The Resident Builder podcast: June 23, 2024

what are some of the pitfalls? And I've read a lot of articles and comment from building and building science related speakers and opinion makers around is this actually a wise idea? Are people actually going to embrace it? Would you give up I guess the security of having a building consent for the work that you do for maybe the savings of not having one, and people perhaps looking at it as gosh, is it up to standard? And how do I know that it's up to standard if

no one's checking it? Well, there are checks and balances. So anyway, we're going to have a bit of a look at that a little later on in the program. But it has been an interesting thing to discuss sort within building circles. But more than happy to take your calls on that as well, your thoughts around this proposed legislation. Could we build up to sixty square meters without necessarily

requiring a building consent? There are then, after this a whole bunch of ifs, butts, and maybe as well, just as there are for the expansion and scope of work that you could do under Schedule one of the Building Act. That's the current legislation in place, and if you were

a call back. In twenty nineteen, the government made some changes to that legislation that allowed buildings, for example, up to thirty square meters that were essentially not habitable in the sense that they didn't have toilet, showers, plumbing fittings in them, they could be built without necessarily requiring a

building consent. But then once you got past the you can build it but and you started to go through all the butts, you realized that there was actually not that many opportunities for you to build that if you were actually going to stay compliant with all of the rest of the regulations that relate to building, it does get a little bit technical. It is kind of you know, I mean, it's are they are they actually chasing the

right target here? Would it make a difference to you to be able to build sixty square meters without necessarily requiring a building consent? Give us a call. Oh, eight hundred and eighty ten eighty is the number to call if you've got building questions, whether you're underway with a project.

Maybe you've discovered something as a place that I look after, and we were there during the course of the week and suddenly it's like, oh, have you noticed that the floorboard here is starting to I don't know what's really going on. I just noticed that that. I just put it down on my list as fixed floorboard. I haven't even had the investigation yet as to why that floorboard is suddenly squeaky. Maybe it was put in incorrectly and

doesn't have any support underneath it. Maybe it's a piece of timber that got wet and has started to decay. But it's on my list to fix. Actually I think it's on tomorrow's list to fix. So if you've got a list and you've got things to fix, and who doesn't, then eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call. You can text as well, that's nine two nine two or ZBZB from your mobile phone if you'd like to send me an email, You're more than welcome. It's Pete

at Newstalk ZB dot co dot nz. So welcome along to the show. Looking forward to you call your conversations. Got a couple of experts who are going to be part of the show a little bit later on. And then, of course, as always, we're into the garden with redclined passed from around eight point thirty this morning, but right now on a kind of wet and slightly miserable old morning here in Auckland, it's eight hundred eighty ten eighty. Is that number to call? Eight hundred eighty ten eighty.

Plenty of lines right now. We're going to run out later on, so now's your chance call us now. Oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty. Oh criaky, sorry, I'm looking at the text. I'm thinking, oh great, there's a text. Right, we can rip into the topics of the morning. What are we going to be you know, construction inspection failures? What do we need to do? Oh goodie, there's one about building consents.

you're proposed to do. So, if it's an upstairs deck, that will be obviously above one point five meters from the ground level, and anything above that height would need a building consent. And think about the logic of it. The building consent there is ultimately there to protect safety, right or to keep people safe. So if you fell from something more than one and a half meters high,

it's going to hurt. If you fell from let's say three meters high, it's very much going to hurt, in which case that would trigger the requirement for a building consent. The cost for that consent, I really don't know. It depends a great deal on where you are in the country. I was absolutely shocked the other like, genuinely shocked. The other day. I was having a discussion with someone who it might have been down at Field Days. So we

were talking with someone. Oh, that's right. He was a builder who'd been working in lives in Toron in the Bay of Plenty and had been working there for a while.

Wasn't on the tools anymore. We were chatting about a whole lot of stuff, talking about, you know, the massive amount of development that's happening, and Tylrong are talking about the controversy about the high rise buildings that they're proposing for sort of the CBD inside Tyrong, And then we got talking about building consents and he said, look, we did a house about five years ago and the building consent fees were about twenty two thousand dollars, which is,

you know, it's still a fair chunk of cash, but it's not unreasonable for the time and if it takes to give out a building consent, So we'll give counsel that. He said, Now, similar house building consent fees charged by Tyrong a city council sixty six thousand dollars for a building consent. I mean, hard to justify. I'd love to see the breakdown of that. Sixty six thousand dollars for

a building consent to build. That's our house. That's going to cost about eight hundred thousand dollars to build, So you know that's high end or higher end, but six thousand dollars for a building consent in Tronga for that one. And this is you know, from a reliable source. This isn't sort of secondhand knowledge and speculation and that sort of thing. That strikes me as an extraordinary high amount

to charge for a building consent. So maybe the government's focus on, hey, we'll let you build up to sixty square meters without a building consent. Maybe their focus should be how do we get counsels to be more efficient so that building consents don't cost as much. Maybe that should be the focus. You can consult. So if you go online, if you go to MBI, dot gov dot NZ have your say granny flats, you'll find it there. You can put in a submission. Oh, eight hundred eighty

ten eighty is the number to call. Sorry, the text about the song is getting better and better. One last text before we take another short break. Love your calls. Eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call. Pete. I have a steep bank surrounding my property which drops onto the road with a footpath. My border is that top of the bank, let's say about twelve meters at its tallest. The council mows the bank, but it may

need stabilizing at some stage, which would cost thousands. Is the council responsible for this remedial work or am I I would have thought, thank you for your texts as well.

