Full Show Podcast: 10 May 2026

On this morning's show, Peter Wolfkamp chatted about asbestos, rusty roofs, and the best size for a shed. 

Later, Stephen McNeil, Senior Building Physicist at BRANZ, joined Peter Wolfkamp on The Resident Builder to chat all things mouldy homes.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Resident Builder podcast with Peter Wolfcamp
from News Talks at B with d I y Gets
I'm Stuck Cool eighteen eighty The Resident Builder with Peter
Wolfcamp and Independent Building supplies the future of Kiwi Building
Today News Talks at B.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
The house sizzle even when it's dark, even when the
grass is overgrown in the yard, and even when.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
A dog is too old to bar, and when we're.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Sitting at the table trying not to starve. My house scissor.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Home even when we are ben, even when you're the.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
House is a home, even when those goes, even when
you guide around from the world you love your most
scream and broken paints, appeel in front the word locals
whisper when they're going and leaving the neighbor.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
House, even when wilbra ben, even when you're in there alone. Well,

(01:57):
a very very good morning and welcome along to the
RISIM Builder on Sunday. You're third meet picked off camp
the RISDM Builder, and this is a program all about
your and in fact, later on today we're going to
take a really deep dive and in fact we might
even be able to peek in behind the wall lining
to have a look at parts of your house that
you can't see unless you do kind of what I've

(02:17):
been doing a little bit of this week, which is
ripping plaster board off and having a look behind, behind
the surface, taking literally a deep dive into drum roll folks.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Mold.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
Yes, So one of the things that we do know
about New Zealand houses, or about a significant proportion, like
at least half of New Zealand houses report having mold
in them at different times of the year and in
different conditions. So is what causes it and what can
we do about it? Well, the good people at Brands
have been thinking about this for a number of years

(02:52):
and they've actually been doing some longitudinal studies on the
impact of mold, its causes, and some solutions around dealing
with it. And one of the people who's been leading
that research is doctor Steve McNeil, or to his friends
apparently just doctor Mold, and he's going to join us
after eight o'clock, So looking forward to that. But eight

(03:13):
o'clock is some way off the horizon between then. Between
now and then, we have the opportunity to talk about
your place, to talk about maybe a project that you've started,
and sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't. Maybe the
wheels have fallen off and the cart is plunging down
the hill, and you're thinking about, how do I arrest this?
What can I do? How do I get this back

(03:35):
on track? Where we can certainly talk about that whatever
particular project that you've got going on, we can talk
about systems. This is an increasingly important kind of philosophy methodology.
Let's say that much of what we use now is
never in isolation. This part goes with that bit, which

(03:58):
goes with that, but in this particular order in order
to achieve the right outcome and part I was thinking
about that. I was standing timber wooden sill the other day,
or wooden sill that had started to deteriorate. There was
a little bit of rot in one corner. There was
lots of flaky paint. It was all a little bit
uneven and so on. And as I'm out there ripping

(04:20):
into it with the random orbital sander, I'm thinking, okay,
so from here there is a process, right, there's a
series of steps that if I'm going to get a
really good outcome, an outcome being I'm not going to
have flaky paint in a couple of years time. Then
what are the steps that I have to undertake to
achieve that. It started with some sanding. It started with

(04:42):
selecting the right primer. In this case, I opted for
an oil based primer. Then I'm going to because it's
window sill and it's exterior joinery, I'm still a little
bit old fashioned. I'm going to go for oil based paints.
So I'm going to use an oil based primer. I'm
actually going to use an oil based undercoat, and then
in the right conditions, I'll apply an oil based top
coat as well an enamel. So that's the process. And

(05:05):
then if if I do all of that, well, if
I don't ignore the flaky paint that was there or
I didn't give it a wash down beforehand, then I
should get some longevity out of that. To be fair,
I got twenty years out of the last one, so
the fact that there's a bit of flaky paint after
that is not a terrible terrible thing, including changing the window.
So I did some puttying this week. I'll tell you what.

(05:26):
It's one of those things that if you ever watch
someone who is proficient and professional at puttying, as in
reputtying wooden joinery. So timber sash, install some new glass,
do the little sprig thing to hold the glass, and
then they sniftily just grab a nice little handful of
linseed oil based putty and they roll it into a

(05:51):
ball like they're doing dough or making something in the kitchen,
and then just easily with one hand sort of extruding
it in and pressing it in, and then they whip
out the old putty knife strike it off and it's
job done well. To be fair, it's not as easy
as it looks, but anyway, the outcome not too shabby,
I think, in my opinion, in my humble opinion. Now
I have to wait the required five to seven days

(06:12):
and then I can put a coat of paint on it,
and that is another job off the list. So if
you want to get a job off the list, on
this Mother's Day, and a happy, happy Mother's Day to
all the mums that might be listening to the show
this morning. Yeah, it's a great day and it's worthy
of celebration. So heavy Mother's Day to everyone who is

(06:33):
a mum. Today. It is almost fifteen minutes after six,
so we've got a great interview a little bit later on.
But we've got your calls, your inquiries, your questions of
a building nature, and they can be it's a pretty
broad palette that we get to paint with. So it
might be about projects, it might be about products, it
might be about professionals or in some case people who

(06:55):
haven't behaved professionally. If you're dealing with subcontractors main contractors.
Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't. So we can
talk about all of those things on the show this morning. Oh,
eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call.
Text is up and running. That's nine two nine two
is B SIDB from your mobile phone and if you

(07:16):
bear with me a few minutes, I'll log into the
email and that'll be up and running as well. So
it's Pete at Newstalk SB dot co dot NZ. Right
lines are open. It's all up to you now. Eight
hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Measure twice, call once on eight hundred eighty ten eighty
The Resident Builder with Peter Wolfcamp and Independent Building Supplies
the Future of Kiwi Building Today News TALKSB.

Speaker 4 (07:42):
That little promo measure twice call once is obviously a
pun or a variation of an often used phrased on
building sites, which is measure twice cut once. It's also
the title of a lovely book that I must have
had it for almost thirty years. I might bring in
next week. Actually. It's a collection of thoughts by an

(08:03):
American carpenter talking about his sort of reflections on his
life as a carpenter, things that he learned from people
who taught him, and then ways that he has acted
and operated his business sort of as he reaches kind
of his retirement years. It's an absolutely delightful book. I

(08:23):
think I bought it on trip to the States years ago. Well,
i'll bring it in, and it's kind of folksy. It's
got nice little stories in there about how you treat
tools and how you engage with clients and so on,
and parts of it still sort of rumble around in
the back of my head. I'll bring it. I'll take
a photograph and put it up on socials at some
stage as well. Right, that's another thing on my to

(08:44):
do list, which to be fair is fairly long at
the moment. But in a couple of little projects that
we're trying to get done around my place are actually
getting done, which is kind of exciting, including going out
the other day getting some new paint for inside the laundry,
so some spacecoat there which is a water borne enamel.
And earlier on I mentioned doing some painting on the

(09:06):
art side using oil based and animals. Of course, we've
talked heaps of times with the guys from Razine around
the difference between water borne and oil based paints and
how they how they operate in which situations they work
best in. So a little bit of water born space
coat on the inside that'll be nice and durable, easy

(09:26):
to wash down, so on and so forth. But there's
more work to do, don't worry. Oh, eight hundred and
eighty ten eighty is the number to call. We talked
to Richard in just a second. I mentioned a mold,
so someone who's fired through a text almost instantly. Mold
can be eliminated with adequate ventilation. Every new bill should
have an improved ventilation system installed to achieve a CCC.

(09:49):
I would wholeheartedly agree with you, and we might talk
about that with doctor Steve McNeil, who's going to join
us after eight o'clock radioat Let's get into it Richard,
A very good mind to you.

Speaker 5 (10:00):
Oh yeah, very well good in mind shower, bathroom, Yes,
toilet area on the ceiling. The paper on the ceiling
is starting to peel, yes, And I was just wondering
what the what the substrate it's peeling off is and

(10:22):
also how to remediate it. So I need to paint it.

Speaker 4 (10:29):
I'm going to presume, unless it's something slightly unusual, that
it's most ceilings, most interior linings in New Zealand are
some sort of plasterboard, right, And chances are it's jibboard.
So how old's the house? Roughly nineteen seventy, okay, so
it would be it would probably be plasterboard. Chances it's

(10:50):
good Winston's wallboard. And that is a layer of paper,
a layer of gypsum and a layer of paper. So
in this instance, if the paper has started to deteriorate
and peel off, unless if you look really carefully, you
don't think that someone has wallpapered the ceil and that's
what's moving.

Speaker 5 (11:09):
Well, it's s where the paper has joined the paper
next to it on the ceiling. If you know there's
a there's a whole line of it. It's like it's well,
I don't know whether it's been papered over.

Speaker 4 (11:23):
Yeah, I mean, and it's I know it's a slightly
unusual situation, but it's not completely impossible that at some
stage somebody has wall paper the ceiling or put like
a lining paper on the ceiling before painting it. So
if you get up there nice and close and just
very gently peck away at the edge of that paper,
If behind the paper you see more paper, then it's

(11:46):
an additional layer. If behind the paper you see plaster
so gibsum are white sort of maybe crumbly material, then
what's happening is the plaster board itself is delaminating and
the surface is coming away. Realistically, at that point, there's
not a lot that you can do to fix it,

(12:07):
unless you wanted to sort of skim the entire ceiling
and so on. But you know, quite again, realistically, at
that point, if it's deteriorated to the point where the
paper is coming away from the gypsum core, then you're
probably looking at relining that ceiling, which might involve pulling
down the old ceiling depending on the size of it
or what's above it, or simply lining over the top

(12:31):
of it. Which is possible. So like most ceilings at
that age will have all sorts of dust and debris
up there, and maybe insulation and all the rest of it.
You could just take the Scotia off around the perimeter,
pop the lights out, get now electrician to do that, obviously,
and then just relined, figure out where all of the

(12:51):
fixings are and just put a new layer of plaster
board underneath. Stop it and stop it, ceil it, top
coat it. Scotia's back on. Job done, not a little job,
but that might be where you end up.

Speaker 6 (13:08):
There right I'm in there right now looking at it.

