Author Topic: Building Our house in Christchurch New Zealand (Read 16911 times) Tweet Share

piersdad · « **on:** April 13, 2009, 07:35:08 AM »

Building a house New Zealand style

the vision

we visited this pair of flats and immediately fell in love with them
we were able to walk through and talk about two kids in a lolly shop.
we immediately contacted today homes and signed up

18 months later and $nz80,000 later our section was subdivided and sewage power phone laid along the new drive

The land
We had a large section at 1000 sq meters and after most of the family had left home we decided to sub divide the section and build 2 granny flats.
This category of house means only retired or dependent people can live in them not large families.
This enabled us to build 2 flats with 50 sq meters of living space outside. As well as the drive way.
Fortunately the section was 16 meters wide and enabled a separate driveway to be fenced off to a rear section.
We had to officially subdivide the section and the regulations we best described and horrendous.
The drive had to have 150 mm of special hard fill on top,
The new water supply to the two flats had to be installed.
Two power supplies and a storm water and sewerage to be laid along the drive.
And a widened access over the foot path made.
All this to get a surveyed and legal title to the rear section cost us in the region of $80,000
Plus repairs to the house
Our house in front is 90 years old and had to have a lot of repairs to it.
So after spending some $8000 on upgrading the house we put it on the market for $185000.
Eventually it sold and we shifted to a rental.

The builders started.
The ground was mostly sand with a hard layer 300 mm down and soft sand below.
An engineers report said the foundations had to be 600 mm deep and reinforcing bars to be laid to the top layer of concrete slab.
Day one and the section was cleared of weeds and the general lay out of the house outlined on the ground.
Then a large digger was used to scrape the section bare of every thing leaving just as bare ground as flat as possible.
The next stage is to accurately mark out the outline of the foundations to the nearest few centimeters and the digger proceeds to dig a trench 600 mm down and about 400mm wide.
This enables the final lines to be strung up very accurately and the levels and profiles to also be accurately done.
Day 2
At this stage the builder has placed a very large supply of boxing wood and a pile of pegs.
day 3 more materials on site
day 4 builder has cleared the trenches and put profiles up around the foundation ditches and ready for the accurate laying out of the house plan.

the finished house 20/3/2010

Storydad.com · « **on:** April 13, 2009, 07:35:08 AM »

piersdad · « **Reply #1 on:** April 17, 2009, 06:16:39 AM »

by extended family i have a great grand son.
todays progress is hat the boxing is being put in the ditches and i have to next sunday take all the excess 10 cub meters spoil away from the site as well as open a trench and add a second water connection and power cable (extra cost of nearly $1000)
fortunatly my son will be able to do this this sunday as he has job the same as this to do and will do both jobs the same day and with the same hire equipment.

Storydad.com · « **Reply #1 on:** April 17, 2009, 06:16:39 AM »

piersdad · « **Reply #2 on:** April 19, 2009, 08:22:08 PM »

sunday and my son was able to get hold of a giant digger and truck and cleared all the spoil that came out of the foundations.
and so the site is now clear of all excess dirt and ready for the finishing of the reinforcing in th eboxing and hope that wednesday the concrete truck will come and pour the first part of the foundations.

Spaced out · « **Reply #3 on:** April 21, 2009, 03:41:27 AM »

That was good then - getting all the spoil cleared away in just one day! You did well between you both!!

Hope the weather holds out for you & you can get the concrete poured in without out any trouble.

piersdad · « **Reply #4 on:** April 21, 2009, 07:52:19 AM »

fine weather for the next week so the criticle work on the foundations and the concrete slab, with the loose shingle insulating base, will be done in good weather woopee!

cost was $210, clean fill dumping fee.

piersdad · « **Reply #5 on:** April 26, 2009, 03:09:41 PM »

checked out and Saturday the builders have prepared the floor slab foundations for the pouring of the concrete on Wednesday.

befor the foundation pour

with the foundations poured and the inside leveled a layer of large round 40mm stones are placed in over the dirt and leveled to the top of the outer foundation walls.

the plastic liner and reinforcing is placed over the stones that form an insulating layer under the floor slab

the February 2011 6.6 earth quake left the house and foundations un touched now i know why 600 mm deep etc

piersdad · « **Reply #6 on:** May 25, 2009, 06:33:25 AM »

