Full Show Podcast: 23 March 2025

You know, change of government feels like it's a little while ago now, lots and lots of talk about we're going to make things more efficient, We're going to make some changes, we're going to make it quicker, easier, faster, to build houses more affordably, etc.

Perhaps you're struggling along trying to get a job done around the house, a practical type of job where maybe you're trying to finish fixing some squeaky floorboards, or perhaps you're looking to upgrade the extraction from your bathroom, which is exactly what I'm only saying that because that was my task last couple of days. The old ceiling fan had finally given up the ghost. It wasn't terribly effective. This is the extraction from the bathroom. It wasn't terribly effective.

To be blunt, I didn't do a great job installing it in the first place. So I found a replacement which was the same size, which is good. It had a slightly different arrangement, which means I needed to redo the ducting and I needed to redo the exit point out of the building as well, so old house one hundred and twenty odd years of dust up there. It was hot yesterday. It was hot the day before as well, so it was nice thirty eight degrees, nice brisk thirty

eight degrees up inside the roof space. And excuse me, by the time you get out to the outside edge there's not a lot of headroom there either. Anyway, it got done and I was delighted with that. Albeit, yeah, anyway, it was a bit dry and dusty up there, but that's my job done. Yesterday, wrapped up at about I don't know, five thirty quarter to six something like that,

just in time for dinner. So if you are working away on a project and it's maybe it's going well, or perhaps it's not going particularly well at all, and you'd like to talk about it, this is the show for you. So all things building, construction, regulations, the legal side of it, what you can do, what you can't do, where to go and find the correct answers. In fact, I was at I had to go and pick up some taps yesterday as well, went into Chesters Plumbing and

we got talking about tile showers. Tile showers seemingly are a bit of a nightmare in terms of compliance. All well and good when you're doing it from scratch, but in terms of can you do a tile shower without a building consent as sort of an alteration to an existing bathroom, I think the short answer is you always need a consent for that. But in reading more about it, I've found some information that goes well, actually, if it's a certain type of tile shower, maybe you don't. We

could go into that detail as well. Oh, eight hundred eighty ten eighty, let's rip into it. It is coming up just gone eleven minutes after six on. Actually it was quite a pleasant Sunday morning, certainly, getting a little crisper out there in the morning. Car's got a bit of dew on it when I jumped into the truck this morning. And the days are just a little bit shorter, and I think daylight saving ends a couple of weeks away.

Something like that's not too far away. So if you're thinking about doing outside jobs, now is probably the time to get cracking. Or perhaps your attention has already turned to some of those indoor tasks that you'd like to get sorted out. We can talk about all things inside outside, under the floor, up on the roof, inside the roof, where I spent a decent couple of hours the last few days, or any other building construction related issues that

you would like to discuss. Eight hundred and eighty ten eighty is the number nine two nine two is the text number. That's zbzb off your mobile phone. And if you'd like to send me an email, you are absolutely welcome.

The pretty much the end of K Road near where it meets was it New North no Great North Road?

is cross laminated timber. It was going to have a very high ecological rating, so it's a Green Star six rated building. It's in an area where you know, we've just spent four and a half almost five billion dollars building a railway line that will encourage mass transit. It's walking distance to the train station, these sorts of things, and well it's a little bit of a walk, I have to say, it's not like it's right round the corner. Anyway.

The building went into Auckland Council. It goes because it's a notifiable building. It went to the planning committee. They sought submissions from people and they ended up deciding that it wasn't the appropriate type of building for that area. There was concerns about its scale, about its appearance on the skyline, et cetera, et cetera. So they've turned down planning permission for it, and I kind of read through

the article. It seems that Chris Bishop, member of Parliament, also read that article and talked about insanity and absurdity and the ridiculousness of the planning thing and why the RIMA Resource Management Act needs reform, et cetera, et cetera. I think a number of other people said this is absurd and then out of the blue, someone involved in it who's been on this show before, Hamish Firth, sent me an email as well, going, hey, your thoughts on this.

We had some email correspondence. I thought, ah, let's chat about it and just in general terms, what happens with these large, significant developments, what the planning processes, Who the planning committee are. I'm curious to know as to how they get appointed to these roles and what happens when they make a decision that perhaps you will be appealed or needs to be appealed. That might be a little

bit subjective, but we can talk about that. So Hamish Firth from Mount Holpson Group, who, as I say, happened he's been on the show regularly as an expert, but he also is involved on behalf of the developer in this particular case. So I'm not going to lobby for or against it, but I'm always interested to see how these things work out in terms of you know, a development lad this goes to council for planning approval, could be anywhere in the country. Sometimes it gets permission and

sometimes it doesn't. And what do you do afterwards. So we've been talking with Hamish about that after eight o'clock this morning, but right now it is the perfect opportunity, given that you're all up and about and thinking about the jobs that you want to get done today. Either like I say, under the house, in the house, on the house, outside the house, inside the house. You tell me what you're up to, we'll talk about it. Oh, eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call. Call us now.

