Full Show Podcast: 24 May 2026

Episode Transcript
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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
wolf Camp and Independent Building supplies the future of Kiwi
Building Today News Talks at B.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
A house sizzle even when.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
It's dark, even when the grass is overgrown in the yard,
and even.

Speaker 4 (00:43):
When a dog is too old to bar.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
And when you're sitting at the table trying not to starve,
scissor home even when we are benn, even when you're there.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Houses a home, even when there's got even when you
go around from the ones you love your most.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
Screamed on broken paints, appeeling.

Speaker 5 (01:23):
In front of the word.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Locals, vesper when they're gone and leaving the house even
when wilber Ben, even when you're in there alone.

Speaker 4 (01:40):
Yeah righty oh, let's get into it.

Speaker 6 (01:51):
Good morning, folks, Welcome along to The Resident Builder on
Sunday with me Peter wolf Camp, the Resident Builder. And
this is a show all about building. Well, it's probably
a little bit more than that. Possibly it's also about renovating.
It's also about maintenance. It's also about the rules and regulations.
The products and some of the new ideas that are

(02:12):
floating out around out there about how we build, what
we build, what we're aiming for when we build. I
think there was a discussion I didn't quite get a
chance to be part of it the other night, around
sort of new ideas and expectations. I guess so in
the past, our focus might have been on things like

(02:38):
more of a focus on what the house looks like,
or which way it's orientated, or those sorts of things,
whereas I think is the beginning of an awareness where
people are going Actually, what I want to make sure
my house does is it doesn't leak lots of air
so that it's easier to heat. Maybe it's orientated in

(03:01):
such a way that it doesn't overheat in the summer.
Maybe I want a house that really looks after its
indoor air quality, let's say, rather than focusing on other things,
or in I guess in a perfect world, it's able
to do both things at the same time. So there's
a couple of there's some very very interesting things happening

(03:22):
in terms of how people perceive housing. The other thing
that I have to say I have become pretty obsessed
with this week is understanding the impact of moisture on
buildings as well. That's kind of internal moisture around obviously
things like waterproofing and sign but also that moisture that
we create because we live in a house. If you

(03:44):
want a dry house, the best thing to do is
move out.

Speaker 7 (03:47):
Right.

Speaker 6 (03:48):
Now, that's impractical, because the whole point of having housing
is it gives us somewhere to be. But then, as
I've been working one in a couple of little projects
this week yesterday, the classic example, so a barge board
on a simple barge board, right, small eve at the
end of a building. Barge board comes down and then

(04:09):
the bottom of the barge boarder is cut flush, so
it's a horizontal not a plum cut, horizontal cut, a
level cut. And that was painted and then it was
left for probably about twenty odd years, right, or maybe
a little bit less, maybe fourteen years or so, and

(04:30):
the bottom of that timber, I noticed that the paint
had started to flake and it had started to change color.
And so when I was scraping it back the other day,
you could see where this is something that's elevated, it's
exposed to weather, but it never gets permanently wet in
the sense that it's, you know, two and a half
meters off the ground. It's a relatively short piece of timber,

(04:53):
but just through the decay and the paint work, the
moisture that runs down there hangs around in that little
tear drop of water that you see that hangs on
the underside of a surface, sits there looking for somewhere
to go and innity. If there's a slight gap in
the paint work, it will draw it south up into
the timber. And so once I scraped it all back

(05:15):
the other day, you could see the evidence that moisture'd
been hanging around there in a place that you know,
if it's low down to the ground, or it's trapped,
or it's particularly shady or something like that, you expect
it to do these things. But just water at the
end of a piece of timber was starting to decay.
The face aboard was probably made out of h three
point one. I would have said back then, probably better

(05:36):
treatments are available now than they were there. Anyway, it's
become an obsession for me, I have to say, is
kind of that forensic side of working on a building
that I'm familiar with and then seeing what it's done
over a period of time, and what the main causes.
And I tell you what, when your paint system starts
to break down, that's when you're in for trouble in
terms of decay. Fascinating time, I thought, anyway, right, oh,

(05:59):
but now it's your opportunity to talk all things building
in construction, whether it's new ideas, products, dilemmas. You know,
and we get plenty of those. You do something and
maybe it works, or maybe it doesn't work, or there's
some products that you're unfamiliar with. And again, you know,
increasingly you can go to the large hardware stores if

(06:22):
that's where you shop. I was in one yesterday picking
up a little bit of metal X because I wanted
to use some timber preservative. I needed a few other
little bits and pieces, some jolt screws or box of
or some sealant. As I'm working my way around sealing
up all of those gaps around the exterior cladding. You know,
there's a baffling arrange array of sealants. For example, So

(06:46):
I need a tube of something to fill a gap.
You know, is it to be painted over, is it
not to be painted over, or is it in an
area that's particularly damp where you might have something that
needs some resistance to mold. All of these things are there,
how do you know which one you're choosing? So let's
get into it, and just very quickly before we go
to the break, and more importantly, very quickly before we

(07:08):
take your calls, because the lines are open. The number
is eight hundred and eighty ten eighty. You can also
text three which is nine two nine two is zbzb
from your mobile phone and if you'd like to email
me you more than welcome. It's Pete atnewstok SEDB dot
co dot nz. Last week on the show, I mentioned
that as soon as the show finished, I was going
to tootle out to the airport fly down to Palmerston North,

(07:30):
which I did to join the Central District's Woodworking Festival
basically which was also hosting the New Zealand Wood Turning
Association's competition, the Golden Chisel Award. It was fabulous, wonderful,
the wonderfully hospitable people and just being there with I

(07:52):
guess kindred spirits, like minded souls with a slight obsession
for timber, and then watching the competition and seeing the skill.
Now the competitions about skill, it's also about speed, and
I guess there's also a little bit of entertainment in
it as well. But watching six people compete to carve

(08:12):
will turn effectively the same item in a limited amount
of time, all starting with a very very similar piece
of timber, basically identical shaped timbers, all macrocarp are all
quite wet. That was quite interesting too, watching people turn
what's essentially saturated timber. But that helps keep the dust
down basically. Anyway, it was a fabulous day and I

(08:34):
very very much enjoyed it and the opportunity to go
down on the end New Zealand flight. It was a
lovely day as well. Radio fourteen minutes after six, the
lines are open. The number to call, Oh, eight hundred
eighty ten eighty. What's on your mind? What would you
like to talk about? What dilemmas, challenges issues? There's a
piece of legislation that I discovered this week as well.

(08:56):
I've been doing some more study around kind of building
and consumer guarantees. I'll get a bit more information for you,
but I might run one of those terribly unscientific texts
poles later on because I've got an interesting moot to
pose to you. Stay tuned. Oh, eight hundred eighty ten
eighty is the number to call.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
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 Talks B.

Speaker 6 (09:31):
There we go. Yeah, what I was looking at was
the course. This week I've continued doing my the modules
as part of the introduction to the New Zealand Institute
of Building Survey's course. So I've completed well, I've actually
I've completed five modules now. The last two were Wednesday Thursday.

(09:53):
But one of the things that came up is a
pieceive legislation that's actually in the Building Act where the
builder or the on seller must hand over to the
homeowner any documentation with regard to warranties for the products
that have been used in the building, particularly around the

(10:13):
maintenance schedule of it. So, for example, some types of cladding,
there's a manufacturer's requirement that says that in areas where
it's not washed by rain, you physically need to wash
the surface once a year. Failure to do so essentially
voids the warranty. Doesn't necessarily mean that the product will

(10:36):
fail any quicker or anything like that. It's just quite
simply it will if there was ever an issue in
the future and the person from the company came out
and looked at it and said, okay, when did you
wash it last? And you went, I didn't. I haven't
washed it. Didn't know that I needed to wash it. Well,
why didn't you know that you needed to wash it? Well,
no one ever told me. So it's the builder's responsibility

(10:58):
to provide that information to the owner. And it's there
in the legislation. This isn't nice to do. This is
a piece of legislation. It's something you have to do.
I would be really interested to know, if you've done
a new build in the last couple of years, did
you get from the builder, the developer, the on seller,
as they're described in the legislation, a file that said,

(11:22):
here are the things that you have to do. Here's
the warranties attached to the various products inside the house
or outside the house, and here are the maintenance schedules
attached to them. Read them, become familiar with them. Even
if they don't tell you, read them. Did they give
them to you? Text me or call me? Actually, and

(11:42):
about your experience. I again, a minor fascination for me
over the last couple of days is how many people
do that and what systems are there in place to
ensure that people are informed about the maintenance required on
their houses. Give me a call, oh, eight hundred eighty
ten eighty to another to call hello, Claire, Hi, Claire.

Speaker 8 (12:04):
Good high. We had we got an upstairs balcony and
we got some work done on it about four years ago,
and the builder said that the height didn't meant to
meet the new code, and his suggestion was to put
a metal beam all the way galvanize all the way

(12:26):
around the top of the of the balcony so that
it raised the height of the wall. Yes, so he
did that, but what happened is that the top of
the beam may not have been exactly leveled all the
way around because of the slope. And when he put

(12:46):
the beam on, he didn't like the looks. So he
dug a little hole to put the beam in. So
the beam, which is I suppose about if you put
your fingers together, Yeah, it's a it's a little hole
that holds the metal beam all the way around and

(13:07):
it is in set into the top cap of the wood,
so the metal about thirty mill below or maybe yeah,
thirty mill below the.

Speaker 9 (13:18):
Level of the wood.

Speaker 8 (13:20):
So obviously it's going to catch water. So we've just
put the rust converter. We've just done it, and it's
just been painted last week. So what we want to
know is what do we do to stop the water
sitting on this piece of metal, which are sitting on
a piece of wood and it's going to go rusty again.

Speaker 6 (13:40):
What a fascinating dilemma. And there's a couple of sort
of legislative and professional things behind what the builder did.
Quick question, in terms of the work that you asked
the builder to do, how is it that they suddenly
fixated upon the height of the balcony. That's not what

(14:01):
you asked them to come and fix.

Speaker 8 (14:03):
I appreciate we were doing a slow so it's he
remade a deck on the bottom of the balcony and
then he said that the height had to be I
don't know about a meat at it. Yeah, and as
was only point nine or something, and so he wanted
one hundred an extra hundred mil to meet the code.

Speaker 6 (14:28):
Despite the fact that the work he was doing had
nothing to do with the building code, it does. You know,
I spent a couple of days in the classroom learning
exactly about this sort of thing in terms of basically
staying in your lane. Right, So I wonder whether is
it one of those situations where the handrail was a

(14:50):
meter above the surface of the deck, But did you
lay like a decking over the top of it? We do, right,
So it was a meter and then that you've added
the decking the platform to it.

