand extreme weather and natural elements.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has set clear goals for New Zealand’s building future: our homes must be resilient to climate change. Yet, a standard build in NZ is only designed to meet the minimum legally allowable code—relying on plasterboard, basic stick framing, and paper or plastic wraps. In a severe fire or flood, how well will a standard build really protect your investment?

At Premium Homes, the Foreverbreathe™ wall system is engineered for superior defence. By sandwiching natural wool insulation and rugged LVL framing between two layers of stone-like Magnum Board®, we deliver structural protection against fire, water, and storm events.

Tested Against the Elements:

Proven Fire Resistance: In Canterbury, dry conditions and fierce Nor'west winds make wildfire risk a serious concern, as experienced in the Port Hills. Magnum Board® is naturally non-combustible.

When Andrew and Grant from Premium Homes put it to a direct-flame test (watch the video below!), the board simply refused to ignite—though the wooden fence behind it almost did!

Extreme Water & Flood Resilience: Standard plasterboard degrades rapidly when exposed to water. To test Magnum Board’s flood resilience, we left a sample fully submerged in water for over 10 months. The result? Zero structural damage or swelling.

Complete Envelope Defence: Used as both an external Rigid Air Barrier (RAB) and an internal wall lining, Magnum Board® shields your wool insulation from both sides—protecting your home’s core against driving rain, high winds, and moisture.

Don't just build to code—build to protect. Choose a home designed to keep your family safe against whatever the future brings.

Sustainability

Sustainability: Building for Today, Preserving for Tomorrow

Be part of the solution by choosing a home that respects the planet at every stage of its lifecycle.

Sustainable building isn't just a buzzword—it's about reducing non-renewable resource consumption, eliminating construction waste, and creating healthy, high-performing living spaces.

In New Zealand, traditional construction methods take a heavy toll on the environment:

Construction and demolition waste accounts for up to 50% of all waste going to Kiwi landfills.

Standard code-built homes leak air at an average of 6.5 air changes per hour (ACH₅₀), driving up energy bills and wasted power.

Conventional builds rely heavily on single-use plastic wraps, synthetic nylon carpets, and vinyl flooring.

How the Foreverbreathe™ System lowers your carbon emission level:

Lower Manufacturing Footprint: We replace standard wallboards with Magnum Board® for rigid air barriers (RAB) and internal linings. Magnum Board® produces significantly fewer greenhouse gases during manufacture compared to traditional plasterboard.

An Active Carbon Sink: Magnum Board® doesn't just emit less carbon—it actively absorbs and locks away airborne CO2 as a finished product.

Proven Lifetime Carbon Savings: Homestar® research on our 200m² Lincoln show home confirms that the Foreverbreathe™ system acts as a true carbon sink, saving 8,000 kg to 11,000 kg of CO2 over the home’s lifetime.

At Premium Homes, we offer a smarter, greener path forward.

The Foreverbreathe™ Sustainable Difference:

Reducing Synthetic Plastics: We replace conventional plastic building wraps and synthetic materials with breathable, high-performance alternatives like sheep's wool insulation and Magnum Board®.

Circular, End-of-Life Design: Unlike standard building materials that sit in landfills for centuries, components of the Foreverbreathe™ system are natural, non-toxic, and circular—meaning they can be safely recycled or composted at the end of the home's long lifecycle.

Superior Efficiency: By lowering air leakage from 6.5 ACH down to an optimal 2.8 ACH, your home consumes far less energy over its lifetime, conserving precious natural resources.

A Legacy You Can Be Proud Of: Every choice you make in your build has an impact. Building a Foreverbreathe™ home with Premium Homes ensures you are actively driving environmental change—creating a home that is better for your family and better for Aotearoa.

Premium Homes ForeverBreathe: A look behind the scenes

WATCH: A Premium Homes Foreverbreathe home under construction. Learn some of our secrets...

Building for Resilience: Climate Change and Your Home

As we move towards 2050, MBIE (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment) has set new building criteria, with a key focus on ensuring buildings are resilient to the impacts of climate change. Here in Canterbury, one of the most pressing risks on everyone’s mind is fire, especially with the recent events on the Port Hills and in rural areas where a combination of dry conditions and our famous nor'wester winds can quickly reignite a seemingly extinguished burn-off.

Andrew and Grant from Premium Homes put the "fire-resistant" claims of Magnum Board to the test and filmed the results. Despite their best efforts, they couldn’t ignite the Magnum Board. They may, however, have come a little too close to setting fire to the fence it was propped against!

Then they put Magnum Board to a water submersion test, which ended up being ten months long, to see how their building product coped. They just couldn't hurt the Magnum Board. This demonstrates the true resilience of our building material, used both as an internal wall board and an external Rigid Air Barrier - effectively sandwiching our wool insulation.