Speaker 4 (13:10):
Good. I love this about mobile phones. Obviously, you know
you're not attached to the phone in the lounge thinking
hang on, I'll just pop out and have a look. Okay,
so when you look at it, if you pack away
at the edge of the paper to touch fair enough
and look. I'm not sure that we necessarily want you
on a ladder on a telephone reaching up to look

(13:30):
at the closely at the paper, but I mean, look,
if it's something where it's just loose and flaky, right,
and you can all right, then what I would do
is I would cut those bits off because there's no
sticking them back on. Then I would use some pigmented seala,
which is a particular type of seala to clean the

(13:50):
area a little bit. Seal it with pigmented seala that
will bind everything together. Then where it's uneven, you'll need
to get a little bit of stopping compound. Smooth that
out with stopping compound, sand it flush until you've got
a smooth surface that you're happy with. Then we'll pig
me entered seila over those bits that you've used the
compound on, and then two coats of I would go

(14:12):
for something like space coat, which is a water borne enamel.
It's a little bit more hard wearing. It's good in
bathroom areas. The other thing is, let's not ignore why
it's ended up in that situation. So I would suggest
that you've probably got inadequate ventilation in there. So look
at proper ventilation and make sure that that is ducted

(14:34):
to the outside, that the runner is as short as possible,
that the rooters as direct as possible, that it's a
minimum of one hundred and fifty mili. And if you're
going to replace the fan, then look at something like
a continuous flow humidity sensing fan that will run all
of the time, but ramp up when it notices that

(14:54):
there's humidity. I steam in there, and that'll be a
really good solution going forward.

Speaker 7 (15:01):
Yeah, well, I haven't got a fan of.

Speaker 4 (15:05):
Put one in, okay, but there are I guess fan
technology has moved on, right, and so there are now
some systems. In fact, I went and picked one up
on Friday. In this instance, it's a through wall fan
that runs constantly at a low rate, but you set
it for a certain type of humidity rating and when

(15:26):
it picks up, when it senses that that space is
humid i e. Damp, it will ramp up the extraction.
Now that's explain this one before. Yeah, seriously, they make
a massive chance. They make a massive difference right over long.

Speaker 7 (15:43):
Teraim go through the field.

Speaker 4 (15:46):
That's great. No, no, And look the thing is, there's
so many types of fans. So the one that I
picked up on Friday is different to the one that
I picked up a couple of months ago and put
into a bathroom where we had the same issue. Right,
lots of moisture, not great sort of operator basically operator era. Right.
If people don't have a fan or they don't turn
it on. Then that's what you're going to get, so

(16:08):
have a look again. It's the ones that I've picked
up are the simics ones, so s I m X
and get one with a humidity sensor that will run
all of the time and ramp up and that will
make a big difference as well.

Speaker 8 (16:22):
All right. And the paint the ceiling.

Speaker 4 (16:25):
If yeah, look that's what I use, and I'm more
than happy saying that I do so. But what I've
gone for is the what they call space coat. Right,
So it's a water board enamel, so it gives you
that hard surface, which is quite good on a ceiling.
It's easier to wipe down, and as long as you
get the right preparation, you're it'll be okay.

Speaker 7 (16:46):
So Rasine tell that.

Speaker 4 (16:47):
Uh space coat?

Speaker 5 (16:49):
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to make it owns Razin.

Speaker 4 (16:53):
Well, you hit them up. Hit him up name.

Speaker 5 (16:57):
I don't know, if.

Speaker 4 (16:58):
I don't know, Clement's and Christchurch, but if he runs
a color shop, he's a good bloke. All the best.
Take care, Boby. Gosh, it sounds like so many jobs
that I've either done or have got on my list
of things to do. Ventilation. Well, funnily enough, we are
talking with Steve McNeil, doctor Steve McNeil from Brands a

(17:19):
little bit later on this morning. If we're talking mold,
we've got to be talking ventilation. And I one hundred
percent agree with that first text, who fired through pretty
quickly going hey, look it can be eliminated with adequate ventilation.
In fact, I picked up on something. I've been doing
some reading for a couple of presentations that I have
to do. So I was in Wellington yesterday at the

(17:42):
Better Home and Living show, which is on at Henry Stadium.
It's on again today actually, and they have a series
of presenters, one of which was me. I was happy
to be talking about building legislation and changes and so
on and so forth. But while I was doing some
reading around that discovered a couple of quite useful publications,

(18:03):
let's say, from either government or from various ministries in
New Zealand around changes to building legislation. There's a very
very good one. Actually, we'll take a break and i'll
come back and talk about this in a minute. More importantly,
i'd like to talk to you, so if you've got
a question of a building nature, let's talk. I eight
hundred eighty ten eighty is the number. Nine to nine

(18:24):
two is the number. If you'd like to fire through
a text, and if you'd like to email by all
means pete ATNEWSTALKSB dot co dot nz. But the lines
are open for you right now at NEWSTALKSB coming up six.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
Thirty begging what they forgot to mention on that YouTube video.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
The resident builder with Peter Wolfcamp and Independent Building supplies
a future of Kiwi building today. Call oh eight hundred
eighty ten eighty News talksreb.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
Rightio lines are open for you. I eight hundred eighty
ten eighty is the number to call. We've talked a
little bit about that situation. Was Richard with paint and
paper seemingly peeling from sealing, someone to fire through a
text and just go, hey, look, I'm in the nineteen
fifties Statehouse X state House. I'm not sure is there
any chance that the plasterboard might contain asbestos? Chairs I'd

(19:15):
like to sort of give a definite no, it won't,
but I think that's probably foolish. It's highly unlikely, But
I suppose my typical response to is there asbestos in it?
These days is if you're unsure for whatever reason, get
it tested. I think it's really really unlikely, simply because

(19:39):
you know, it's not a five or cement sheet, it's
not lagging those sorts of things. But I know, over
the years I've done a reasonable amount of reading on
that issue, and one of the most confronting things that
I read some time ago was looking at if you're
in the trade, or if you know a little bit

(19:59):
about asbestos, we tend to think about it as being,
you know, nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties, nineteen seventies type product,
right and thereafter it's not really around that much in
building materials. I need to find out that, in fact,
it was part of some very very specific building materials

(20:22):
until the two thousands, the early two thousands, it was
still coming into New Zealand as part of building materials.
And then, as per the case of the fire doors,
in the last year or so, turns out that there
was a it was in material used in the assembly
of fire doors because of product supplier overseas, which is

(20:46):
not uncommon, used it as part of their manufacturing process,
and so the person using it at the end of
the chain doesn't know that the person three steps earlier
had allowed the use of asbestos into this particular building material,
and that was detected. I'm not sure where that story
ended up washing up, but certainly it made the new
about a year ago or so. So Yeah, generally a

(21:09):
certain amount of caution around just saying nope, it's not
their best thing to do. If you're unsure on reasonable grounds,
then go and get it tested. I talked a little
bit about ventilation, saysus text. I installed my own adducted
heat pump system stiffty, but I've been thinking about putting
in a fresh air intake. Do you have any advice

(21:30):
on this? The los Nee systems from and then they
mentioned a brand seem to be very expensive. Well, possibly
they're expensive because they're really good and they work well.
You know, we keep thinking that expensive is somehow wrong
or expensive is relative? Isn't it expensive and related to
what if it's expensive and it's really really good, then

(21:52):
yes it's expensive. But that's like saying a really good
car is more expensive than a cheap car, probably because
they work better. But yeah, fresh air intakes, whether that's
part of reducted heat pump system or a different time
type of system, worth investigating. Absolutely, I wait, hundred eighty
ten eighty is the number to call. And this is

(22:13):
a classic to I feel better about stuff that I've
kept in my garage now, Pete, I had an old
Mister hal fan, still new in the box in the garage,
had to have been there thirty five years. I put
that in my bathroom ceiling. It's like a jet engine.
It sucks the room clear and three minutes even closes
the door for you. They don't make them like that anymore. Well, Trish,
I think that the one that I installed about a

(22:35):
year and a half ago when I did some work
on the bathroom at my place probably doesn't quite close
the door, but certainly when it's on, opening the door
is harder. Right, So if the fans on, opening the
door is slightly harder because you're working against the suction.
So that's great. If it works, if it's doing the job,

(22:58):
that's awesome. I wait, hundred eighty ten eighty the number
to call. The lines are open for you. I wait
hundred eighty ten eighty ten. Good morning, Good morning, Peak.
I'm very well.

Speaker 8 (23:11):
Yeah, I just built a twelve boy twelve workshop, you know,
just for me cars and motorbikes and stuff.

Speaker 4 (23:19):
I'm presuming you're going to say it's twelve by twelve meters,
not twelve by twelve feet.

Speaker 8 (23:24):
Yeah, that's correct, mating. It's quite quite a large one.

Speaker 4 (23:27):
It's not a bad size.

Speaker 8 (23:29):
No, it's good size. When we made a home and stuff.
It's brand new. And I'm just the ridgings there on
the slide, you know how you've got the ridging with
the little holes in the iron all the way around. Yes,
the dust seems to be getting in and I'm just
trying to eliminate as much dust as I can. Some
good cars and that and there.

Speaker 4 (23:50):
You know when they is it steel frame or timber frame.

Speaker 8 (23:55):
It's steel frame on the outside, yes, but it's timber
frame on the inside. Timber frame on the inside.

Speaker 4 (24:03):
But ye okay, and where like it sort of one
of those portal type things. So they've got a couple
of big portal frames and then some girts or battens
around the outside, and that's what the cladding's fixed to.

Speaker 8 (24:18):
No, it's just the cladding is all fixed to six
boy two boards on the inside of the shed.

Speaker 4 (24:24):
Right, okay, yep, building paper around.

Speaker 8 (24:28):
It, so not on the ceiling all the sides.

Speaker 4 (24:34):
No ah, yeah, yeah, that's it's a bit of an
over well. I'm not saying that they haven't done the
shed as per thespecs or anything like that, but you know,
what you're trying to do is stop dust, which means
you need some barriers to that. And I guess a
really simple solution would have been once the frame was up,
to wrap it in roofing, underlay and building rap and

(24:58):
then then put the cladding over the top of that.
So even if something got into those into that void,
let's say where the corrugations of the exterior clotting are,
then it's not a direct pathway into the building, which
is what the building rap would do. You wouldn't consider

(25:19):
lining the inside.

Speaker 8 (25:24):
Well, lining you have to take all the iron, would.

Speaker 4 (25:28):
You lining the inside?

Speaker 8 (25:30):
So you know, yeah, I could, but it's a pretty
big job. It's all pretty well sealed. I think the
only way the dust is getting in is mainly from
the bottom of the iron where the holes are. Yes,
now it has got a flat piece of sheet on

(25:51):
the bottom of all the sides, you know, right at
the bottom, just to cover it. But you've still got
a two one or two milk gap, you know, where
they're covering the holes and I reckon the dust is
still getting in there.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
Yes, you can see light when you look right on
all the holes.

Speaker 4 (26:11):
What you might find is where that bottom row of
fixings are right, So they've textcrewed everything to that bottom
row of fixing. If you were able to go back
to either the manufacturer or the manufacturer of the iron
and ask for foam infill, so it'll be strips of

(26:32):
foam about eight nine hundred long that are profiled to
match the profile of whatever cladding you've got. And what
you can do is if you could back the bottom
of the screws out and slide that up in there.
It's designed to stop basically, it's designed to stop airflow,
drafts and maybe vermin and that sort of thing from

(26:54):
entering there. It's not the same as a vermin strippers
on a cavity. It's a foam material and it just
stops material getting up there and stops drafts. So you
could still going to be a fairly borious task. And
because you can see so when you're standing inside the shed,
you can see the back of the exterior cladding. It's exposed.