Speaker 8 (15:02):
Now I don't think it ever quite was. Okay, the
balcony was in nineteen ninety five, and my understand yes,
but you're right he would have raised it. Not he
would have raised one hundred miles. Yeah, but the balcony
rail is a full well I would call nine inches.
What's that twenty two hundred miles.

Speaker 6 (15:25):
Yeah, yeah, so below the I guess now we're looking
at what's the likely consequences of making that change. So
the handrail or the balcony rail, is it solid, So
it's got lining on the inside, lining on the outside.

Speaker 8 (15:42):
Yeah, yes, yes, it's a cuitcular rail with air in
the middle.

Speaker 6 (15:48):
Right, Okay, And that top cap, that original top cap
that was there, that's a solid piece of timber. Is
it a piece of pine and painted or is it
a piece of seed or something like that.

Speaker 8 (15:59):
It would be pine and painted.

Speaker 6 (16:00):
Pine and painted. And then in order to so he's
inserted like a little plate with a pedestal on it,
and then mounted another rail on top of that. And
when he's fixed the pedestals, the little upstands, he's checked
those into the timber. So he's created a pocket in
the timber.

Speaker 8 (16:18):
Yes, I love the language. Struggling for the length.

Speaker 6 (16:21):
No, no, no, I'm just describing it in ways that yep.
So and so where you had a probably it was
it the timber cat Was it flat or is it?
Does it have a little bit of fall on it?
Does it slope in one direction? The original one, it's

(16:42):
still there.

Speaker 8 (16:43):
Everything that he put it on about four years ago.
The wood, the wood, the water is reasonably flat.

Speaker 6 (16:50):
Okay, all right, So over that surface it's going to
hold a little bit of water, and inevitably it will
cup a little bit, and depending on which way the
grain is, it'll it'll cup up at the edge or
it'll cup in the middle, or something like that. But
either way, there's now a pocket in it and a
bit of metal in there. And a couple of screws.
Those screws will go right through that timber. What's below

(17:10):
this area like it? Is it a habitable space? Can
you Is this on the second floor of a house
and below the deck or the balcony there is a
habitable space a bedroom or something, right? Okay, I can't

(17:32):
say anything other than it's going to cause a problem, right,
And so the top caps should have fall on them,
and they certainly shouldn't have any penetrations through them. And
then if you were going to put a penetration on there,
you wouldn't then make a pocket that will allow water
to sit in there because that can't drain, right, So

(17:54):
that that's going to leak. And if it's if it'll
be leaking now and then almost inevitably it will continue
to leak for a period of time. And what it again,
this is from my sort of learning or from the
workshops this week. You know, watching people have been doing
weather tightness assessments for twenty years describing the impact of

(18:16):
just what seems like an infinitesimal amount of water going
into the same place year after year after year, and
then when you pop the cladding off, watching the impact
of what seems like not a big gap and just
what we expect is usual rain water, and suddenly you
know everything below it is saturated and starting to decay.

(18:40):
So I get where the motivation from the builder, and
it's admirable in the sense that, hey, I've done some work,
which means that the handrail doesn't comply. You need to
be a meter high to comply with the code and
to be safe, so I'm going to add this rail
to it. However, the better approach would have been to

(19:01):
add a bracket either to the inside or the outside
of the upstand and have that coming up and then
put the capping on top of that or the handrail
on top of that. The penetration through the top cap
is the problem because I don't think there's any way
that you can stop that leaking over time, So that

(19:21):
needs to come off, and I get the top rail,
but it can't be fixed through the top like that.
So if it was me, I would probably look at
removing that top rail, removing those pockets. I would be
looking at getting someone to make a flashing for me

(19:42):
that I could install over the top that's got a
bit of fall on it. So the water is going
to run away, and then if you were concerned about
safety from falling and so on, I would be looking
at having a bracket that fitted either to the inside
face or the outside face. And on top of that
I then put a rail that was at a meter high.
But top fixing is going to cause leaks. I can't

(20:07):
be any clear about that.

Speaker 8 (20:08):
Well, given that's been there for a couple of years,
do you think we should now lift the cap of
and check the sturdiness of the material underneath.

Speaker 6 (20:20):
Yes, that would be sensible, Yes, because inevitably water will
sit in that pocket, and even if it's not rain
water as such, it'll just be moisture in the atmosphere
right humidity, condensation, condensation will track along that steel post
and we'll sit there, and then it'll just migrate around
the edges of it, and then eventually it'll follow the

(20:42):
screw and it'll just track inside the building envelope. So yes,
if you were going to make a change, pull that off,
maybe pull the top cap off. You could always treat
that area in an abundance of caution and then put
either a metal cap or some sort of capping over
the top that's got fall on it. Into your brackets
on the outside. You more an interesting dilemma.

Speaker 9 (21:05):
Well, thank you.

Speaker 8 (21:06):
Really hard to explain me.

Speaker 6 (21:08):
You and I get exactly what you're saying. And again
I'm not being overly critical of the builder either, by
the way, I think that their intention was right. No, No,
I just think that in the end. You know, we've
all pretty much learned now that like top fixing through
parapets and upstands and balcony walls almost inevitably leads to

(21:31):
failure in almost every situation.

Speaker 8 (21:35):
But your critical question was you said, is that balcony
over a habitable space? Yah, That's what I had checked
through in my head.

Speaker 6 (21:44):
Yeah, okay, so that's your big concern. You know, if
it's a balcony that extends out from the house and
it's fully framed and lined on both sides, but in
the event that water gets in there, it's just going
to drain out of the bottom. It still my rock,
but at least it's not causing damage to habitable space.
But you know, obviously if it is a habitable space,
or it's close to habitable space, you want to be

(22:04):
able to protect the building.

Speaker 8 (22:07):
Well, it's a complicated that the world of a house
on that.

Speaker 6 (22:10):
Side can be yeah, thank you very much, lovely chatting
with take care everyone else. All the best, all the
best bother then. So a big part of the courses
that I was doing this week were around remediation and
reporting on basically weather tightness and things like that. It

(22:31):
was actually more about property inspections, but there was a lot.
The people who presented the course are like extremely experienced
with the tight remediation experts and so on. They've done
literally thousands of investigations into failure of plotting systems and
so on, you know, over the last twenty twenty five years.

(22:52):
So fantastic body of knowledge from these New Zealand's due
to building surveys members and then watching the photographs going here,
look at this, and what do you think it looks
like when we took the clouding off, and then seeing
what it looks like when you know, in some cases
quite obvious gaps in the cladding or poor detailing roof

(23:12):
to wall junctions embedded, you know, an apron flashing that
doesn't have a kick out at the end, just directing
water in behind the cladding straight down the framing, and
when you pull it off you can just see this
whole wall is just completely rotten where and that's it's
not surprising. But in other instances where a small penetration
or a window or an act of celant or poor

(23:34):
detailing and so on has allowed water into the building
envelope for a period of time, and then when you
come to do the remediation, pull the cladding off and
see just how extensive the decay can be in certain circumstances.
So something like this with a top cap and a
penetration through the top, water will get in there one
hundred percent. I mean, if it's getting into the underside

(23:57):
of my facierboard or my barge board that's two meters
in the air, and we think the water is just
going to drip off, and it's still getting up and
into the timber there. Imagine how much water loves a
flat piece of timber with a gap in it. It's
just going to go straight in through there. Thirty three
minutes after six eight hundred eighty ten eighty is that

(24:17):
number to call? It is six thirty three here in
newstalk said b lines are open. Last week we had
a funny old thing where we're getting through the show,
which is great, and then right at the end is
like five people call. If you're thinking I'll wait for
a little while, don't just call me now. Oh eight
hundred eighty ten eighty.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Vexing what they forgot to mention on that YouTube video
the Resident Building with Peter Wolfcamp and Independent Building supplies
the future of Kiwi building today call oh eight hundred
eighty ten eighty news talks there be.

Speaker 6 (24:50):
Just by the way, in that previous ad break, there
was an ad with my voice in it, which, to
be fair, is STI little bit weird for me to hear.
But anyway, the Home and Garden Show is on this
weekend at starts on Thursday at Eton Park, So this
is these are awesome events, and I'll be there on
Saturday and Sunday presenting one of the expert segments at

(25:14):
twelve o'clock each day. So Saturday and Sunday of this weekend,
this coming weekend, which is also long weekend, it feels
like it's kind of snuck up on Us King's birthday
on Monday, the first of June, which is June is
also a bit scary. But anyway, getting back to the
Home Gun which is on this weekend at Eden Park
from Thursday through to Sunday and midday on Saturday and

(25:37):
Sunday I'll be doing a little presentation which I quite enjoy.
A couple of text messages. A suggestion which is quite
a good one, actually raise the height of the rail
with some timber framing and then cap the whole thing
with a flashing so then there's no brackets whatsoever. Makes
a lot of sense. That would also work nice big
flashing lots of I suppose the tricky thing is always

(26:01):
junctioning into the existing cladding at either end of the balcony,
but that can be achieved as well. Pete. Just going
by that conversation, it appears that home buyers do need
a degree in home building, as builders and developers can
do whatever, and we buyers will be none the wiser.
From Jared, look, I think there is, if not an obligation,

(26:26):
why wouldn't you inform yourself if you're going to be
involved in a building project, whether it's an extensive renovation
or a new build, why wouldn't you spend a little
bit of time looking at the legislation, looking at the
ways in which it protects you. And this was one
of the interesting things from the building surveying course that

(26:47):
I've been doing this week. There's a tremendous amount of
legislation that protects consumers, whether it's a Consumer Guarantees Act,
whether it's the Fair Training Act, or whether it's a
piece of the Building Act which talks about consumer guarantees
as well. And that's the piece that says the builder
or on seller, upon completion of the build, must hand

(27:10):
over to the homeowner all of the relevant warranties and
requirements to fulfill those warranties at the completion of the project.
So you know, if you've installed a cladding type that
requires regular washing, for example, you have to tell the
homeowner that. And it's our responsibilities, the builders, to do

(27:30):
exactly that, and I have a strong suspicion it doesn't
often happen. I do note a couple of systems. So
one of them is a portal. It's an online portal
called gt SO GTE dot com, which a number of
large group home builders used. I've used it in the past,
where you can upload all of that information and then

(27:51):
you pass over ownership of that portal or access to
that portal to the homeowner when you've sold the house.
It's brilliant and simple and straightforward. But if you're not
doing something like GT, then what are you doing to
give homeowners, new owners of that property that you've built
for them, all of the information that they need. Oh

(28:12):
eight eighty the number to call Dennis, good morning.