I would have thought that if the bank is public property is council land, the bank is their responsibility, and that if your border, your boundary of your property is at the top of it, and that's impacted by the land below falling away, the responsibility to keep that stable, to provide stability to your property would lie with counsel saying that, and it relates back a little bit to a call we had two weeks ago from a gentleman who's retaining wall was starting to collapse because it was

being undermined by movement on the adjacent property and the adjacent proper he was owned by the council. That's he's now in a battle with council about that. So I don't underestimate how difficult it might actually be. Now interesting, I made the comment about Tarrong a city council and the cost for the building consent being about sixty six thousand dollars, does the granny flat rule apply in Oh, hang on No, this is another one. That's another text

that's coming in here we go Pete tarrong. A council collect their development contributions differently. The developer doesn't pay them on the land. They're collected in the build It's an odd way of dealing with them. That's why the council's building consent costs are so high. So if you're a little unfamiliar with this, there is often if you're doing a development, let's say you've got and I'm familiar with

this a little bit norkland. Let's say where you might have a section that's eight hundred square meters and you're able to build two houses on that. These days you probably build six on there. But let's say can do too, So you subdivide a portion of that. You end up with a four hundred square meter tight section on its own title and council is part of that process of

creating this new piece of land. Effectively, we'll charge you a reserve contribution fee, and that's a fee that goes towards theoretically money for public development, so looking at public spaces like reserves, etc.

rural areas as well as residential zone? If so, I plan to use it as soon as I can. We'll get into that text in just a moment. Oh wait, one hundred and eighty ten eighty people of camp with you this morning the resident Builder on Sunday. That's the show, and this morning we're talking to Craig. Good morning to you, Craig the morning.

want anything to do with it. I suggested to her to go to the UH the l b P complaints to do that and Council Owe to suggested to pay some money in and get an extension until it's resolved. But the builder there was no animosity with the builder. The buildings complete, there's nothing wrong with it. Yeah, absolutely fine, but they just won't do the paperwork. What what what can she do?

an extension of the building consent. Probably doesn't need to apply for an extension to the building consent right now, does she? When was the final inspection done?

professional behavior. So I think a lot of lbps have forgotten the fact that there is now a code of ethics. And part of that is that you have to communicate that you have to act responsibly, that you have to be prompt right. So, and because his work isn't being called into question in terms of the actual physical work

that he's done. I think I've always felt that probably seventy five percent of people's complaints about licensed building practitioners are probably about the way that they behaved rather than what they actually built. And in this case, it's going to open up a lot more grounds for people to challenge the behavior and the professionalism and the ethics of lbps. And I actually think that's not a bad thing at all.

So I suspect this guy's going to end up in front of the disciplinary committee and they're probably going to find that he has breached his terms and conditions I suppose of his being an LBP, and he'll get fined.

the person one chance. If he happens to be listening to the show and he kind of understands where the place is, then I'd suggest be wise and sit down and write out that record of works, because you have to do it. And there is nothing there is nothing that I've seen or read that says, oh, you don't have to do it because you didn't feel like it

or you didn't get paid. And I know I know of an LBP who knew that he wasn't going to get paid and decided that he wouldn't issue a record of works and it went to the disciplinary body and he got fine two thousand dollars for doing that, and the amount that he was waiting for was two thousand dollars, so he ended up I think being four thousand dollars in the whole. He didn't get paid and he got fine. So you know, word to the wise. Oh hey, nice

to chat and good on you for looking after your auntie. Thanks, take care, Craig. See then take care by by oh eight, one hundred and eighty ten eighty is the number to call. A couple of months ago, part of the conversation i'll this program was someone who said, look, I got a letter from council that after the final inspection, I had sixty days to submit my application for a CCC for a Code Compliance Certificate, and I wanted to see evidence of that. I haven't actually ever seen evidence of that.

And I went home and I did a bit of reading, and from what I can see, you as as a homeowner, after the final inspection, you must submit your CCC within twelve months. And what happens then is if you don't submit for a CCC within twelve months, the final inspection is kind of declared and valid, and in order for you to submit a CCC after twelve months, you have to get a new final inspection done, which opens up

a whole other can of worms potentially. So, but I haven't found anything in any of the legislation that I've reads that I've read that says you have to do it within sixty days, and yet this was sort of an official document from a council saying you have to do it within sixty days. So if you've seen one of those, or if you've had that email, if you could, I would love it if you forwarded it on to me. I'd like to see that. Pete ATNEWSTALKZB dot co dot

nz is the email address. Oh eight one hundred eighty ten eighty is the telephone number you can call us right now. Lines are open. We're going to have a busy show a little bit later on. We've got a couple of experts joining us to talk about compliance in terms of H one and the building code and changes to thermal efficiency. That's what H one is all about.