Speaker 8 (27:21):
You mean looking down, No, just if.

Speaker 4 (27:23):
You're standing in the shed, looking at the wall, what
you see the framing and then you see the back
of the profiled metal sheeting that is the exterior cloud. Yeah, okay,
so what you might even find is that if you
back the screws out on the outside on that bottom
row from the inside, you can see where that lowest
row of fixings are. And then once you've crowded a

(27:43):
bit of space there, you could push that foam in
fill strip into those spaces and just work your way
around the perimeter filling up those voids from the inside.
That's probably the most straightforward fix.

Speaker 8 (27:56):
Gotcha. Yeah, that sounds good. That sounds good, And you know,
with you one other thing to help out yep, oh yeah, yeah,
I've got a couple of mates, awesome cold there for them.
What about just a quick question before we go, what
about if you've got to set brave foam stuff and

(28:16):
just gave each hole. I did think of that. I
just I just want to try and get it right,
you know.

Speaker 4 (28:23):
Yeah, I mean, yes, it's a yeah, you could. I
suppose what it is is that it won't be even right,
like it will look like you've just grabbed and I
use some of that stuff the other day, put in
the door sealed around it. But then I can cut

(28:44):
it back and I can cover it with an architrave, right,
So in this instance here you'll have different amounts of it.
It's still in effect because it's a shed. It's it's
not exactly sealed, right, so it's not exactly the exterior. Well.

(29:05):
In effect, inside of your shed is not that different
to outside of your shed, and so foam in that
sense isn't really designed to be exposed to the elements
in the future, or designed to be exposed to the
exterior atmosphere. I think the foam strip will give you
a tidier finish. Yeah, it's a little bit more time
consuming and you have to buy it and that sort

(29:26):
of thing, but I think that's a tidier finish.

Speaker 8 (29:30):
Sounds good to me.

Speaker 4 (29:30):
Peau all the very best, my pleasure, take care. That's awesome,
and twelve by twelve shed I can only dream, as
I've been spending quite a bit of time in my
little workshop trying to was one of my last jobs,
taking a door that had been let me think about it, technically,

(29:53):
it was a left hand hung door and it needed
to become a right hand hung door, which means taking
it's an exterior door, which means taking the door out
with the frame, taking the hinges off, taking the lockout,
filling where the hinges were, and filling where the hinges
were in the frame, then filling where the mortars lock

(30:16):
had been, then essentially flipping it over, cutting new rebates
for the hinges onto both the door and the frame,
then fitting the door with the new hinges into the
old frame, and then reinstalling the frame. But all of
that I was trying to do inside the workshop, which
meant sort of squeezing around the side of the work
bench because I've got so much other stuff in there.

(30:39):
Something like a twelve by twelve workshop, that wouldn't be
an issue. You could waft around in there with all
the space in the world. However, I'm sure there is
some like mathematical formula that goes the optimum size of
a workshop is always just a factor of ten percent
bigger than what you've actually got. And I'm sure that

(31:01):
Ted would have stood there gazing at this magnificent one
hundred and forty four square meter shed, going how am
I going to fill that? And then in the twinkle
of an eye he'd be standing there going I need
a bigger shed. Oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty is
the number to call. We'll talk to Tracy straight after the.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
Break, turning Oh's into She'll be right. The resident builder
with Peter wilfgam and Independent Building supplies a future of
Kiwi building Today. Call oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty
news Dogs, there'd.

Speaker 4 (31:31):
Be lines are open for you this morning. It is
twelve minutes away from seven Tracy.

Speaker 8 (31:34):
Good morning, Yeah, good morning Peter.

Speaker 9 (31:38):
Just a little horror story with multi people say that
the ventilation is important, and it is. I totally get that.
How do you ventilate when you have a leaky bathroom?

Speaker 8 (31:50):
Yeah, it has.

Speaker 9 (31:50):
Been totally ignored and covered out to the extent like
this is insane that rather than fix that the bathroom
there has the problem, you go to the house that's
identical kind or a house that's identical next door and
rip out their bathroom, but don't fix the bathroom that's

(32:11):
actually leaking. Right, And then yeah, then you rip out
the cylinder because you've got a two story house, So
you rip the cylinder out underneath the hot water cupboard,
you replace or that you make it all look pretty.
You put a big four to two in the middle there,
right in the corner, so you don't see the water
coming down from the bathroom.

Speaker 10 (32:32):
Right.

Speaker 9 (32:33):
Then you move the person out so that doesn't affect them.
But then you move a homeless person right and he's
unaware it.

Speaker 4 (32:40):
Tracy, this is not a question about Mold. This is
a question about your engagement with KO, which I.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
Understand is no every single Yes.

Speaker 4 (32:49):
I know that, but it's not really what you want
to talk about. You want to talk about your engagement
with KO. So if you want to do that, be
honest about that.

Speaker 9 (32:58):
Okay, Well I want it's the like we all know
mold bed right. Well, you consider the property that I
was in, right, there was a leachy home right five
weeks before they closed those houses down. This is what
scares me the most. Five weeks before they closed through down.
There's a company called SPM mas set.

Speaker 4 (33:20):
Hey, look, we're not getting into naming companies and engagements.
I'm not dismissive of the seriousness of the issue, but
I think we want to be careful around naming companies
and so on and so forth. Appreciate the call the
simplest text of the day, and I wheartedly agree sheds

(33:41):
are never big enough. I'm sure there is an equation
that relates to what I've got and what I require,
and that there is some sort of equation that goes
no matter what it is, it's never going to be
big enough when it comes to sheds. There'll be some
mathematical equation for that. We can talk all things building
in construction on the show this morning. It's really upfront

(34:02):
about what it is that you want to talk about.
It is six fifty one. Good morning, Pete. We have
a nineteen seventies house that was fully renovated about ten
years before we bought it. It has a stipple ceiling
which is in very good condition, but we're wondering if
they may have asbestos in them. Thanks from Mary. Certainly,
it's not uncommon that a certain type of textured ceiling

(34:23):
material did contain I think it was like a blue
asbestos in them. Typically it's the ones that have like
a slight reflective element, like they glisten a little bit
when you look at them. There are some stippled ceiling
applications that were basically a splashed plaster type look That

(34:44):
wasn't uncommon in the nineteen eighties, which is just basically plaster,
so there's not an issue with asbestos there. If it's
much older than that, then again, the simplest response to
all of these questions is, if you are unsure, and
if you have reasonable grounds to have some concern, simply
remove a small sample, take it to an approved laboratory

(35:09):
and have them tested, have it tested. There is so
many testing labs out there now that it won't be
difficult for you to find someone who is able to
do that. And obviously if you're going to be removing it,
then you need to ensure your own protection. It was
really interesting. I was on a site the other day
where someone needed to come and test the meter board.

(35:34):
So exterior meter board, like most older houses, have many
of the backing. So when you take the cover off
a meter board, you'll see the meter and maybe an
isolation switch and so on, and then that's on a
cover that swings open. Those boards well known now to
have contained or likely to have contained asbestos. And so

(35:55):
the person that came to do it, they were all
kitted out for this, right, they had their own ppe,
they had a plastic bag that was clearly marked potential
asbestos waste, and any of the dust or debris that
came out of that while they were doing it just
went into the bag and then that I'm sure that
they send to the right disposal site. So you know,

(36:16):
there are ways of managing and working with it to
ensure that you don't expose yourself or anybody else to
some of the dangers of it. But again, simple answers.
If you're unsure, you've got reasonable grounds to be unsure,
get it tested. Margaret, good morning, Oh.

Speaker 6 (36:32):
Good morning, Peter. I was just asking for some advice. Sure,
I bought this house in I think it was nineteen
ninety eight or somewhere around there, and it was twenty
years old. I think no, no, sorry, it was about
twenty years old. Now in the bathroom it has got

(36:54):
shower master equipment, like the bar, the vanity and the shower.
Now there's absolutely nothing wrong with the bar or the vanity, Yes,
but it is off white in a very sort of
creamy color. Want to replace the shower because like those showers,

(37:18):
it's become a.

Speaker 11 (37:19):
Little bit of than I sayeah, sure, yep, yep.

Speaker 6 (37:22):
Now the shower master that's there, it's all in one piece.
You know, there's no tiling or anything can you still
get showers like that.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
Yeah, probably not exactly like that, but very close to it.
So I know there was a thing where you used
to be able to get these shower trays that were
kind of they came about they had the base and
then they came up about five or six hundred high,
and then you had another piece that joined to it
at that point, so you had this sort of smooth

(37:56):
transition from the vertical to the horizontal. Right, you can't.
I don't think. I haven't seen any of those for
donkeys years. The last one I had.

Speaker 6 (38:06):
See what I've got the rim, So you know what
you're saying is round the rim.

Speaker 8 (38:13):
And so of course going of course and things.

Speaker 6 (38:16):
Like that, and I want to replace it. But from
what I've seen of new bathrooms, it's all white, white, white. Well,
I don't really want to get rid of the vanity
and the bath because they are there's stuffing wrong.

Speaker 4 (38:30):
Yeah, sure, they're durable and yep, yep.

Speaker 6 (38:34):
Condition. The only thing I've thought of was, you know,
I'm hardly likely to get anything that's color, so it
would have to be jolly white.

Speaker 4 (38:44):
It probably would. The So if you go, look, what
I'm going to do is I'm going to replace, and
I'm going to run because I've got the news and second,
but I think that the good thing is is that
you will be able to find a unit that's either
the same size or very similar in size, so that,
with some minor adjustments, your plumber and builder working together

(39:06):
be able to rip out the old one and replace
it with a new one with a lining tray and
a liner and have that installed. But yes, it will
be nice, clean white, unfortunately or fortunately either way, but
that's that's doable, and you don't need a consent for
that because it's pretty much like for like as well.
It's not a tiled area.

Speaker 8 (39:25):
Right.

Speaker 4 (39:26):
We're back straight after the news at seven, helping.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
You finish that five but it fixed you started the
resident builder with Peter Wolfcamp and Independent Building Supplies the
Future of Kiwi Building Today. Call oh, eight hundred eighty
ten eighty Youth talks'd be right, Oh, welcome.

