You're listening to the Resident build Up podcast with Peter Wolfcamp from News Talks at Bay.
The house is a whole even when it stars, even when the grass is overgrown in the yard, even when the dog is too old to borrow, And.
When you're sitting at the table trying.
Not to start house scissor hole, even when we.
Are band ball, even when you're.
There alone, A house is a hole, even when those goes, even.
When you go around from the ones you.
Love, your more.
Screams, building plains, being in frond the world locals lisball when they're gone, leaving them house, even when we'll be ben lone, even when you're neverlone.
Well, very good morning, and welcome along to the Resident Builder on Sunday. You're with me Pete wolf Camp, the Resident Builder, and this is a show all about no surprise surprise, building, building, construction, renovating, altering, maintaining, planning, purchasing, choosing contractors. Whatever you would like to discuss with regards to building construction regulations. We can do all of that on the show this morning. So I trust you've had a good week. Weather's not far from the mind. I
was out in my workshop yesterday and I'll explain why. Well, I don't need to explain why I'm often in the workshop, but with a particular purpose. Yesterday, when an extremely heavy band of rain sort of swept across where I am and where Aucklanders live inundating curbs and pathways, and probably not to the extent of having a flooding inside house and that, but it was one of those remarkably heavy downpours that sort of swept across the city for about
ten minutes or so and then disappeared. Kind of made me add a couple of other jobs to my to do list of things around the house. Sought out some decent spouting on the workshop would probably be top of that list, seeing the water pouring over the top of what I've already got there at the moment. So, and
these are the sorts of things that happens. We walk around and we go, oh cracky, that's right, I should do that job, and maybe I should get onto that, and maybe there's a bit more maintenance that I need to do here there and everywhere. So if you've got a task that you would like some help with, eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call, Or if you'd like to send a text, you are more than welcome to do that. Thank you Steve for your text.
I'll explain the moment the If you've got a question you'd like to text through, you're more than welcome to do that. Of course. It is nine two nine two or zbzib from your mobile phone. If you'd like to email me, you're more than welcome to do that as well. It's Pete at newstaloksb dot co dot nz. So I trust you've had a good week and if you've been involved with a project, I trust that it's been successful
and progressive. And if it's not going as well as you would have hoped, then maybe we can talk about that on the show as well. Eight hundred eighty ten eighty is that number to call. A little bit later on, we're going to catch up with Mike Colds. We are going to definitely talk to Redcline past at about eighth dirt. He might even bring Rud on a little bit early.
We have much to discuss. So one of the tasks I said last week on the show that I would rodd and I have talked about barn Ow's for a while. I know this is not necessarily building related, but it is now because I built something. I built some barn ol boxes. It turns out the RUD sent me two different designs and they are quite distinct from each other. So I've ended up making two different barn owl boxes,
which I've sent photographs to RUD. I put a quick post up yesterday with a bit of a time lapse, and I made a little video about sort of how I've set them out and what I think the thinking is behind them. That'll be up on my Facebook page a little bit later on today. So it's all there, it's all happening, and I point this out just as
a sort of public service announcement. Rushing when you're doing tasks tend to lead to mistakes, and I was either ushing not kind of, not really, but I sort of was yesterday to try and get something finished, and just a moment's in attention while using a fairly sharp knife trying to clean off a sticker from a hasp off a latch right ended up with me going inside clutching
my finger, going I think we need some bandages. So anyway, I'm not sure what the damage is, but it's a decental chunk that came out of the finger and a couple of bandages and that sort of thing. It's just a moment's in attention. And as soon as I did it, I was like, ah, you muppet, why would you have held your hand like that? And then when the blade did slip, it went straight into the finger. One of those ones where you go, yeah, that's going to hurt
a little bit more than what I was hoping for. Anyway, It's all fine, but yes, just thinking it's that classic. Just take a moment to think about what you're doing before you rush to do it. And another transformational event for me. But I'll talk about this a bit later on. I've started using a track saw. I'll explain that a bit later on. We'll get stuck into it. Eight hundred and eighty ten eighty is the number to call Steve.
Thank you for your text back to Dancing in the Cowshed with the opening song back on Steve in the Cowshed this morning. I hope the cows enjoy the music as well. I know apparently it's very popular to play classical music to them, but I figure a bit of Ben Harper probably doesn't go astray either. And Matt says, hey, Happy Father's Day. Indeed, indeed, if you happen to be a dad, Happy Father's Day to you, and thank you
very much for your wishes. Matt. How do we note on my desk when I left this morning saying Happy Father's Day to me as well, which is awesome. I eight hundred eighty ten eighty all things building construction, regulations, rules, dilemmas,
you know, discussions that you might get into. Actually, I just quickly I had a good converse with a guy who's very experienced in the building sector, regulations, involved in innovation and so on, and I quickly said to him, look where are you at with the rollback in terms of H one, this kind of idea that's been flagged by the current minister, going well, maybe it's added too much cost, Maybe we should look at rolling back H one, which is all about energy efficiency, and he goes, yeah,
but look at the news. At the moment we're in an energy crisis where we can't generate sufficient energy to keep the lights on, and now we want to roll back a practical set of solutions that would allow our houses to be more energy efficient, i e. Requiring less energy. One hand's not talking to the other. Oh, eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call Neville. Good morning to you, thank good morning.
How are you doing very well?
Thank you?
That's sweet. Now I called early because I'll followed you device.
So a wise man, you're a wise man.
You're a friend of mine. She lives in a house that's at the end of quite a long drive, and there's three houses that ended quite long drive, and those three houses own the quite long drive. Now, one of the houses on one side of the driveway has a right of way because it's a cup hold of sense quite a long time ago and has a right of
way to the garage. But in the interim, some new people have brought that property and they're now develop it, and so they're going to push three driveways into their property, so the garage, the original house, new house on the back.
And I'm gone, you're going to be crazy.
And she said to me, no, Well, I'll check with the council, and they said, no, no, we've granted a permission. And I'm going, but you guys owned that the driveway. They don't own anything, and yet they're going to push at another two drives. I would have assumed that the right of way would have stood. I wouldn't have imagined you could have created two new accesses off of a driveway. You don't know.
That's an interesting one, and I'm just thinking about it. I'm just trying to work my way through that. So there's a driveway that services three properties, and typically when you look on a title or something like that, you'll find that each of the individual titles has like a strip of that driveway as part of their title, and they all have either an easement or an agreement that
says we're all going to share. So I own one meter of a three meter wide driveway, you own another meter, you own the last one, and that becomes the use and the property for those three individual houses. And I'm getting the impression that this long driveway there happens to be a neighboring house right which adjoins it, but doesn't necessarily have legal title to the driveway.
And then they bring houses on the driveway right.
And they've informally years ago taken out a section offense which has allowed them to use the driveway and drive into their property. But now now that's being formalized as being the entrance to a new development over the land that they don't own. That's the bit that I don't get.
Well, the thing that's really concerning a lot for me. I can understand that they have a right away because I assume that the garrets, but that particular terrance way goes has mean if it's twenty years, let's assume. But what concerns me is because they're granted a right away to that particular entrance, now that they want to develop the property that they actually have rights to create.
Two more.
Access is onto their property off the driveway they don't own, and there seems to be no recourse.
I would have thought that your friend who owns the property probably needs to go to it'll end up becoming a legal thing. A lawyer would need to go survey the title and send a note to counsel going, hey, look, by the way, you've granted access to a property that is not actually owned by that person, and we withdraw our right for access to that property. And the other thing alongside that is that and I don't necessarily want to stand in the way of development just for the
sake of standing in the way of development. But at the same time, like I know from sort of either subdivision or intensification work that I've been involved with. There is often quite specific rules around what they often call a jole like a joint access area, in terms of the width of it. I know, for one development we were involved with, we had to add like a passing
bay so that there was sufficient width. You have to allow things like can you get a fire truck down there, depending on the length of hose that you need to get to a property, those sorts of things, so you know, what might have been a sufficiently wide driveway for three properties may not be a sufficiently wide driveway for six property or six developments. So there's a few issues there. Ultimately, if you're going to go into battle with counsel, it's going to involve lawyers.
So that's always the problem, isn't it. Everyone's a little bit scared to run up a bill of a lawyer because you never actually really know what you're going to end up until you gets anyway.
Yeah, actually, that's good question. I'm not sure if lawyers do that. You know, like, if I wanted someone to come and do some work at my place, could I I'd ask for a fixed price quote, But I'm not sure that you get that much when you go and see your I'll ask our lawyers. I think he comes in a fascinating one. Hey, look good on you for helping you mate out.
Thank you much.
You'll take care pleasure actually on that and it was a story. So I'm in the habit these days of as I'm reading articles that I find online, often on the Herald website and those sorts of things. If it's interesting or I feel that it's got some information that I might need later on, I just send it to myself and it sits in a file on my inbox sort of thing. And there was a fascinating one this
It was on the Herald website. I'm sure it's still findable now, where the headline was basically homeowner amazed that counsel could install manhole to sewer line by front door
with no permission or no discussion and consultation. And I thought, gee, that's an intriguing one, because I know I've been involved with situations where someone a developer, for example, has approached a neighboring property to say, hey, look, I need access to your property in order to upgrade the stormwater line or the wastewater line in order for me to pull down this old house and whack up six townhouses, and typically the neighbor could go, actually, I'm not that happy
about it, and then maybe some money changes hands and suddenly they're more happy about it, or they go, no, I'm not really that interested in it. But the developer pushes it through council, and council end up making an order saying, hey, look you can. You've got to give access to that. It's our asset that happens to be in your property, and this person has a right to use it. But that typically takes a long time, eighteen months,
two years, something like that. And so I was intrigued by the story where the homeowner is essentially saying, look right outside my front door, which actually just happens to be on a driveway. They're going to install a new wastewater connection from across the road from a development of a corner site where there was one house which is now going to have eight townhouse development on it. And so the developer instead all of this information is in
the article. The developer, instead of taking that and pumping it up to a chamber and then having a gravity fed on that side of the road, has opted I think with a little bit of insistence from council that in fact gravity fed I e. It's better if it all just flows downhill, across the road, down a section of the driveway and into a new manhole which sits, which will sit above the existing council owned or asset, being the wastewater line there. And so this homeowner has said, look,
no consultation, which is really really unusual. I have to say. Anyway, you may have a comment on that, or you may go and dig out the article and have a bit of a read. But it's worth taking the time to read the article. I eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call all things building, construction and as it happens right now, but offencing so we'll talk to Dobby in just a moment. We'll take a short break if you'd like to join us. I eight hundred eighty
ten eighty is the number to call. I found the article that I mentioned. It was up on the twenty ninth of August. If you're looking for it, I have to say, yeah, have a look at the article. It's it's quite good. If you want to chat about it, that'd be great. I eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call Dobby. Good morning to.
