Zanetto Builders is a Tasmanian residential builder specialising in certified Passive House, custom and luxury homes — built to perform, and tested to prove it.
We hold Tasmania's largest team of Certified Passive House Tradespersons: 13 people certified by the Passive House Institute across building envelope and building services. We have delivered around $8 million of Passive House projects.
Our certified Passive House at Blackmans Bay, Bluebush, was independently certified by Jason Quinn of Sustainable Engineering Ltd and tested at 0.5 air changes per hour against a limit of 0.6, a heating demand of 10 kWh/m² a year against a limit of 15, and primary energy of 48 kWh/m²·yr against a limit of 60. In 2026, it was named HIA Australian GreenSmart Home of the Year and HIA Australian GreenSmart Custom Built Home. Fysh Place — two all-electric coastal homes near St Helens — took HIA Australian GreenSmart Multi Dwelling Development on the same night.
That is the part we care about most: the numbers are audited, not asserted. Any builder can say a home follows passive house principles. A blower-door result and an independent certificate are the only things that settle it.
We build statewide from three bases: our head office at St Leonards near Launceston, and offices serving Hobart from Cambridge and the East Coast from St Helens. Every project runs on open-book pricing, and we return a costed feasibility within 10% of real build cost in 48 hours — so clients know where they stand before committing to a design.
26 state and national building awards since 2021, including four national titles.
Zanetto Builders
Bluebush Passivhaus
Memberships Housing Industry Association (HIA) Master Builders Tasmania Australian Passive House Association (APHA) Sustainable Builders Alliance
Certification 13 Certified Passive House Tradespersons, certified by the Passive House Institute — building envelope and building services Tasmanian Building Licence CC7565
National awards 2026 HIA Australian GreenSmart Home of the Year — Bluebush 2026 HIA Australian GreenSmart Custom Built Home — Bluebush 2026 HIA Australian GreenSmart Multi Dwelling Development — Fysh Place 2024 Master Builders Australia — Best Use of Australian Made Products — Asgard
State 2023 Master Builders Tasmania — Young Builder of the Year (Kyle Zanetto) 2025 HIA Tasmania — Trailblazer (Natalie Pierce) 26 state and national building awards, 2021–2026
Bluebush is a certified Passive House at Blackmans Bay, south of Hobart — among the first in Tasmania to earn the international mark, and in 2026 named HIA Australian GreenSmart Home of the Year and HIA Australian GreenSmart Custom Built Home.
The owners' brief was unusual and, in hindsight, the whole point: they did not want a home that looked efficient. They wanted one that could prove it. That meant building to the international Passive House standard and having it independently certified, rather than "built to Passive House principles" — a distinction that costs a builder considerably more and is the only version a certifier will sign.
Certification leaves nowhere to hide. Every junction, window reveal and service penetration is modelled in PHPP during design, then has to be built exactly as modelled, because at the end an accredited certifier measures the finished building against hard limits.
The results, certified by Jason Quinn of Sustainable Engineering Ltd:
The airtightness figure is the one worth pausing on. A blower-door result at or under 0.6 is a number most Australian homes miss by an order of magnitude, and it cannot be retrofitted or argued — it is measured on the day.
Designed with Maxa Design. Photography by Tassie Visuals.
For the family living there, the outcome is not a certificate. It is a home that holds its temperature through a Tasmanian winter on a fraction of the energy their neighbours use, for the life of the building.
Fysh Place is a two-dwelling, all-electric development on Tasmania's East Coast at St Helens, and winner of the 2026 HIA Australian GreenSmart Multi Dwelling Development — one of three national titles Zanetto Builders took at the 2026 HIA Australian GreenSmart Awards.
The owners expected the location to be the hard part. St Helens is a small coastal town three hours from our head office, and the assumption going in was that distance, logistics and trade availability would shape the result. The brief was the opposite: deliver a considered custom development to exactly the standard we would hold in the city, and do not let the location become the story.
Coastal sites do impose real constraints, and they are worth naming rather than glossing over. Salt exposure changes the specification — fixings, flashings, cladding and hardware all step up to corrosion-resistant grades. Most of this coastline is bushfire-prone, so a BAL rating under AS 3959 drives glazing, screening, decking and subfloor requirements. Exposure feeds into wind classification, which feeds into bracing and tie-downs. And every trade who does not live on the coast has to get there, which is a genuine cost we price openly rather than bury.
The answer to all of it is planning and site discipline rather than compromise. From the first meeting — owners, architect and builder in the same room — the job was to make a regional build feel routine.
Designed with Cumulus, delivered under build manager Isaac, with photography by Tassie Visuals.
Two all-electric homes, built to a national standard, on a site most builders would have treated as an excuse.