little room between the floor and the ground. It has both totra piles and concrete ones, as it must have been added on to at a later date. Whatever the solution is, I don't imagine it'll be that cheap. You're probably right, and you know typically if you can get in underneath the house, then you know and safely do so too, because it's quite a process to repile a house. Obviously, you need to hold the house up, which generally involves

lugging in lots of what look like short sleepers. So STIs building up piles underneath the house, jacking the house up level, supporting it so you can remove the existing piles, digging a new hole where there might just have been. In this case of it's totraal ones, they would have just been sort of not even driven into the ground. They would have dug a small hole, pop the totra post on top of it, and then trimmed it off

level with where they wanted the bearers to go. And that would have been it, and they would have sat there for years. And I've pulled out some that when they come out, they kind of look like a rotten tooth, you know. They're just like a V shaped where they've rotted around the outside, and eventually they rot to the

point that the house starts to subside. So if you've got those old toutraal matti piles like that, you'll need to pull those out, dig down, require depth probably four fifty to six hundred deep, hang a new tennelized pile there, and then pump in concrete in there. Now, all of that you can do if there's sort of five six hundred millimeters underneath the bearer. Anything less than that that

gets quite challenging. I suppose. The other option is you look at getting the whole house lifted to redo the piles and then drop back down, or the house ends up being at a higher level. If there were lots of existing piles and the movement was quite within let's

say one hundred millimeters, you can block and chock. I'm sure there's a slightly more technical term than that, but typically it just involves leveling the house and cutting little blocks on top of your existing piles, strapping those down in a way that means the house is still secured to the piles. And that's basically it. You can chock and block if you can get in there, and it can be no more than one hundred millimeters, and I think there might even be a regulation around how many

sort of chock and blocks you can do. You know, not every single pile in the house can be cut or can have a block and certain in the top of it. So those are your options. But if it's really really low to the ground, in some cases I've seen it and had to do it myself over the years, cut the floor out and work from there and then sort of reinstate everything. But that's when the cost really starts to ramp up. So the yeah, a couple of issues. Therefore you good luck with that, and good luck with

the milking. This morning. Another text that's come through. I made the comment about tile showers. I've it should be simple, shouldn't it. It should be relatively straightforward. If you are doing an alteration. Let's say you've got an old The classic example is, you know, typical sort of nineteen sixties nineteen seventies bathroom will have if it's a complete bathroom with a toilet of vanity and a bath and maybe a shower over it, you want to rip that out

and you want to install. You're going to upgrade it. You want to tile the shower tile, the floor tile, the shower enclosure.

I think it is control of internal moisture. It starts to talk about tile showers and then it refers you to the Waterproofing Association of New Zealand Guide steps three through six or something like that, and it says if you comply with that, if you do it as per those standards, it's deemed to be compliant. And there it talks about having hob I know, this gets all incredibly technical and a bit boring to be fair, but though

that's what I've sort of got to with my reading. Actually, when I was in it Chester yesterday we were talking about tile showers, and again, you know, if you're in a situation where you're selling plumbing fittings and someone says, do you think I need to consent with that? It puts the people in the store in quite a challenging position. What's the advice and their advice. The conversation I had yesterday was, look, go back and talk to your local council about it.

part is often that is an area where it leaks. Right, if you've got a tiled floor and a tiled upstand, that ninety degree bend from flat to vertical is where you may get some leakage. So if you've got a tile in acrylic shower tray with an upstand and your tiles come down over the top of that, it's less risk. Plus the waste is more easily formed. You're not worried about how water actually gets into the waste and where the water that gets through the tiles and sits on

the waterproofing is still actually directed into the waste. I'll go and have a look at that. I have spent when I've got time, a little bit of time reading determinations, So you can go to the INBI website and read through determinations about when there has been a dispute between let's say a builder or a homeowner and council about issues of the building code, you can apply to MB for a determination. It goes to the specialist team. They review it and decide whether the work is compliant with

the building code or not. What was the one that I was reading the other day, Oh, I was searching for stuff on tile showers. I don't know if it was determination zero five to four, but I'll certainly go home.

it takes to get those. So the press release that came out, when was it twenty first? Okay, so Friday. I don't know if it's great releasing these sorts of things on a Friday, but new annual data has exposed the staggering cost of delays previously hidden in the building

consent system. According to Building and Construction Minister Chris penk he quotes I directed the Building Consent Authorities the BCAS, to begin providing quarterly data the last year to improve transparency, followed repeated complaints from tradespeople waiting far longer than the statutory twenty days for a building consent. For the first time, we have a consistent nationwide data proving statutory frameworks masking problems.