Speaker 4 (39:44):
Back to the program. It is six and a half
minutes after seven. Eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the
number to call. So if you've got a question of
a building nature and that could be fairly broad, to
be fair, we can talk about that eight hundred eighty
ten eighty is the number to call, so Margaret just
before the news was talking about then they're kind of

(40:05):
not that common to see anymore. But I remember ripping
one out, which was a shower unit in a very
attractive purple color. As I recall, that had the shower
tray was three sided. One the shower tray, a little
lip at the front, and then the side walls let's
say where the shower went from the base to the
walls transitioned up about five hundred mill and then the

(40:26):
top piece screwed together. It was bolted together and then
inserted so made for it was quite durable in the
sense that you didn't have a junction at the bottom
at that transition between the flat tray or the base
and the upright right, which is that's where most of
the water is and that's where most of the leaks occur,
so having that molded into one piece. But yes, as

(40:50):
I say, it was purple, it was a magnificent purple color.
I ripped it out. It went into another house. Actually,
it served quite well there for quite some time, and
actually I think I took it to about two or
three childs. It was that hardware. But they don't make
them like that anymore, but you can. You could rip

(41:10):
that out replace it with another pre built shower system,
so a tray and walls without necessarily requiring a building consent.
So it's a shower. It's in the existing location. The
fittings aren't really changing, the number of them are not changing,
and because it doesn't involve any additional waterproofing, it can

(41:30):
be done under Schedule one of the Building Act as well.
Someone has come back to me with a formula for
the ideal shed size. They are little bit of maths.
Is N plus five where n is the size of
the existing shed in square meters, So whatever size it
happens to be, it's that plus five is the formula.

(41:50):
I feel that there's some value to that formula. I
also feel that there should be some like a power
of so it might be five to the two or
something like that, just to really get a sense of it.
It's a little bit like the formula of how many
motorbikes doing it? It's the current number plus one is
the formula to that. Apparently, oh, eight hundred eighty ten

(42:11):
eighty is the number to call. Seven minutes after nine
Steve Hello.

Speaker 10 (42:15):
Good morning, thanks for taking the call. I've got a
nineteen house was built in the nineteen sort of late
eighties s early nineties, the roof which I've had painted
by a professional company. When I went up, I was
going to do it myself, but my wife wouldn't let me.

(42:36):
I've just retired and they get a bit of burdigo,
so she's got the room might not be a good place,
but I had been up there. There's the old Russ
spot up there that the profile of the irons what
they call a sex rib. Yeah, you'll probably know what
I mean. That's not your standard corrugated iron. But I
noticed on this ridging on one part of the very

(42:57):
top there's some little rough spots coming through, and when
I was treating them, they I don't notice herelines split
in them, And I went, oh, so there was always
already a breakdown on top of the ridging. So I
got curious and unscrewed the ridging and could see a
little bit of rust underneath, and dust and rubbish that

(43:21):
I've got that I don't know what it's called. You
know the name of it. The paper that sits under it.
It's lead. It's really flexy.

Speaker 4 (43:29):
Yes, yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 10 (43:32):
It had I've since had it painted. Long story short,
I've since had it painted. I started treating and the
painter said.

Speaker 7 (43:38):
I'll deal with that.

Speaker 10 (43:39):
Don't worry about that. And I've gone up and had
a lot because I'm very curious and I'm pussy and
I'm got.

Speaker 4 (43:44):
The job done properly, and you're paying for it, right, and.

Speaker 7 (43:46):
I'm paying for it.

Speaker 10 (43:47):
And there's patches over those rough spots.

Speaker 8 (43:51):
He's just.

Speaker 10 (43:53):
He said, I'll patch them, everything will be all right.
But I've noticed the more I look at that lead paper,
I'll refer to it all around the ridging, and there's
lots of splits in it. Yes, it was badly scallared
and lest it a lot, don't worry about it. We'll
paint them. They'll be fine. But could water be getting
them through those splits and underneath and rust coming through

(44:17):
from the bottom, and have I painting the top of it?
Have I just said in the problem?

Speaker 4 (44:23):
No, it's a really really good question. So the ridge
that's there extends down probably one hundred and fifty two
hundred milk from the apex, and hopefully it covers the
sheet that's underneath it. By a similar amount roughly, so
probably a little bit less. The roofing sheets will run
up to just shy of the ridge, and then the

(44:45):
ridge cap goes over it, and then to fill in
the gaps because obviously the profile of the ridge cap
is flat. You've got the six rib and so you've
got that flexible used to be lead. That's a slightly
different product now and that's folded down. What that's mainly
doing is stopping the wind from driving rain up, is

(45:09):
what that's really doing. Because in the end, and the
other thing that's important is what's the rough roof pitch?
Is it reasonably steep? Is it quite flat?

Speaker 10 (45:18):
It's quite It's quite flat, okay. And that was you know,
they didn't even use scaffolding because they said they'd go
yeah confident, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's pretty pretty good
low pressing.

Speaker 4 (45:30):
Okay. So if it's relatively low profile. If you think
about what happens when we have accommodation of wind and rain,
rain will fall on the roof and then if the
wind's blowing in the right direction i e. From the
bottom of the roof to the top, it could take
some of that moisture and push it up to the
top of the sheet, and then they should have whoever

(45:51):
installed the roof in the first place. Typically you turn
up the trough of all of the sheets before you
put the ridge cap on, and that stops water from
Water's literally then got to climb up and over before
it potentially gets into your space. So the lead or
the flexible edge, the soft edge on the edge of

(46:14):
the ridge capping is really there to stop, to close
the gap and to stop the wind blowing the water up,
because most of the water that falls on the roof
will simply run downhill and it would continue to run
downhill whether there was soft edge there or not. So
I think that if you've got relatively small cracks, but

(46:35):
it's still if you've got a crack of a millimeter right,
or even two millimeters, is that likely to cause a leak?
I don't think so.

Speaker 10 (46:45):
Okay, it's fairly. It's easy to not be late. It's
a bit lot passing. You can go up there, even
when up the other day, and you can message it
and to place. You can even bring the crack slightly together.

Speaker 4 (46:59):
Yeah, it's not And if you were to do that right,
if you were to do that just sort of you know,
if there was an area where the sheet there was
a gap or something like that, and you could just
gently press that back down and then you were to
apply because once if you've used a roofing paint, it's
got a little bit of flexibility, it's got some elasticity
to it, and it will it will span the gap

(47:21):
and even if it moves slightly, it look if there
was a very small crack there, I think the chances
of that actually causing a leak is really really small.
Saying that, you also, and I'm sure you're realistic enough
to go by painting the roof, I've extended its life.
So that's a good thing. But at a certain stage,
you know, you're also getting to end of life for

(47:43):
that roof. If it's if it's the original one that
was installed in the nineteen seventies nineteen eighties, then yeah,
it'll it'll probably last for a while, and by painting
it you've extended its life. But at a certain stage
these elements are going to need replacement as well.

Speaker 10 (47:57):
Yeah, I think you're right. It had never been painted.

Speaker 4 (48:00):
Yeah, right, we bought it off.

Speaker 10 (48:02):
He not around to painting it, and so they got
I had a roof a look at it, and he said,
it's some pretty good names. If you paint it now,
you'll probably get know the ten years out.

Speaker 4 (48:11):
Of it easy easily, you know. And I did one.
She was twenty five, twenty seven years ago, where you know,
we're doing renovation. The roof was not in great condition.
I said, look, it's not part of your budget. Now,
let's paint it and we're you know, you might get
an extra five or ten years out of it. I
think it lasted twenty right, with some minor repairs here

(48:31):
and there. So but yeah, I don't know that I'd
be too concerned if there's in that situation. That's what
it's doing. It's just stopping that. It's closing the gap
to stop the wind from driving rain up here.

Speaker 10 (48:46):
That's really good work. Yeah, lo one really quick. I'm
having a bit of a trouble with the contractors. But
I ain't bore you with all the details of that
part of me's gowne. I knew I should have done
this chob now. I'm a rasine man too, by the way,
I had to get over that. It's okay, it's a

(49:07):
good paint. I've got translucent panels in the roof skylights
quite a long. I've got quite a decent sized garage
and over that area that's oversprayed onto the really obvious underneath.

Speaker 7 (49:23):
Yet I get.

Speaker 10 (49:25):
I said, I'm not going to pay for this until
this is sort of that. I won't mention the company
and I don't want to beg them because it's their
job to fix it. But when they came back with
graffiti cleaner, maybe a bit embarrassed and said, we were going,
why didn't you Why wouldn't you know? But anyway, the

(49:47):
pressing down, trying to in the pressing down, trying to
get the paint off, which is sticky on the plastic,
by cracking it. Yeah, two cracks and two leaks already.
And I got some advice and the manufacturer that said, look,
it's been up there fifteen years, Yes, at age at
any pushing trying to get paint off, it's just going

(50:09):
to be a disaster that they can create holds in it.
So what would I mean? Part of me is gone, well,
you need to replace panels.

Speaker 4 (50:17):
Yeah, I think so too. You know, it's one of
those things that you know, the paint's designed to stick, right,
So the whole point of it is that it doesn't
come off, so having to remove it is always tricky,
and trying like applying a solvent or something like that
onto a translucent material is likely to discolor the material,

(50:37):
and then trying to scour it off, let's say, is
going to leave scratches. And then putting too much pressure
on an older material it's already starting to become a
bit fragile due to age, is likely to cause cracking.
So I think in this instance probably well within your
rights just to say, look, I'm sorry, guys, but in
the end, this is the it was okay, before you've

(51:00):
done the work, you've caused the damage. I think you
should come to the party and either pay for contribute
to the cost of replacement of those panels.

Speaker 10 (51:10):
Yes, yes, and I said, but they're in great condition beforehand.

Speaker 4 (51:15):
That they were working before, right, yepy working. Yeah, I've
I've got a very similar story. Actually I'll do that
in a minute. Hey, good luck with all of that stuff,
all the best I can, all the best, take care
of eight hundred and eighty ten eighty. Now, a little
bit later on, like in about an hour's time, doctor
Steve McNeil from Brands is going to join us. There's

(51:36):
a couple of things here. One is Brands have been doing,
as they obviously do, a tremendous amount of research, including
some longitudinal studies and surveys of existing houses. So I'll
get doctor Steve to explain it, but essentially they'll ask
families like you and I if they can add some

(51:58):
equipment to monitor the condition inside houses. So they'll measure
humidity and temperature and moisture content and VOCs and all
of these sorts of things over an extended period of
time in real houses lived in by real people, and
from that do some research around what the conditions are,
what is there a potential for mold growth. If we

(52:21):
see mold growth, where do we think it's coming from,
et cetera, et cetera, etc. So there's that survey to
talk but there's also a test house that they have
on site at Brands which is just outside of Wellington City,
where they can also do testing of different conditions. And
there's some publications, one of which I was reading the

(52:43):
other day around mold. So we're going to be talking
about mold and so on. We've had a whole bunch
of questions about it as well, including this one Hey,
with regard to ventilation heating, I've got an unused bedroom
in the house now that our child has left home.
It's used as a storage room. Unfortunately, it's now quite
a damp room and cold in winter as we don't
heat it and we keep the door closed. My question

(53:04):
is how can I stop it feeling damned? Do I
need a dehumidifier to keep the room warm or keep
the door open keep the room warm? Thanks very much. Yeah, look,
there's a whole bunch of particular issues in there, but
certainly if you store material, and that material, whether it's
old books or clothing or whatever, you know though, that

(53:25):
will absorb moisture. Right, So you're packing a room full
of absorbent material, you're then allowing that room to become cold,
which means that that moisture that's in the air will
be absorbed by that material. So even if the room
warms up, it's then going to release the moisture from
the materials that you've stored in there. And if you

(53:46):
keep the door closed and it's cold, you are you're
creating sort of an unhealthy environment in that particular space. So, yes,
heating it would make a difference. Yes, opening the doors
and windows from time to time would make a difference,
and probably installing a dehumidifier in there it would help
as well. So it's that sort of detail that would
be talking about with Dr Steve after the News at

(54:08):
eight o'clock right through until eight thirty, and then of
course we're into the garden with recline past as always
from eight point thirty here at newstalk zet B right,
we can take a short break. If you've got a
question of a building nature, the lines are open for
you right now. Oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Where DIY gets unstuck call Oh eight hundred eighty ten
eighty The resident builder with Peter Wolfcam and Independent Building
supplies the future of Kiwi Building Today News talks there b.