Speaker 5 (28:16):
Yes, I've got a nine sixties house, ninety series bricks
where the tires of brick tires have been they never
had building paper on. Yeah, you know, is there any
way of insulating there?

Speaker 6 (28:33):
There's a couple of different ways of insulating it. The
most common way would be to remove the lining from
the inside. Then basically it's a little bit finicky and
you sort of staple bits of building paper through the
essentially the rectangles that are created between the studs and
the knogs, and then you put the insulation into there.

(28:56):
There is a system whereby you can inject insulation into
the walls total cavity.

Speaker 5 (29:04):
Wouldn't it?

Speaker 6 (29:04):
Well, it does, And that's always been something that I've
been concerned about because we know that bricks work in
terms of whether tightness. In fact, they're incredibly reliable in
terms of where the tightness because they've got that cavity
behind it. And then you go, well, hang on, if
I then fill that cavity and that water is trapped there.
What happens to that water? So when I've talked to

(29:25):
people involved in this, they've said, well, look what we
do is we do fill the cavity. We recognize the
potential risk in that, and what we do is we
seal the exterior of the brickwork. So it might just
be a clear ceiler, but it stops that moisture ingress.
It stops that water migrating through the brick. And I

(29:47):
guess if you're confident that that's going to work, then
filling the cavity.

Speaker 5 (29:50):
Is filling the cavity.

Speaker 6 (29:54):
Then your option is to remove the interior lining, add
into the building wrap, and then put the insulation in
and replace the interior lining, And I get the dilemma.
I worked on place not long ago that was exactly
in that situation, and I tell you what, it was
quite scary. I was doing the job in about September
and I pulled the lining off just to repair a

(30:16):
section of the wall. And the cold that you could
feel in that cavity, because you know, when you think
about it, you've got the outside world bricks, then you've
got air, and then you've got ten mili of plasterboard
and that's you. That's between you and the outside world.

Speaker 5 (30:32):
Right, Oh well I'll tek about it.

Speaker 6 (30:36):
Yeah, but broadly speaking, those are your options.

Speaker 5 (30:39):
Yeah. Well, thank you very much.

Speaker 6 (30:40):
No trouble at all, Nice to chat with you. By
all the best bye. By the thing. It is quite.
It was, it was quite. It was one of those
It was quite memorable in the sense that I remember
pulling the lining off and then I knew what it
was going to be like beyond that. So you this
is a again a nineteen sixties brick and tile, right,

(31:02):
so bricks, cavity frame, you board on the inside. That
was basically it no installation, no building wrap on the
outside of the building paper. So when you pulled the
lining off, you were exposed to that environment that's created
between the brick and the back of the plaster board.
And it was coal en drafty. So a challenge for

(31:29):
all the houses. Six forty three. We'll take a short
break and cutam after the.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Break, turning Oh's into She'll be right The resident builder
with Peter Wolfcam and Independent Building Supplies the future of
Kiwi building Today Call Oh eight hundred eighty ten eighty
News Talks there'd b.

Speaker 6 (31:48):
Lines are open number call oh eight hundred eighty ten
eighty koreem good morning to.

Speaker 10 (31:52):
You, Good morning, happy Sunday, Pete, good good.

Speaker 6 (31:56):
How can I help?

Speaker 10 (31:58):
Thank you for taking my call pleasure. I just got
quite a curvy one, quite a kind of like a
legal curvy one, and see if you can what's your
ideas on that one? As keeping quick background, we built
a beautiful house for ourselves. We project managed ourselves. We
have done a couple of renos and subdivision, but never
built one from the scratch. With decided let's do one.

(32:18):
The house became finished up. It's almost finished as beautiful.
I had a separate contractors doing different jobs. We are
project manage ourselves. Said like somebody did all the public drainage,
another company did the foundation, all the brick walls, and
then the main contractors that took over from there to
the framing windows and make it the way they've tried

(32:41):
to bring it right to a jip and we took
over from there. So long story short. My one of
my main contractors, which is the one took a huge,
a big build. We worked well right to the probably
I will say to about eighty five nine percent of a.
It was hard to work, but it was working. Was fine.

(33:02):
The last team scene, the last team scene ages just
like before Christmas. It just shorty worked, slap on, slap off,
get out of the dotch as soon as possible, done
and run. And the last day before you go and
I will say like, hey, this this, this, this need
to be done. This needs to be done. This is
not finished. Pluff and this is I had a list

(33:23):
of things and I was going back and forth and
they I said to him, I said, because of that
one as I need to hold some money back and
to finish the job. So shame on me. I signed
the contract, and the contract is saying is I don't
want to name them yet. The contract says is there's

(33:43):
no out of retention money holding. Why is everything finished?
You pay all the money, then we're going to put
you in a list of defects client, then we come
back and fix it for you. So I'm holding up
on that one as much I I am. He knew everything,
and I talked to them and left, and he sent
me a legal email to say, or I don't know

(34:07):
why you hold the money. I said, like, well and
put it this way. I paid ninety six point five
percent of my voices on Timelyanna, not even a day late. Yep,
we're talking about close to a million dollar. Okay, not
a small amount of money to be a small change.
And I'm not a one day late, and this is

(34:27):
a small amount. I hold it. And then you say like, no,
they're defects. They're not unfinished. I'll see, but they unfinished.
Clearly you can see them. No defects. So he didn't listen,
and we were. I offered anything I can do. I
offered say like, hey, I can send the money to
my architects account. Once you finish, you can take the money.
I can send the money to your soliticelect account, your

(34:48):
solicitor's account. This is a list of things need to
be finished. If it's finished, we can take the money.
And he said, like I said, how much more? Garante.
He took me to the claim, not the small claim
because it's about forty thousand. It took me to the
claim and the claim the same thing, saying is well,
connor between Like I would like you got sort of
between you guys before I make a judgment. So what's

(35:08):
my main question comes down? And here is how come
the building industry. How come this contract? How come they
allow people to slap on, slap off, take the money,
then turn around and call it defects. Then they pay
them the money. Then you have to go chase and chase.

(35:29):
We all know I'm not the only and the only
reason I'm doing this, the reason I've got a big
mouth probably can here.

Speaker 11 (35:34):
You know me.

Speaker 10 (35:35):
I don't want to. I don't want to know my name.

Speaker 6 (35:37):
You've been to my place.

Speaker 10 (35:38):
You've been to my place. I run a vitual business
sivent and employees worked from me. You've been to my
place number of times. If you all I can tell it,
I'm not.

Speaker 6 (35:48):
I tell you what I think that the number of this.
There's a couple of things right. One is partly people
think that when a contractor is offered that they have
to accept it, right. So you know. One of the
things with if when you're to go, when you're about
to start a project like this, and lots of people

(36:10):
will be in your boat right or in your shoes.
So you go, so you sit down with the builder.
You have to have a contract. The builder offers a
contract and the person reads through it and goes okay
and signs it. Now the terms offered by the builder
don't necessarily need to be accepted by the homeowner, particularly
in these instances where you know you're so involved in it,

(36:31):
you're really reliant in part on goodwill and the nature
of the relationship right to ensure that that person stays
on task right to the very end, to finish the
building to the standard that you would expect. So if
in the contract that they offered they had that clause
that said, I don't know if it would have been

(36:52):
as obvious as saying I'm just going to do a
rough job and then we'll call it defects and i'll
fix it later, but you have to pay me. But
that's essentially what the contract is. He's been able to
get you to sign that, and you have, and so
you've accepted the contract, and now you to bear the
consequences of that contract. I guess the next thing is

(37:13):
around understanding what the standards actually are. Right, So in
his contract or in the contract there, I would have
hoped that it would have agreed to undertaking the work
under these conditions and to these standards. So the next
thing for you, in terms of a legal approach is
to go, well, actually, I've looked at the work that

(37:33):
you've done and it is not up to the standards,
and you can use the construction contracts, you can use
the legislation, you can use things like the mb Guide
to Tolerances right, which has very clear information around you know,
what's considered a defect and what's considered just poor workmanship

(37:55):
or poor work. And it's got where you have to stand,
what you can see, what distance away, and all the
rest of it. So have a look at the MBI
Guide to Tolerances. It's online, and then you could use
that to then go back through the list of defects
or unfinished work and go, actually, this isn't a defect,

(38:15):
it's unfinished work. This isn't a defect. It's unfinished work
because realistically there shouldn't really be that many defects on
handover because you would fix all of those defects, you know, defects. Again,
we spent a bit of time talking about this in
the course this week. Is things like someone fits a
door handle right, and then six months into the new
build it falls off in your hand. Right, that's a defect.

(38:39):
So then you ring the builder and the builder has
an obligation under law within that twelve month period to
come and fix that defect, and they don't get to
charge for it. But I'm going to run into the
news in just a couple of minutes, which is a
happens all the time. So I'm happy for you to leave.

(39:01):
I'm curious that I'm just trying to make the connection.
I wonder whether my approach this would be to go
through the contract initially, figure out what standards are applied
in the contract, then to take an approach, and you
may need to get some independent advice, right which might
actually be a building surveyor, to come through and go Actually,

(39:22):
this work doesn't qualify as a defect. It is quite
simply just a you know, it's poor workmanship, and we're
going to go this is poor workmanship. This is poor workmanship.
And I guess the other thing is, but in your contract,
if you don't have a provision to say, you know,
payment will be made on completion of the work to

(39:43):
the current standards. Is there something like that in there?

Speaker 12 (39:48):
No?

Speaker 10 (39:49):
And also just look at how curvy is that one.
I get the construct to myself sort of read it
before I signed it, read it and look at that
cream as everything is fine and I've readed myself. Shame
on me. I trusted him, I actually trust it even
till now. I paid and blew my mind. I keep
you close to a million dollar without a day late.

(40:11):
So why do you think I'm not going to pay?
What is this for me? Is this principle for me? Standards?
I want to do it to me, and I want
to do it for other people behind me. I don't
want to this happen. I'm going to bake mount. I'm
going to I don't want to happen to some old
grand Yeah, I don't want to happen this.

Speaker 6 (40:28):
Look unfortunately, you know, and I find it difficult in
this environment right when most contractors are scratching for work, right,
it's it's not great out there. Why would you have
a really good client and then treat them poorly? I
don't understand that as well, and.

Speaker 10 (40:44):
Why the contractors exactly?