You moning money. Interesting as you're talking about that driver, it is exactly the same, right, all you do get the boundary pegs down by the road and put a fence on each side.
I think I know what you say. I think in this instance here, it seems like an informal arrangement where a neighbor, who it would appear to me anyway, doesn't have legal access to the driveway, by agreement with the neighbors, has cut a hole in the fence and can drive along the driveway and nip into their property. Right, So.
That I appreciate it, really really that place that's got three owners, three of them own that driveway, so the three of them go against one, Well who wins?
Well that's right. But yeah, it's a bit of a kid.
It sounds like you're just an agreement from the last in and the last owner. Now that when you buy a property, it tells you exactly what hasn't got a permit and what's required on their property and your boundary.
I suppose this one's just going to come down to what whether or not the person actually had legal right to use that access way. Now maybe while it might not be on their title, they might have registered an easement for example. So because you know, it's that sort of thing. If you look at plans that are often drawn where a subdivision takes place, and while each house has its own individual title, they'll share a portion of
the driveway. And as I was saying tat Neville, you know, you'll see it kind of divided into thirds or quarters or something like that to show which part of the driveway you own, but then you have an easement over the rest of it to use.
It goes back to the thing is like, whether it's a driveway, a house, section of whatever you pay rates on today, Well he comes driveway, it belongs to you. You decide.
Yeah, and I'm a little bit curious. And then the other thing, as I mentioned to Neville, is that whole thing around you know that like there are obviously planning regulations around the width and style of access ways depending on the number of properties. So you know, a driveway that serves only one unit could potentially be two point four meters wide. A driveway that serves more than one unit might need to be But yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.
Now if you look at that on. If it's got three things, it'll be a three point six.
Yeah, that's right. And in some cases, depending on the length of it, sometimes you.
And there'll be addresses on thirty one. Yeah, thirty one c h. So there's three have got the right a wage of that, That's.
What I'm thinking. But ultimately, if you're going to go and do battle with counselor, you're probably going to have to lawyer up. So I suspect it's going about you.
Don't need a lawyer. You do is show them what you're paying rates on. See the lawyer you've got.
If you did a title search on the adjoining property to see what their title actually show shows they have access to our rights to.
Yeah, a counter's got that. All you do is go and apply for it, and they've given you a photo copy of your titles.
Awesome, all right, some good advice there, Dobby appreciate that all of us to take care of. Then, oh wait, I was so tempted to ask him whether or not Dobby being I presume a nickname was a nickname that was given to him after the Harry Potter movies came out, or whether that's a nickname that he had before then I didn't feel I should ask, Oh, eight hundred and eighty ten eighty is the number to call put morning
peak text. We've put a roof on us. We want to put a roof on slider over a small storage erro with thinking wooden trusts clad with roofing, iron on galvanised. Now is that possible without a consent?
TI?
As soon as you end up with a roof on anything that requires a consent, particularly if it's attached to your existing building, So things like car ports, for example, up to forty square meters can underschedule one of the act be built without necessarily requiring a consent, as long as it then fits a number of other criteria in terms of distance from boundary, not being attached to an existing structure, etc.
Etc.
Most often, as soon as you put a roof on, for example, the difference between having a loggier type thing, which is just rafters posts and a beam to give some definition to an outdoor space, you can do that without a consent. As soon as you add a roofing to that, then typically it triggers a requirement for consent, and I would imagine that in this instance, your question
is if you're going to do storage area. Unless it's not attached the house and it's not its own height away from the boundary, or it is its own height away from the boundary, it probably triggered a requirement for a building consent. Eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call if you've got a question of a building nature. The lines are open for you right now. Call us now eight hundred eighty ten eighty News Talks there B. It is six point thirty four here at
Talks HEB. Probably in the rest of the country as well. Eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call if you've got a question of a building nature, whether it's you know, we've talked a little bit about fencings
and driveways, and it's that whole. I guess it's an increasingly common issue in most metropolitan areas or most urban areas where intensification is obviously underway and suddenly it does put pressure on either existing infrastructure, whether that's assets that are in the ground I pipework and services, or above ground as well in terms of parking, driveways, access, rubbish
collection and all of those sorts of things. And I've just had another read through This article about it was in the Herald on the twenty ninth of August about a gentleman who lives in Green Bay. Green Bay's a little sort of beachside suburb alongside the Monaco Harbor out of central West Auckland, and a development that's happening on it. This is the I suppose the crux of the issue an eight hundred and twelve square meter site that is now going to have eight new townhouses put onto it.
And I have to say I personally don't in most instances have too much of an issue with intensification. I think we need to do it. I think it's a really good way of creating more supply, of hopefully addressing issues around affordability, and of preventing urban sprawl, which I don't think is a good at all. This kind of constant let's just find more land, old farms and put more townhouses on them, is not a I don't think it's a great method of growing your city. So intensification
is good. But I thought that things like the Auckland Unitary Plan and other planning initiatives by councils around the country was to promote these sorts of developments within walking distance of public transport and so on and so forth. That you know, if you're five hundred meters from a train station or a transport hub or then you're allowed to intensify to a certain height and number. And then as that distance reduces, then the scale of the intensification
reduces as well. With an idea to saying, well, look, if we're going to promote intensification, then we also need to promote mode shift in terms of transport. And if we put these types of developments near transport hubs, then people can use public transport to get around a little bit ideologically driven. Oh, but it does actually kind of
make sense. So then I was fascinated by the story around the connection of eight new townhouses to a sewer connection that is in the adjoining property, not adjoining, but across the road and down a right of way to a new manhole there. And then yes, I had a look on maps, and then I had a look on the gis to see what was what the infrastructure is like, and then thought, actually, this is not the sort of
development that I think we should be having. It's an eight hundred and twelve square meter site in a suburban street that is predominantly single house dwelling and quite a distance from any major transport hub. There's buses at the end of the road, but then they connect to another transport hub before you go in. So I wonder where the issue with this story is. Really this is the
sort of development that intense probably shouldn't have happened. Anyway, your thoughts, Oh, eight hundred and eighty, Then I'm to call hello, Gabriel.
Yeah, good morning, Peter. Sorry, I speak some of it in.
Imperial, quite familiar with I've got Yes.
I've got a width between the house and the neighbor's fence of seventeen feet. But I want to erect a what's called a portable garage. It's made of it's made of canvas, heavy duty. That tent basically is it's thirteen feet wide, which means that I've got about two feet
on either side when it's up. Are there? And the other thing I want to do, it's may change it is that on each corner I want to add poles of two meters in length and drop them and concrete them around them around this tenth so that it stabilizes it further. So I'm wondering are there any rules or any rules that I should be aware of? And yeah, I mean, look to do I need consent?
The typically you would, and the main reason for that is proximity to the boundary. So the sort of rule of thumb is that if you're within a meter of the boundary, and a met is just over three feet, then that triggers the requirement for a building consent. And so two foot is obviously less than three foot, and so that would requirement. Also, the building should, ideally, if it gets done without consent, be the height of the structure away from your existing structure, and you won't have
that space. The challenge would be getting a building consent for something that's not really a building, i e. It's you can a sort of temporary structure.
Temporary structure.
Yeah, and the what are you going to do? Just park a car in there? It's just cover for a car.
Yeah, yeah, that's what I hope to do. But yeah, okay, so I need to consent, But that's fine. That's really what I'll wanted to know before I get right into it yet.
But I think so, and you know, part of that will also be that like if let's say you don't go for consent, and suddenly you start building and the neighbor goes craiky, I'm not really that happy about this thing being so close to the boundary, And then they go to council. Council will turn up and go, well, actually you do need a consent for that. It's unauthorized works and you'll get a notice effects or a you know,
a letter, potentially a fine. I mean typically counsel don't go out looking for these sorts of things, but when it's drawn to their attention, eventually they'll get round to looking at it.
Yeah, so good advice as usual.
Pleasure somebody boundaries where it's all that already all the best, take care bother them and Eric a very good morning to you.
Good morning, Peter. I have a problem I'm hoping you won't be ever help me with. I've just done a twelve meter by eight meter edition on my son's house. So now we're into doing the old part of the house. So when we put the new roof on, we stripped the roof off the old part of the house. It's a fifteen degree pitch, so because the pearlins didn't line up, so we removed the eye and the building paper of the netting replaced the pearlins, put the new white paper
on and reroofed it. Since then, we've ripped all the wooden windows out of the old part of the house and replaced them with double blows with the planted seal, and anyway, we now have a mold problem growing on the bottoms of the pearlins and about the meter up the rafters in where we've reroofed just one side of the house, on the eastern side of the house, so we kicked in the front entrance, the bathroom in one bedroom when we started last weekend ripping the ceilings and
that down in the old part of the house. In the bathroom, we could see this mold growing and it's quite bad growing on the on the It's only on the top side of the purlins and for about a meter up from the top plate up the rafters. A. What's caused that? I know, I listened a while ago you were talking about roof ventilation. A what caused it? And B how do we solve it? Because it wasn't
there previously. I have I have a feeling that because while we had all the wine eating and everything off, we took the opportunity to put new bats completely over top of the old bats that had shrunken down. I have a feeling that they had one of those test that sucking motor things in the bathroom with the heat lamps in it and an extractor fan. I have a feeling the fact that the hose may have had a hole in it, or you know, the one hundred and
fifty little point to the outside of the house. So have you any ideas what caused this or it wasn't there in the previously and we get rid of it.
Yeah, I think it's probably just happenstance that it wasn't there before, because there was probably a lot more airflow, right, and a lot more ventilation in an old drafty construction, And so then you've ended up going part way towards reducing that airflow, which then creates still air, which then creates the potential for mold growth. And it's it's a it could potentially be a thing called interstitular moisture control.
Right, it's a big word.