Speaker 4 (54:37):
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(54:59):
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(55:21):
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limited time. Radio lines are open for you. Oh eight,
one hundred and eighty ten eighty is the number to
call a couple. Just a very quick text because we

(55:44):
have sort of start to talk about asbestos a little bit. Pet.
Can you remove asbestos cladding in stages yourself over time
when doing a renovation addition to total being more than
ten square meters, following the approved methods of wrapping, et cetera.
From Matt It's an interesting one. Technically, a homeowner can

(56:04):
remove up to or a contractor actually can remove up
to ten square meters of asbestos without necessarily needing to
get a license susbestos contractor to do or supervise the work.
And so I know people have gone, okay, so if
I take ten square meters this week and ten square
meters next week and ten square meters the next, I
can get rid of all of the asbestos cladding on

(56:26):
an old garage or something like that. When you read
through the legislation, it's very clear that it's a total
of ten square meters. So technically, if you do it correctly,
you can remove up to ten square meters as a
contractor working on a property. But it's a total of
ten squares, so it's not cumulative. You can't do ten

(56:48):
one day and ten the next and so on. I
still would wholeheartedly recommend getting an expert to come and
do that, saying that if I'm really honest, in small situations,
we've done exactly the same thing. You know, a small
piece of super six cladding at the end of a
garage where you might want to win fall the window.
You know, with the right gear and knowing what you're doing,

(57:11):
hopefully you can you can remove that. The other part
of it, of the course, is what are you going
to do with the pieces that you've removed because that
can't shouldn't go to landfill. That's got to go to
an approved disposal site or to a contractor who will
dispose of it correctly. Oh, eight hundred eighty ten eighty
the number. Gary, Good morning, Good morning.

Speaker 12 (57:33):
Peter good Yeah, speaking of renovations, we have a bathroom
that we would like to upgrade a little bit. It
has wallpaper and on some of the joints and edges
it's started to lift, yep a little. I wondered if

(57:57):
you could recommend or have any ideas about how to
refix that without taking the wallpaper off.

Speaker 4 (58:06):
Sure, you know, depending on the scale of it, you
can just either use some wallpaper adhesive again, or just
simply use some PVA glue. And it might pay to
sort of slightly dampen the surface just to give it
a little bit of flexibility, and then put some PVA
in behind there, press it flat and it should adhere

(58:28):
straight away. You might need to keep a little bit
of pressure on it for a while. But I again,
I had a guy come and help me out on
job late last year, same thing. There were just some
of the joints were just opening up. He was there
for about fifteen minutes sorted it out. So, yes, it's doable.

Speaker 12 (58:47):
Oh that's good. Oh did I hear you correctly? So
maybe damp in the wallpaper.

Speaker 4 (58:53):
I'm just thinking about a little. You know how sometimes
paper gets more bristle, right, so it's slightly not as
flexible perhaps as it once was. And you got to think,
typically when you do wallpaper, you apply you either soak
it in the old days, or you apply lots of
adhesive so it becomes pliable. Right, So if something's curled

(59:13):
up and you want to flatten it out and it's rigid,
you might want to soften it to allow it to
fold back, not saturate it, just a little tiny little
bit of moisture on there just to help it go
back flat, and then some adhesive behind it, either some
wall paper paste or some PBA.

Speaker 5 (59:31):
So would you roll sort of roll?

Speaker 4 (59:34):
It's a good idea.

Speaker 7 (59:35):
A little afterwards, Yeah, that's.

Speaker 4 (59:36):
A great idea. Why not just a clean and one
of those little foamy rollers with a clean sleeve on it,
and then that would help just flatten that surface out.

Speaker 12 (59:47):
And with regard to the glue peter, I mean there
are many, I guess versions of PVA glue from your
very basic sort of stuff. Is there any particular suggestion
you would make there?

Speaker 4 (01:00:01):
I think you could use. No, I mean you probably
don't necessarily need to use in the exterior one. So
there are PVAs that are suitable for exteriors. Just a
good quality PVA glue will be fine. Or you know,
if you go somewhere like the raisine shops which also
sell wallpaper, they've probably got some adhesives there that they
could recommend. Right, my pleasure, take care of them your

(01:00:26):
new Stork Sept. B. We're talking all things building and construction,
and that's a fairly broad palette that we get to
paint with, so let's rip into it. David, Hello, Yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:00:36):
Good morning. I've got a daughter that's looking at buying
a house up north and it's got a de chromastic
or a stone on tile roofing that the stones have
mostly come off on. We've got a building report down
on it and it's showing signs of rust on it,
and there's no building paper on the underside.

Speaker 4 (01:00:56):
Yeah, that wouldn't be uncommon.

Speaker 13 (01:00:58):
No, it's a nineteen seventies house, so I heard that
that it's uncommon. What's the is conversation going to be
a big problem with it leaking, and is painting it
going to give you a a treating it and painting
it going to give you a fix that will last
for a while till they can save up. As normal

(01:01:19):
most house first.

Speaker 4 (01:01:21):
Home buyers, they're going to be stretching.

Speaker 13 (01:01:23):
Yeah, they love the house. There's a couple of other
small problems than that, but that's the main one. That's
sort of is like a red flag. But whether or not,
it's a set of three houses joined together, So this
is the mark.

Speaker 4 (01:01:39):
Okay, yes, I'm with you can sometimes be a bit
challenging in those situations doing a reroof you know, like
where does well, you know where your roof stops, but
how do you then if you were to a replacement.

Speaker 13 (01:01:54):
Yeah, they stepped slightly, You've got by the look of
the pictures. I haven't been there myself, which is a
big problem. I'm down south and they're buying a.

Speaker 4 (01:02:00):
Short and so yeah, look, I think reality for straight.
If it's a nineteen eighties house with a dechromatic roof,
you know, if they're really lucky and no one's ever
walked on the roof, it'll probably be in not bad repair.

Speaker 13 (01:02:18):
But it does show some dense in it and stuff.
So someone who's yeah, which is typical for.

Speaker 4 (01:02:23):
That, it really is. And if you walk on those
roofs and you don't know where you're supposed to walk,
damage can occur really quickly. And then so because there's
so many profiles in the roof, what you'll get is
someone who stands in the wrong part of the sheet
and they crease it, and then that causes not just
a divot or a little hollow in it, but often

(01:02:45):
there's a split in the sheet there, right, and so
those things they can cause leaks, whether it's a big
leak or a small leak. Condensation is a reasonable concern
because obviously there will most likely be condensation on the
underside of the sheet, and if there's no roofing paper
there to hold that until it evaporates, then yes, you'll

(01:03:07):
get connensation potentially dripping down onto the insulation, and then
depending on what type of insulation, that can become saturated,
and you can see the problem that's likely to occur.
Look again, I think that if it's if it's not
causing any obvious leaks now, and while there might be
some small damage, it's modest or within reasonable expectation, then

(01:03:33):
you could go, Okay, if I got it painted, would
it give me ten years accepting the fact that painting
it's not going to be the solution. Painting it's going
to extend its life and give you enough time to
save up for a reroof, which is likely to be
needed at sometime in the future. The other thing that
if they are serious about the property, would what will

(01:03:57):
change the cost of that reroof is whether or not
there might be some asbestos material in there, and yeah,
safe issued guidance, it's probably already going back seven or
eight years now, a couple of years ago where they
identified a number of roofs of that vintage that did
actually contain asbestos. And what that means is that instead

(01:04:20):
of you know, the roof of turning up, ripping the
sheets off, throwing them in a skip and doing a reroof,
you've got to get approved contractors and to remove it
and then pay for the disposal. And a couple of
years ago project that I was aware of, you know,
the cost of removing it was in the sort of
fourteen to sixteen thousand dollars for an average size roof,

(01:04:43):
and then you've still got to do the reroof, so
in the back of their mind they either get it
tested now so you know, or just bear in mind
that if you press go on the contract, that might
be an additional cost at some time in the near future.

Speaker 13 (01:04:59):
So can you get a roofing company to come out
and give you a quote on the roof if you
don't own the house?

Speaker 4 (01:05:05):
Yeah, I tell you what. A number of companies. In fact,
I will just use Google earth right to do their quotes.

Speaker 13 (01:05:13):
Now, okay, but we need to test for asbestos first.

Speaker 4 (01:05:16):
Red testing would need to be done. Yeah, I would.
I would. If you if you know that you're probably
going to be there long enough to do the replacement,
then that would be a really good thing to know. Definitely, okay,
and they will come out and test it for you. No,
typically not. I know that there's mobile testing services, but
they tend to be for large commercial sites. Typically, what's

(01:05:40):
required as a sample to be delivered to a laboratory
or sent to a laboratory that that becomes a bit
of a challenge too, because you don't own the boys
your house, children don't own the house yet, and you're
asking permission of the owner. Can I take a little
sample or a snip a little bit of the material
off to test it, and they might go, well, no,

(01:06:01):
we're not going to extend you that, right, in which
case that's that's there because they still own it.

Speaker 13 (01:06:07):
Right, Okay, that's fair enough.

Speaker 7 (01:06:10):
We'll give us something to work by.

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
Absolutely, got time for one more quick question.

Speaker 7 (01:06:13):
Go for it.

Speaker 13 (01:06:14):
The windows are planted on. It's a brick Vanier house
with shiplack vertical, yes, and then the windows are recessed
in between the bricks. But have got the shiplack with
no flashings on? Yes, it's got a wide eaves the
windows within probably one hundred and fifty two hundred to
the top yep. To flix the top flashing? Could you

(01:06:37):
batten out top and bottom and put say a piece
of rusticated ply down over the windows for a head
of flashing? Is that acceptable?

Speaker 4 (01:06:45):
So the way that it's detailed at the moment, they've
got the shiplap ply and that doesn't extend over the
shiplap cladding, it doesn't extend over the upper lip or
the upper extrusion of the window. It's tucked in.

Speaker 13 (01:06:58):
Behind the flashing know nothing, yeah, okay, yep. And it's
been like that since they got I think what's made
it worse is they've painted it black, has cut all
a timber.