Speaker 6 (40:48):
And look, you know, if you're engaged in a process
and a bunch of people doing some work at the moment,
you know, Tony the Tyler came to an outstanding job.
I've got great painters working. It's it's a pleasure, right,
and buildings should be enjoyable and a pleasures down the
line and just leave you details with my producer, righty oh,
we're coming. We're crashing into the news at seven o'clock.

(41:09):
Will come straight out of the news with more of
your calls, including Graham and Mark in a whole bunch
of texts as well. Back after the news.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Lasson helping you finish that five minute fixed you started
the Resident Builder with Peter Wolfcamp. An independent building supplies
the future of Kiwi building today Call eight hundred eighty
ten eighty Youth Talk c B.

Speaker 13 (41:58):
When I wake up in the morn alone and the
sunlight hurts, man something with our word bed heavy man
man and the world are raised.

Speaker 6 (42:26):
So it's just a little bit of a sort of
a trip down memory lane for me playing that song.
It was the theme song that I used when I
first started the show, which happens to be twelve years ago,
so twenty fourteen, middle of May two thousand and fourteens
when we started the show. So thanks for being part

(42:46):
of the journey and nice to hear that music again.
Still like the theme song I've got now, but you know, gosh,
if I try and change it. My lord, right, let's
get into it. Peak wolf Camp resident builder here at
news talks, he'd be talking all things building and construction.
Got a whole bunch of texts with regard to Kareem's
comments before the news This is this whole The challenge

(43:07):
I guess for homeowners when they take on the role
of project manager is you then take on the responsibility
of managing the project as well, and so things like
having those discussions with your contractors around finishers and workmanship.

(43:28):
To some degree, it does become your responsibility. I'm not
saying that it then absolves the contractor of their responsibility
to ensure their works up to standard, but it does
become your job because if you weren't doing it, somebody
else would be doing it would be their job, and
you've taken on that role. So that was really it's
always really interesting someone has text through. Unfortunately, I'll just

(43:49):
read the text out. Unfortunately, he is at fault or
culpable at some level. If project management was in play,
unsatisfactory work would have been recognized. I guess Goen is
probably thinking, well, look, I have told the builder and
the builders telling me that it's not He's just going
to make it a defect and I need to get
paid I mean I personally, I don't like that attitude.

(44:10):
I think if you're doing a project and you've done
something and it's clearly not right, and the person who
is the project manager, who in this instance also happens
to be the client, the one writing out the checks,
tells you and has reasonable grounds for doing it. Hey,
look that finish is not up to standard, and then

(44:31):
that's that's when you fix it.

Speaker 11 (44:33):
Right.

Speaker 6 (44:33):
You can't hand over in complete work, and certainly I
don't think you should be able to hand over incomplete
work expect to get paid and then come back and
fix it late it. Just do it straight away. Oh wait,
one hundred and eighty ten eighty all things building in
construction this morning, Graham, Good morning to you and your body.

Speaker 11 (44:52):
Do you be there?

Speaker 6 (44:52):
Greetings, greetings.

Speaker 11 (44:55):
I've got to fly with our yep built in nearly nineties,
and the ply with has got little cracks all over it,
and I'm wondering if I should be worried.

Speaker 6 (45:11):
I think it's right to be concerned, and I guess
so is the house. It's plywood with battens over that
sort of thing, battens over the junctions to make it
look a little bit like Batman board, Yes, exactly, okay.

Speaker 11 (45:23):
And there has been stained, not baited stained.

Speaker 6 (45:27):
Right, And has it been regularly stained and maintained since
the nineties.

Speaker 11 (45:33):
No, No, No, it's been quite bare, right yep.

Speaker 6 (45:40):
Because you've got to remember plywood is multiple layers, so
it'll be twelve MILLI ply most likely, so it'll have
maybe five layers of plywood. So if you see some
surface cracking, that's literally it might be just on that
outer layer, in which case it's not really a weather
tightness issue, as in the crack doesn't go from the
front of the board to the back of the board.

(46:02):
But moisture inside the cladding or in the cladding is
still not a good thing. So I guess one option
would be to prep the house and then paint that
surface rather than have it stained. The paint will give
you some added protection and longevity if it's in reasonable

(46:22):
condition and you want to stay with the staining, then
suitable preparation like really thorough cleaning, a light sand probably,
and then apply lots of coats of because it'll just
be so dry it'll want to suck up moisture, right,
It'll want to suck up all of that stain, So
to get a really good coat of stain on there

(46:44):
and then stay with the manufacturers suggestions around how often
you have to recoat it is really important. You might
find that at the bottom of the boards, depending on
how close they are to another surface, you might have
a little bit of decay in there, so you'd want
someone to check that. But you know, like, is the

(47:05):
house leaking? Do you get water inside the house? Do
you think?

Speaker 11 (47:09):
No, No, it's fine?

Speaker 6 (47:11):
Okay, Look, then I think it's just a case of
its overdue maintenance. You kind of know what you have
to do. It's just a case of getting on with it.
And whether you choose to stain it or paint it
is up to you. Painting might give you a bit
more durability, and also if if it's become quite faded
and so on or rough or something like that, it

(47:32):
might be quite hard to get a really good look
of finish on the staining, Whereas if you were painting it,
you know you could do. You could clean it thoroughly,
do a code of primer. You can sand and fill
and that sort of thing and get a much nicer
finish I think if you were doing the painting. But
that's that I'd need to see the timber to make

(47:53):
a determination on that.

Speaker 11 (47:56):
No, it's quite a big ouse.

Speaker 6 (47:59):
It'll be a big job. Yep. Absolutely absolutely does look
quite good with a coat of the old. And this
is the thing, you know, like all systems have these
maintenance requirements, and often with timber that's left natural and stained,
you know, the time between coats can be as little

(48:19):
as eighteen months to twenty four months, right, that's the
manufacturer's recommendations, and if you stray outside of that, the
deterioration can really accelerate. And I guess that's what you
might be seeing there, is that, Hey, it's been a
while between drinks and the timbers looking pretty thirsty.

Speaker 11 (48:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (48:38):
Yeah, we can all relate to that. All the very best.
Take care Seagram by way, oh, eight hundred eighty ten
eighty is the number to call.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
Oh.

Speaker 6 (48:49):
Just talking about what we were talking about prior to
the news around builders requirement to pass over information to
the homeowner and the new homeowner around maintenance schedules and
warranty stuff. Someone's come through and just text built a
house actually with a one home six years ago received
a large file on how to maintain the windows the paintwork,

(49:10):
the garage door, the remote control, et cetera. From Leslie.
That's fantastic. That's what should be happening all of the time.
That's awesome. And actually we'll talk about windows and the
placement in just a moment. We might take the break
now and then we'll come back and talk to Mark
in just a moment.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
Where di Y gets unstuck. Cal the resident builder with
Peter WILFCAM and Independent Building Supplies the future of Kiwi
Building Today, News Talks there B.

Speaker 6 (49:41):
You and News Talks THEREB. The lines are open the
number eight hundred eighty ten eighty hellow Mark, here you go. Yeah,
pretty good, thanks to yourself.

Speaker 14 (49:50):
No bed, no bed.

Speaker 11 (49:51):
What's up?

Speaker 10 (49:52):
Hey?

Speaker 14 (49:52):
I got a question. I've got an old eighteen eighty
one villa and it sits up on a hill or
on a it's been dug out on a hill. It's
got a front that drops probably away two or three
meet and I'm going to put a while of it
ten to twelve meter deck long and about eight meters

(50:13):
out from the house. I'm going to step it down,
probably have about five meters out from the house and
then step it down and have another three meters out
from there.

Speaker 7 (50:23):
Yep.

Speaker 14 (50:23):
What I want to know is it's got to be digging.
I'm a farmer, I've got a post driver. Can I
help those piles in with my post driver rather than
concrete them in?

Speaker 6 (50:37):
Potentially, yes, but it will be whatever is on the
building consent, because you will need a building consent.

Speaker 7 (50:45):
For that, So I will need one for the.

Speaker 6 (50:50):
Yes, right, yes, oh, yes, most definitely, And mainly that's
about the height of it. Right, sock dicks up to
one point five meters high you can do without necessarily
requiring a consent, But something like this where you know,
obviously the house at the front is already quite elevated
and so the height of the deck is going to

(51:11):
be quite elevated as well. And it's on a sloping site,
so you know, I think once you engage with the
design process, you're going to find that geotech engineers are
probably going to be involved, because whoever you ask to
design it is going to say, look, it's really outside
of the scope of three six o four because of

(51:32):
the slope, So you'll need to get some geotech investigation done.
What's the condition of the slope, how far, what's the
embedment of the piles likely to be and it theoretically, well, see,
the hard thing is like, if you were going to
pile drive piles for the deck, you wouldn't be able

(51:53):
to get your pile driver up high enough to get
to the top of a pile and then drive it
like two or three meters into the ground. If you
then needed them to be three meters out of the ground.
That's a six meter pile that you're trying to drive in.
But would you need me yeah, Well, the other option
is that you drive in a series of piles that

(52:13):
get you anchored into the ground, and then you build
a structure on top of that which doesn't rely on
the embedment to provide the bracing. So typically, you know,
you drill a hole in the ground, you put a
great big pile, and you concrete it in and the
fact that it's two meters in the ground means that
when it pokes up three meters, it's not going to
wobble that much because it's in the ground. Whereas if

(52:36):
you put something in the ground, pile, drive it in
and cap it off, say three hundred mil above the ground,
and then you build on top of it, how are
you going to brace that bit that you're going to build,
you're going to end up with a whole lot of
diagonal braces and so on in your structure to give
you that lateral support. Yeah, so yeah, it might be possible.

Speaker 14 (52:58):
Yeah, well, just ratt there's it around the house is
sort of like a two meter three meter you know,
what's the law for sure, And then then the bank
slopes away gradually that the only high piles will be
probably the road that will separate between the two layers
a deck and are going to step down and meet. Yeah,

(53:20):
well I realized it's going to have to be all all.
So you know, it'll race sideways and that, but that's all.
You're not going to be able to see any of
that anyway, because it's all going to be you know,
you're not a much said from the house or anything
like that.

Speaker 6 (53:33):
And in the sense, and it sort of reflects a
conversation I was having with some of the other day
around getting what we might call early contractor engagement right
that that you've got a way of that you think
you could build this that's practical and using some of
the skills that you've got, so rather than go to
a designer who doesn't know anything about you and what

(53:54):
you might be able to do. If you get in
front of a designer who then works with an engineer
who goes, actually, look, we can because you've got this advantage,
we'd like to start with us, and then what can
we build that allows you to take advantage of your skills? Right,
But you need to be talking to the designer and

(54:15):
the engineer before any of them draws anything that's going
to be the key.