Yeah, I know, and to be fair, it does get enormously complex. Well yeah, it does quite quickly. But there's a lot of articles about it and it kind of relates to a couple of things. One is that we have to start understanding that moisture, as in water molecules attached to air, migrates through solid surfaces. So and that I'm still trying to get my head around it, to be fair, right, this is an area that I'm trying
to do a lot more reading on. So, for example, an a skillion roof a little bit like what you've constructed, there will always be moisture inside the room below that. Now, if for example, we've got just plasterboard lining and then we've got our ceiling strapping, then we've got some insulation, then hopefully there's a gap at the top of that insulation to the underside of the roofing underlay, and then
you've got your roofing iron on top. So moisture will migrate from inside that habitable space through the plaster board and then trapped inside that surface, which if that's got less airflow than before because you've put new building paper on it, because maybe you've tidied up some gaps and bits and pieces, or you've ended up closing up the
gap between the roofing underlay and the insulation. So Ideally you must have at least fifty millimeters of gap between your insulation and the underside of your roofing underlay to allow for some airflow in there, because without it, that's where the moisture ends up. And then when the moisture adheres to a surface, it creates a damp environment and promotes mold growth, and that's what you might be seeing.
I've seen similar pictures for example of actually some classrooms that were built about fifteen years ago where agains you know, rafter perlin building paper, iron, insulation, plasterboard on the underside, and when they pulled them down because they'd seen mold on the ceilings, what they found is that the moisture had got into that space and the insulation was starting to blacken with mold, and there was mold growth on the timber as well, and potentially from their timber decay.
So that's kind of if you do want to do some reading, start in that area. And again it's pretty flash sounding terminology, but interstitular moisture control is where you want to be looking at on.
The new part of the house, or sorry, on the new part of the house. Because we had to put the extra thick vats and before we put the pearlins on above the top plate we used. It came in a box and you sort of folded it out like a constantina. It was like a corrugated plastic. It was about eight hundred high and we put it right around the right around the house and so that meant that the bats could not possibly touch the building paper, et cetera. But this is like a white mold, it's not a
black mold. There was absolutely no sign of it on the ceilings on the inside of the house, but we could just smell it when we started pulling down the ceilings in the bathroom. And the soun's an asthmatic, and the soun's an asthmetic, and it's the last thing we want.
So the other.
Issue, the other issue to look at is what's the ventilation like inside the house. And you know, I know that often when we talk ventilation, people just go just open a door or open a window and that sort of thing, and that's part of the solution. But you know, in modern living, we don't always leave windows and doors open.
So having an active form of ventilation, whether that's a positive pressure system or a balanced pressure system in the house actively, you know, controlling airflow, controlling moisture within the house might also be part of the solution. Interestingly enough, I've had I had a long discussion with actually someone who's going to join us on the PROGRAMM a couple of weeks time, Storm Harpham, who's an engineer who now
works specifically in ventilation for residential houses. So she's going to join me on the show in a couple of weeks time. And again I met her at an event.
We got talking about insulation, about ventilation, and then a property that I look after had a similar issue where I thought I had dealt with mold issues in a bathroom, including adding a new fan, putting in bed of repainting the ceiling, cleaning all the moisture off, checking for leaks, etc. And then after about eight months later, had the reoccurrence
of this mold issue. And one of the things that in discussion with Storm we talked about is that it's very much about changing the type of ventilation that we've got in that building. And so I'm going to swap out the fan that I've got in there for one that has a humidity and temperature sensor on it. So it's reading the room and turning itself on when required, rather than relying on the people who are in the house to go, oh, that's right, I need to turn
the fan on. And then we discussed other sort of you know, home ventilation systems that will be active all of the time to increase air flow, to control humidity, et cetera, et cetera. So there might be a couple of things happening there.
What I thought about doing was around this, A feat was putting in a series of like underhouse vents, you know, but you know, the galvanized vents, and like, yes, I'm a bit reluctant because the old five blow it will have his best orso yeah, because it's an old house. It's pretty old house with that, with that, you know, but without having something at the top ll very well having a hole at the bottom. But I heard you talking about ventilated ridge.
And interestingly enough, I did a I built for myself on another project, a ten scua meter cabin right home office type thing, and it had had a monopitch roof, so six inch rails, four to two rafters, jframe sorry six two rafters and jframe. And then what I ended up doing is I had actually a vapor control barrier underneath the rafters, then I had my insulation, Then I had a different type of vapor control barrier on top of the rafters. Then I put battens on and then
my perlans to allow airflow. And so I've got airflow that comes in from underneath the iron and then at the top don't really have a ridge cap. You've just got a barge flashing at the top. But at the top there I've installed one hundred mil vent because it's a dark roof and it's going to heat up, so trying to control the amount of heat and condensation that
I get in there by actually having some ventilation. So similar to what you're talking about, having potentially airflow in and out in a roof space to help control the environment there would possibly be a good thing. What I do is I've got to take a break, but I would have a look I tell you what, I have a look at some of the brand's articles recently have been really good around They're often really good, but the ones around ventilation and moisture control are digestible but really
really good information. So have a look at the brand's articles online. They're worth reading. Nice talking, take care, take short break back in a mow your news talks, they'd be we can talk to Doug, but I think I might get them to hold just for a moment because we don't have much time before the news. Top of the hour. After the news, we are going to touch
base with Mike Olds from Razine Construction Systems. And in the next hour, of course the climb past will be along, and to be fair, we might have to start a bit early because we are going to be talking about our boxes. A mild obsession of mine or our household has been this migration of German barn ow's, which have become native to Northland and are moving their way down, including a very exciting post the other day, one of them sitting in a tree on Ponsonby Road of all places. Yes,
indeed Ponsonby Road anyway. So I went to the expert being rid and said, hey, look, do you have any designs for these owl boxes, because there's quite specific requirements to make it an enticing habitat for said barn owl. So he sent me some plans, and then he sent me some other plans. So I made the first one on Thursday, and then I went back out into the shed yesterday because it was a pretty average kind of day weatherwise, and made another one. So I've now got
these two different designs and layouts for barn owl boxes. Anyway, I'll put up some photographs on my Facebook page a little bit later on so you can see what is that I'm actually rambling on about. But a very entertaining couple of hours in the shed to make both of these various designs, or a variety of designs that I've now got so two different layouts for the same owl house.
And I'll try and put up my plans for how I made them as well, So we'll do that anyway, we will talk more after the news sport and whether here at News Talks. He'd be if you'd like to join us. The lines are open than The number to call is eight hundred eighty ten eighty, and of course you are more than welcome to text as well. It's nine to nine two or zib from your mobile phone. We're back after the break. You a News Talks, he'd
be welcome back to the show. Eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call if you've got any questions around building construction renovating, like Eric our caller just before the news talking about an existing house, then some alterations, and then after the alterations having an issue with moisture and mold growth in what has been the new addition. So something changed which has then created the environment for mold growth. It does get I don't keep keep realizing that.
I keep saying these things are complex, and they are because it's a It's an interconnection of a whole lot of different elements around ventilation, around moisture, about construction, around what happens as moisture migrates through a solid surface, the position of the jew point, and those sorts of things. But there is a tremendous amount of research that's been
done on this, partly driven by failure. So when we see things that don't work well, then we suddenly realize, actually, we've got a bit of an issue with how you know, we've assembled the assembly of our construction either leaves the moisture sitting on the outside, which is where we want it, or inadvertently we end up with it sitting on the inside.
So we move the jew point to the inside of our building structures, which then provides an environment for mold growth, so we need to understand how that moisture migrates through solid surfaces and the impact of variation of temperature inside and outside. The impact of adequate ventilation into our houses is our houses come. We're a long way from being
air tight, but we're getting closer and closer. If you look at how we do building wraps and we do window ceiling, we look at the quality of the window and the lack of gaps and cracks and drafts. These sorts of things make our buildings more air tight without being air tight. And then highlighting the fact that we need to do adequate ventilation as well. And the other thing that it struck me the other day and it's
a part of what I do. I guess that is the least pleasurable is every now and then being asked to go and have a look at some work that's being done, and then from time to time looking at it going it's just really poor work, you know. And while I think in general we've got reasonable standards in terms of how we put our houses together and the quality of the people doing the work, every now and then you still end up running into a job and into a site where you just go, look, the person
just of viously didn't know what they were doing. And how did you end up contracting this person? How was it that you allowed this person to come and do this work? Was it they were recommended and they've done a really bad job? Did they end up? Did you get how? I heard of a story years ago someone got eleven quotes for a renovation project, took the lowest quote, the cheapest one, and the job was a disaster, and
you kind of go, well, no surprises there. So getting quality and ensuring quality is always a bit tricky, and funnily enough, it was something that I got chatting to Mike Olds from Razine Construction about the other day. Mike, a very good morning and happy Father's Day. Likewise, please
cheers mate. It's a real issue, isn't it in terms of you know, if you're slightly unfamiliar to building and construction and you're out there looking for contractors, how do you know you're going to get someone who's reliable and is going to do what they need to do in order to achieve a good outcome? And I guess you know, for you guys with Razine Struction, it's all about exterior
construction and clanning and so on. So if we're going down the exterior construction with razine, how would you how do you guys monitor it?
Well, since day one of our business, we've taken their approach that we just don't sell our products out the door for a start. We only supply qualified professional contractors who we can then support through the entire process. And it's interesting over the years, it hasn't really changed in terms of what people need to look for. Price is always a dominant factor, and that seems to be even
stronger these days to the current economic environment. But still with that said, people need to do their due diligence and part of the process on our side of things, outside of the LBP process restricting supply into professional contractors that know what they're doing and how to do the
variety of systems that we offer. As another mechanism that we applied back in two thousand and five to generate great as surety for the installations of the products and systems was an on site review process or technical review process by one of our technical sales staff. Now that
involves a review at substrate. So once all the battens and the flash and the clouding, the substrate's been installed, we do a review at that stage, checking roof connections and all sorts of things, and then at the final review we go and doo a qa check on the
finished article of the project. And then following on from that another seven years later we send reminders to the clients to start considering general maintenance and repaints and checking that they've been looking after and maintaining the property over that sort of that period of time. So there's a lot of fact that's involved in it that I think one of the key things in terms of what you started a conversation with is around checking the quality of
the quoting stage. At the moment, everyone's going for a lot of quotes and checking things in terms of price of the first dominant factor, but they should need to check previous project history with clients or with contractors just to say a look. And particularly with us, it's pretty visual.