Councils are stopping the clock on applications by requesting additional information, extending the processing time beyond the official twenty working day's target. The complete data for twenty twenty four paints a stark picture. Two thirds of applications required a request for information or an RFI, adding an average of nearly twelve extra days

to processing time. That's twelve more days of projects. Stalling time is money for our Tradees and officials estimate a twelve day working or twelve working day delay because of an RFI could cost around four thousand dollars per dwelling last year, forty ninety four three hundred and sixty two applications triggered an RFI. So that's from Minister. I'm happy to talk about this as well, and it's the timing all the time is interesting. We've been waiting in terms

of the sector. We've been waiting for this for a little while as to see what's going to happen. Of course, telling us what we already knew might not be that useful. Most people who have submitted a consent have kind of wondered, you know, why didn't I get my building consent in twenty days? What in the next few months. I'm just reading more from the press release. In the next few months we will finalize decisions on major initiatives to speed

up the process. These include streamlining inspections, enabling trusted builders to sign off their own work, restructuring the bcas the building consent authorities to ensure that they're fit for purpose, and adopting a more balanced approach to liability for defective work.

I have to say that within that particular power, that's an enormous amount of potential changes to the way that building regulations are administered and the way that we go about I suppose providing the compliance pathway for construction work in New Zealand. There's a lot in that. If you're a tradee, if you're a developer, if you're a homeowner waiting for a building consent to be issued for let's say, an alteration for a bathroom, this will impact on you.

I will ensure that we get the Minister on the program the next couple of weeks to talk about this and sort of drill down through it.

for further information. The implication out of this feels like it's council's fault that the plans aren't right, Whereas I just wonder whether there's a flip side to this, or there's an alternative alternate to this particular issue as well, where you go maybe the quality of the plans that are being submitted for building consent are not that good, or our council being too risk averse and not how do I phrase this properly? I guess it's it's around

you know, do you? Yes, you have to put every single detail now into a set of plans in order for it to prove compliance with the code. Look, I just and I said this the other day at a sort of group of building professionals. In fact, there was some council people involved in that as well. You know, I built a house. It was a labor only contract that I had with my mate Dan. We were we got we put in a labor only price to I don't think we had to do the slab, but we

did everything from the slab up right. So we nailed the frames together, pot the trusses on, did the cladding, put the windows in, did the jib, did the finishing line. So typical three bedroom house, maybe one hundred and twenty squares, And the plans for that I've still got. I've got

a copy of the plans. They're in a file of old plans and I think there may be four or five pages right of plans sufficient to build a house in nineteen ninety one, ninety ninety two, and today I would suspect that if you submitted a set of plans for a building consent for a similar type of house, it would be I don't know, fifteen pages of plans of details right cross sections, elevations, details of window flashing, sell flashing, side flashings, junctions.

Councils are using the RAFI process to extend time. We used RFI to manage workloads and workflows when I worked in that role. So yeah, look, and that's the sense I think that most people have is that if council or the people doing the processing are a little it under the pump or they're under resourced, then the quickest way to give themselves a bit of extra time is to pop out an RFI, and some of the rifis I think are and I'm sure I've told this story.

I'll tell the story a little bit later on about an RFI that I made of mine got with regard to double glazing. But it's probably an extraordinary example, but I know that it's absolutely true. Right Oat, let's get into it. Twenty three minutes away from seven o'clock, Sandy, A very good morning. Good morning, Hey there, how are you doing?

or moss and mildew and those sorts of things. Soft A wall like that left on its own, over time will darken and potentially you'll get basically like a it's not quite a mold, that is really a bit of will. But then, and in fact I was looking at I did some concrete retaining walls as part of garden landscaping at my own place about twenty odd year ys ago, and we plastered them and I just leave them natural, and it's a bit mottled and a bit this and a bit that, and that's all part of the character.

So if you like that, it's great. If you wanted to take sort of a medium approach to it, I suspect what your neighbors have done if it's because it's quite an architectural finish is you hone the surface of the brick, So you use a grinder with a diamond blade and you just hone the surface, so it makes it slightly flat, but it also highlights the actual aggregates that are in there, right, and then put a sealer over the top of that. That's quite nice. I'm not

suggesting you need to do the honing. You're welcome to, but you don't have to. But you could apply like a clear sealer over it, which will just mean that it sheds water a bit more and it will just give a little bit of protection to the surface from that organic growth.

get the fence in. But in this case here the face that you see on your side I think should be on their side of the actual boundary line.

get them. You know, they don't look glossy, they absorb in, they're almost a matte finish. But it will help just keep you know, the inevitable organic growth that mold and mildew that that rows on to expose surfaces at bay for a little time. Oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty. I'll take a short break, but if you've got a question, you should call us now. We've got plenty of time. Oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call.