Speaker 14 (54:21):
Oh, such a big decking. I mean I've looked at
all those types of decking you put on. I've come
to the conclusion that maybe a wide one, a six
six inch board, I mean, they all seem to bloody
shrink And is there any anything that's above the rest

(54:44):
that what you know that you might have seen that.

Speaker 6 (54:48):
I mean, you know, if if it's in an area
maybe where it's particularly exposed you get a lot of rain,
and if you're in the Wellington area that happens down
there from time to time. You might want to have
a look at some of the composites. But you know,
in general, like a good quality hardwood six inch well
fixed down with the right type of screws. You know,

(55:09):
if it's weathered a little bit before you put it
down those sorts of things. It's it's pretty durable. And
then I always still recommend that you know, you can
leave it to whether off or you can give it
a code of protection by putting a seiler or a
stain over it as well, so that'll help.

Speaker 14 (55:27):
Maybe in a further show, you might have to give
me some names of some of the stuff that, yeah, you.

Speaker 6 (55:32):
Think, look it up, have a look around. There's some
good stuff out there, all right, all the very best,
enjoy take care then you and New Storks. He'd be
eight hundred and eighty ten eighty the number to call Judith.
Good morning to you.

Speaker 9 (55:45):
Good morning, Hell, are you very well?

Speaker 6 (55:46):
How can I help?

Speaker 12 (55:48):
I've just got a question. I've got a double story house. Well,
it's not all double story house. It's where the boards.
I've got some boards that are the paints lifted yep,
and the places I can read because I want to
do something before winter really sets in. Yes stop yesterday.

(56:14):
And the young girl I've seen suggested, I've got some
boards next door window just out from my front door,
but then it hits the corner of the house, so
it's only the boards are only like probably a spot long.
She suggested, I send the whole board rather than the
patch where it's lifted and feather it out. Is that

(56:36):
what you would.

Speaker 6 (56:37):
Do to be blunt, not necessarily and look, I'm doing
this work right now, right, So I would typically go round,
maybe with a tungsten scraper initially, and look for those
areas where the painter is obviously starting to flake and
peel off and just run the tungsten scraper over there

(56:59):
and see what comes off with you know, reasonably enthusiastic
application of a scraper, but not not ripping it off
right because in the end you can peel off all paint,
but it's you're looking for paint that's starting to fail.
So I would I would get that. Then I'd go
over the top of that with sander. If you've got
access to a random orbital sander or something like that'll

(57:22):
it'll make life easier. But you can sand those.

Speaker 12 (57:24):
Areas one of those little pads things I brought yesterday.

Speaker 9 (57:29):
You know, I don't, but it.

Speaker 6 (57:31):
Doesn't have a battery and it doesn't have a cord.
It's it's completely okay. Look that that yes, by all
means do that.

Speaker 9 (57:41):
It's about hard.

Speaker 8 (57:42):
I've discovered yesterday.

Speaker 6 (57:44):
It's it is a little bit hard, so tungsten scrapers
s and it are the weather boards pine boards or
are they something else? Do you know what the weather
boards are made out of?

Speaker 15 (57:56):
No?

Speaker 12 (57:57):
I don't.

Speaker 6 (57:58):
Sorry, okay, either way, my preference is still for that
first coat over beer timber. Is I use an oil
based I just think that that sucks in a little
bit better. But because we are going to use an acrylic,
then I let that dry thoroughly twenty four hours, give
it a very light sand. Then I apply a coat
of quick dry so the razine quick dry over the

(58:19):
top of that, and then I apply my two top
coats of my finish color over the top of that.
And I hear what the person in the store is saying,
is that in the end, if you just sort of
scrape it and lightly sand it, you will see that
there's a slight difference, right, We're talking microns of thickness.
You can feather that out. You can also do get

(58:43):
back to the beare timber, put the oil base on,
then use some furring cream or some specialist fillers, like
I'm using a two pot one at the moment, which
is really nice and light and so I just do
a little skim coat of that over the top that
flushes everything off, and then I give that a light
sand and then I put a primer over the top.
Then I do my top coats. In most instances, it's

(59:06):
really hard to tell where the where the timber where
the painted peeled off completely after a couple of coats,
it's really hard to see where that is. And that's
a lot less work than stripping everything back to be
a timber.

Speaker 5 (59:22):
Right, Okay, But in the end.

Speaker 6 (59:28):
All of all of the preparation is worth it, right.
The painting is easy, prepping is hard, and it's all
about prepping.

Speaker 12 (59:37):
Yeah, so what kind of sology you use? Because I
noticed when I was working yesterday there's a or little
split in the timber.

Speaker 6 (59:45):
Yeah. Sure, I mean, if you want to be real.
Like again, this is based off my own experience where
I've got actual splits and timber and I'm wanting to
seal that up and essentially use effectively and adhesive. I
actually bought some repair Care, which is a two pot
or two tube system. It is expensive, right, Like I

(01:00:07):
think I paid one hundred and seventy dollars for the
two tubes. Now, I'll get quite a lot of product
out of that, but it's still one hundred and seventy bucks, right.
But what the advantage of it is is that when
you mix it together, it becomes very hard. It also
bonds with the surface, and I can press that into
any gaps and cracks that I've got and then strike

(01:00:29):
it off and then I can send it later and
then prime over the top. And I've been doing a
whole bunch of that yesterday. If not, I've been using
Epo tech, which is again it's a two pot one
so there's two parts. One parts are hardener that sands
really nicely, which I like. Or you know, if it's
not major, then just contract filler out of a pot, right,

(01:00:51):
and that's nice to sand and it drives pretty quick
as well.

Speaker 8 (01:00:55):
It's called what sorry.

Speaker 6 (01:00:56):
Oh, just cont what they call contract filler. You'll find
it at the Razine store. Comes a little white pot
with a green lid. Simple, okay, So all about preparation though,
you know, you know, I know, it's not the sexy bit,
but it's it's the bit that makes the difference.

Speaker 7 (01:01:14):
I know.

Speaker 12 (01:01:14):
And yeah, I just yeah, so I I could reach
the but that I can reach to do something.

Speaker 6 (01:01:21):
Yeah, sure, and you're right, you know anything we can
do now. And I'm not sure where in the country
you are, but in Auckland, I've been delaying doing work
for years, but I was waiting for the weather to settle,
and it has settled and I'm going to make use
of every single hour that i can while it's still
relatively dry to try and get my house sealed up

(01:01:41):
again before winter. Same as you. Good luck with it, Judith,
all the very best to you. Oh, eight hundred eighty
ten eighty is then number to call. Will take a break, Yes,
let's do that, and then we'll talk to.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Julie Measure twice. Call once on eight hundred eighty ten
eighty the resident builder with peterwolf Camp and Independent Building
supplies the future of ken We Building Today news talks
there be.

Speaker 6 (01:02:05):
Delightful just before we talk to Julie. Good evening. That
might be a hint. Good evening, Peter from luck Fair
Financha in Wales. That's terrible pronunciation on my part, but anyway,
this gentleman texts from Wales, Yes, Wales in the UK.
Your helpful hints are as valuable to me up here
as they are in the New Zealand. No one should

(01:02:26):
be surprised that good expert knowledge travels internationally. All I
do is search product suggestions with New Zealand supplies and
then cross search the specs onto the UK and it
works a little thumbs up now with the pronunciation of
the village, I live and give it another go. I
won't out of respect to your language and your culture.
Someone's bound to call in and help you get that out.

(01:02:48):
So l l A n F A I r f
c h A N. It would sound beautiful in Welsh obviously,
but I'm going to muck it up anyway. Lovely to
have you listening, Alan, much appreciate it. Julie, good morning
to you.

Speaker 9 (01:03:07):
Good morning page.

Speaker 16 (01:03:09):
I have a nineteen to seventies weather bought house with
insulation in the ceiling and under the floor. When I
have people sleeping in the bedroom with the door shut
from one of the bedrooms the external wall on the
inside on the very still cold night, I literally end
up with liquid with a condensation.

Speaker 10 (01:03:29):
Running down the wall.

Speaker 16 (01:03:30):
I'm just wondering how well whether a solution would be
to take the jib off the internal side of the
wall and put bats in and reline it all if
that might solve that problem, and if so, do you
need to.

Speaker 6 (01:03:43):
Consent, Yes, and yes, and that might be a couple
of other things. So the look the fact that your
walls are uninsulated, which is what was acceptable at that time, right,
So insulation only became mandatory and only in a very
lighthearted way in a sense in nineteen seventy eight New Zealand. So, yeah,

(01:04:09):
the uninsulated wall, effectively there's very little thermal protection between
you and the outside environment. And if it's in a
space perhaps that doesn't get that much use, and it's
on the south side of the house, then the deficit
becomes really obvious, and that'll be seen with the condensation
that you're getting on the inside wall, and that amount

(01:04:30):
of moisture probably also then gets to the point where
you might have a bit of mold growth and those
sorts of things. The typical approach is to remove the
interior lining, ideally install some building paper or building wrap
against the back of the weatherboards. The even better thing
to do is to actually install there's some products which

(01:04:53):
provide a little bit of ventilation and drainage so that
you're not trapping potentially moisture in that area, because you know,
ideally what we want around the outside of the building
is a vapor barrier of description that stops moisture migrating
through the wall and the weather boards. Moisture will move
through the weatherboard, right, and I know that that's you know,

(01:05:16):
we go, oh the hell does that happen? My house
isn't leaking. There's a difference between leaking and moisture, right,
and so what can happen in some instances? And I
think this is the reason that the government haven't changed
the requirement to get a building consent for this work,
because if you do it incorrectly and use the wrong products,

(01:05:38):
you're likely to make the situation worse in terms of
moisture inside the building cavity. So yeah, the typical approach
is remove the lining, get some building paper against the
back of the weather boards, install your installation, redo the lining,
and for that you do require a building consent.

Speaker 16 (01:05:55):
Okay, yeah, So would that be potentially better than putting
one of those like an HRV or.

Speaker 6 (01:06:03):
Well, look, I mean there are benefits to making sure
that your house is dry on the inside because dry
air is easier to warm, right, and in air exchanges
allowing ventilation. Proper controlled ventilation will provide a will be good.
You could also ensure the ventilation and add some heat,

(01:06:27):
but of course that the heat loss is going to
be through your uninsulated walls, so that becomes a big
issue because you go, then I'm spending money to heat
a space where I'm losing that heat. Now that might
also just be a solution, which case you go, what's
my problem. My problem is the room's too cold and
I'm getting condensation, and so I'm just going to heat it.