You can see what's going on on the outside, so you can do some drive buys and have a look at the see if you've got some reference projects excuse me to look at, and that gives that additional surety because the expectation of visual you know, in terms of what you expect to see, you know, not from I mean we put up loads of projects on our social media and through Instagram, Facebook to show the work across the country and irrespective of whether you're in the Deep
South or in the far North, those types of that's quality of work, in caliber of work you see should be an expectation, you know, and I think that's what
people need to just have it. Just do some do some additional little checks before they actually engage the contracts, you know, because the old average peep there what you pay for and it doesn't take much sometimes to make an extra couple of phone calls or to do a bit of a drive buy and have a look at some project works and make your decisions from there as well.
Yeah, brilliant advice and I mean impressive that you guys have set out a lot, well quite some time ago to go this is the pathway for us. And like you say, we're not selling our product out the door. It's got to go to a license applicators. We're going to work with those people to ensure that our clients get the very best outcome from their engagement with us. Which is great to find out more folks check it
out online. Razineconstruction dot co dot NZ Mike, Happy Father's Day to you and enjoy the golf day today year with news talks, he'd be at a sixteen minutes after it's fourteen minutes after seven. The lines are open. The number to call eight hundred and eighty ten eighty is that number to call. Number of texts about sort of planning
regulations and new builds and infrastructure and so on. I made the comment about this development that I've been reading about in the Herald online, about the Green Bay development where eight new townhouses were being built in essentially a residential suburb, single dwelling or single houses per section type
of subdivision, not terribly close to transport. And I made the point that I think that if we're going to do infrastructure increasing intensification, then we need to do it where there is the potential to then use public transport. And it's got to be easy, right, It's got to be a couple of minutes walk. Not No one's going to walk for fifteen minutes in the rain to catch a bus that then has to take you to another transport node in order to get to where you might
want to go. But a couple of texts new build up the back. Don't joke. People don't use buses, they go and park on the yellow line, speed up and down the right of ways. Yeah, I think it's changing. I think it is a mind shift thing. And we're talking about ventilation as well. Ventilations critical in New Zealand's cheap and simple. Not so sure about that. In Europe they have for many years solved this issue due to their environment, and as usual n zeters behind the world
and very slow to understand what is common sense. Thank you very much for that text. If you've got an opinion, eight hundred eighty eighty is the number to call. Doug. Thanks for waiting. Good morning to you.
Thanks.
Yeah, yeah, I listen to this a lot. It's very very interesting.
Great of you to say, thank you.
Yeah.
So yeah, I do have the same issue about pungentation and moisture and things. We've got an older home, so heading towards the healthy homes, which we've done the policy on the ground and underneath the floor and well to carry on. And now we've stealed all the window. Obviously it's a wooden joinery window, so it was bottle of draft strips around windows, but it seems to be more we're more we're selling the envelope, the more moisture we're
getting inside the property. Mm hmmm. So we've looked at like we've got a heat pump, dehumidifier, that sort of thing in the air. Now we're looking at maybe an hr V, but to to keep the property warm the HRV, now we've got concrete tolls on the roof with no paper underneath for the envelope and the ceiling which will be pumping and cold here. Yes, you know, like during the night.
I have to say I've never really relied on if you look at it thermodynamics basically, and you go, what does it take to transfer heat from one area to another? And often doing so through almost zero thermal efficiency in deducting that we use in many cases and so on.
It's never really stacked up for me. Right. So, while there is a huge benefit to having a ventilation system in the house the whole, unless there's it's a proper, properly installed heat recovery system, which is different to you know, drawing warm air from your roof space and distributing it around.
I think you've got to be You've got to do quite a lot of reading about the claims and about the effectiveness of the systems, saying that I think you're onto something when you say, look, we've done some work to ensure that we don't get gaps and drafts around our windows. We've done as much installation as we possibly can so as we make our living environment more and
more air tight. And I'm even hesitant to use that word because you know, like within passive house design and high performance buildings, that's something that you're aiming for and you're measuring it right. You're getting an actual, specific number that you can attach to your house that proves that
it's actually air tight. And unless you're doing like a blower door test and those sorts of things, I don't think you should, really any of us should make claims around this building's airtight or moving towards air tightness without actually being able to prove it. So but in general, when you compare and I was talking about this with someone the other day, actually Storm, who's going to join us on the show in a couple of weeks time.
So nineteen sixties construction timber framing, elevated timber subfloor with a concrete basement or concrete block wall as the foundation with very little ventilation right, couple of small grills. Then you've got timber framing, no insulation in the timber walls because of the age, no building paper on the outside, and then a cavity and then brickwork, so there's a lot of air flowing through that environment right through those. And then you've got a concrete tile roof which is
probably sixty odd years old. So it means that all of the glaze has gone off there, and I suspect that every time it rains that roof is going to absorb moisture because it's not just sheeting off, right, So you go, that's my environment. Now what can I do without completely rebuilding the building? What can I do to change the indoor environment so that I've got less issue
with mold? In that instance, you're kind of fighting a bit of a losing battle because there's so many other things that are wrong with the building that it's hard. You know, we're seeing the end result being the mold inside the house, but the reason for the mold is probably just the type of building that it is. But in your situation, if you've added insulation, if you've sorted out draft proofing. You've obviously got a fixed form of
heating inside the house with the heat pump. You've added the dehumidifier, which will help to extract moisture from the air, but it does nothing about why that moisture is in the air. So you're you're you're responding to a problem without solving the problem because the dehumidifier, I guess solves the symptom, but it doesn't solve the problem.
So that's part of the heat pump, you know, it's a three and one. Oh yeah, But then but then if yeah, people don't use the dehumidifier, and if they don't open windows to have circulation to dry the inside out, Yeah, that's where the issue is, isn't it.
But then you know, with things like low during the day to dry out.
Yeah, and look, I'm a huge fan and of you know, those really simple things like if it's a good day, like even yesterday, right, the weather got up to despite the rain that we had in Auckland, the temperature got up to a reasonable amount in the afternoon, so we open up the doors and just let the house breathe. But then you also, at a certain point you need to be aware and you go, actually, it's cooling down outside. So my house is warmed up a little bit during
the day. I've ventilated it a little bit. I've got some fresh air into it, which is great. But now as I noticed that, I was walking past the window that was open, and suddenly it's a bit cooler. Okay, now's the time to close the window. Trap some of that heat that we've gained, because that's a benefit to me because then I don't have to put the heating on till later in the day or later at night.
But if you're not actively engaged with controlling your environment by opening doors and windows, closing blinds and all those sorts of things, then it's not unreasonable to go, let's have a system that helps us control that environce and that's where ventilation systems, whether it's positive pressure, balance pressure,
heat recovery ones. You know, we're starting to talk more and more about them, which I think is really really good, and there are some examples of like really good systems that are out there that will change the quality of the indoor environment considerably. But let's not delude ourselves. These systems at this stage are also quite expensive.
Yeah, that's that's the thing. You know, it's everything you're doing, it's it's all cost it is. But then if people don't use that system, then you know, it's like a heat pump for instance, you know, like running the heat pump because of the cost of it. That's a thing. But it's just the basic things of opening a window or like you say, drapes and things when the sun does go down to keep that warming.
That's right, yep. But these these things require they require a certain level of awareness right on the part of the occupant of the property, whether that's the owner of a property or a tenant living in a rented property. So it requires us to be informed right to know how to operate, you know, in the same way that I was going to say, we you know, you might read the ownership manual of a car. I don't think any of us ever do. But you know, houses do
have a manual. Ideally this this is these are the things that you should be doing inside your house to create a really good environment. But I don't know that we're teaching that that much.
So do we need to look at a different system?
Do we look I think take the time again, I pointed out to Eric before the news, you know, like I've been reading well, because I'm an LVP, I get the brand's magazine, the build magazine, and you know, typically they arrive in the little box and you kind of it to one side, but I make the effort now to go when it arrives that I actually flick through and read some of the articles, and they're really topical
and current. You can find articles from brands online as well, so just do a search one day when you've got an hour to spend and go through and read some of the brand's articles. There's other groups like the Healthy Home Movement. They're starting to write a lot about ventilation.
My understanding is there's actually going to be like an industry lead lobby group that's being formed as well to talk about ventilation and just kind of wrap your head around the different concepts in terms of, you know, what's a negative PreCure system, what's a balanced pressure system, what's a positive pressure system, how do they all work, and what's going to work best for me? Because I think our housing stock is quite variable. You know, I'm in an old villa, so I've got lots of drafts in
my house because that's just the nature of them. My solution is probably going to be a little bit different to perhaps a solution if I was in a relatively new build where I've got timber framing, I've got building wrap, i might have aluminium jewinery which is well sealed. I've got air seals around the windows. I've sealed all the penetrations for the different services. I might have roofing underlay,
et cetera, et cetera. It's well insulated. I'm going to need a slightly different system than it for what I need for an older house.
Mm hmm. You know this particular property exit that's got both that's got wooden jewinry and wooden sashism and plus the aluminium jewinery and they both, Yeah, the performance is exactly the same because it's not double glazed to see. So it's the other issue.
Yeah.
And then also the ceiling. We've got the ceiling with the overlay, you know it's got that's been topped up. Yes, But then we had a contractor in the you know, trying to find stuff underneath that.
Yeah.
I like, yeah, yeah, so Sack, you can't find anything. You know.
The other thing to look at, Doug, is that some councils around the country. Hopefully all of the territorial authorities offer a Eco Design Advisor service, and I think the initial consultation is free, so have a look for that. In fact, I'm aware that their conference is coming up soon for the Eco Design Advisors. So you know, it's about trying to get impartial, informed advice about these issues.
So you know, you've you've obviously decided that you want to try and figure out what's going to work best for your house, which is awesome, and now it's a question of okay, well where can I go to find ideally independent advice, So check it out online, have a look at whether your local council offers this Eco Design Advisors advice. All that's good, all of this, enjoyed the reading, Take care, Thanks horrible all this your news talks, they'd be we'd take a short break. We'll be back with
Terry in a moment. If you'd like to join us. Eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call your news talks. He'd be talking all things building and construction. Eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number. Hello, Terry, how are you?