More than happy to take your comments. With regard to the announcement from Chris Pink, the Housing and Construction Minister Building and Construction rather Minister with regard to building consents, a couple of interesting texts coming in on that, including this one. I think Pink is being disingenuous here. As a former quantity server, the amount of time wasted chasing

up information missing information was infuriating. Yeah, I wonder whether I wonder whether that potentially should have acknowledged the fact that a certain number of consents that are submitted are probably of poor quality and in order to execute their duties appropriately, they need to go back and say to the designer, hey, there's information missing here. You need to

provide more information. However, the story I was going to tell you, so someone I know who was doing a reasonably innovative build, right, it was, it's not a standard go to three six o four and put a house together type build ended up getting I think after the first submission of their building consent plans something like a

ninety seven individual RFIs. And part of that would have been because it was a complex and innovative build, and there would have been features in that house that wouldn't have been part of the standard building code, right, in which case it's fair enough that the consenting or the processing officer goes, hey, look, how's that going to work? How's that going to work? However, and this is increasingly common, one of the things that they will often ask for

is a maintenance schedule. So, yeah, you're going to use this particular product or methodology, where's the maintenance schedule for it? In this particular RFI. And I swear to you this is one hundred percent true. One of the RFIs that came back was what is the maintenance schedule for the gas inserted into the double glazed units. Have a bit

of a think on that. If you think about double glazing and you know how double glazing goes together, and these days, rather than just sort of air in it, we're often inserting argone or other gases into that space. And so the RFI from council was, how what's the maintenance schedule for the gas inside the double glazed unit? Ponder on that during the break. We'll come back in a moment whether.

hundred eighty ten eighty. If you want to talk about buildings, about ceiling around you know, I mean, look, a lot of it is around protecting what you've got right, So you know, the maintenance that we often talk about is I always tell a story about maintenance in terms of I got a phone call from someone one time and they said, oh, could you come around please, and we need to replace the window, as in, replace the opening sash. And what had happened is it was an upstairs window.

It was a simple, you know, two sash window with a million in the middle. Both of them opened and they had been left slightly open, and the wind caught the sash, whipped it back against the building and pop the hinges, and so the entire opening sash fell out, crashed to the ground a story below, smashed into a couple of pieces, and the glass was broken and so on.

So in order to repair that, I had to go measure the opening size, go to the joiner, get a new sash made, go to the glazier, get some new glass made, put some scaffolding up, go up, replace the hinges, fit the new sash, redo the hardware, get someone to paint it. So all of that, you know, it's quite a process. There's weeks involved in measuring, going to the joiner, going to the glazier, getting the painter on site, putting

the scaffolding up, et cetera, et cetera. And in talking to the homeowner later on, she said, well, I had asked my husband if he could tighten the hinge because it's been loose for about three months or something like that, right, so you know, hinge gets a little bit loose, you can see it flapping around, and then you don't get

that done. And look, we're all guilty of it. I've got a thousand things that I need to do, so I'm not pointing the finger at anyone, but it's that classic example of a little bit of maintenance delayed can cause much bigger problems. So that's why we do maintenance. Just quickly to answer the RFI story that I was

telling you just before. So the house was complicated, it was unusual, It used a whole lot of building methodology that perhaps is not common and it's not found in the building code, but it had an approved compliance pathway. And so one of the RFIs was what's the maintenance schedule for the gas in the double glazed units? Now, if you know anything about double glazed units, they are

installed in the factory. Sometimes they put argon in there because it's more effective, and that just sits inside the double glazed unit, right, and the double glaze unit is sealed, so there is no way back into the afterwards, I mean apart from the fact that the person that I

know was flabbergasted that that was the question. They also in their reply to the ninety seven RFIs they got from council for their funky new build, they simply replied to number whatever it was, seventy six or whatever, that they would that it had a valve and they would pump it up as required. And that was their response to the RFI sufficient to say, I think the person realized that that was a bit of a foolish question.

In the same way, look to be fair, I was doing a code of Compliance application and one of the RFIs that came back was, Hey, there's no detail about subfloor ventilation. It was a concrete slab on grade, right, So I don't need to provide information on ventilation to the subfloor given that there is no subfloor.

wants to speed up the build process. There was lots of figure is around. You know, it takes this many days from building consent to CCC. Can we shorten that up? I think one of the figures was it was like something like five hundred days from building consent to CCC. Then it identified the processing time for a building consent. So a lot of focus on Council bcas building consent authorities, how long it takes them to process a consent and is the delay? So they have a statutory requirement to

process a building consent in twenty days. What typically happens, and almost everyone I know has had exactly this experience. Building consent gets submitted, the clock starts, and you know, around fifteen eighteen days after the consent is submitted, an email arrived saying hey, look we need this information, an RFI request for further information. And at that point, as soon as the email go out, as I understand it,

the clock stops. So if it's day fifteen, then they go, right, we've stopped at day fifteen, and then they wait for the response from the designer or the architect the architectural drafts person to provide the information, and when it's received back,

then the clock starts again. They start processing. So you know, if they're under you could argue that if you're under the pump as a processor, what you do is you flick off an email going hey, look I need more information on this, that and the other thing, and that gives you time to do other work while that consent sits there in a holding pattern until the RFI comes back. That's one way of looking at it. I guess the other way of looking at it is that you know,

a consent is submitted, it's lacking in detail. Maybe there is some complex junctions that are not fully detailed. These flashing details that are not included. There might be waterproofing details, anything in the building consent and so the consent is incomplete and the processing officer can't say it complies with the code if those items are missing, right, in which case it's not actually the fault of council, it's the

fault of the person who's submitted the plan. Is the quality or are the quality of the drawings less than optimal? You may have some thoughts on this. Oh, eight hundred and eighty ten eighty, we're going to talk installation. Good morning to you, carry How are you this morning?