We'll be talking with Nick Cardy Jones from Metro Performance Glass around double glazing and its role in that compliance, which if you've submitted a building consent after the first of November last year, you will need to comply with

these new regulations around H one. And then we're going to get Hamish Firth regular planning expert to join us on the program at around eight to fifteen as well to talk about this granny flat rule and what it might actually mean and what you might actually be able to build. So we'll talk about that at around eight fifteen. But we're talking to you and the number to call is eight hundred and eighty ten eighty pack in a mo. We're getting a couple of texts in around the whole

granny flat thing. I'm happy to take some calls on it. So cast your mind back to the beginning of the week, and the government made some announcements around the beginning of a consultation period. So I'm reading this from the website. So this from the MBI website. The government is focused on increasing the supply of affordable homes for New Zelanders.

As part of this, the government is proposing to make it easier to build small, self contained and detached houses commonly known as granny flats, on property with an existing home on it. We are seeking feedback on options to enable granny flats of up to sixty square meters in size to be built without needing a building or resource consent,

so long as they meet certain criteria. The criteria granity flats must meet under the proposed exemption will form the checks and balances required to ensure that they meet building performance and quality requirements and appropriately manage environmental impacts. Finding the balance between speed, safety and risk to ensure that New Zealanders have safe, healthy and durable homes built as

quickly as possible is important. This is why we want to understand all the perspectives on potential costs, benefits and risks for the criteria we are proposing that granny flats and small homes will need to meet. So that's what the consultation is, and it's going to be pretty quick. I think like within the next you've got a little bit of time to submit your discussion or your thoughts on that. Then it goes on to talk about the

Building Act. So one of the things here a text that came through was, hey, I heard this week that allowing these granny flats will help fix the rental crisis. Does that mean that these granny flats can have separate power, water meter connections and a mail box and rubbish collection, even a proper oven. If so, then yes, many investors were treated as a game changer to help provide another

rental property on the one title. Thanks from Tim, I suspect that most of the things that you're talking about there would not actually apply to these types of dwellings, as in would it have separate power, Probably not, as in its own meter. Probably not. Separate water meter. Well, you'd have to go to council and or council owned

businesses like Watercare in Auckland and apply for one. In A new water meter in Auckland costs about seventeen thousand dollars I think at the moment, and a mailbox will know because it won't have its own title and its own rubbish collect That's a very good point. Could you ask for an additional bin, Yeah, you probably could, but I would imagine you've got to pay for that as well. And a proper oven. Yes. It seems that these are

designed to be completely self contained. So, for example, the change in legislation from ten square meters to thirty square meters for a sleepout, one of the ifs and butts in that legislation is that whoever was in that unit had to have access to the house because you weren't legally allowed to include a toilet or a shower i e. Sanitary fittings into those up to thirty square meter buildings. So the person who was inhabiting that space you could

sleep in it. You could be in it during the day, but you had to have access to the main house, whereas this would be something that would be self contained in the sense that you could cook and wash in that building. Would it have its own water meter, No, I don't think so. I think you'd be running a line from the existing feed out to that dwelling, so all of the rates would still be paid, or the water fee would still be paid by the occupants of

the main house. It does get complicated, and this is where the consultation will be really interesting to watch because I think there's a lot more fishooks in this than it would seem when you look at it at first glance. Oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call someone just text through as well, and I'd love more detail on this. To be fair, Craig, morning Peak Council can't not issue CCC if a record of works is not supplied, and that runs counter to everything that

I understand about CCC. To be fair, Craig, if you're missing documentation, if you don't have let's say a record of works from the LBP who did the structure of the building, then I would have thought Counsel in no way would issue a CCC. They just say, I need we need the record of works for that work in order for us to issue a CCC. And it's your problem if you can't get that from the LBP that did the work. So if you've got more detail on that, I'd love to hear from you. Oh, eight hundred eighty

ten eighty is the number. And I'm not here to slang off at Toyrong a city council, by the way, and I understand that perhaps the way that they gather their revenue around reserve contribution fee and so on might be different to other councils, and that's why it might be the figures are higher. But I love this text as well. A building permit and Toyrong the City Council was forty seven thousand dollars a while back across the city boundary to the Western Bay District Council and the

cost was seven thousand dollars. We'll take your calls on that. Eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call if you've got a project that's underweight and you're needing a little bit of help, for a bit of advice or wondering about particular products to buy. Then it's eight hundred eighty ten eighty will come back after the break US TALKSB. It is six forty six here at News Talks D probably six forty six all around the country

as it happens. Can I also, just before I talk to Pete, praise we're praise as due in my street and some adjoining streets. We had to notice a couple of weeks ago saying that Victor are going to be doing some work on the overhead power lines and the poles that support those, and that there was going to be some disruption to power supply. Ie your powers going off at eight thirty in the morning, it's likely to

be off until six o'clock at night. It's going to happen on a Saturday, which was kind of a little bit odd really, but anyway, it was going to be a Saturday. It happened to be yesterday. So bang on eight thirty house was plunged into darkness. I've just got out of the shower and the trucks turned up. They all down our street, around the corner, around the other street.