Terry?
Love you here?
Can you hear me now I can indeed, Yeah.
I love you, Shan, try and catch you in a rude every morning every Sunday we just call earliest. I've had a HIV put in my roof recently on the same situation as him sixties here spriptile roof and I'm surprised in no installation and no building paper in the roof, But I was surprised to find out how much heapy was in the which comes through and pushed down, as it was quite good just for that for him to give them the feedback that helps his decision or whatever.
Again, you know, I mean I know that, you know, like I've got thermostats inside the house, so I can measure temperature inside the house and the hallway and temperature
inside the roof space. And you know, during summer there can be a considerable variation between that, right as in my roof space it's a corrigodrone roof, it's you know, it would probably get close to forty degrees up there, and so you know the idea of capturing that and pushing it down, it's that what that variation in temperature is and what expectation you might have of how much that would raise the temperature inside the house, whereas I
think the greater benefit is not really around heat gain, it's all about warming the house. It's probably, in my mind, more about the actual ventilation. And then there's there's systems now which will draw air from outside, pass it through a heat exchanger and then push that into dry areas of the house and extract from damp areas or wet areas of the house. They're also quite good systems, so
that's a sort of balanced pressure type system. But look, I think the fact that we're starting to talk about them, I think that it should be something that should probably be included in updates to the New Zealand Building Code. That again, if we look at how we're building today, while we're not we're aiming for houses that are less drafty, we're still a long way from being air tight. You know.
It is having an impact, all of the changes to the building code and how we build today versus how we even built thirty years ago, having a massive difference in terms of the indoor environment that we're able to create. But I think we need to focus a bit more on ventilation now.
Yeah, you get to see something like that, I've been hanging around for quite a while before I made this decision, and I just couldn't find anything really that would do what I wanted.
So how long have you installed the system?
A couple of months so we hadn't seen the coldest all the winter, but even in the bedrooms sometimes at night the grandson would say, it's cold, and your grandad, but it just gets that condensation down. But you can, yep, it's like that. You can screw those vents closed a bit more of it was like that or something that's just on the see how west corner and that you get the condensation on the windows and running downd the walls where we're not getting that as much now. So
we're not getting that now. So that was a positive.
Yeah, absolutely, And I mean that's that's where it's kind of exciting when you make a change like this, right, and then you see a positive outcome. So if you're in a house where you know, persistently during winter you're either you know, drying the windows off because of the condensation, or you're constantly battling mold growth on walls and that sort of thing, or you put your shoes away and then you take them out in summertime and they're covered in sort of a furry green moss, you know, and
I've seen that in wardrobes and so on. You know, if suddenly your house isn't doing that, it's those are it's it's the classic canary and a coal mine, right. They those are signs that there's something within your lived environment that's not working, and if you can solve those problems, that's a huge win. Yeah, so good on you.
It sounds exciting just some of the people just when you get a good day, but I leave your wardrope war open because they leave them closed and love and they get snow and through there.
That's right. It's that fascinating combination, combination and intersection between what's really simple and what's really complex. And often, you know, what seems like really complex issues can be dealt with quite simply. And so you know, it sounds so incredibly it's kind of the classic teaching grandmother that to suck eggs sort of comment. But yeah, if it's a good day, open your doors and windows, leat your house, breathe. There's nothing wrong with that.
Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Talking about your terry all the very best take mate, Then, now I'd better take a break. I think eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call if you've got a question of a building nature call us right now, eight hundred eighty ten eighty you and new Talks. There'd be Pete wolf Camp with you talking all things building construction. Quick text before we talk to Kate. Pete, you've just made my mind up. We were debating whether to rec
condition a nineteen fifties concrete tile roof. Will replace it after your comment's about the glazing coming off the tiles. Ours look like the surface of a cinder block and we do battle mold in the house when reroofing with color steel. Should the roof replace the valleys as well as they would be about seventy years old, and also ze point five to five thickness the heavy or a lighter gauge. Thanks very much, Nick, couple of things on that,
Please don't mistrew my comment. My comment about the concrete tile roof was the fact that this particular one, it's the original roof from I think nineteen sixty seven something like that. So yeah, the glaze that's often on concrete tiles has i would say, almost completely worn off. So I'm thinking that, you know, if the concrete, if it's a sunny day, the concrete will dry out as soon as it rains, A certain amount of that moisture will not shed off the concrete tiles will be absorbed into
the concrete. That's obviously going to have an impact on the overall internal environment of that that structure, because there's all that moisture being trapped there. So reglazing or repainting that roof would also solve that problem. If, however, you do want to go ahead and replace your existing concrete tile roof with a color steel roof for a long
run iron roof, then go right ahead. I'd have to point out too that that typically requires a building consent, so you know, in terms of schedule one of the act it's about like forul like and a concrete tile roof is not the same as a lightweight roof, like
an iron roof. And again initially when you think about that, you go, yeah, but it's lighter, so it's going to be less impact and it has less impact on the weight of the building, the bracing elements and that sort of thing, which is true, except that what you do need to account for with installing an iron roof as
opposed to a concrete roof is uplift. So typically you want to make sure that your perlins will need to be replaced because the batons that you've got for the concrete tile won't work for fixing roofing iron two, so you'll need to repurl in it. They need to be fixed to the rafters in such a way as to prevent uplift, and ideally it's an opportunity to go through and refix all of the rafters or trusses down to
the top plate also to prevent uplift. And those sorts of things are structural, so they'll trigger a requirement for a building consent should be a relatively straightforward process, but it does, in my opinion, trigger the requirement. And point five to five is the heavier gauge. So there's point four to five and point five to five, and I look,
point four to five is absolutely fine. Typically I've gone for point five five because if somebody has to go on the roof later on and they're a bit of a muppet and they don't know where to stand, then there's a little less likelihood of them damaging the roofing. If they don't know what they're doing. Oh eight hundred and eighty. They shouldn't be u there if they don't
know what they're doing. But hey, I've been on plenty of roofs where there's a lot of damage from contractors who have stomped around installing TV aeriels and vents and sky dishes and all the rest of it. So yeah, there are ways of moving around the roof without damaging it, but not everybody seems to know that. Oh eight one hundred and eighty, ten eighty is the number to call. Kate A very good morning.
Morning, Pete, good morning, great be able to seek your advice yet again, your s You've been helping me countless times. I'm building a seventy three square meter dwelling in Browns Bay. It's north facing and west facing, and I think this is on topic because my electrician, we've just got the joists and bearers in frames are going up when the sub floor goes down next week, so we're on the way. Awesome, But electrician, yes it is. Electrician has advised considering heat
transfer system. Now this has the front of the house with raged ceilings. It's to about sixteen degrees. I think the rear of the hoe has flat ceilings. I've got a gas fire in the front, and I might add a heat pump, and it's one big living area. And then I've got these two little bedrooms that I'm thinking, how am I going to heat them? And am I
better just to put a panel heater in there? Or someone is this electrician suggests a heat transfer a system, but it doesn't have a big cavity in the ceiling because it's rap so I'd have to I assume pipe this and then and then put it through the wall into the room or does it go down loads is a wall cavity and I've got I've got noise bats through the wall, so it's well insulated.
I think.
ABC join.
That's It's a fascinating question. I some of the heat transfer systems I'm I'm dubious about in the sense that, you know, one of the things that I've started come to real and the reading that I've been doing recently is air is a really good insulator, right, so air is a great way of stopping heat transfer, and yet we're talking about using air to transfer heat, which it doesn't want to do because it's really bad at doing it, and I'm being quite blunt here, so I think with
a building like what you're building, you now have the perfect opportunity to do a really good job with the timber framing, a wrap around the outside, installing quality joinery, effective double glazing, air ceiling around the window, putting good insulation in the underfloor, putting good insulation into the ceiling. I don't know that heating is going to be a
big issue in your dwelling. If you've got a fixed form of heating with a gas fire, as long as it's properly ventilated and doesn't cause moisture to build up inside there as a result of burning gas, then I think that you're your bigger concern for that type of building built to modern standard is probably going to be around overheating, depending on whether you've got eaves that shade some of the summer heat or whether you've got I would be focusing on ventilation, and I think for a
small bedroom that might be on the south side of the house, double glazed, well insulated, well constructed a small panel heater just to raise the temperature there in the winter months for a relatively short period of time, give it and being this is very specific advice to your property, because, as you said, you're in Auckland, it's a new build,
it's relatively compact. I think that ventilation, having a some form of ventilation that draws fresh air into or pushes fresh air into your living spaces and extracts moist air from where your kitchen, laundry and bathroom might be and ducts that to the outside. That's what I'd be focusing on.
So you're speaking of basic extractor fans for.
Year or possibly having a linked system, so a system that that So ideally what we're trying to do is create an airflow inside the house that pushes fresh, dry air or air from outside that might be filtered or cleansed in some way into your habitable spaces, right what we might call our dry areas. And then as that comes into the building, it then puts pressure on the wet areas. So imagine air flowing into your living room,
possibly into your main bedroom and so on. And then at the same time you've got active extraction happening all of the time in those areas that typically we have more moisture in, so bathrooms, laundryes, kitchens, so as air is being drawn into the house into the dry areas, it's being extracted out of those wet areas, and so you've got this obviously invisible, constant movement of air that is drawing in fresh air and extracting moist air out of the building all of the time.
That's the sort of system. Is that an HRV or DVS type system.
Yeah.
Look, you know, with the growst respect to them, they've they've kind of come to dominate the market. There are other systems by other manufacturers that are out there as well, and there is some subtlety around how all of these systems work. Not all of them have that combination of air in and air out. Air into a dry space, air out of a damp space. So you do do some reading around it. And you know, again I think your electricians onto something in terms of saying put some
ventilation in. Again, I don't know that you're going to get massive benefit out of heat recovery or heat transfer. This notion that we're going to take warm air from one part of a house and duct it to another part of a house. You'll get airflow, which is a benefit. Whether you get actual heating out of that, I don't know. So the benefit for me would be the airflow. And you can deal in Auckland with a well inserted building with the heating quite simply by other means.
Yeah, thank you. So if I decide later on I want to put a heat pump in, that can just be retrospectively installed. It doesn't have to go in.