door reveals. You'll have to extend those for the extra depth. So if you're prepared to lose some space in the garret, I know it's not much, but you will lose a little bit. Okay, that's one solution where that particular type

of insulation works really well. Is typically all if you're going to retrofit insulation into an existing wall into as in remove lining, add insulation, that actually triggers the requirement for building consent in this instance here, because you're adding insulation to the face of it, you don't need to worry about building consent, so it's a completely compliant way of retrofiting insulation in your situation. Technically that wall between the lounge and the garage is the exterior wall of

your building. I know it's completely interior, but in terms of how the building's designed, it's effectively an outside wall. So I wonder whether no, actually, I actually think in that case, you could remove the lining insulation into the wall and redo the lining without needing building consent because you're not worried about moisture into the wall because the wall is inside the building envelope.

extension cords and you know that sort of thing. It's a good opportunity for a bit of an upgrade.

Pink came in. It was very good of them, I thought. So I approached through his office the minister, to go, hey, look I'd like to do an interview. You're the incoming construction and building minister. And he said, oh, look, I'll come into zid B during the week, we can record the interview and replay it on the Sunday. So I'll reach out again and get that underway, because there's a lot in that particular press release of what we think

might come up. A couple of people have sent some texts, especially the comment around some builders being able to self certify. We'll unpack that a little bit later this morning. Oh, eight hundred eighty ten eighty give us a call. The lines are open.

skating off the roof and landing on the ground. And then I've painted plenty of roofs, so yeah, you can do it. In terms of a brush on application for a seiler, I'm not sure that there's anything that I could could actually honestly recommend to you. Good luck with that though, and please be safe. That's the key to it all. The best to you, Matt oh eight hundred and eighty ten eighty is the number to call just

talking about safety. Actually, so the job that I was doing yesterday involved replacing the extractor fan in the ceiling. Had the electrician come round on Friday just to check that the existing three pin plug. So these days often when you buy a new extractor fan, they actually come with fixed wiring and a three pin plug on it.

So up in the roof space in this instance, there was an existing it had been wirened by the previous electrician three pin plug and because I had the electrician do a little bit of other few other jobs around the house. I said, can you just go up and test that plug, just to make sure that it's safe. So they go up with a little meg tool. I'm sure there's a more technical phrase than that, but I'm a chippy not a sparky. Anyway, tested it, it's okay.

Plug the new fan into it, replace the ducting. Made sure that deducting ran as straight and as level as I possibly could across the ceiling. So I had to sort of move insulation aside and clear a path and all the rest of it. And then with an old house, I needed to go out over the top plate obviously, and then drop then have a bend and go down through the safit. Now, on an old house like mine, the safit is twenty mili thick caraie so and also this is often the track. Actually, this is a good one.

I've seen this so many times, and people involved in ventilation or extraction see this all the time as well. So off the fan is one hundred mill port and then you have to extend that out to one hundred and fifty millimeter diameter, so round semi rigiducting which I ran out. But then when you get to the junction between the roof coming down to the top plate and the safit, you know, you there's just not enough space, right, There's not one hundred and fifty mil clear there. So

sometimes people just squish the ducting down. So they take the circle and they kind of squish it down a little bit, turn it into an oval, and kind of bend it through that corner and hope that the airflow still goes out through the grill to the exterior. I ended up getting some so simics to a range of ducting, so I transferred from one fifty round to I think it's two hundred by ninety rectangular section, so it's got a transfer like a little adapter from round to rectangular.

Then I had a short section of the ninety by two hundred ducting, so it's a similar volume to what you get in fifty one fifty round and then a ninety degree bend and that tucked neatly over the top of the top plate through the safe. I did have to cut a little bit of the there's like a board that runs round over the top of the ceiling joists on an old house at the raft land on.