Multiple crewis climbing up or being elevated up into the power poles down the street, taking off the old timber crossbars and replacing those, and replacing the isolators and tidying up all the overhead lines and so on. A lot of people, I mean, like multiple trucks, multiple crews, obviously, lots and lots of traffic control, which meant the street was down to one lane, etc. We went out for most of the day, came back to find a couple of guys just testing or the meterboard at the front

of the house and the powers back on. That was five o'clock in the afternoon when we got home. But I actually thought looking at them working, it was poetry in motion. It was beautiful to watch. And yes, there's disruption, and that's a bit of a pain in the backside and all the rest of it, but it's work that needs to be done in order for the system to operate and to be more resilient and reliable. And I

thought they did an excellent job. So again, I know it's disruptive and it's a bit of a pain, but I thought that in this instant infected an outstanding job with their coordination for that little project in Devenport yesterday, Pete good A Hello, Petey, Oh, why is this not there's something wrong with my fingers. I've decided hang on, hang on, hang on out. Let's get this sorted out. Pete, go for it.

box out and it works. I don't know the legality that gave it a letter. And now the interesting thing with the water is that the council at the time, well I used to get it in the rates for the water and they called it a pan tax to do with the toilet. And interesting thing is that we never had meters over twenty years ago, but when they brought in water meters because because you see the council claimed, oh,

you'll be using more water to flush the toilets, you see. Anyway, when they brought in the water meters, it was then challenged and the council had to back down because they had they agreed that now they would be able to see if there was more water used. So we actually got a refund on that, and I think that doesn't happen now. But I note that the new granny flats can go up to sixty square meters, which I actually fifty square meters seem to work fine, but sixty is

a little bit better. But it's all legal, it's all consented, co compliance certificate and everything, and it's been quite an asset for me.

of it. So you ended up with you could buy effectively two houses in a granny flat. Now, whether that's extended family, which is awesome, because there's this thing now with sometimes with apartments, where you can buy an apartment which is actually two apartments. It has one front door and then you go into a lobby and then there's two doors, and you can either have the whole thing together, or you could buy it and then have one as a potential rental income or as housing for maybe you know,

older family members, independent children, that sort of thing. So I think what I like about all of these discussions around what we build sort of is about recognizing that houses are not one dimensional, there's not always just one purpose. In terms of our focus has very much been on we're going to build a house for a family, and as if a family mum, dad, and a couple of

kids is the only way we live. But the reality t is we don't live like that, and the number of groups that are actually that traditional sort of model is diminishing arguably, And so I think this kind of widening the scope of what we're building and for whom we might be building. So it might be you might have a family group, but they might have older parents.

They might be a family group with an independent teenager or a person in their twenties who wants to stay at home, or they might like you thinking ahead, thinking well, actually, if I build something I put in a granny flat and I get it compliant from the day one, then I've got an income stream. Fantastic. It's awesome, it's awesome. You're obviously well ahead of your time, Peter, Ah.

little bit better return. But no, it's it's worked. But I mean, I think the new thing here is, and I haven't looked into this is around the consenting. Mine was just included in my prisful building consent. But it seems to me that people with maybe I think some properties would lend themselves very well to doing something like this,

and some could create some complications. If you think you put something out in your backyard and then someone's got to walk all the way down the side of the house to get to it, that could seem quite problematic. But anyway, that's it's it's worked for me, and they have sort of been around in one form or another. I don't know about other councils. So I'm in the western plenty here and that was the way it was twenty years ago here.

from the get go. And the number of conversations I've had on this show where people will go, hey, look i've got a downstairs area and it's already got a shower, I want to pop in a kitchen and then I can let it out, and I'm going, yeah, but then that's non consented, right, And the things that you the hoops that you had to jump through, and to be fair, the safety that you've built into what you've built in terms of the fire protection and the isolation is really

really important. And that's why I think it's right that we still have to comply with the building code in terms of separation if you're going to end up creating a truly independent sublet within your existing property, and I wholeheartedly agree it shouldn't be something that you can just go ahead and do without getting a building consent for it, essentially to ensure that everybody is safe, particularly in the event of a fire. So good on you. I think

it's awesome, really appreciate you call Pete. We're going to talk to Robert after News, Sport and Weather, which is coming up top of the hour at seven o'clock. There's a couple of good ones too about building consent fees and reserve contributions. Will come back to those after the break as well. In a quick one forty year old house insult fluff insulation in the attic. Can we use some form of barrier stapled down to contain the insulation? I guess you could, but you'd have to be a

little bit careful around creating condensation. Back after the break news top of the r at seven.