You could. But at the same time, I mean, if you're thinking about a heat pump and you know there's some real advantages to having one. For example, I think in particular again with Auckland's climate, a heat pump will be a benefit and asset to you in terms of cooling right over the summer months when we do get those days where the humidity gets up and it becomes
kind of uncomfortable. So and again, because you've got to do penetrations and services, if you're thinking about doing one in the future, it's going to be far cheaper to do one now, okay if you can. I know budget is always important, but you know, given that you've got to run electrical cable, you've got to run ducting, you've got to run services to the outside condensate pipes and so on, it's far easier to do it as you're constructing.
So oh that's good.
Yeah, it's a false to be blunt. It's a false economy to think I'll do it later on. It will never be cheaper than doing it right now while you're building.
Yeah, good, good advice. Can I add in one more question point about noise? So next door there's another dwelling and I've got people living next door who're very noisy with a car, and it's single blazing where that dwelling is. Is there anything I can do besides retrofits some double glazing to stop this noisy car coming into a bedroom at night. I just don't know what to do about it.
This is obviously not in the new seventy three square.
At a new build the same section.
Just you know, you can get more acoustically effective glazing, so whether that's double glazing or simply going for a laminate, So you'll get acoustic performance out of a laminate as well, so glass then a laminated layer and then another layer of glass. Certainly you can get acoustic performance out of double glazing as well, So there's two options there really.
But then you know, as soon as you stop the sound traveling through the glazing, it'll find somewhere else to go, so it'll migrate through the walls, it'll go and gaps and cracks around the window, joinery, et cetera, et cetera. The other mitigating factor is sometimes actually planting can be reasonably well, can do something to sort of baffle noise
from a neighbor, but ideally you'd want to. Ideally you'd be pulling wall lining off, putting in a houstic insulation into the walls, sealing all the gaps and cracks around the joinery, and uplade, upgrading the glazing and that will help as well. But planting is surprisingly effective as well.
It's a parking area, so it can't but thank.
You, right, yeah, but even if you've got like half a meter or so and you were to do you know, some planting in there, that would Okay, it's not unattractive either. Enjoy the process and thank you. I know that building can be stressful and all the rest of it, but at the same time, enjoy it. I'm sure it will be a great process.
I have a great team and that's the key.
That's the key.
Fabulous, I'm sure.
Pleasure your father's day.
Thank you very much, Kate, and thank you all the this bye by thing. We'll take short break back in a moment quick text before the news, Pete, can you advise do I need a council consent to remove garage store and fit a ranch slider from D I suspect so, because I suspect that what you're doing is change of use. I that's going to become instead of a garage, a habitable space. And if that is the case, then yes, that triggers a requirement for a change of use. So
check that out with your local council. A couple more texts will come to those straight after the break. Lots of discussion around heat pumps and ventilation, so we'll carry on with that and remember rid cliin past in with us at eight thirty your news talk CB, Welcome back to the program. Oh eight hundred and eighty ten eighty is the number to call pet Wolf camp here right through till nine o'clock. We can jump into the garden
with arid Cline pass at around eight point thirty. We may even bring that forward because we got a bit to talk about today. So last week on the program, over the last little while, we've talked about this population of barn owls right, which has become native to Northland and migrating their way south, which is caused a great deal of excitement and our household for some reason, and ages ago, I said to look, do you have a plan for an owl box, as in somewhere for them
to call home? And he did. He sent me through some plans. I've mentioned it a couple of times, never got round to actually making one, and I promised on the show last week that I would make one this week, which I've done, and in fact I ended up making two because he sent me two different drawings, one for a Dutch design which is elongated and rather spacious, and another one for an English design which is slightly more compact,
but interestingly enough two storied. So I've got a single level dwelling and a multi story dwelling, and I have one with a door and one with a detachable roof, one with a tunnel, and one with offset entries, because it's all about apparently making sure that the environment is dark and cozy for them. Two ways to achieve that. One way is having these two entries that are offset so that the light can't shine through. The other is
to create a tunnel. Anyway, I've built both of them and spilt some blood in the process, but that's another story anyway. So we're going to talk about those, and if you're interested to see one of them, it's up on my Facebook page. I will put up a slightly more detailed post about that a little bit later on today as well, So we will be talking about that with it. But if you'd like to build something that humans can live in and you'd like to talk about that,
then the lines are open right now. Oh, eight hundred and eighty ten eighty. A lot of talk this morning about ventilation, about heat pumps, about heat recovery system about heat transfer systems, and trying to suppose upgrade the code to allow for this. It's not required in the code bar the requirement to ventilate, which is having a window that opens, a window that can open or the opening size must be five percent of the floor space. But
there's a problem with that as well. So typically if you've got a room and it's let's say it's a ten square meter room, then you have to have a window that opens once that half a met half a square meter opening. But then you find that that opening size is calculated on the window opening completely, but if you can fall further than a meter in the threshold is less than seven sixty you have to have a
restrict stay. So you have a window that technically complies with the ventilation standards, but because you can't open the window completely, in fact your ventilation area is considerably less, so it doesn't It then doesn't comply, but it does comply with other parts of the building Code. There is some overlap there which is not helpful. But apart from extraction from laundries, kitchens, bathrooms, no, you don't even need extraction from a laundry necessarily, but you do need ventilation.
There's no other record for ventilation. We're talking about houses that are increasingly as we build better moving towards air tightness, and so the requirement to bring in fresh air and control moisture inside the building. I think it's more and more critical. Hence ventilation systems, active ventilation systems that can be installed. We've had lots of discussion about that, and a bit about planning as well. It's always a bit
of a contentious issue. A couple of people of text and we were talking about a story that was in The Herald earlier this week. Written by Bernard Oorsman about a homeowner in Green Bay who was shocked, surprised, and upset that council had allowed for a development occurring across the road to then drill underneath the road down their driveway, install a new manhole to provide access to the wastebaterlone which happened to be pretty much right outside their front door.
No contact and certainly no permission requested or given by the homeowner for this to happen, And all of this requirement for additional stormwater connection came from the fact that a single dwelling across the road on a corner site had been removed and councilord granted permission for eight townhouses to go on an eight hundred and twelve square meter site in a effectively a suburban street. You may have
a comment on that as well. Oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call a couple of quick texts on this morning peak question for you, as we want to do both. If you had to decide which to do first, between a heat pump and a
home ventilation system, which one would you do first? From grant grant, I would not answer that without asking a whole bunch of other questions, things like you know, what's your house constructed of and whereabouts are you So if it's an older house that's got, like my old house, very little in the way of draft proofing, and I've tried to insulate and so on, but it's still a drafty kind of house, then I would be looking at a different type of ventilation system and maybe a different
type of heating system. So I think it's really about having someone do an assessment of your house. It's construction, it's methodology, it's standards in terms of either air tightness or insulation or location is another big thing. If you're in the South Island and it's really cold, versus if you're in the far North where perhaps like Auckland, for example, So much of our focus has been on making our houses warmer, which is good. Our houses need to be
at a temperature that allows us to be healthy. But for example, in Auckland, we have more cooling days than we do have heating days. In general, if what we're looking for is an optimum of let's say twenty degrees, that's an optimum temperature for our houses to be. Typically in Auckland, we have more days where we need to cool our houses to achieve twenty degrees than we do have days where we need to heat our houses in
order to achieve twenty degrees. So if you're in Auckland, the focus is probably going to be on heat control and potentially cooling for comfort rather than necessarily heating. Now that flips over, of course if you're in parts of the South Island or Central North Island and so on. That's why we've got these very specific climatic zones as part of the building code now, so all of these questions have got to be responsive to the actual environment.
I eight hundred eighty ten eighty gives called out. We're talking to it at around eight thirty, but we've got time for your building questions right now. I eight hundred eighty ten eighty something use forgot to mention or I'm late to the party in terms of this is a
tool issue. So for a number of years now, I've watched tradees arrive and unpack their track saws to do all sorts of work, whether it's cutting sheets or bench tops or that sort of thing, and I've kind of to be blunt, I've kind of poop pooed it a little bit, you know, as in, look, i've got a straight edge, I can clamp it down, i can run the skill saw along, I've got a table saw. Or basically you should just be better at what you do
and be able to cut a straight line. And then a little while ago, the guys that dropped me off their track saw, which is fairly new for them. And so these little ol boxes that I've been building, which you will not be surprised, I'm delighted to the fact that I didn't have to spend a cent building them because I had off cuts of plywood and stuff like
that made the whole thing using track saw. All of the angles, all of the cuts, everything for these little olboxes all done with a track and I kind of go, why didn't I get onto this earlier? So if you're wondering, yes, they are actually incredibly useful and I've really really enjoyed using it, which has been a bit of an earth shift moment for me. I have to say, right, oh, eight hundred and eighty ten eighty is the number to call Veronica.
Greetings, good morning, Pete. How are you heaven by this day?
Thank you very much God.
I have a question because you're talking about our ventilation. We've got an a frame house, yes, that has no roof cavity, so it's right down to the ground as an a frame, and we're giving condensation insight, and we literally don't know what to do anymore because nobody seems to be able to help us in terms of a ventilation system or some ideas, and just wondering if you can help.
Yeah, I mean, look, I can see why it's slightly more challenging because typically what we do is we you know, and houses. We've got a trust roof. It gives us a great big triangle of space and we put all of our ventilation systems in there. And you don't have that opportunity saying that, There are in wall ventilation systems that you can get, and there are some systems which
are connected. So for example, at either end of the building where you've got your walls, you could add an integrated system there that talks to each other, so it monitors airflow and humidity and changes air coming in and going out, so air exchanges in a linked and controllable manner through those walls at either end of the building. Potentially you could in fact install ventilation through the roof effectively, which is your walls as well of a system there.
The other thing is, so airflow is part of controlling condensation. The other thing is I guess it'll also come down to because I'm guessing with an a frame house, you basically got windows at both ends, a lot on the roof section.
Yes, because the roof goes right down to the ground.
So do you have any any penetration through that, dormers or anything like that.
We've got windows. We've got a window in the kitchen, so the kitchen sort of in the middle. We have windows at the two bedrooms on the side, in the bathroom at the back, and then we've got a big runch larder at the front, and that is where most of the condensation lies. And we've got big windows up above it that have got no curtains or anything like that, and they're really hype. They can't reach them. I think someone measured to the top of about eight and a half. It's a huge space.