I did notch a little section of that out. Didn't make a great deal of difference structurally, but I needed to notch that out, and I needed to cut through the Safit obviously not with a whole sort, because I'm creating a rectangle out let. The reason I say all of this partly is that it's that way of doing it is the optimal way to ensure that you don't have any restriction on the airflow from the extraction. That's

really important. And then the other thing that I did is I've got a little mobile scaff and took the time to go lug that round from the other side of the house put it up so that when I was doing the work measuring out the cutout in the safe, then using the drill to sort of pre drill it, then getting the multi tool out and cutting it out and all the rest of it, I could do that while standing on a platform, which is way more comfortable

than trying to do it off a ladder. I mean we're talking, I don't know, to be four and a half five meters from the ground to the underside of the safe and trying to do that off a ladder. It's not terribly pleasant to work on, certainly not as safe and it just takes more time. So for the time that it's spent that it took me to take a little mobile scaff around there, set it up and

do all of that, he just way safer. Hence my comment to Matt, if you are going to go up there and do work on your own roof, make sure that you do it safely as well. Oh, eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call. Remember after eight o'clock, we're going to have a bit of a chat with genuine called Hamish Firth. He's been on the show before. He is a planner, a good old fashioned town planner as he describes himself, and so we've had him on the show to chat about boundaries and planning

regulations and these sorts of things. I'm just going to get them on for a bit of a chat around what happens when applications for developments get turned down. The reason for that is currently in the news. Bit of a story about a quite modern, quite environmentally friendly, quite innovative building that was going to go up on k Road crang Ah Happy Road in Auckland went to the planners at Auckland Council and it got turned down. The building is too big, it doesn't maybe fit with the heritage.

Da da da da dah. Now he's been involved in that directly, so acknowledging his interest in it. But it's looking forward to that chat with him around what happens when these sorts of consents, the applications for resource consent for the planning of these buildings gets turned down. So we'll do that after eight o'clock. But right now it is your opportunity to talk all things building construction. Eight hundred and eighty ten eighty is the number to call.

There's a code of ethics for LBPS. So someone's taxed through. How does the lb ethics deal with an LBP defaming other members? An LBP designer has called a new immigrant LBP a cowboy and not a real builder, without having any evidence of his prior knowledge or prior knowledge of this person. And the person who's said this is Canadian, apparently, I'm not sure you'd have to take it to the LBP committee and have them decide on that. We're talking

about RFIs and council and delays. So where a lot of this comes from is the when you submit a building consent, the building consent authority typically that your local council has a statutory obligation to process your building consent within twenty days. Now, the number of building consents that actually get processed within twenty days is relatively small. The Minister Chris Penk has gone to mby who have gone to the bcas to go. You need to tell us exactly the data on how long it takes you to

process consents and that gives them some insight. So in the press release from the Minister, I directed the building consent authorities to begin providing quarterly data last year to improve transparency, followed repeated following repeated complaints from trades people waiting far longer than the statutory twenty days for a consent. For the first time, we have a consistent nationwide data

proving statutory time frames are masking problems. Councils are stopping the clock on applications by requesting further information, extending the processing times beyond the official twenty working day target. So council will issue an RFI, they'll stop the clock. When they get the information back, they will then start the clock. If they then have a further request, they'll stop the

clock and start again. So you know, if it RFI comes into the design, they need to look at it, they need to prepare a response, they need to submit it and then the clocks you know that might take. That's an extra week, right, We're going to get the Minister in to talk about this, but I do wonder whether are they ignoring the fact that sometimes plans are incomplete and they can't be processed based on the information provided. And that's of no, that's not the processing office's fault.

That's the person who submitted it's fault. But lots of texts on this. It's quite interesting. And also someone has text through what defines a trusted developer when it comes to self assurance? Where is the independence of a review? As it is a as we know there are some reputable developments that have also had leaks. If that is the case, Can I also provide a building inspection report about the house that I'm selling from Gerardo? You can probably do that, but I think people would be unwise

to accept it. Oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty the number to call Michael. Very good morning.

she says, yes, yes, yeah, you know, carried on. She she was quite pleasant, and we'll send somebody around o a look. And I was still my own lawns at the time. So I waited about two weeks. I had heard back. I said, oh, well, I ring up again and I, oh, she's not here anymore. And I got some other woman and I said to her, well, she went absolutely so she went berserk. She just yelled and screamed.

are quite a lot of extra work to go. You know, excavate it down, box up both sides, pour the concrete, et cetera, strip the boxing, redo the grass around. So it's not surprising you don't see them as much as you used to. But yeah, they are a great idea. It's just I'm kind of not surprised that they haven't done it unfortunately. Thanks very much for you call all the best. Oh eight hundred and eighty ten eighty the number John Good morning morning. Hey, how you doing good?

et cetera. I've met a number of people at council who are extremely competent, right, and their professionals in their field, and they've got a tremendous amount of knowledge, now, whether that's a processing officer or an inspector on site and so on. At the same time, I've also encountered council officers who perhaps are learning and so they don't have all of the experience or knowledge that someone who's been around for a few more years has got, and that

can be a bit frustrating. With regard to professional reports like that, I would tend to agree. I think that if you've gone to an independently and suitably qualified person got a professional report done that's specific to your building, you're relying on their experience to say and knowledge to go, this is now compliant. What you know the advice that we've given you, If you undertake this work, the building

will be compliant. You're right. Why would counsel then go, well, hang on, no, We've we've got a problem with that work, Like what's their core competency versus the person that you've got. There's a similar frustration sometimes on building sites, where you know, if the work is of a certain scale, you might have your own structural engineer right who does the design and then will come to site and do the supervision.