Speaker 4 (01:07:07):
And oh yeah, okay, the.

Speaker 13 (01:07:10):
Worst thing possible, but that's life.

Speaker 4 (01:07:12):
Yeah, I mean in terms of how it's actually performing.
Given if let's say it's got a five hundred or
six hundred eve and from the underside of the safe
to the top of the windows, like one hundred and
fifty millimeters or so, wind would have to be driving
that rain and almost horizontal for there to be any
moisture that hits that small piece of cladding. So realistically,

(01:07:36):
it's probably not causing a leak. But if you wanted
to fix it, and I can see why you would, yeah,
you could simply remove that little bit of cladding, batten
it out, and then bring some ply over. You could
even just have it extending over the upper lip of
the extrusion and the cladding itself acts as a flashing.

Speaker 13 (01:07:56):
And then repaint that and you're fine.

Speaker 8 (01:07:58):
Yep.

Speaker 13 (01:07:58):
No, it's more for potentially, you know, ten years down
the track, if they decided to sell the house, they're
going to get the same questions asked.

Speaker 4 (01:08:05):
For sure or sensible solution sounds great? Take care all best, David,
Thank you, boba. If you've got a question of building nature,
which is hey, look, it's a pretty wide palette that
we get to play with. We can talk all things
building and construction quick text. Hey, after a few years

(01:08:25):
high peek, after a few years of kids slamming the doors,
the door handles have come loose on the doors. The
screws have come loose, and tried different ones, but now
they won't tighten. God any tips on how to repair.
If it's kind of a modernish handle, Sometimes the screws
go right through to the plate on the other side

(01:08:45):
of the door. So I'm assuming that that's not the case,
because if that is, you can just tighten them up right.
But if they are screws that go into the wood
of the door and that's become loose over time, you
might just want to take the handle, take the screw out,
take the handle off, get a little bit of a
match stick or something like that with a bit of PVA,
pop that into the existing hole, and then put the

(01:09:06):
screw wos back in once the PVA is set, because
that will just give some purchase for the thread of
the screw that might be the go quite useful. The
old the other day on a hinge. Had to move
a hinge a couple of millimeters, which is always tricky
because the screw wants to go back in the old
hole right, so you can't move the hinge over. As
it happened, it was like two millimeters that I needed

(01:09:28):
to move it back, So same sort of thing. It
wasn't matches. I just made a little bit of timber,
popped that in with a dob of PVA, and then
screwed them in next to it, and that worked.

Speaker 7 (01:09:40):
So well.

Speaker 4 (01:09:40):
I'm sure I measured it a couple of times, but
still ended up with a hinge in the wrong place.
I don't know how, but that happens. Oh eight hundred
and eighty ten eighty is the number to call when
asbestos goes to a disapproved disposal site. What happens to
it then? From Roger good question. Basically, it's more nothing
actually happens to the asbestos, bar the fact that it's

(01:10:05):
buried in such a way and in such a location
that no one's likely to get to it again, as
opposed to a situation that I recall a couple of
years ago, where there had been some illegal dumping. Effectively,
it sounds like you know, Farmer Joe said to his mates, Oh,
just back the truck down and tip down the back

(01:10:27):
of the farm because I'm never going to use it.
We'll dig a hole and we'll just tip some building
material and some of it was asbestos in there.

Speaker 14 (01:10:33):
Well.

Speaker 4 (01:10:34):
Of course, fast forward fifty years and Farmer Joe's back
paddock has become a suburb. The excavators come in, start
clearing the top soil and discover all of this old
asbestos that have been dumped there decades before. So Roger,
it's more about there are tip sites available across the
country that are dedicated as basically hazardous waste, so materials

(01:11:00):
deposited there, it stays there ideally forever, never to be
uncovered accidentally. So it's it's on a register. That's what
happens to it. There's no other safe way of kind
of containing or disposing it lanfill, so that's word will
go and we'll just stay there. It is seven one.

Speaker 1 (01:11:18):
Measure twice, call once on eighty ten eighty the resident
builder with Peter Wolfcamp and Independent Building supplies the future
of Kiwi Building Today News talksb.

Speaker 4 (01:11:32):
Knowing that we've got an expert on mold coming up
after the news at eight o'clock. We've had a whole
bunch of texts around sort of issues of ventilation and
mold and so on, and I had a quick look
online to find there's a phrase, actually I think I
heard it on maybe on Kerry Show, just around ventilation
and so on, and it's this German word which apparently

(01:11:53):
has become very popular in the world of TikTok round
a practice that the Germans has called luften luften, which
is the German practice of airing the house out all
year round, including this idea that even in the midst
of winter, houses in Germany typically good quality joinery, good
quality glazing, well insulated and so on. It might be

(01:12:16):
minus three or four outside, but people will still get up,
open the doors up, all the windows up for ten
fifteen minutes. Lets all of that humidity and moisture that's
built up from occupation during the winter out and then
there's this sort of looften idea. I think it's a
great idea, just get up in the morning, an idea,
regardless the conditions, open the doors and windows, all that

(01:12:38):
fresh air out. So we'll talking a little bit about
that with Steve McNeil after the news at eight quick
text as well, Hey Pete, who is responsible for a
small retaining wall repairs or replacing? Is it both parties?
Is it the high side of the low side? The
neighbor on the high side says it's our responsibility because
we're on the low side. Your thoughts, well, Joe, I

(01:13:00):
think your neighbor is possibly right, but probably completely incorrect.
So it's relates to where the boundary is. So if
it's if the retaining wall is on your side of
the boundary, then the wall is your responsibility. If it's
on their side of the boundary, then it's their responsibility.
And the other way is often who gets the who's

(01:13:23):
got the benefit of it?

Speaker 8 (01:13:24):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:13:24):
So if I added a retaining wall on the boundary
because I wanted to level out my section and I'm
on the high side, then ultimately I'm responsible for it,
but that retaining wall should be on my side. So
short answer is it's all about the boundary mentioned earlier.
If someone was talking about roofing and repairs and so on.

(01:13:46):
Just a quick story for me before we go to
the next break music. Oop, here we go. I quite
like this little bit of music about being here, so
I read again. It was a brand survey about satisfaction

(01:14:07):
and people who had contractors doing work and the work
was really good gave a certain satisfaction level people. Interesting enough,
when they did a deep dive into this, people that
had had let's say, someone had made a mistake but
they fixed it, their satisfaction level or rating for that
contractor was even higher because they had fixed it, which

(01:14:28):
I quite like. And then I had an incident this
week where I had some scaffolding installed onto a concrete
tile roof in order to get access to part of
the roof further away from the edge. Right. It was
a Dutch gable that needed replacement, and the guys put
the scaffold up awesome, launched it across onto the concrete
tile roof, which is always a little bit tricky. And

(01:14:51):
then when it came time to pull the scaffold down
the job was done, there was a broken tile, and
so I said, really sorry, guys, but there's a broken
tile there. Without hesitation, the owner of the business rang
me said leave it with us, we'll get it sorted,
and sure enough they did. So that putting it right
is the really really key thing. So that's that's super important.

(01:15:14):
Oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty the number to call.
They were my heroes of the day. I'm gonna I
was thinking do I name the company or not because
they won't feel good about having made the mistake, but
the Boddy awesome job and fixing it as well. Right,
we'll take a short break. We'll be back with Judy
in just a moment.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
Begging what they've forgot to mention on that YouTube video
The Resident Builder with Peter Wilfcamp and Independent Building Supplies
the future of Kiwi Building Today.

Speaker 3 (01:15:40):
Call Oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty News Dogs their b.

Speaker 4 (01:15:44):
Your news dog'sp Judy.

Speaker 11 (01:15:45):
Good morning, Good morning Peter, thank you for taking my call.
What I'm ringing about is my granddaughter bought a house,
a nineteen sixties house and there was a bit of
marking on the ceiling. So it's had a new roof
put on it, but they've still got problems with the
moisture inside and the walls. So they moved into the house,

(01:16:05):
but it's moved out because they've got a new baby.
I've had a p and a builder go through and
they're trying to find what's wrong with it. And the
only thing they think it can be is maybe it's
sort of it's sealed itself. The house is sort of
you know, sealed. There's no air getting through.

Speaker 7 (01:16:22):
Sure, but we were in there.

Speaker 12 (01:16:25):
They did open the windows.

Speaker 11 (01:16:26):
But now she's thinking of putting a DVS system in,
So will that stop these patches on the wall?

Speaker 7 (01:16:33):
That's on my questions.

Speaker 4 (01:16:35):
I tell you what I mean. I can offer up
a response, but it would be really interesting to put
that to our guest after eight o'clock, who is doctor
Steve McNeil from Brands. They've been doing some long term
study around, you know, the condition of New Zealand houses,
and without letting the cat of the bag too much,
you know, one of the shocking statistics is that about

(01:16:57):
fifty percent of New Zealand houses report visible mold. And
so in this instance, a quick crapp like questions about
the house. It's of what vintage?

Speaker 11 (01:17:08):
Roughly nineteen sixties okay, yeah, so nineteen sixties house, so
prior to having insulation in the exterior walls. I didn't
ask her that, and she said to me she thought
there was bats in the wolves, but I feel that
there wouldn't be.

Speaker 7 (01:17:26):
But that's my opinion.

Speaker 4 (01:17:27):
Well, it's possible if the house has had a retrofit
subsequent to that, but certainly in the nineteen sixties it
wasn't required and so it's unlikely to be in there
exterior cladding you know, war or you know with the
woods yep, Okay, yeah, Look, certainly raising the temperature, adding ventilation,

(01:17:50):
having really good extraction will help keep the humidity inside
the house to a more controllable level or a more
reasonable level, and that will impact on the mold. But
one of the things we're going to be talking about
with Steve is, you know, the types of mold that
we see inside our wall envelopes and how that occurs.

(01:18:11):
And I think there's like there's a I'm almost hesitant
to use the phrase, but there's this sort of an
idea of floating around and building circles at the moment
around are we creating kind of a leaky buildings two
point zero scenario where good thing, we've made our houses
more air tight. Good thing we've made them, we've got
more insulation in them. Potentially, are we then trapping moisture

(01:18:34):
inside the building and not allowing it to escape or
to be regulated in some way. Now, that's not the
situation for your daughter's place. But it's a general big
issue anyway. But I think in their case, adding some
ventilation and adding some heat to the property will make
a difference for.

Speaker 11 (01:18:54):
Them, okay, and it will get rid of these sort
of quite big patches on the wall. They wouldn't have
to take the linings off of them.

Speaker 4 (01:19:03):
I think typically if you were to clean it, and
there's some really effective cleaners, you know, like interior cleaners
that are designed to address issues of mold and so on,
and then I would use some special paints in terms
of a stained blocker just to seal that surface really well,
and then top coats from there. I mean, and look,

(01:19:25):
if it's like I've seen mold on walls where it's
it's literally you know, you could scrape it off with
a knife, right, So I presume it's not that. It's
more a shadowing thing where you can see mold there
on the surface without it being embedded in the material.