Magnum Board is only half the picture. Paired with the natural power of wool insulation, the Foreverbreathe system creates a hygroscopic wall that truly breathes. This dynamic combination regulates moisture vapour to keep your home dry and condensation-free, naturally reducing your energy needs

WHY US

1. Qualified Home Builders

Discover Our Green Expertise

Experience the difference with our team of eco-home builders who have the skills and qualifications to bring your sustainable dream home to life, from design to construction.

Quality First

We believe in delivering exceptional quality as well as sustainability in all aspects of our home-building process.

Join us for a better building experience. Contact us today.

2. Commitment to your satisfaction

We prioritise your satisfaction and this is reflected in the quality of our eco homes.

From the time we start talking design with you to the time you move in we are fully committed to providing excellent customer service and will be there with you throughout the entire process.

3. Our Eco Credentials

We have Comprehensive Eco-Building Knowledge and have been awarded through Master Builders for environmental and sustainable excellence.

Our builders are experts in eco-building, resulting in comfortable, energy efficient homes with clean air. Our methods and materials used result in homes that are more sustainable.

Quality and Sustainability First

We believe in delivering exceptional quality and sustainability in all aspects of our eco-home building process. Our builders are dedicated to using high-quality, environmentally friendly materials.

Join us in creating a greener future for your home. Contact us today.

See what our customers say

Customer Experiences

Award winning Master Builder, Christchurch

As homeowners of the 2021 Registered Master Builders award winning home, we would like to say we are extremely proud and grateful to the team at Premium Homes. Andrew stood by us through two and a half years of difficult times while we negotiated a successful resolution with our insurance company, which enabled us to manage our own repair.

As this was Phillipa’s family home we wanted to preserve and enhance many of its original features while creating something new and modern.

The project was a pleasurable experience through Premium Homes’ superb craftsmanship, attention to detail, continuous communication and organisation skills. The team was dedicated to the project, and this resulted in a unique house, which we are delighted to call home.

The exchange of ideas between us and the builders was so rewarding and resulted in a finish beyond our initial vision.

“We want to thank you all for the brilliant transformation of our house. The result is wonderful, but the experience was also excellent. Your communication was superb, you were on budget and on time – no mean feat with our 100-year-old house – and added the unforeseen along the way.

So, again, we appreciate your care of us and our home. Thank you.”

Phillipa and Lawson

Cashmere

When we saw the completed build for the first time it was with some well earned awe at the quality of build and craftsmanship, all the little details that couldn’t be captured in photos were realised and we learned how lucky we were to have chosen Premium Homes”

We adore our house Premium Homes built for us in Castle Hill Village. In our search for a building company that could build in a remote location at a high elevation and wind zone, Premium Homes caught our eye with their Healthy Homes building philosophy. They exceed expectations creating a healthier, stronger and more energy efficient house. We were excited by the use of wool insulation and magnum board (in place of fiberglass and Gib) and it has proven its worth in reducing noise, keeping the air clean and feeling fresh and the house breathes not getting too hot nor too cold. Premium Homes were able to effectively go through the build process whilst we were in Australia during COVID times and unable to visit site. No corners were cut and any issues and decision making requirements were communicated and dealt with effectively. When we saw the completed build for the first time it was with some well earned awe at the quality of build and craftsmanship, all the little details that couldn’t be captured in photos were realised and we learned how lucky we were to have chosen Premium Homes. To us, the little extra cost in building a healthy home is well worth it. We are so proud of our house we would love to show it to anyone who is interested in building a healthy home. Who wants to build to the bare minimum requirements when going a little further to improve makes such a big difference? building healthy homes can only improve NZ living and we would now never build any other way. Our heartfelt thanks goes to all the team at Premium Homes for executing such a fantastic home for us.

Thank you.

Georgie and Steve.

Castle Hill

We planned to build a healthy home based on the ancient Indian science of home building (Vastu Sastra), with modern NZ specs, and of course within a budget! Premium Homes met all our requirements. During the very early stages when we lived out of town we were guided through the whole process, from planning to final hand-over.

Groundwork began two days ahead of our timeline and from there construction progressed quickly, with the team making sure all the Vastu aspects were carried out with utmost attention to detail. As with any construction process, we wanted to improvise a few things impromptu. Premium Homes provided insight and were flexible to accommodate these changes. It is also important to emphasise that Premium Homes have a very impressive line-up of sub-contractors, who were friendly and proficient.

Having moved in, the COVID-19 lockdown was a great opportunity to evaluate the performance of the house, and we came to appreciate the workmanship and the healthy aspects of the house.

Overall, when the builders treat your dream project as theirs, the end result is remarkable. The team at Premium Homes are a trustworthy lot.

A&P,

Lincoln