It's not uncommon. For example, if you're doing piles, or if you're doing particularly complicated reinforcing or some steel beams or something like that, the person who does the designs will send someone out to look at it on site, and then the council inspector will come along and go, I'm not sure about this, and you go, well, hang on, I've had my structural engineer has approved it. They're going to issue a producer statement. They are effectively taking responsibility

for this part of the structure. Why do I even need you? You know what I mean? And that's a similar frustration.

at the wording. I read the fire report, fire engineers report, and it's capable of storage. That's not what he applied for. He's got a five so he can put the horse up on the truck, right, networks on there.

Somebody might turn it into apartments, right, but that's not the intent of the consent at the time that it was submitted. And why should counsel go, Well, we don't know what's going to happen in the future. Therefore we're going to get you to protect against potential change of use for the building. That's not their remit. Their remit is is it compliant right now for the intention that I want to have.

the defective work because everyone else has gone right. So in that case, you know, maybe that's another part of this. And potentially what you're saying as well is that you know, if someone has built a building and it's for their use and it's not a public building, it's a private building, and they're prepared to take the risk, then maybe the risks should sit with them, Whereas when council get involved and they're looking after rate payers, money because if it

goes wrong, they're paying out rate payers money. That's where they become much more risk averse. And as a ratepayer, we kind of want them to be, don't we. Oh you know what I mean? So, yeah, we don't.

before the firebreak gaate came. But that's unlo likely now in a modern building where I don't think they typically install fire hoses. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's pretty much where we're heading. Nine minutes away from it. We'll be back with thee in just a moment.

maintain a safe zone. Makes sense to me, does. I had a job long time ago, like almost forty years ago, working as a laborer basically in an engineering shop, and one of the jobs we were doing was on top of a machine welding on an oil reservoir, And my job was to stand there with the fire extinguisher so that when the guy who's doing the welding the flames got too high, I would put them out and then he could carry on welding. Anyway, it was a long time ago. Don't text me and tell me it's unsafe.

I know that it was a long time ago. Ian greetings, Oh, good morning.

and buildings get turned down. That's a bit topical at the moment, so we'll do that after the news at eight.

of us. And I caught that story the other day about a new development in k Road being turned down by the sort of planning commission for Auckland Council because it didn't meet the requirements right in terms of heritage or height or appearance and da da da da da. So I just wanted to touch base with him to give some general guidelines around that. So we'll do that shortly. But just before the news we were talking with Ian about his dechromastic roof. Has Ian still there was He gone,

he's gone, oh okay, not to worry. So Ian was talking about dechromastic roof, which is probably forty odd years old. It's got some asbestos in it which makes removal quite expensive.

The last one that I have some awareness of sort of the removal of the roof went from maybe one thousand dollars for just the labor and tip f to I think it was about sixteen thousand dollars as an exercise to remove reasonably sized roof quite high obviously, but because it had asbestos and needed to go to a special tip site, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, it became expensive. So in this case, I'm just oh Ian's back with us, which is awesome. Ian greetings, Oh, good morning,

good morning, Petter. Hey, good on you for testing the roof. So it's a dechroymastic type roof, so a metal tile with like the chip sprayed onto it. It's obviously getting to the end of its life. You've had it tested. It's got some asbestos in it, which means, as I just mentioned that, the you know, the cost of removal goes from maybe a thousand bucks to fifteen or sixteen thousand dollars, so it's really tempted to leave it there.

The biggest issue that I often have with them is that typically what happens is when people walk around on those types of roofs, they don't know where to stand and so they end up walking in the middle of the tile. They crease the ridge and the tile, and that causes it to shear right, to actually split, and there's not a lot that you can do about that.

You can try and panel beat it from underneath and that, but you'll always have a tear in there, which case, if you were to coat it, you're relying on the coat and the coating to seal that gap. And I think that's a little bit of an ask. If the roof is actually in reasonable condition, i e. Not that many people have stomped around up there, then yeah, potentially coating it will give you more time. You know, you might get another ten or fifteen years out of the

roof if you give it a really good coating. But ultimately it probably needs replacement, and the replacement can often get a bit complex because the existing metal tile will be onto a baton, which is like a two B one, whereas if you were going to do Corrigoi dine or long run iron on there, you'll need to replace those battons with peerlins. You should be able to do it underschedule one of the Act, which means you don't necessarily

need a consent for it. But you will need to strip the roof, strip some of the batons, relay the perlins that will lift the roof up, so you might have to change the facier and the spouting. You can see how this just gets bigger, bigger and bigger.

a little bit about roof ceiling on the program. He said, look, I've just been on a roof where the owners had it coated with a sealant and he said, it's just a sticky, gooey mess. Yes, this is months after the coating went on. Now, in this particular instance.

the faces and that sort of thing. So look, if you are going to go down the ceiling pathway, I think you need to be really really diligent around which contractor, how well they do the preparation, what the warranties are, what the you know, the state of the company is to ensure that they're not a bit of a fly by night. And then if you've satisfied yourself that it's going to be durable and give you another ten years,

then by all means go for it. But you know it might also feel like you're just putting off the inevitable. All the best I leave you those options. Take care. We're going to take a short break. Then we're talking with Hamish Firth Planner in just a moment.