experienced planner from Mount Hobson Group. And when I saw this announcement at the beginning of the week from the government saying, hey, the government has focused on increasing the supply of affordable homes. We're looking at options around enabling granny flats of up to sixty square meters to be built without necessarily requiring a building or resource consents as

long as they meet certain criteria. Being quite a lot of discussion in the media about it, quite a lot of discussion online, some of it good, some of it not so good. To be fair, Hamish very experience, So we're going to have a bit of a chat about that at around eight point fifteen this morning, we're going to be talking h one compliance at the end of this hour with Nikarti Jones. So busy old morning, eight

hundred eighty ten eighty. Though, for your calls right now, if you've got a question about a project that you are underway with, you can call us eight hundred eighty ten eighty Hello Robert, Yeah.

have to replace posts on. So I was looking at a place the other day that I look after, and the fence is more and more on a lean and I kind of gave the fence post a bit of a wobble, and I can't figure out whether it was it never had concrete around it, in which case it started to move, or whether it does have concrete around it and the post is actually rotten at the base.

And either way, I'm going to have to disassemble a section of the fence, dig out the old fence posts concrete and some new ones, put the fence panels back in, because I don't want to have the cost of replacing the entire fence. So again, you know, is that maintenance, Like if I could I have done anything to maintain that fence to stop it falling over into disrepair. Probably not, it's just the nature of that fence in the way that it was constructed in the first place. But saying

that I spent I spent a happy Saturday. I spent a happy Friday water blasting patios and treating the ground. Now that will then eliminate the moss, which will mean that it's safer, I e. You won't slip on the pathway. And also yeah, that that's part of maintenance as well. It's also part of safety.

through the fibers. Yes, it might clean off the mold and mildew and whatever sitting on the top of it, but chances are you're actually going to damage the fibers of the timber by water blasting timber too close without a chemical pre wash. You know, powerwashing is good. Water

blasting in that instance is bad. But at the same time, after a couple of hours literally of water blasting edge of the house, in the concrete base, and all of the patio which had been overgrown which we dealt with earlier in the week by doing a massive prune in

this garden, it's also enormously satisfying. The other thing that was enormously satisfying about the water blasting that I did on Friday, apart from testing out a new pair of gum boots, which were amazing, is that it's on a property where we had installed a rainwater tank, so rainwater harvesting now, given all the weather at the moment and there's not a lot happening in the garden, there was plenty of water in the tank, and so I would have worked for about I would say two hours, possibly

even a little bit more with the water blaster going constantly. And I had it simply connected to the water tank, which was one of the Bailey slim Line tanks, one of their Sustainability series tanks that I put in, So two thousand letter tank hooked up to the downpip. It's got an overflow, it's got an outlet at the bottom with a hose tap on it, and that Bailey water tank I would have like, I would have water blasted for two hours just using water out of the tank.

I don't think I even got anywhere near emptying the tank. But it is literally hundreds of liters of water that I wasn't drawing from the mains. Therefore, in that instance, nobody's paying for it. Free water out of that Bailey water tank.

You can have a look online and then make your submission. You might I think it's a great idea. You might think that it is a disastrous idea that will lead to shabby, poorly built housing popping up in the worst possible places, and it's just going to create chantytowns. And to be fair, either of those options is probably quite possible. Oh, eight hundred eighty ten eighty call us now. It is

fifteen minutes after seven. Another question we're going to add to the list of things that we'll talk about with Hamish Firth from Mount Hobson Group. After eight o'clock is around. Who can then occupy the granny flat? So Texas has come through. Granny Flat can only be occupied by close family. If you want to rent it out, you need to get it consented as a minor unit. So different rules that will be really interesting to talk about. Marty, talk to me about Granni flats.

rain right over that period. And by and large a one and one hundred year flood event might include rainfall of up to about eighty millimeters, right, so we're three times more than what we would expect to have once every hundred years. So in that sense, you know, if your drainage overflowed or your downpipes overflowed or the spouting

overflowed during that rain event. That's not surprising, right. What will be challenging is will we see standards or performance expectations for drainage increase because of these events which might happen. But currently the legislation, you know, there's rules already in the Building Act and in the Building or in the Building Code rather around let's say, how many square meters of roof per downpipe, what the size of the downpipe is, what the size of the pipe in the ground has

to be, all of these sorts of things. So if what you've got at the moment complies with that, then that would be considered adequate. Whether it's going to be adequate in the future is a question for others.

tribunal and tell on you. You would probably need to find a drain layer or a building survey who could have a look and say, in fact, what we've got is one two five spouting, we've got this number of downpipes, we've got this catchment area. It's directed into council or it's directed into private storm water which connects to public storm water. All of these things are compliant with current legislation. The fact it was overwhelmed is because it was an

extreme event rather than and every day. Now, if you get ten millimeters of rain at your property and there's flooding and somebody actually finds that, well, actually it might go into the ground, but it goes into a soakage pit that was done forty years ago and now has no containment at all, then it's probably fair to say it's inadequate and not fit for purpose, in which case you'd need to do some upgrades.