Speaker 7 (01:19:45):
Yeah that's what it looks like.

Speaker 4 (01:19:46):
Yeah, okay, Yeah, certainly some ventilation will help. But if
you can do stay listening for our guests in the
next half hour of the show.

Speaker 6 (01:19:55):
I will definitely do that.

Speaker 4 (01:19:56):
Nice to chat with you all the very best. You
take care of bother them. Just with regard to that
story that I told about the scaffold as it came
back to repair the crack tile tiles. Actually someone six.
Don't name them because there's a possibility they only fixed
it because you're Pete wolf Camp. No, I don't think so.
I think they're just a really good company and I've

(01:20:17):
used them before and they probably want to keep working
with me in the future. And so that's what contractors do.
You look after people if you want to stay in
business for a long time. That's the golden rule. Oh,
eight hundred and eighty ten eighty. We get one quick
call after the news then our guest doctor Steve McNeil
from Just Brands after eight.

Speaker 3 (01:20:36):
O'clock, turning ohs into She'll be right.

Speaker 1 (01:20:46):
The resident builder with Peter wolf Camp and Independent Building
Supplies the future of Kiwi Building today. Call eight hundred
eighty News talks.

Speaker 4 (01:20:56):
There'd be news talks. They'd be It's a resident builder
on Sunday with me Pete wolf Camp, and we're talking
all things building and construction with a particular focus this morning.
My next guest is doctor Steve mcdeal from brands, so
we're only talking mold. But Emil a meal, thank you
for waiting. You had a quick question about asbestos.

Speaker 14 (01:21:16):
Oh yeah, yeah, I just heard the tail interviews, like
I haven't heard the whole lot. But I had someone come,
I've got I live in a rental. Someone come and
talk a tile off to try and get to the wastes.
And I'm just I'm just a bit m yeah, but

(01:21:39):
anxious about it all. I thought, well, he's left the
tile in the garden. What like, I'm just worried about
the whole the whole thing, you know, like it doesn't need.

Speaker 4 (01:21:56):
When you say took a tile off and left it
in the garden, is it a concrete roof tile?

Speaker 9 (01:22:01):
It's our tile off?

Speaker 6 (01:22:02):
The Hello?

Speaker 4 (01:22:06):
How do you know that though?

Speaker 7 (01:22:08):
Because I've been told before that it is.

Speaker 4 (01:22:12):
By someone who knows trades many Okay, all right, then look,
I would I would probably go back to the contractor
or to the firm that employs them, and just then
I think what I would suggest you do is you

(01:22:33):
ring them tomorrow morning, first thing, and go hey, look, irang,
there's been no action. My next phone call is going
to be to work safe, right, And unless you really
want work safe investigating. Then I suggested to come back
and address this issue in a safe and suitable manner,
because I've had another text actually someone who's saying, look,

(01:22:54):
a neighbor is starting to do quite a lot of work.
They don't have building consent, they're removing material. My suggestion
to them is your phone work safe. They triage it,
they typically make it and me yet harm incident, and
they'll come out and they'll investigate. So if the people
have not done the right job, I'd suggest that you
just say you need to sort it out. Otherwise, my

(01:23:15):
next scholers to work.

Speaker 14 (01:23:17):
Safe, Well, I'm just worried about like it's like, well, I.

Speaker 4 (01:23:21):
Think if it's there and you're not near it and
you're not touching it and it's at soon, it's a
not you know, I don't know that I would lose
any sleep about the fact that it's there. Right, So
it typically the risk is when the fibers become airborne
and friable, and that's not necessarily the situation for.

Speaker 14 (01:23:42):
You because it was just like one tile.

Speaker 4 (01:23:46):
Yeah, yeah, look, I would certainly get back to the
contractor immediately on as so as you can on Monday
inform them that you've had some advice that the next
people you should call is work safe and take it
from there. Sorry to hear that that's the situation. And
to be fair, I would have thought that most contractors
were better than that these days. You know, any of
us that are reasonably experienced, we know what the raw

(01:24:06):
are and there's really no excuse for not following them.

Speaker 8 (01:24:10):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:24:10):
Oh, it is nine minutes after eight, and it's my
great pleasure, I think for the first time on the
show to have a I know I've met Steve over
the years, but to have you on the show, doctor
Steve McNeil, a very good morning, or to your friends,
doctor mold how does that work? Thanks better, no trouble
at all. Pleasure Hayle. Let's start at the beginning. Brands

(01:24:33):
as part of their like most people, I think, when
they think about brands, think about brand's appraisals on you know,
a tube of sealant or a building product or something
like that. But there's there's I know, there's a lot
more that goes on, including this sort of long term
or longitudinal studies of like real houses with real people
living in them. Is that part of the work that

(01:24:55):
you've been involved in.

Speaker 7 (01:24:57):
Yeah, yeah, definitely better. So if you look at the
long term sort of the long name of brands that's
Building Research Association, there's a really strong research opponents to
what we do. And so I've been part of a
team that's recently just finished a really large piece of
field work called Heat two. So that's a survey of

(01:25:17):
around seven hundred and fifty homes in the country. We've
had really really detailed both energy, temperature, humidity monitoring of
people's homes, yes, over the course of twelve months, so
it's really quite detailed work with a whole part of
different surveys as well, so you know, asking all the
questions about how people are using at homes, how they're

(01:25:38):
experiencing overheating, had experiencing damp and mold and those kind
of things. And one of the one of the really
you know, astounding findings from that is, you know, fifty
percent of our homes have visible mold rater than a
four piece of paper. So it's it's quite a large amount.

Speaker 4 (01:25:54):
So when you say an so that's a patch of
mold that's visible on walls and ceilings that would be
as large as a piece of a four paper.

Speaker 7 (01:26:03):
Yeah, yeah, and it's it's you know, one of these
things that can be quite a health risk as well obviously,
but you've also got damage to the building longer term
to think about. Yeah, Like I said, it was the
second edition of this heat study, so we did an
earlier one and finished around two thousand and one, I

(01:26:25):
think it was. And if you look at what we
saw in bedrooms overnight from that study, we were seeing
around an average of thirteen degrees as the temperature of
the bedroom. That's changed recently to around sixteen degrees in
this survey. And we think a large part of that is,
you know, you've got things like warm up here, we
homes happening, so more insulation going in. But also if

(01:26:46):
you look at the original heap from near early two thousands,
in the sample of four hundred homes, it was about
four heat pumps, right, and now it's about sixty percent
of buildings have heat pumps. So we've got a lot
more efficient heating in our homes than what we've what
we had back then.

Speaker 4 (01:27:04):
So I mean, part of this is really good to hear, Like,
the numbers are still not great. If it's fifty percent
of houses, that's not great. But I think for those
of us who have been in this space for a while,
I'll just speak for myself, we tend to have kind
of a quite negative approach to housing in a sense
that we go, we know what all the faults and
failures are. But it is genuinely good news to hear

(01:27:28):
that in some cases some New Zealand houses are actually
quite a number of them are better than they were
twenty years ago.

Speaker 7 (01:27:37):
Yeah, and it's probably more a case of well, the
way people are using their homes to change it and
they've got access to easy to use heating. I think
we've still got a huge number of homes that need
a lot of work, you know, the retrofit side of
what we have in the country. So if you look
we've got sort of around I think it's about too
million properties. Look at the last that's indeed data and

(01:27:58):
us go on two million private dwellings. If you look
at sort of the last excreme, maybe the last twenty
years of buildings that have got double glazing and you know,
some some form of insulation that leaves a huge amount
you know that that are going to be single glazed problems,
missing insulation walls, and it's of the scale that the building.
You know, the industry can't build its way on that problem.

(01:28:18):
We can't replace those buildings so capacitive, you know, industry
running at full capacity would take decades to get through
that level of work. So it would have to be
a retrofit kind of scenario to to really improve some
of these older stocks.

Speaker 4 (01:28:32):
And of course some of that retrofit work is quite extensive.
You know, like, arguably, you could go, hey, look, if
i've got single glazing, it's kind of low hanging fruit.
Right in most cases, probably ninety five percent of cases,
it's it's a relatively straight forward process to go, I'm
going to take that single glazing out. I'm going to
retrofit some double glazing into that space. But once we

(01:28:54):
reach walls and hard to reach underfloor areas and so on,
it becomes a little bit more challenging. So the lack
of insulation is that in and of itself a reason
that we have so much more in our houses.

Speaker 7 (01:29:08):
Yeah, that's one of the major contributors. And also ventilation
as well is a big one, yep. So I mean,
if you look at what happens on the on the
inside surface of a building, that's really controlled by the
way people are living and what those service seperatures are.
And so that's that's down to your heating and ventilation
and your level of insulation, and that doesn't get into

(01:29:28):
the space where what's happening inside the building cavities as well,
So what's happening inside roof spaces for example, where we're
seeing increased reporting of moisture and roofs yep in recent
in recent years. So, yeah, the insulation is a big
part of it, but we also need to be mindful
that we really have to ventilate. Well, you know, as
a nation, we've never really done it that well. We've

(01:29:49):
just kind of got away with it with buildings that
are relatively leaky. Yes, but now we're at the point where,
you know, we're building a little bit more air tight,
which is great for keeping heating, but it's really exposing
that we're not ventilating properly, and it's it's something that
we're trying to address at the moment.

Speaker 4 (01:30:05):
And so our co requirements around ventilation is it's a
bit out a date to be blunt, that's that.

Speaker 7 (01:30:14):
Would be my opinion of Yeah, yeah, five percent. The
four area for open windows basically as your typical compliance
pathway for domestic drollings, and we seriously need some compliance
pathways for say mechanical ventilation that allows the industry to
actually grow. You know, it's establish a good set of
rules around it, make sure it gets done well. But

(01:30:35):
but that's that's you know, the sort of thing that's
definitely happened overseas and it makes a big difference to
health productivity, all those things.

Speaker 4 (01:30:44):
Can I start with, I don't know, we've already been chatting,
but just a question what is mold like? If if
you have to say, what not so much? How does
it get there? But what actually is it? If I
go in and I, you know, go to the back
of the wardrobe and I find that there's a blackish
patch on the plasterboard, what actually.

Speaker 7 (01:31:04):
Is It's a it's a living organism. It's a it's
a fungus. It's yeah, it's and it's not actually the
presence of it on the wall that's really the big
issue for people. It's it's it's what comes off and
gets into the air. It's the spores that get into
the ear and those kinds of things that are really
the thing that that has a health impact.

Speaker 4 (01:31:23):
Right so people when they talk about mold will talk
about you know, stacky botros. So is that a particular
type of mold and is that particularly hazardous to human health?

Speaker 7 (01:31:36):
Yeah, that that's probably one of the worst ones we've
got around, and that was prevalent in a lot of
the leaky buildings. You have a large amount of water
that was accumulating inside walls that that can be quite toxic.