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any of those in the country. It was going to get a Green Star rating, a six green star rating, so it's a sustainable, environmentally friendly building. And it was submitted to Auckland Council. That goes to a planning committee I think, and they've turned it down. So what happens in these situations? So a very good morning to you, Hamish Firth from Mount Holbson Group. Thanks for joining us again. Hamish, you've been with us a couple of times on the

show because of your expert knowledge in this area. And I you and I know that you guys are acting for the developer in terms of preparing the submission, so we recognize your involvement with it. But in these cases, what happens when you know you've prepared an application goes to the planning Commission. Who's the planning commission? What's the process? What happens? Hamish?

buildings in this area. This application relied very heavily on the new rules. Yes, three years later, those new rules are still not in place or in four because Council has not made a decision. So we were told that these rules would be in place in April twenty twenty four. Now, because the rules aren't in place effectively, we have to go back and use the old rules, which are now some twenty five thirty years old, and they become the

default position. So the issue here is probably not that the building can be approved or should be approved, or will be approved under appeal. It's the fact that the baseline was the old rules and that the new rules haven't been given effect to and it's taken an awfree long time and are still not in effect.

And Auckland's just spent almost five billion dollars creating a rail link and now we can't have tall buildings near it.

they've done. And I think that this is tragically an example that is all over the country where our innovation, our progress is held back by the fact that the bureaucracy slows things down. I'm comfortable we make a judgment call on whether it's right against a new set of rules, But what we need is those rules to become operative

or enforced much quicker. So I think we have to work backwards and say all of these processes to take no longer than one year, and we work backwards from hearing in one year's time, and then we make it more streamlined. So what you've got, as with Plan Change seventy eight is everybody's gone on hold because the new rules allow two or three or four times more development,

and everybody's weighted and weighted and waited. So you've actually put economic development on hold through bureau but the slowness of the bureaucratic process.

but we're not going to adopt it. What's the gap there?

The complaints are that there's rafies that come on the nineteenth day, yes, and that there's what you might say subjective RFIs, so a different a building officer may have a different level of experience or a different interpretation. So the solution is, or if you break it really down, we want we don't mind if there's rfies. I think it's really important that plans are drawn correctly following a

process through. So what we're asking for is RFI is to be made within say five work days, and need to be a consistency in approach, and I think the only way we're going to get that, and Pete, we have touched on this before is technology. So plans are scanned, a computer program reads them, and the same decision will pop out every time. You'll always have the humans. There is the backstop or the final check. So you're not losing jobs, you're just speeding up the process and making

it more consistent. It's the same thing with this RAMA processes.

at the end of the strip. I mean, it doesn't feel like it's going to impinge on heritage in any significant way. But then, you know, I'm saying that as a chippee and a local res or a resident in a sense.

So contextually there's not a lot of heritage. However, we're in the K Road Heritage precinct. So what the client did not a developer, an investor, long term investor holds property and has held property since thennineteen sixties. Nothing ever gets sold, and so they are not doing this in a speculative way. They chose probably the architect at the top of the tree fear and hate. They gave them a solid brief that had to recognize and respect the

heritage character. If you go anywhere in the world, you will see a modern interpretation of a building wedged between heritage buildings at times, which actually enhances the other heritage buildings by highlighting them through the contrast of difference. So if you look at their fine details of this building, the line, the verticals, the horizontals that have all been

taken from Ques from the buildings along k Road. The proportions the window sizes that there is such a depth of detail that whilst it may not appear to be solid masonry and little tiny windows, it more than more than reflects a heritage and respect and also will highlight any other building in the nearby area and its heritage status.

big decisions faster for regionally significant projects. This is one hundred million dollar project and what it does is you've built a five billion dollar city rail at karrang A Happy station is five hundred minutes from the site, so this will allow people to come in from all over West Auckland. Four five hundred thousand people stop there, walk or scooter up to this modern office building and get

home again. This is why the CRL was constructed. So there is a real nexus between this building, the regeneration of this area, and in the station.

the Red Clone past us with us. Actually just before we go to root, a little project that I've been working on is going to be available for you to watch later on tonight. I think so I did a project which I'm calling my host project. Host is the Dutch word for house. It's a renovation a little cottage. We did it a couple of years ago. Video that back then that I've kept the footage. I'm now going to release that. So we've made a bit of a story about this host project and from tonight you be

able to look at that on YouTube. So check out my socials in terms of resident builder at Facebook or Instagram that'll give you the link, or just go directly to YouTube search for me reson build of Peter Wolfcamp. You'll find it there and the slightly longer format video so talking about the renovation and that sort of thing. So enjoy that.