Yeah, I mean, look, one of the things obviously would be to look at double glazing. That if it's single glazed, you're going to get more likelihood of having condensation because the due point will end up on the inside of the glass and that that's where you're getting a condensation. Even if you put double glazing in, which would help, then you'd also want to look at ventilation. You'd want
to look at temperature control inside the house. Again. You know, I wonder whether in this instance here where you're trying, you're looking at sort of an integrated system of fairly complex issues, right and you're trying to find a pathway through that is have a look at the eco design
service that counsels offer. And the other option is to look at the New Zealand Green Building Council have home Star technicians or home Star assesses as well, again who are kind of experts in this field, and you could invite one of them to come and do an assessment of your property and give you some independent advice. Okay, all right, so check out those when.
You asked, when you're saying about the double glazing, is double blazing triple glazing? Is there any advantage or I think.
In the most instances you can achieve the performance with double glazing like low eglass and argon filled glass and that sort of thing that you would get in most instances that you know, like triple glazing obviously sounds better, but you can achieve almost all of it with double glazing in most situations. So I presume you're not in the south lower part of the South Island or the central North Island.
No, no bere on White Island.
So yeah, but it's you know, relatively benign climate, right, that's why you guys live on why Heck, because it's it's always a degree and a half warmer than Auckland, for example. So no, look, I think having a look at double glazing. But you know, I know Auckland Council do have an Eco Design advisor, and certainly there's plenty of home Star rated assesses in Auckland as well that you could call on. So much my pleasure, take care
and Michael, greetings to you. Hey Michael, Hello, Michael, Michael Earth calling Michael. He wandered off me thinks hello, someone's listening to the radio going come on, you rang this guy up and now you've wandered off. We might come back to that in just a moment. Oh eight hundred and eighty ten eighty is that number to call? Someone's
asked me my opinion on solar systems. Look, I think there's a huge benefit to going solar in terms of resilience if the grid does go down, and I mean, look, we're in an energy crisis right at the moment, so if you can provide your own power, there's got to be an advantage. And I think what's shifted for me most dramatically with solar, because it's something I've kind of been aware of obviously for a number of years, is
around the reliability. So I think it's not untrue to say that, let's say fifteen twenty years ago, you'd install a solar system, you'd have the upfront col with the idea that there would be a payback, so after a period of time, the savings on your power bill would have paid for the install cost of the solar system. And to be blunt, typically that was take seven or eight years of savings to pay back for the system. But by that time the system was at the end
of its lifespan. So there's no advantage really to doing that, whereas now, and I know life for solar for example, you know they're doing a twenty five year warranty on the panels. That's remarkable, and I know from having been involved with the installation of other systems, and that one and also that one that you know, the effectiveness is far greater as well. So yeah, I think it's something to seriously seriously consider. Eight hundred and eighty ten eighty
the number to caour. We'll try Michael one more time. Hello, Michael, Hello, Hello there gotcha.
Hello.
I want to say Happy Father's Day from your son, Joseph.
Fantastic. All right, very clever, very clever. Thank you mate. It's a pleasure. All right, I'll see soon. All right, take care. Right, we're going to be talking to Rid climb past and just a moment, if you've got a question for Ridd. If we're going to jump into the garden, we're going to talk all things gardening. He's been busy in the garden. I've been busy in the workshop. We'll talk to Rudd in just a moment. Oh, eight hundred
eighty ten eighty. If you'd like to join us, it is eight twenty five your news talks, they'd be and we're just standing by to jump into the garden with the red climb pass to be with us in just a moment. If you've got a question for Ridd eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call. One of the things we will talk about is this whole
thing around the the L boxes. So there was a request actually came from my own house to build one of these in order to entice perhaps an OL to come and live at our place for a while, which would be awesome in any way, I went to the expert, which was Rude, and said, hey, can you send me some plans? Which he did. I think he'd forgotten, to
be fair, that he sent me two different plans. Of course, I've built two different OL boxes and put up a little video of one of them, and I'll put up a little bit of an explanation about the two different OL boxes a little bit later on. So we'll try and get that sorted out. But if you've got a question for Rud, the lines are open and the number to call is eight hundred and eighty ten eighty. Just going to check in with a team that we've got Rude. Not yet, I can't hear.
Right.
We'll come back to that in just a moment. A couple of other quick texts that have come in just before the break. I've talked about the soul before this from a sparky who was talking about installing, you know, like heat transferred systems. Before installing a heat transfer system asks a supply to show evidence of the temperature and the roof because of the construction type, there was no heat in my roof space, so they ended up declining. That's not to say there's not a benefit to putting
ventilation in, which I think is really really important. And other text comes through, Hey, look, I've got a late nineteen eighties house with a concrete tile roof. There's no building paper or no roofing underlay underneath the roof. Is that normal? Is that okay? From Blair? Yep, that's still
the case today in terms of the building coat. So if it's concrete tile roof with a pitch I think of greater than fifteen degrees, there is no requirement to put a roofing underlay underneath the concrete tile roof, mainly because there's not the same issues with condensation as you might have from a metal roof. If it's less than fifteen degrees, I believe there is a requirement to have a roofing underlay there. So hopefully that answers that one.
And this is the classic response every time, and this has been the case for as long as I've been doing the show. Soon as we talk about, you know, making our houses warmer, more comfortable, dryer, et cetera, you know, I get a text that runs along the lines of, oh, come on, you know it was all right back in the day. Yeah, Well, all of the evidence would point
that that's not the case. Actually, and some of the longitudinal studies, particularly out of the University of Targo's medical team who've done longitudinal studies on the health impact of living in poor damp conditions is massive. So our houses weren't great and they should be much better. Oh, eight hundred and eighty ten eighty, If you've got a question for it, I think we've got rid up on the line.
Hey, get he, get he? Get making it? How's that?
Yes?
Hey, love, your love, your love. Your photos. I must say they're great.
So let's indulge ourselves for a minute, because I did promise that i'd make one, and I have made it. But in fact I didn't make too because you sent me two different plans, right.
So I think I sent you three.
Oh okay, all right, well that means I'm going to make another one, which is fine, fair, I've had a.
Great especially if you want barn owls.
Yes, I do want barn owls specifically. What have I now built blood boxes that are not for barn ols?
You built two boxes? Said no, no, the two boxes. One one is for the one that has got the offset instances is something that was designed for little owls, which had the German owl. They're actually small owls, very small owls.
It's a very big box for a small.
Owl I know, I know. And the other one is actually also a box for little owls, but probably ruru would go in there as well, which is of course our native rural owl. Yes, okay, the one for the and I sent them because I feared that for some reason you might not have either gotten it or looked at it. There's a third one from England which is slightly larger for the bar. The banyl is the largest of the three native owls, or the three owls that
we have in New Zealand. But look, to be quite honest, a barno might go in the largest ones that you've built anyway, as long as it's got an entrance of something like thirteen fourteen centimeters diameter.
Oh, okay, because all of the designs that I had said that the entranceway needs to be somewhere around seventy to eighty millimeters.
That's right, and that is for little owls. And I've got little owls in my garden. You see the one that I sent you from the fasting We banned those. This is actually an owl that came from Europe. It's actually a Naedalance owl.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's amazing. So here you go. The other thing that you were You're quite right by saying that Ponsonby Road is where we found somebody found an owl sitting there in a tree.
Amazing.
How cool is that?
Absolutely? And I know I've seen some photographs Bayswater. I think that was rue that was sitting in the tree there. And then some people that I know over in beech Haven Way had a barn owl crash into the a pool glass and kind of wander around the deck slightly dazed as well, which is pretty awesome. Okay, well, look ill, I may have to. I've still got some plywood leftover, so make another one.
I'll tell you what now. But that is the cool thing that we're doing now because these there are other people that are making barny boxes, if you like, and and they they love that sort of idea because they're dry, they're high, they're protected, and it's all good. The other thing I was going to say is that for barnals
there are two types of boxes. One that goes inside the barn, yes, because they love to live in human barns, and the other one is probably better for outside buns, but in trees and in such a way that they can have enough shelter from rain and all that sort of stuff. And the sun. It's another thing, of course, hanging them up in the right place. If you hang them in an area where there's always sun, especially in the summertime, you'll find that vinyls start to cook a bit. They get very very hot.
Ah okay, because I must have one of the designs has got like a little balcony right.
Exactly exactly that's where you go sunbathing. But anyway, the point I love that. The point though, is that we have to be careful not to cook them too much. And the third thing I'd like to tell you that is something that we've just found out here in New Zealand. When those binyals got into Kaitaia in two thousand and eight. Is that these pears have three broods a year. Wow, So imagine it. Imagine that three times four. You with a bit of luck, that's twelve young and a year for just one pair.
Fantastic, amazing. Isn't that just incredible?
Just it?
I love it.
And I'll tell you what I was. Actually, I was at an event on Thursday night with Cactus, you know, the clothing manufacturers, right, New Zealand based clothing manufacturers. And Ben, who's one of the owners, was there. Now he actually sits on the board of Forest and Bird as well,
so he's active. And we were talking about this whole thing where I guess as government funding for some community organizations dries up and conservation work dries up, in some cases, individuals are taking on the responsibility themselves and they're going, well, actually, we think that this is really important work, so we're just going to carry on and do it. Which is also and that you've been part of the space for a long time. I think, well that's so.
Can we trust that sort of stuff? Yeah, absolutely, that's exactly what this is about. And and and and there's another group just actually I got an interesting called just before your missives online from Ethel mccullay. Now, most people who are in Christians will know Ethel McCully because he was one of the guys that ran the McCauley Garden
Center see Chrusties for a long time. And it was something that we said last or sorry, something that I said last week when a woman drum rang up and said what would you do with what would you do with chicken manu? And said, I wouldn't use it. And here's Ethel. He's part of Rotary South Christians and they are selling chicken manure and he knows exactly what I mean.
So he says, can you please tell people that again, chicken manure itself is not bad, but I would put it through a compost cycle first before I use it. And that makes so much sense, or diluted with good garden mix or you know that sort of stuff. So you don't go to the high faluting chicken manu and put it on your garden because that will burn your plants. Be very careful with that.