And if you've ever gone onto a council website, there's a thing called a gis right, you can look at all sorts of information about where drainage is, where overland flow paths are, where natural hazards are, et cetera, et cetera. But flood Viewer is newly developed and it has information that's obviously been gathered via lider from the recent flood events and so it's updated and it's very very specific.

And I know this because I've looked at a number of properties that I'm engaged with to see where the new flooding zones are likely to be. So go online, go on to flood Viewer and then type in the address and you might find that suddenly you are actually in a flood zone.

the stores as well. I guess broadly speaking, most of them all operate out of the same thing, you know, in terms of what chemicals they might have in them, But certainly having a pre wash makes a significant difference, and so I mentioned I had our own house family home wash. The other day, I talked to the young fellow who was coming to do it, and he had a pre wash solution, which is sort of a commercial

grade one. He applied an application allowed that to sort of, you know, get into all of that moss and mold that grows on the outside of a house, and then he did a powerwash. So not not he it was a water blaster, but he used it in such a way where he wasn't directing a massive amount of water onto the building, which is really important. So I think a pre wash or a treatment before you wash the house is essential.

the way to go. But the treatment is really important.

after I've been doing all this work. So I've got to go and do another job now to make them look a bit old, because we all know there is no credibility in wearing brand new gun boots out in public. Twenty seven minutes after seven, let's talk to Tom. Hello there, Tom, Good morning, sir, good ones.

thing too close to the work. Why I'm ringing now is because I think it'd be a very good move if we're allowed to do these sixty square meter buildings or similar to make sure they go wooden floors that can be picked up and taken away if anything goes wrong, or if your bigger developed are happening not conquered floors, so you can't take the building away.

did want to move it later on. Although picking up a sixty square meter building is not a small job, right.

with you. I think that anything that is going to be allowed to be built up to sixty square meters without necessarily requiring a building consent probably needs to be built with a timber floor rather than a concrete slab on the ground.

new ones. But I know one hundred those maps are out of date now because the high tide of the floods in the you know, a lot of house, of lot of streets, and we're talking run along the creeks the course. I'm very flat land, and the actual high tide of where those flood warders came through exceeds the current map, even the new ones. Really, those maps are already out of date. They're already out of date. I know they've gone past by many meters. We've got friends in these areas.

this other one. And so when I looked on the flood viewer, I was impressed at how accurate and up to date it was and how extensive it showed areas that would be prone to flooding in the future based on evidence from what happened back in January and then

again in February. So my experience of it has been I looked at it and there was a particular property that I was looking at, and it was like the flood zone came right up to the boundary basically, and interestingly enough, looking at those properties, and I've known this area for twenty five years, thirty years. There would have been one or two occasions in thirty years where some of the properties in the most low lying part of it had had some flooding of like basements and that

sort of thing. But then based on last year's rainfall, it was way more extensive and that was reflected in floodviewer. So it's interesting to hear you say, look, you know properties that were flooded last year that haven't been included in flood flowed flood viewer.

They decided that they would build six hundred millimeters above the required minimum, and they still got one hundred millimeters of rain through the house of flood water through the house, and they went six hundred mile above the flood zone.

geology to build a straight road on. Of course it's on flat land, and that whole side of the street basically is a council buying them out, but some people are going to hold out, so you're getting the houses being removed, but people living in the house next to it, because they've bought it cheap and they've renovated it. I just think, why would you buy it cheap and renovated it because it's going to get, you know, something to

blood recently at two hundred bills. Yet to say it's going to happen again, isn't it It's going to happen again.

But flood view is a new tool, a new website that's been developed that shows updated and I've found it to be eerily accurate in terms of you know, what I remember from the floods from last year to what is now on flood Viewer. So it is you can whittle away a happy couple of hours googling your friend's addresses to see whether they're in the new flood signs. Oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call Bob. Greetings to you, sir.

pipe between my boundary and the connecting pipe. Well, I thought, once you got to your boundary, that regional problem and the rest of them blind to countils. But under the by law and the tarooas, no, they don't. It's irresponsible to taps into their main pipe, which was you know, a good klimitter down the road. So it would it mean we were to get roading people in signs et cet etector sector. Is that a common thing?

building compliance. And I know sometimes when we talk about these things, it's it's easy for the eyes to glaze over and all the rest of it. So we're trying

to have a look at it. In particular H one of the Building Code, but there's other parts of the Building Code that relate directly to glazing, and one of the challenges that I've found, and I've done a couple of many years of work alongside Metro Performance Glass talking about glazing, particularly around double glazing retro fitting, because of all of the benefits that it brings in terms of warm, dry, comfortable.