Speaker 4 (01:31:47):
Yes, And how is it that that develops and you know, like,
how do you like, do you get a good mold?
Probably not, but you get one that's not serious to help.

Speaker 7 (01:31:59):
Pensylm was derived from from molds. You know there are
there are good molds out.

Speaker 4 (01:32:03):
There, Okay, but yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:32:06):
It's the funny thing is people say, you know, associated
only with condensation, and that's one thing to be to
be wary of. So mold will actually grow when the
RELs of humility gets above about eighty percent. So it's
it's one of these things that if it stays wet
enough for long enough on the surface or damp enough,

(01:32:26):
it doesn't have to be actually you know, physical water
drops there. Yes, it can, it can. It can start
to grow. If it gets too cold, it will slow down.
So that's really really cold spaces will not tend to
grow it. And it's you know, if you look at
the sort of there's a few technical teams I won't
check out there, but when when you when you increase

(01:32:48):
that relative humility even more, that the rate of growth
speeds up quite a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:32:52):
Right.

Speaker 7 (01:32:53):
For example, if you were if it was around eighty percent,
you're on a surface for for a month, you'll you
start to see some mold. But if it was around
ninety five percent, you see for some species, you'll see
mold within a few days.

Speaker 4 (01:33:05):
And look, I was sort of presentation the other day
where they had sort of a twelve month serve a
relative humidity for Auckland, Wellington and christ Church. Auckland regularly
for an extended period of time was above ninety percent
relative humidity.

Speaker 7 (01:33:21):
Yep. And that's also the danger when you're when you're
looking at just look at relativity and without taking temperature
into account. Right, So when you bring that outside air
at relativity into your house, you change the temperture of
it so that that actually changes the relative humidity. So
it's not as bad as saying that Auckland's always going
to be ninety five in the building because the change

(01:33:42):
in temperature will change what that relative humidity is.

Speaker 15 (01:33:44):
Yes, but the thing is it is high enough at
Auckland that for I think it's it's thirty percent of
the year forty odd percent of the year that it
is wetter outside than you would like inside.

Speaker 7 (01:33:58):
If you're trying to keep the rh between forty and
sixty percent under a normal temperature. Yep. Absolutely, it's it's
a big problem for Auckland especially, and any we're anywhere
really north of about New Plumbus and Hamilton, Yep. It
becomes more and more of an issue because you're you're
at this place where you're relying on dilution as your

(01:34:19):
primary means of getting rid of that moisture. But if
the ear that you're diluting it with through outside has
got plenty of moisture in it, you're you're you're in
a hiding is nothing to actually get rid of it.

Speaker 4 (01:34:30):
Sometimes it's a particular geographical challenge, isn't it For certain regions,
which I think we're only just starting to understand that.
It's it's like we're in an environment where it's because
you know, you can't change the relative humidity outside right
there's nothing we can know about that. No, we're not
changing the climate in these areas, but we are going

(01:34:50):
to have to learn to deal with it. So I'm
going to take a short break. I'm going to come
back and what I'd really like to do is go, Okay,
so if you fifty percent of our houses have got
visible mold the size of an a four bit of paper,
what do we do as homeowners? As tenants?

Speaker 8 (01:35:05):
You know?

Speaker 4 (01:35:05):
What are the things that because I think some of this,
if we're really honest, is operate error right, a lack
of awareness, and so we're not using our houses right
in order to control the mold. And we're going to
talk about that straight after the break, Doctor Steve McNeil
with me. We'll be back in just a moment.

Speaker 1 (01:35:21):
And helping you finish that five minute fixed You started
the resident Builder with Beeterwolfcamp and Independent Building Supplies.

Speaker 3 (01:35:29):
The future of Kiwi Building.

Speaker 1 (01:35:31):
Today call oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty news talks.

Speaker 4 (01:35:34):
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Speaker 3 (01:36:38):
News talk zebby.

Speaker 4 (01:36:40):
With me this morning. Doctor Steve McNeil from Brands or
Dr Mold to his mates. So we've got a house.
We know that the surveys out there right, seven hundred
and fifty houses long term survey, fifty percent of them
reporting Mold as occupants. Whether we own it, whether we
rent it. What do we do, like basic things that
we should all be doing.

Speaker 7 (01:37:03):
Basic things. You really need to make sure that you're
trying to control the moisture sources in the building. You know,
try and try and draw your clothes outside if you can.
If you can't, you know, make sure you're using it
a dryer that's that's vented to outside. Is the other
the other option, but that obviously comes with the with
the power cost yep.

Speaker 5 (01:37:25):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (01:37:25):
The The other thing is you know, really really basic
stuff like you know, using pots on on on on
the stove, all those using listen pots on the stove
for example. Though those things are dead simple and they
can they can seriously decrease the metamorhure that that you're
pumping out into the building. But also keeping on top
of ventilating the building properly as well is a good thing.

(01:37:48):
One thing that's that's it feels a bit counterintuitive, but
the whole practice of the Guman practice of what they
call shock ventilation, where you go around and you just
open up all the windows first thing in the morning
and then close them and do that kind of thing
every every few hours. If if you don't have a
ventilation system that that's perfectly adequate way to help deal
with with some of that load. You know, we can't

(01:38:10):
have we can't have everyone, you know, living in a
perfect house. You have to deal with what you have exactly.
I think that that's that's quite a practical step and
a really important thing for that is when you when
you open your windows to flush that that moisture out,
don't be afraid to do that when the air is warm.
Sounds really counterintuitive, but within if you as long as

(01:38:32):
it's only open for a few minutes, by the time
you close the windows again, but the heat has not
left all of the materials in the building, and that
holds a lot more heat than what the air was
holding that you just let out. So if you're worried
about comfort, just doing a couple of minutes of everything
wide open and closing it again can actually be quite effective.

(01:38:53):
So we usually did a study in Wellington a few
years ago with a family in a pretty modern house
that we're dealing with with connosation on their on their
frames of their double glade on yes, and we measured
some measures that can and said, hey, look this is
what it's like outside if you just did this and
I think we went from something like an eighty percent

(01:39:14):
chance of finding a realist humidity of a eighty percent
to something like a forty percent chance within a couple
of weeks.

Speaker 4 (01:39:22):
And that literally is as simple as get up in
the morning. Maybe not a quarter past five when I
got up this morning, but get up in the morning,
you know, open the back door, open the front door,
open a couple of windows, let the air circulate through
the house for five minutes, ten minutes, close it up again.
And then, like you say, the heat that's in your

(01:39:43):
walls and you're not losing that, you're just using losing
that moisture that's in the air.

Speaker 7 (01:39:50):
Yeah, I mean, the heat capacity of all the materials
you're building far exceeds what's in the air. You're not
doing it for too long, you know. I had a
study that we did a few years ago on that
ventation house that you came to visit, yes, where we
had one of the one of the new guys was
was was tasked with arriving every morning at exactly at
a clock and opening the windows, conditioning conditioning in one

(01:40:11):
of the rooms to a particular temperature humility. And yeah,
we learned some really interesting stuff from that, and it's
it is really that that short period and there's not
really much benefits of leaving it open for a long
long period after that. Right unless your building gets gets
warm from the sun, you know, you really need to
mobilize that moisture out of materials to get out of

(01:40:33):
the house. And so so it's it can be an
effective thing. I mean ideally, yeah, were to have everyone
having you know, heat recovery, mechanical ventilation, all that kind
of stuff, but you know that stuff that will will
take time for people to eventually get.

Speaker 4 (01:40:51):
The other day, when I was talking with some of
the team, there was a simple two page advisory note
that someone sent to me from Brands Brand's Healthy Homes,
and it's basically about temperature and humidity and and so on.
It's just a two pager. It's really simple. It's bloody
good information, to be fair. I'm going to put a

(01:41:12):
link up on my Facebook page now or shortly if
people want to read, you know, if they want to
go deep dive into this, this information is available. How
would you find the results for the HEP two study.

Speaker 7 (01:41:25):
So that's all on the brand's website Brands dot dot
Crador indeed, and we are about to launch a brand
new one very soon, so within the next month. I'm
I'm sure it's within the next month. And so that's
going to make things a lot more easy to find
because it's that's always been a challenge with any website,
you know, you get more and more information from things,
get to get more of a challenge. But there's been
a really good reorganization done. So that's about to go

(01:41:49):
live very soon.

Speaker 4 (01:41:51):
Fantastic.

Speaker 7 (01:41:51):
So yeah, your link, your link may change.

Speaker 4 (01:41:54):
Yeah, well I'll get this one out because it's a
really simple PDF. You know, print it off, put it
up at home and use it. Steve, thanks so much
for your time this morning. Actually, here's a quick tech.
What if it's foggy, would you still open the house up?
Yes you would.

Speaker 7 (01:42:10):
Yeah, if it's colder outside then it's inside. It's it's
going to happen. This moisture in the air, yep. The
amount of moisture in the air is very, very steeply
dependent on the temperature.

Speaker 3 (01:42:21):
Yes, so even if it's cold, even by a couple
of get.

Speaker 4 (01:42:24):
Up, open the doors and windows, ten minutes, close them up,
go for it.

Speaker 7 (01:42:28):
Like when it's when it's pouring down with the rain
and five degrees outside, and you're like, I don't want
to open the windows because it's going to be one
hundred percent outside. The thing is, though, that that ear
that's only five degrees can can hold only a tiny
fraction of the moisture that right is in your building,
So it can still be quite effect of getting rid
of getting rid of moisture. Fantastic, foggy and the same

(01:42:51):
temperature as your house. It's a different story.

Speaker 4 (01:42:53):
Okay, yeah, hey, look this is this has been fantastic.
Well we'll get you back on and go take a
bit of a deep dive into this. But thanks and
thanks so much for joining us this morning.

Speaker 7 (01:43:04):
All right, thanks better, it.

Speaker 4 (01:43:05):
Been pleasure here Steve, your news talks, b Let's get
into the garden. Eight hundred eighty ten eighty four red
climb passed. You can text as well. Nine two nine two,
and I promise you before lunchtime today, I'll put up
this link for this pdf from Brands on my Facebook
page to just search for resident builder. You can find
the link there. And I put up another one actually

(01:43:27):
last week when I was doing some research around the
steps for doing like a granny flat is a really
good graphic that's been released via imby on that as well,
and it highlights the fact that it's not quite as
simple as we all thought it might be. Anyway, the
red climb passed after the break where DIY gets unstuck.

Speaker 7 (01:43:50):
Cal.

Speaker 3 (01:43:50):
Eight eighty ten.

Speaker 1 (01:43:52):
The Resident Builder with Peter Wolfcamp and Independent Building supplies
the future of Kiwi Building. Today News talks EDB. For
more from the Resident Builder with Peter Wolfcamp. Listen live
to NEWSTALKSB on Sunday mornings from or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.