(01:06:50):
And I know that the fault is that my room
is cold because I've got no insulation, but I'm just
going to tackle a heating side of it, and I'm
going to solve it that way. The better solution is
put the insulation in, but it's still a solution, right,
and in some form of ventilation mechanically extraction is going
to be good. I've just done a little project where

(01:07:11):
because it's in a fairly damp area, I've installed a
through wall vent that runs constantly at a very low
rate and then ramps up when it detects a rise
and relative humidity in that space. So again I'm not
going to put any heating in there, but I am
going to deal or help control the moisture by having

(01:07:35):
constant ventilation in there. So that might be another external
external war, but you could go through a feat as well.
I'm looking another project where again similar sorts of issues. Right,
not practical to insulate, so we're just trying to control
moisture and we're going to do a supply grill, so

(01:07:55):
air into the room and then air out, and ideally
you'd want to add some warmth to that and form
of fixed form of heating, but getting that airflow is
going to be a really critical part. So that's kind
of the that's the big picture of the small problem,
which is the room's called.

Speaker 9 (01:08:14):
Yeah. Yeah, I have seen a little fan venting on
an external wall and an older, older family members how
while back for that reason, but I wondered whether that
was still I haven't seen it anywhere else only Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:08:29):
No, it's it's just one of those things that's got
to be part of a big solution. So understand what
the problem is and then work out where you can
intervene and then then undertake those do those.

Speaker 16 (01:08:41):
Yeah, it a bach cost to get someone in to
do that sort of relighting the wall.

Speaker 6 (01:08:49):
The hard thing with that is you. And this is
where I do quite genuinely struggle with the fact that
this does require a building consent. I understand why, because
it's actually really important to ensure that people do it
to the right standard, right that we don't inadvertently do
some work that's going to make the house. And I
guess the government looks at that and goes through their

(01:09:09):
advisors at mby and that goes, Okay, well, how do
we stop people doing this work and making the house work? Well,
we make sure they get a building consent. Then we
can see what the standard is that they're working to.
I still would have liked to have seen that work.
Move maybe to schedule one in a limited way where
a licensed building practitioner could do or undertake the work,

(01:09:29):
and then you rely on the experience of the licensed
building practitioner to do the work well and not have
to worry about a building consent. The other part of
this might be if what you're doing is relatively limited
in scope, you could actually go to your local territory
or authority or BCA, to the council who would normally
issue a building consent, describe the work that you're going

(01:09:51):
to do. Describe the methodology, like I've got this builder
who's really familiar with this. Can I apply for an
exemption and they may grant you an exemption? In fact,
I would kind of hope that they would. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay,
that's another pathway. Nice to talk with you and all
the very best. Thank you very much, take care you

(01:10:13):
and news talks. He'd be so kan. Good morning to you. Hello,
Hi there, hey Pete.

Speaker 15 (01:10:21):
I'm doing a bit of a reno or my garage,
turning it into you know, somewhere were you can live.

Speaker 7 (01:10:25):
Yep.

Speaker 15 (01:10:26):
And like the corrugated iron on the roofs all good,
but like all the nails are sort of let go
rustard ride out in. I'm just wondering what's the best
way to go about sort of rumeding that.

Speaker 6 (01:10:41):
Uh So, if the nails are rusty, you can pull
the nails out. You've got to be a little bit
careful with it that you don't open up a bigger
hole in the top of the roofing and then replace
them with roofing screws.

Speaker 15 (01:10:53):
This is the most and that's all good.

Speaker 6 (01:10:57):
You won't need the silicon unless you've ended up with
a slightly bigger hole than is covered by the near
prene washer, which is on the underside of the roofing head.
So ideally you don't because if you put silicon up there,
you've got to maintain that right, Okay, it doesn't last forever.
So ideally pull the nail out straight, put the screw in.

(01:11:19):
The washer will cover it. The other thing with the
project that you're doing is if you're changing from a
garage to a habitable space, just do what's on the
building consent because I presume you've got a building consent
for this work.

Speaker 15 (01:11:33):
Oh and we're in Levin. We don't need to worry
about consents. Pete, you're just starting to take the work
and you everyone sweet airs with it, all.

Speaker 6 (01:11:42):
Right, knock yourself out. You're wrong, but knock yourself out.

Speaker 15 (01:11:45):
But no, I just planned. I've got one more questions.
What's the finishing when the scooting's going around? Is it
preferable if I like, put a no more gaps in
there and then put the scooting on.

Speaker 6 (01:12:00):
Funny, I was talking with one of my builders the
other day about this, and look, it's been kind of
my practice for a little while is just to use
a little bead of sealant, you know, no more gaps
or pseudal or whatever you want. And you just put
a little bit on the back of the skirting and
then you put the skirting on. Maybe some of it
will come up and you can strike that off. It
just helps keep it there and provides you with it

(01:12:22):
just gives you a little bit of protection against that
cracking and opening up in the future. So yeah, it's
good practice to do that.

Speaker 15 (01:12:28):
Yeah, because some of the gap, some of the gips,
because I'm lining it all out with plywood, so then
some of the gap, there's a significant, significant gap along
the bottom.

Speaker 10 (01:12:36):
Yep.

Speaker 6 (01:12:37):
Yeah, I would fill that with sealant. Oh yeah, sweet,
all the best, Nice to talk to you. Take care
by by then you and News Talks bead is seven
forty three. Actually, if I wait just half a second,
it's now seven forty four. We'll be back after the.

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
Break vexing what they forgot to mention on that YouTube
video The Resident Builder with Peter Wilfcamp and Independent Building
supplies the future of Kiwi Building Today call oh eight
News Talks there be.

Speaker 6 (01:13:06):
Actually got a couple of spear lines right now, So
if you've got a question by all means, give us
a call. Oh, eight one hundred eighty ten eighty, just
a whole bunch of texts regarding a whole bunch of issues.
Someone suggesting that you know, one of the ventilation systems
will help solve that problem. This is the nineteen sixties
house no insulation in the exterior walls, which is not uncommon,

(01:13:30):
or in fact it is common because there was no
insulation requirement prior to nineteen seventy eight. And then the
you know what do you do about that? Well, the
gold plated solution or the proper solution is, let's insulate
the exterior walls. But if you can't, then changing the
indoor environment by adding some ventilation and some heat will

(01:13:50):
help a couple of people erase this question around whether
or not new home owners, or in fact people have
undertaken reasonable renovations, are getting the information from the builder
or on seller that they require required to provide by law.
This is a piece of legislation that we discussed in
the workshops that I was doing this week with the

(01:14:13):
New Zealand Institute of Building Surveys around a requirement. It's
in the Building Act, so it's law that says at
the completion of project, any items that require maintenance, the
warranty and the maintenance schedule need to be handed over
to the homeowner. So if it's a cladding type or
a window type, you know manufacturers will have in their

(01:14:34):
terms and conditions this is what you now need to
do to look after our product. We've supplied it to
the standard expected, etc. You've installed it as per the
manufacturer's instructions or the building code. This is now how
you have to look after it. But how do you
know how to look after it if you haven't been told?
So that information needs to be passed on. And I've

(01:14:55):
been curious as to how many people after completing a
let's say a new build get that information. It seems
like some do, but I would imagine that some don't.
Oh eight, one hundred and eighty ten eighty is the
number to call. Hello Allison.

Speaker 17 (01:15:11):
Oh, good morning, Peter christ I have I have a
question about my decking. Well it's not my not the
conventional decking, because the architect's concept was that our houses
on a wharf, and the house of sort of sheds
on the wharf. So it's six x two pine with
a slightly rough look.

Speaker 11 (01:15:31):
About it.

Speaker 17 (01:15:32):
But it's got too rough because the builders it was
built in about ninety nine. The builders are put the
decking down with nails, right, and they only used two
nails even at the joins, and it has started to
warp at some of the joins. And I just don't
know what to do about it. With little grandchildren running

(01:15:52):
over and dropping on.

Speaker 9 (01:15:53):
It, et cetera.

Speaker 17 (01:15:55):
Is it possible to screw it down? Could I force
it down with screws?

Speaker 6 (01:16:01):
You'd have limited success forcing it down. Som timber is
quite powerful, right, so if it wants to cup and
if it's a wide piece of timber, it will want
to move. And depending on which part of the log
the timber is cut from which way the grain is running,
whether it's going to cup up or cup out, all
of that will pen. But certainly using like a long

(01:16:23):
stainless steel bugle screw something like that will help fasten
the timber down. And because you've got so much timber
to play with, if it's a six two or a
one fifty fifty roughsor on board, you could also sand
that surface right, because you could sand two or three
milimeters off. It wouldn't matter to the board because there's

(01:16:45):
so much of it. So yeah, I did do that.

Speaker 17 (01:16:50):
I got my builder to do that in a couple
of places, and I'm sort of sorry I did, because
it's left completely different.

Speaker 6 (01:16:56):
It will look completely different, yes, yes, but over the
time that will also settle down. So if an area
is weathered and then you've sanded another part, the only
thing that will be different is rough boards are rough
sorn for a reason. And then if you send them
then they're no longer rough sor they're smooth. Yes, you
can't change that, right, Okay, but screwing them down substituting,

(01:17:19):
because what you might find is some of those nails
might have walked their way out, and chances are the
nails that we would have used back then, they wouldn't
have been annular groove, so they won't have like little
ribs on them that hold the timber in fasten to
the timber. So if they walk their way out, just
with a pair of pincers or a privar lift them out.

(01:17:39):
Put in a decent size screw and in your environment,
I'd probably go for stainless steel.

Speaker 17 (01:17:46):
Okay, Well, there's real helpful than all the best.

Speaker 6 (01:17:48):
Take care anyway, right, Tony greetings.

Speaker 18 (01:17:53):
I'm on in. I'm going to a lance trade carpenter
out of the trade for twenty years, not an LPB. Sure,
we've got a bathroom, a twenty five year old bathroom
whiss piled to a bath toilet share and pain basing
that in the chip sailing. I personally want to rip
that back to the wall framing. You want to reconfigure
the layout of the bathroom and probably give it a

(01:18:15):
tilet to come in. Am I allowed to do that?
And does that require consent? Or what's the story?

Speaker 6 (01:18:21):
What would likely trigger a requirement for consent, as if
you were going to do a tiled shower that required waterproofing. Okay,
So if, for example, you were going to do everything
that you've described, but in the shower you went down
the road and bought a you know, like a preformed shower,

(01:18:42):
then I think you could do that without a consent
because it's a preformed shower. But as soon as you
get into waterproofing, a waterproof membrane behind tiles in a
shower triggers typically triggers the requirement for consent.