But we also one of the challenges when you talk about glasses because you look through it, right, so we don't often appreciate how it fits into some very very important parts of the building code. So to discuss this a little bit further, it's a pleasure to welcome back to the program. Mc carty Jones from Metro Performance Glass. Very good morning, Nick, Good morning Peters.

let's start with that energy efficiency. There's been significant changes to the requirements as of November last year. How are you starting to see the impact of that.

and some slab insulation components. So hey, windows, Undoubtedly we're a big ticket in that about fifty percent of the heat loss in homes NBA discovered can come from windows that might be through the glass that mon't be through

the joinery. So look with that change come through. Essentially, what it means is as you're building a new home, to build to the current H one standard, it will largely mean in New Zealand you must be using lowy double glazing, will need to be arg and filled, and the frame itself will now need to be thermally broken rather than a solid piece of aluminium will need to have a thermal break to prevent that heat loss or transfer to the outside of the building. So, yeah, what

we're seeing a strong uptake in that. You know, a few years ago, maybe only twenty to thirty percent of homes we're having low e double glazing with argam installed in them. And now you know, with that uptake it will be well over seventy percent nationwide.

or you can feel it working, because of course it's really hard to see it working. It's got to be quite you know. And this is where as we're talking about those those really specific elements of how the double glazed unit is assembled out of what type of glass, with what types of coatings, with what type of gas inside it, it actually makes quite a big.

is substantially stronger. So you know, as we say, we're getting lifted and performance of sort of anywhere in the range of four to five times what clear doubglazing had been through these almost visible coatings on the surface of a glass.

through the glass, right, and the wounds were horrific. So these days glazing also needs to ensure safety in if you did fall against it, and how does that impact the glazing as well and what's being installed in houses.

So if you've got glazing that's you know, full white glazing, might be a door panel or something like that, or you might have glazing within sort of eight hundred millimeters of the floor. The Building Codes really really specifically tells you what that glass must be in order to be safe for human occupancy. So as we go around and we do retrofitting, will typically removed these panes of glass and where it does is required to be a safety glass.

Come from safety glass. We put that glass in place, so you're actually lifting the total safety leaders of the home and you're actually bringing in terms of the glass compliance up to modern standards just by the process of retrofitting.

of safety glass must be. For example, in a bathroom, any any wet area within two meters of the floor, all of that glass from the inside must be tough and safety glass. So if you did have a slip and you'd have a fall of your arm did reach out and had a window, You're going to be hitting a safety pane of glass as opposed to a pain

that would shatter and form some big long shards. And schools are really similar as well, So all of the glazing going into schools these days is required to be that safety glass as well.

and I'm seeing them deflect. So obviously when you're doing large section glazing, there's also then a whole lot of things there around the structure, their ability to withstand wind in particular.

well and safely for that building. And so you know, we spend a lot of time looking at the different wind zones and positioning of glass and homes and coming up with the absolute right specification of that glass and how thick does that glass need to be for its size, its location in the wind zone, to ensure that we're not getting that big draft of wind comes through and can essentially damage or break a window, and specify the unit to meet those requires.

What I find a bit frustrating is when you hear commentary in the media from people that are supposed to know what they're talking about but don't. And so I'm going to get around that by going to someone who does know what they're talking about. So before we jump into the garden with rud Klein passed at eight thirty this morning, we're going to be talking with Hamish Firth,

planner at Mount Hobson Group. He's been on the show a couple of times planning issues, very good grasp of the legislation, understands what all the implications are of making changes like this. So we're going to have a chat with him in about ten minutes as well. We'll take your calls right now. And I mean a lot of texts. I mean, this is interesting, and this is kind of where this is an exemplar of the sort of complexity that's going to emerge once we start to try and

pin down legislation on this. Hey, Pete, if these granny flats don't need a building consent, will they need the five odd building inspections during construction? If so, what's the point of employing an LBP, as they still cannot apply the code without costly inspections. Is this going to end up as a bit of a scam, Well, no, Chris. The whole point of not having a building consent theoretically

is that there won't be any council inspections. And I notice that in the brief discussion pieces that have come out from the government, they're talking about a trusted builder. They're not using the word LBP because lbp's licensed building practitioners have to do restricted building work. Restricted building work

is basically work that requires a building consent. This is going to be work that may not necessarily require a building consent, in which case there won't be any council inspections, in which case, if you're buying one down the track, how do you know it's any good? Those are the issues we're going to be dealing with. So we'll be talking about that with Hamish Firth very soon. Donald, greetings to you, sir.

glazing and put in double glazing. Now if in some situations the sash won't accept a piece of double glazing, because you've got to remember, if you've got four more glass in there at the moment, or even three mil and then you're going to put double glazing in, it's going to be at least sixteen millimeters thick, possibly even

a bit more depending on how it's put together. So not all sashes will be able to be adapted, in which case they'll just make a new sash and install that into an existing window frame.