Just quickly. And because it relates to Father's day, so dad was an avid My dad was an avid gardener as well, right, and so because we were, you know, duchies, and we knew the van Brinks down the road who had the chicken farm. Right, we would go and collect chicken compost manure from there, and Dad, I think, knew intuitively that you didn't put it straight on the garden. So he would go and collect a trailer load of chicken manure from down the road and we'd bring it home.
And then he had at one stage it was like an old bath semi buried into the garden, and so he'd fill that up and he'd let it compost down and then he would use it, and in the meantime he put a kind of an old bit of plywood over the top of it. Anyway, I can remember as a kid forgetting that there was a plywood lit on there the ply would it obviously rotted. I ended up knee deep in the pooh. This whole pay.
And just an Ivan Brink fam One of those people married one of our my what is his brother in law?
The road between Oppertoy and Worry. Yeah, Eve, let's talk to some people. Mike A very good morning, good.
Morning, how are you good things? That's good, that's good. Hey, My wife two kids were moving from see what can I dance the Central Otago? Yeah, I was wanting to know what we should be planning at this time of the year and side a gardening tunnel.
Where in Central Otago are you?
We will be moving to rein Freley.
Ren Freury. Okay, okay, so you do get big frosts and.
Things like that as far as I'm a yes.
Yes you will. Okay. You know what is probably the best thing to do, Mike, and it's and and I'm not joking, is to go for a walk around where you are. You know, go to Renfairly town, see who has got the nicest gardens? What is the stuff that works well there? And you can you know, I would normally send you to a botanic garden if you like. I don't think there's a botanic garden in Renfurley. There will be one in Dunedin. But stay, stay central and
go and never look who's got a good garden? And I bet you, Mike, if you knock on the door of a really nice garden, they'll tell you exactly why and what. Because gardeners do that. They share that, they share their knowledge and that is probably the best way. The other thing is to go and you've got to do a lot of work on the internet. I suppose to find out what you can what you can get there,
but honestly, go local, ask the local people. I bet you you will find really willing people that will help you out. Awesome, Thank you very much, No worries.
Mike, all this Mike, you take care and Robbie, a very good morning to you. Hello Robbie, Hello.
Good morning gentlemen.
Really the question for you.
I've got a lemon tree.
And it's now looks like st or something black that's leaned over the leaves, and the whole tree is sort of like it.
I just wondered what it might be.
That stuff is probably called black sooty mold, which is and and makes sense that name, doesn't it. Are you in the north of our country? Are you in the north Wellington? Well that is that is still the North, Okay, so et ceteras. You will quite often get creatures that suck sap out of the actual plant, out of the leaves, sometimes out of the stems. And it could be meati bugs, it could be scale in sects, it could be aphits.
And what these things do is quite an interesting he but they poop out honeyedjew, which is sweet sap that they get from the plant. That honeydew then falls onto the leaves, often on the top side of the leaves, and that is sweet stuff. That is a really good material on which sooty mold grows. So what you're seeing there is the end result of some sap sucking bugs damaging your plants a little bit and pooping out sweet sap called honeyjew on top of that gross sooty mold.
What you need to do is think about how to get rid of the scale insects, the mealy bugs, and the aphids. Very simple. Get yourself a material like nim oil or conquerer oil, and you can mix that with a little bit of if you like, pyrethroid insecticides, just insecticides, and spray that on top of those leaves of your plants, of your shrubs, and of your in this case, citrus tree.
You'll find that you kill. You will kill the ones that pull all over the leaves below, and slowly the black shooting mold will.
Go, oh, thank you.
Is it conquered.
Conqueror Conqueror oil. It's a mineral oil that you use on plants, your your gun center will know what conqueror oil is.
Thank you, okay, thanks very much.
Your mine and welcome.
All the Robbie. You take care. I think we'll take a break. We'll do that. We'll do that before we talk to and Nett will be back in just a moment.
Rud.
I'm just looking at the email that you see me yesterday with the barn l nest boxes for inside Trust. So this one now has a balcony from the first floor. Yes, this is a whole new design.
No, I know you'd love it, and it needs a licensed building practitioner.
I have to say, with the designs you sent me, I couldn't resist but slightly change them. So I just couldn't bring my self to build one with a flat roof. So I've put a pitched roof on them.
I think that's lovely because that's exactly what they like. But you know what is the good things, especially that long then one. Quite often you get starlings in there, or or because your hole is now too big if you like, or minus and it is. Yeah, oh yeah, you get them as well. No, no, but what's the point is that we get starlings in our little owl boxes. Now, the little owl is not really big at all. It's maybe at the most eight inches in size. That's all
of this is tiny. But when you are styling and you go into a little owl box, you end up paying for that with your life. Those little owls know how to kick them out or kill them, right and then and then they leave the corpses inside the box because what you get is flies. And if the babies come out of the egg, they see the flies and they learn how to and flies. It's absolutely stunning.
That's fantastic.
It's really cool.
I realized though with this one. It requires a barn. And and I don't have a bar to be fair.
No, you don't need a bar like something that's European.
It all right, all right, I will make it maybe today, maybe not. It's a nice Father's Day things today. And happy Father's Day to you too, mate, and your post day.
And oh and is Joseph okay?
Yeah, you know he's great. He rang before and said happy Father's Day. So that's nice, right, And hello there.
Hello there too, Rude and Pete. Hello, I want to talk dead compost. I've killed it? Can I believe it will come back?
What did you do to it? To kill it.
Well, I think I've put too many grass put things into it.
Oh no, no, no, no, no no, that doesn't mean it's dead. It means you've.
Actually it's not. It's not roughing anything I put in. I put all the kitchen scraps out there, but it's not roughing.
And that's exactly why you're going the wrong way, because even the kitchen scraps are not part, are not needed. That is what you need now is wood chips. Right, So so here's here's a science lesson on compost. Compost is made basically now on two things. The one is one is nitrogen, which is all the grass clickens or the leaves, all that stuff, or you're in most of
the food scraps. The other bit that it needs and the large amount of compost, the largest part of the compost is carbon, and carbon is wood chips, branches, that sort of stuff. And if you just keep on putting green stuff in it, you you don't get enough composting going at all. If you're now going to put a lot of that wood chips in and mix it in, if you can with the rake, you'll find that everything will pick up and there will be your compost won't be dead. I'll do you that for free.
Well I haven't seen any little wombs or anything in it.
No, because they find it a bit too asset. They burned their bubs in there.
Always.
Thanks, Can I thank Pete briefly? Thank you very much. A long time ago he told me to put PVC windows in.
Oh yes, and.
I did, and I've now sold the house to my son and he thinks they are absolutely fantastic.
Look, I think it's always one of these things. You've got to look at the individual situation and make the right choice for that. And if the PVC was the right choice there, then that's fantastic.
So great here I've been meaning to tell you. Thank you.
It's a pleasure.
Thanks Rude.
Both the very best. Hey, let's look at a couple. It's all got time for one more call. Also, if you want to give us a call. Eight hundred and eighty ten eighty the number. Gardening questions Germinating peony tree seeds please tree.
I have not, literally I have not worked with pone seeds. I think Duly usually gets them from the shop and and plants them directly as seed links. I've never worked up so I don't know now I'm not gonna I'm not gonna dare to do that.
And pianis are not a tree?
Are they not necessarilyful.
Cold, very cold climates for.
That in order to flower properly? That's right, right right?
Another one from Duneed and is it too late to start sowing seeds. I've collected a lot of seeds from last year, just checking if seed raising mixes the best to use. I'm also hoping the red and cream carcabak seeds will take from Joey.
That's a good thing to do right now. I would say seeds are sowing depends on exactly what you're talking about here. But for instance, if I'm now starting to look at my tunnel house, I need differenstance sew seeds for what do you call them? Tomatoes? But the problem is if it's too cold, they don't like that. So you do that inside, and you do that inside the house until literally all frost tender plants need to do that until frost is no longer an issue. It's that
sort of stuff. So some varieties can be sown right now. In fact, I've had broadbeans sewing it's themselves over in winter and they are now flowering. Unbelievable, but that does work. But other plants can't handle that. So it pays to google which particular seeds you want a plant and make sure you do it at the right time. But yes, you can sew seeds all.
Right, brilliant, Hey Tony, very good morning to you.
Good morning, gentlemen. I've got Micaleia bubbles pedging live and all front and I've got the beliefs cooling up and got brownie black spots on them and the falling.
Off the tree.
But the leaves are all filled up and down spots.
Yeah, but it might pay to actually use use some some fungicides on that because it sounds like a fungal infliction if you like, and fung sides plant, you know, for plants to stop that brown spot actually getting on with it is important. So what I would use is
a systemic fungicide. Go to your local garden center systemic funger side, something like, well, there's all sorts of the bits and oh, there's all sorts of varieties there, but ask for a systemic that is taken into the plant and basically stops these fungi from developing on your leaves.
Thanks.
For yet.
I'm listening attentively because we have Michaelia Grappi's at home. But thankfully and reasonably good health.
That's it. Sometimes when it's too wet and too cold, it can get these fungal problems. Yes, all sorts of.
Things, right quick one from you, Richard greetings.
Yea good good morning. Hey, Marsian lawn. I sprayed the lawn, the marshy part with your wit and for it. It all died off nicely, yellowed and everything. What do I do with it?
Now? I would suggest you change the pH that means the acidity of the soil by literally putting lime on it, not not not dolomite lime, but agricultural lime or normal lime or whatever you want to call it. And that will change the pH and that will that will really disadvantage the moths.
Okay, your morning, welcome mate.
Go well, what's the distribution rate? Is it like a handful to.
Or you've gotta be a lecense building partitioner to do that a handful to the meter roughly? No, but yeah, I know, I know, I know, yeah it is.
Actually I took your advice. I went and got some nitro foscar blue the other day and yeah, around hand plum tree and it was a handful or eighty grams per square meter to be fair. I don't have a scale in the workshop, but I.
Don't do I this is the point and the handful to the square meter is something that is like is years old in gardening. It's been there all the it's like you know, putting your finger out, said that's four inches.
Thank you mate, first to September, not the first day of spring. Will come down when I visit that on the twenty first.
Jack Dam had to go at that two.
Take care mate, Happy Faur's day, all the best, Thanks folks, thanks for your company. It's been absolute pleasure. See you next Sunday.
For more from the Resident Builder with Peter Wolfcamp, listen live to News Talk sa'd be on Sunday mornings from six, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.