Speaker 18 (01:18:55):
Okay, So if I do what you just said, but
do a reconfiguration of the layout, I shift the shower
with the toilets the toilets and the plumber comes to
those the plumbing trade. Am I still okay? Do I
still need to consent?

Speaker 6 (01:19:08):
I actually still think you're okay, because typically what triggers
are required for a consent is altering the number of
or adding to the number of sanitary fittings. So if
in that space you've got a toilet, a basin and
a shower, that's three items and a bus, so four items,
and then you move them around, you've still got four

(01:19:30):
sanitary fittings.

Speaker 18 (01:19:30):
Right, yep, ye make it less thing, I make it three.

Speaker 6 (01:19:36):
Either way, less than is not the same as more than,
So I think you'd be okay. The other sensible thing,
and I'm preaching to the choir here right, is obviously
the work needs to be done to the building code,
So I would document all of the work that you're doing.
Photograph everything. Show how you've dealt with wall junctions, Show

(01:19:57):
how you fixed the aquil line to the wall, Show
how you've waterproofed the floor, those sorts of things, and
then you know, if anyone asks later on, you could
do it. The other thing, given your experience, is you
could also you know, write a brief description of this,
bring your local council, talk to the Building Consents help
desk and go, can I get I'm going to do

(01:20:19):
this work? This is how I'm going to do it.
Could I get an exemption from a building consent? And
I think they should be able to give you one
for that.

Speaker 18 (01:20:26):
You know, so if they give you that for an email, it's.

Speaker 6 (01:20:30):
Just a letter, so that you know. Let's say, and
this happens so commonly. Now, let's say in a couple
of years, you decide you're going to move to the
beach and you put the house on the market. Someone
comes in and they go, oh, cricky, that's a new bathroom.
I wonder if they got a consent for that bathroom.
And then they find that they didn't, And then the
burden is on you to prove that either you didn't

(01:20:50):
need a consent or that well basically that you didn't
need a consent and that the work is up to standard.
So you can provide the evidence about the standard by
taking the photographs and the evidence. But also if you
had a letter on file that said, actually this work
is I can do it under Schedule one of the
Building Act. And here is a letter from council to

(01:21:11):
say that I don't, then it's all problem solved, right, Yeah,
that's the point.

Speaker 18 (01:21:16):
That's the point of the question. How hard is it
to deal with the counsel in regards.

Speaker 6 (01:21:20):
To that might just be which way the wind is
blowing and who you happen to talk to on the day.
I mean, you know, I again, you know you from
your experience, you know how to deal with people in
bureaucracy and councils, right, so you take the right approach,
provide them with lots of information, provide them with a pathway,

(01:21:43):
and say you know, And by I means there's a
really good website online called can I Build It? I
think it is and it's part of the MBI website
and it helps you. It's like a flow chart. Do
I need a consent for these sorts of things? And
be really interesting to just you know, put into that

(01:22:03):
what we've just talked about and see what it says.
In fact, I might even try and do it during
the break. But I think that if you don't have
to tile and don't do the waterproofing, I think you
can do that work without a consent. Okay, appreciate all guys,
nice to talk with you. Thank you, Tony, take care
your news talks. He'db we're coming up to news, sport
and weather at eight o'clock. Remember root climb passed from

(01:22:24):
eight point thirty. A couple of calls after the break
back after the news.

Speaker 1 (01:22:32):
Turning Oh's into She'll be right the resident builder with
Peter Wolfcamp and Independent Building Supplies the future of Kiwi
Building Today Call eight hundred eighty eight News Talks b.

Speaker 6 (01:22:46):
Rightio A little bit of housekeeping, So just before the
news talked to Tony about he's obviously a very experienced builder,
no longer in trade, but wants to do some work,
including an extensive renovation of a bathroom which is an
existing bathroom, not not adding any sentry fittings in fact
dele them, but will make some changes to the layout

(01:23:09):
and so on. None of that structural, it's just plumbing
and then finishing. And the question is do you need
a building consent for that? So I said, we'll go
and have a look at canibuild it dot gov dot NZ,
which I did. So I've worked my way through it
and this is how it works. You search through, choose
a project, repair, maintenance or replacement of sanitary plumbing and drainage. Okay, yep, great,

(01:23:30):
Am I aware that the work needs to be done
by an authorized plumber and drainer? Yes, will comparable materials
be used? I've said yes, as in handbasin's handbasing. A
bath is a bath at toilets and toilets are They're comparable,
So I've said yes. Next question is if you are
planning a replacement, will the replacement be in the same position? Now,

(01:23:51):
depending on what they mean by that, like when you
say same position, does that mean in the same room
or in exactly the same position? So if you co
know as in I'm moving things around within the space
and interpret it that way, then it triggers a requirement,
likely for a building consent. If you say, yes, the

(01:24:11):
things are in the same place. There was a bath
in there, and I'm keeping a bath in there. Therefore
it's in the same space, even if it moves slightly.
Then you go on to the next one. Is the
repair necessary due to the failure of that component? This
is with regard to the provisions of the building. That's
not the case of that's a no. Is it complete

(01:24:32):
or replacement or substantial replacement? Of a specified system. Specified
systems are things like sprinklers and fire and so on,
so it's not that so in the end you get
to take for this project, you may not need a
building consent based on the answers you've given. Your project
may not need a consent, but you do need to
comply with the relevant rules in terms of getting the

(01:24:53):
work done. You can't do the work yourself. You have
to get a plumber or a drain layer, comparable materials, replacements,
da da da da da. But if you go, it's
a good tool. It doesn't tell everything, but it's a useful,
useful guide. A couple of other quick things that are
coming through. Actually one person's text, Ay, you're right about

(01:25:13):
the bathroom. No tiles don't need a consent. That's from Rosy.
Someone was asking. I came in the end of what
you were saying about the builder handing over a maintenance
schedule at the completion, could you briefly repeat that it's
in the Building Act, and it's around consumer guarantees and warranties,
and it's in the Building Act. I will try and

(01:25:34):
find the exact piece. I'm just struggling to find that
right now, and then a couple of people have text
through just around, you know, dealing with contractors. I guess
this was the Kareem who we spoke with just before
the seven o'clock news talking about having been he was
the project manager for his own build and now there's
work that hasn't really been finished to a reasonable standard,

(01:25:55):
the builder's demanding payment, and then he says he'll come
back and fix those things as a defect. Someone has suggested, look,
most commercial build contracts have retentions for a defects period.
This would out properly financed residential builders from the sort
of man and van type safer projects over three hundred grand.
It's going to be really interesting too when the mandatory

(01:26:16):
warranty and insurance type schemes come into play as well.
This is going to be huge going forward. We'll get
some experts to come and talk about that. Now. A
couple of weeks ago, if you recall, we had a
conversation with the gentleman who said, look, this is what
I do in order to save power. I turn my

(01:26:39):
electric hot water cylinder off until I feel that I
need some hot water, and in his words said that
could be two or three days, three or four days,
I think he might have said. And then I turn
it on and I wait for the hot water cylinder
to heat up all of that cold water, and then
I've got hot water. And then when I finished doing
what I need to do with the hot water, I

(01:27:01):
turned the cylinder off, and I be fair, I didn't
really know how to apply to that in the sense
of are you actually using less power? Was my main focus.
And then a couple of people texted and went, hey,
but there's a couple of safety issues around potentially contaminating
that water and Legionaire's disease, and I figured, let's go

(01:27:22):
and talk to the experts. It's also raises that issue
around energy efficiency in our houses and most houses, if
you've got electric and you've got electric hot water cylinders.
We'll chat with James about this in a moment, but
my understanding is it might be as much as fifteen
percent of your power bill. Now, if you've got conventional
hot water cylinder, how much energy is that using and

(01:27:45):
how much would you save if you were to swap
that out for some of the new technology. And I'm
talking there about heat pump hot water systems, which are
way way, way more efficient. So we're going to talk
about all of that with James from EKE A very
good morning and thanks and my apologies for being so
disorganized to only con that this morning. But James the

(01:28:07):
page from ECA A very good morning.

Speaker 7 (01:28:13):
And no problem there is. It's good that I can
get on.

Speaker 6 (01:28:15):
Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you with us. So
again for people that might not be familiar, just as
a background, what does ECA and what do you do?

Speaker 7 (01:28:25):
Yeah, so ECA with the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority,
so IKEA has here as a delivery armor of the
government to really help out with the efficiency across the
nation in terms of both with businesses and with home
inside homes as well. So there are programs out there's
the Warmer Chibi Homes program, we've heard about that, which

(01:28:47):
is looking at installing efficient heating and insulation and homes.
And then we regulate all the products if you see
the energy rating label on washing machines or your fridges,
that sort of thing. And then also you know, supporting
businesses to really help them okay energy efficiency as well

(01:29:09):
because it's a huge cost.

Speaker 6 (01:29:11):
Yeah, and I think this is the thing that we
kind of underestimate. I guess you know from our consumer
point of view, I get my power bill, I pay
my power bill, and it is what it is, right,
and then it's that deep dive into where does my
power go and what levers can I pull to perhaps
reduce my power consumption, reduce my power bill. And also,

(01:29:33):
I guess from a government point of view, we know
that we've got some issues around ensuring energy supply. And
I'm not going to go into the politics of it,
and I don't want to draw you into this, but
it you know, proposals to introduce like an LNG storage
system to give us some back up and so on,
those are big expenses for the government, for any government
to consider. And I know, you know there's these alternatives

(01:29:56):
maybe around well, if we didn't use as much power
because we use better technology, that would help as well.
So just dealing with this one gentleman who phoned and said,
what I do is I turn my hot water cylinder
off and then I wait until I need more hot water,
which might be three or four days time, and then
I turn it back on again. Do you think, just roughly,

(01:30:17):
are they actually saving any power at all by doing that?