Do you just say, actually, what I'm going to do is remove the entire windows suite, Because when we're talking about windows, I think sometimes we forget that there's two components to it. There's the frame and the glazing, and the combination of the joinery and the glazing make up

a window, for example. And what you might find is that, in fact, the overall condition of the aluminum joinery as such that you could put the investment into the double glazing, but you've still got poorly performing frames, in which case may be replacing the whole lot, which is doable. That would probably trigger requirement for a building consent, by the way, But look, there's there's heaps of information online and some

of the stuff that Nick was talking about. Have a look at the Metro Glass Metro Performance Glass website, and then for specific information on double glazing, you can check out retrodg dot co dot nz as well. It is let me see twelve minutes after eight here at newstalk ZB.

One of the key things with the plastic clouding systems is there flat surface, so they're very low maintenance in terms of that easy to clean, and they're easy to repaint when you need and you can also easily change the color going forward if view if the property sells to new owners and they don't like the color that you had on the house, so you can easily change and update those things. Part of being a Rasine Construction business or Razine Group business is that we're genuine razine

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him a number of questions. And the reason that I'm consulting with Hamish is you're a planner. You've probably seen these sorts of proposals, and I guess you've got an insight into what are the likely outcomes of how complex is this going to be to administer in whatever way it ends up becoming law hamous, Good morning and welcome to the show.

points in the right direction. Second, this is the beginning and this goes to your question about beginning of a process of getting counsel away from the last man standing in terms of liability and getting them to be the keeper of the record. And then thirdly for the homeowner, so whether it's granny literally, whether it's the teenager, whether it's the uncle coming home, whether it's extended family or far now, or whether you just want to rent this

out and make some money. This provides at that high level a simple opportunity across the country from the top to the bottom. That we have a regulation and standard. The second part of it, which is to your question, is the devil will be in the detail. And I think it's really really important that we get it right. We get it right in terms of where these can be located. We don't want these in flood zones, exacerbating flooding. We want to make sure that we've got the connections.

We also don't want to create a swetto where you walk into a yard and there's tenery. So is it one sixty square meter two thirty? How are they connected to the pipework. I think I think we can still get that right. I think this discussion document which is calling for submissions, you know, we need the insurance Council to be involved here to say, okay, how are we going to deal with these? We need, you know, the legal teams to come in and say how would we

deal with these? In terms of limbs and I'm coming to buy one, has it been built properly? And then thirdly, we want to make sure that there is light regulation around them so that we don't end up having people living in car crates because the quality goes to zero.

boundary without fire rating. You're not going to have stormwater overflow exacerbated by over coverage. So I think we use those as a really good guide and you can ply with those. I also think that, and you probably hearing my voice, Pete, I'm excited about this. This is a game changer. I think that we should be collecting development contributions on this there is still going to be pressure on the services. There's still going to be pressure on

the parks and the stormwater and the sewer. So a tick box says you go to counsel and say here's what I've done. I heard you say it's trusted builder. I think it should be a licensed building practitioner. I think that the plumber who signs in the same way US Sparky does. Yes, Sparkis aren't regulated by council. They provide their CCC to the homeowner or to the license building practitioner. But this is where I talk about counsel being the keeper of the record rather than the last

man's standing. So we make the licensed plumber present his certificate to confirm he's done it to code. We make the LVB do the same, so that we know the unit meets healthy home standards. Ye, so that we know it's been built properly and put on properly. But it's not that you need to consent for it. All you need to do is show council you've done it. That you have to have that tick box that will go on the limb and the liability moves from council back to those licensed building practitioners.

these on there. You might be an orchard needing seasonal workers, so suddenly you can holorify a farm.

these things and that they're ensurable. And I think it may be as simple as a healthy home certificate, so it gets right, it's been built to a code or it's been built to code and the licensed building practitioner confirms that, so that liability comes back on THEMS.

Make it simple to understand. That can be done in ketty ketty, It can be done in Goa, It can be done anywhere, and we all have the same regulations we're working too. We want counsel out of this process, but we want there to be a regulatory framework and pathway that give surancies to home runers' banks. And also think about it as yourself as the neighbor. The last thing you want is the neighbor is that properly be built on the boundary. You're okay, there's a minor dwelling

but let's make it comply. So I think that this time I'm going to make a submission. You know, I may even wander all the way down to Wellington and appear, because I think we've got to do this in a well thought out manner. And this sets the scene for further changes in the Building Act to make it simpler. I heard you were talking about the cost of building

getting higher and higher. If we can reduce it and simplify it and make it least costly, you're probably going to get a greater amount of compliance.

they're too close to the boundary. Right, so in terms of imposing controls, like if suddenly you notice that your neighbor is building a meter from the boundary and at sixty square meters, that would probably breach the outline of what this discussion document is about, because the broad outline is that it should be the height of the building away from the boundary and that would stay. That would be a sensible sort of limit on where you could build.

can see where you're coming from. This is potentially going to make a significant difference to housing affordability and housing availability as long as we keep those controls around it, because we don't want As someone text through to me earlier, he's looking at his neighbor who's put two car crates down the bit of Corrigo, dying in between and has got a family living there. We don't want that.

road trying to right. Guy, is there any sort of spray that you can get that wouldn't kill every animal in the neighborhood?