Speaker 7 (01:30:23):
Rightfully speaking, there is potential there to save power, right
now you said before it was about fifteen percent of
your powerful was the energy bill? Is hot water? I
put that up that figure maybe up more around a
third better sow it does make it have a significant
chunk of your energy bill. And so this is why

(01:30:45):
hot water is a place that you can really go
after in your home to to lower your costs. Yes,
there was some very selling points of about the potential
health and safety issues there with that sort of behavior,
not to mention potentially not having a hot shower for
three or four days, So you do need to you

(01:31:09):
need to be very very careful that sort of thing.
It's a type of thing that people can do if
they're potentially going away on holiday. Sure, But but the
the things we want to talk about here is that
it's not particularly practical or particularly effective either. So you
might save money, but it's not going to be a
lot of money. Were you can save money is an

(01:31:32):
efficiency in this space. So doing it on and off,
you know it will go completely cold, and then turning
it on again three or four days, it will spend
hours heading up. And it's if you have an efficient
modern system that is well insulated. Almost we describe them
as as almost like a cheap energy battery for your

(01:31:54):
home because it doesn't take a lot of energy to
keep them at temperature, touching it for three or four days,
and you've got a modern cylinder that's well insulated, you've
got you've lagged the hot water pipes that running out
from it, you have low flow fittings in your home
that mean you don't waste power, waste hot water when

(01:32:15):
you're having a shower. Then you can really save money
that way, and that's the way you can really ramp
that up rather than you know, like kind of fitting
around the edges with turning things on and on. And
that legion now at risk is very very serious. And
that's why you know that the building code has that
sixty degree with storage limit or minimum setting for hot water.

(01:32:42):
So making sure that that doesn't if you're not putting
yourself at rest, because if you're turning off for three
or four days and then someone comes into your home,
it might not be you. You know, you've got a climber
coming over some sort or a sparky to do some
other work and they turn on the tap on warm
and then they fill up a glass of water and
it comes out cold, and they still drink and I
guess what, like they they're at risky, so you need

(01:33:05):
to be really careful.

Speaker 6 (01:33:07):
So let's dissuade people from turning off the hot water
cylinders as an energy efficiency thing. Someone has just taxed
through going hey, look, could you please ask your guest
about the efficiency and health impacts of turning off the
hot water cylinder. Let's say the beach property. So let's
say you're away for three months for example. In that instance,
turning it off probably makes sense. But then in terms

(01:33:31):
of looking after your safety and health, what would be
a sensible precaution when you first come back to the
property and turn the hot water cylinder back on.

Speaker 7 (01:33:41):
You just need to Yeah, I mean, you're right if
you've got to beat the property. If I have one myself,
I'll be quite lucky. But I also I'll probably turn
off my cylinder when it wasn't there as well. But
you need to let it heat right up right, it's
not the water is coming out of the tat now
it feels warm enough of it. They have a shower,
let's go for it it. It needs to be hot

(01:34:03):
and there before you go go there. So good. So
that's just a simple, simple, measure you can do to
really protect yourself. There.

Speaker 6 (01:34:13):
So the other thing that I've become really fascinated by,
and I guess it felt like kind of new technology
even just a couple of years ago, but they seem
to be more common and the shape of them has changed.
And I'm talking about hot water by heat pump hot
water systems, right, So it's a completely different mechanism for

(01:34:35):
heating the water and the cylinder. Many of them seem
to be able to be installed in an exterior location,
and they most of them look quite different. But how
much more energy efficient if I got a modern heat
pump hot water system versus even a relatively new hot

(01:34:58):
water cylinder that's the conventional one let's say that I've
got stored away in a cupboard inside the house.

Speaker 7 (01:35:05):
Yeah, this is a a topic that's nearing dead in
my heart over hot water heat pump or heat pump
water heater outside my house. Now, I had one installed
last year, so we also work a lot in the
space as well as eca. So a direct comparison between
electric cylinder and a heat pump water header, you're thinking

(01:35:25):
maybe seventy five percent energy savings there straight away off
the bat, So it's huge. You do need to do
your sums and your figures to make sure it's going
to work for your home though, because it's probably double
the price to install it. So with a lot of
energy efficiency measures that you can have in your home,
if you use it, you get the benefits. If you've

(01:35:48):
you have there's only one of you in the household,
and you have one shower a day, the additional cost
of installing it over maybe an electric cylinder, it might
not pay for itself. If you're a big family, you
have bars, the showers going all the time, if you're
using hot water, then the benefits really wrap up quite

(01:36:10):
quickly for that household and you you will save a
lot of energy over us over the lifespan here because
you know, just because of the price of them, it
does take longer to pay itself off. But sure as
soon as you get there, you're winning.

Speaker 6 (01:36:26):
And I know that the systems are you know they
seem expensive, Well, they are expensive. And I was at
the Wellington Home and Garden Show a couple of weeks ago.
There were some people there and they went, Okay, tell
us roughly what you think you spend on power right now?
What your hot water sounder is like and if we
were to install one of our systems, this would be
the payback time, you know, because it was it's like

(01:36:49):
a six seven, eight thousand dollars investment for one of
these systems. So that might be a barrier for some people,
but it's you can't argue with the efficiency of them,
can you.

Speaker 7 (01:37:02):
You can't argue with the efficiency of them. And also
the other good thing at the moment available for home
owners is the green loan options as well that certain
financial lenders have in place. And that's something I took
advantage of myself and so I've got a zero percent
loan for this, whereas competitive I find installed an electric

(01:37:24):
cylinder when my old gas one went to put last year,
then I would be borrowing to save it at that
as well. So that you see something something for people
to be aware of as well. But yeah, you can
e can we have a home energy savings calculator that
people can go and kind of enter in you know,
where you live and how many people in your house,
and then it gives you the estimate based on so

(01:37:47):
you're not you're not looking at the marketing of you
know so and the pressure of a home and garden show. Yeah,
sure to make a decision. You can go away and
do your homework and work out of that's going to
work for your your specific place as well, because it
is very individual and so you should try that for

(01:38:07):
you and think about what's going to happen in your
home in the future as well. You might be using
lots of energy over the next two years, but then
you might have my kids are going to be going
to university and moving off to Otaga or going to
Australia or something, so you know, all of a sudden,
your energy bill is going to your your efficiency of
your home itself climbs dramatically, Yeah, just because as you use,

(01:38:30):
as your teenagers have gone.

Speaker 6 (01:38:33):
And I but and the sort of you know, like
this has probably triggered a bit of thought and reflection
from people listening. Hopefully that's the intent of it. So
on the eco website you can do these sorts of analysis.

Speaker 7 (01:38:46):
Yes, yes you can. It's and you can. You can
twiddle around with things there and sure also have a
look at your different options there and doing a bit
of doing a bit of your own homework there. But
I'd like to I'd like to think that the the
heat pump water heater space is really it's a it's
a product. Space is really matured for a lot of them. Yes,

(01:39:07):
like probably like five six years, you know, if you're
talking about the home and gun shows, like ten years
ago going to those, those things look like they're assembled.
In my garrett.

Speaker 12 (01:39:15):
Some times.

Speaker 7 (01:39:18):
They were looked like I put them together, but it
was Now they're really really sleek. Yeah systems, and they've
got big money backing, big brand backing to them as well.
Now rather than one of these disruptive brands, you've got
the big players in the market, and you feel it
gives you so much more confidence there that if something
goes wrong with it down the line, I can probably
get a fixed as well.

Speaker 6 (01:39:39):
Yeah, I must smell. The one that I was looking at,
you know, looked unlike any hot well heat pump hot
water system that I've seen before in terms of it
was elegant and simple, and I thought I could live
with that outside my window, you know, that sort of thing.
So there's there's some amazing stuff. James, thank you very
much for joining us early on a Sunday morning. And
I do encourage people a few because this is this

(01:40:01):
is knowledge's power, right so the more you know, the
more you understand, and you you think about the nuances.
The little details make a big difference in the space,
So have a look at the eco website as well.
It'll help you out there Again. James, thank you very
much for joining us this morning.

Speaker 7 (01:40:17):
You too had a great day.

Speaker 6 (01:40:18):
Take care right, We've got a break and then we've
got rud which will be awesome from around eight point
thirty this morning back in a.

Speaker 1 (01:40:25):
Mote helping you finish that five minute fix you started.
The resident Builder with Peter Wolfcamp and Independent Building Supplies
the future of Kiwi building Today call Oh eight hundred
and eighty ten eighty news talks.

Speaker 6 (01:40:38):
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(01:41:00):
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(01:41:24):
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Advice from local DIY experts is only an email away
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customers are proud to say I did it myself. News

(01:41:44):
Talk z B Right, I really enjoyed the conversation with James.
It seems you did as well. And I've got a
whole bunch of text questions, very specific ones about different
forms of heating and so on. So I'm going to
reach out to James and go, hey, look, how about
you come back on the show in a couple of
weeks time or so, and we'll try and do a
bit of Q and A around those energy efficiency things.

(01:42:04):
But seriously, the some of the whole and I'm not
advocating for them or anything.

Speaker 7 (01:42:09):
Well I am.

Speaker 6 (01:42:10):
I'm saying that we should be more energy efficient, but
some of the systems that I've seen recently are well,
they're pretty you know, like he was describing, it looks
like some of the early ones that was something that
I would have cobbled together inside the garage. But the
new ones are pretty slick, which is awesome and very efficient,
so you get two things out of them, right. A

(01:42:32):
couple of other things, just quickly. Home and Garden Show
is on this weekend actually coming up at the Eden Park,
the Eden Park, the one and only Eden Park Thursday, Friday,
Saturday Sunday. It's cheapest chips to get in and I'll
be there on Saturday and Sunday at midday. So they've
got a whole series of expert speakers and I'll be

(01:42:55):
doing a little presentation actually around legislation on Saturday and
Sunday and I'll be there for a bit of time,
so come and say hello. That's the Home and Garden
Show on at Eden Park starting on Thursday right through
to Sunday. And again for those of you who I
mentioned last week that I was on my way to
Palmerston North who was fabulous to be fair to go

(01:43:16):
to the wood Turning Festival. Basically the wood turners and
woodworkers festival and to be part of or to watch
and sit there with Don, who's like the organizer, he's
the godfather of the whole thing. Don who was helping
me understand what was going on with this wood turning
competition to be awarded the golden chisel, which I got

(01:43:38):
to hand out, which was kind of interesting. It was
great fun, and there were tool supplies there, so I
didn't come home empty handed. I got a very nice
gift from the people there, which was lovely, but also
managed to find a tool that I didn't know that
I needed. But lo and behold, there was something that
I didn't have that was very useful and I used
it yesterday, which is even better. Right, let's talk to

(01:44:00):
Rudd eight hundred and eighty ten eighty. If you've got
a gardening question, Rudd coming up.

Speaker 1 (01:44:06):
DIY gets unstuck. Call Oh eight hundred eighteen ten eighty.
The Resident Builder with Peter Wolfcamp and Independent Building Supplies
the Future of Kiwi Building Today. News Talk SEDB For
more from The Resident Builder with Peter Wolfcamp. Listen live
to News Talk SETB on Sunday mornings from six, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.

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