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Just one fine day last week and they managed to pour the concrete slab
and even though the weather was 6 c and wet the builders started to assemble the framing of the house and to day the fire wall between the 2 flats and the roof frames were well on the way to being placed in position.
so I can now wander through the skeleton and visualise the finished house.

with the guttering and combined barge boards in place the roof is ready to put on but bad weather meant that thy just got half the roof on and it poured with gale force winds made progress impossible.
So with the building paper and half the roof, the house was really weird, with the rattles and whistles from the wind.
Sunday I visited and with a magnet picked up all the stray nails around the site that were bent and discarded and got 2 liter carton of them.
in my old house i had to replace the main galvanised water mains and found that several really rusty parts were opposite where a nail had been discarded in the trench some 70 years ago so polution from stray nails in the ground are a defiate no-no

monday the 25th may 2009 and the weather is fine.

piersdad · « **Reply #7 on:** May 30, 2009, 08:05:05 AM »

Friday 29 may

The builder has removed all the unused timber and boxing etc from th esite and the brick layers have arrived to start.
The heat pump installers have put the necessary pipes through the wall.
Windows are in and the inside is drying out well.
Got a bill for nz $50,000 for the closed in stage progress payment.
Our bank has sent us the info about how to handle the loan.
This mornings news says that with the recession the interest rate will rise soon.
Can have some of the loan on fixed rate 5.6% and some on a flexi rate.6.4%
The flexi rate means that if we can save more than the weekly mortgage we can take it off the total and pay the loan off sooner.

soveriegn loans

So it is to guess how much is on flexi and how much on fixed for how long.
It means if we sell some thing the money immediately saves us 6.4% on our loan and so it is a sort of negative interest that does not class as income and so does not attract tax.

So with the loan in place and the house ready for the brick layers we are getting really excited and waiting with baited breath for the finish

the gass fitters have been and placed some copper pipes to the kitchen and bath room and laundry for the gass supply for the instant hot water this means we dont have to store hot water for days just for the odd moment when we need it.
the hot water is heated instantly on the spot by gass.
we noticed a strange drain pipe in the shower area and realised that the gass hot water system needs to have a drain for the water it generates while burning.
so we will have a large cycinder of gass out the back of the house and extra room for storage where the hot water cupboard was ment to be.

piersdad · « **Reply #8 on:** June 18, 2009, 09:33:52 PM »

all covered in now with the power,plumbing,gass, in the walls and the insulation in place all rady for the lining.
no work this week and when i rang up found out they were waiting for a new contract to be signed but did not tell us #$#@
so got on to it immediately and tomorrow wil resign the contract in the family trust name
the money is ready to be forwarded but we now need a separate valuation befor the bank forwards the 180 000 dollars.

piersdad · « **Reply #9 on:** June 21, 2009, 08:37:59 AM »

did a bit of clearing of the section and took the old olive tree out of the corner as over 5 years or more we have had just 7 olives from it
when i dug it up the tap root was missing and rotten in the area so that would be the reason for its failure.
the rubbish skip was in a new place and empty so the olive tree was dumped in it.
did not notice some thing else that had happened

went for a visit and a huge truck was in the drive all praise for the truck driver as he had only 150 mm each side from the wooden fence.
(we should have had the wooden palings on the other side of the posts and this made the driveway 2.7 meters not the official 3 meters trucks are usually 2.4 meters )
he had delivered the gib board used a fork lift perched on the end of his tray to unload the tons of gib board.
don't know how he did it as he was on his own and the gib was neatly stacked in the two garages.
some of the gib was 13 mm thick and 6 meters long
i would think that they will be laying the gib on it'd side so that the seam will be just a horizontal run at 1,2 meters from the floor .
this makes a very easy sealing of the groove in the middle of the walls as well it means all the walls will not have any vertical seams which are generally time consuming to fill. as well time is saved as each board is cut to the exact length of each wall or roof.
wandered around and did not notice some thing different

another visit and it Had been raining and the water was in puddles in front of the house and then i realized the scaffolding was all gone

havent got a pic today as the front looks all finished except for the garage doors and the drive

piersdad · « **Reply #10 on:** June 21, 2009, 08:35:39 PM »

The latest pic

piersdad · « **Reply #11 on:** June 23, 2009, 05:58:52 AM »

the paper war continues
our bank has kindly forwarded $40,000 and i immediately paid this to the builder as we actually owe them $110,000 at the moment.
the bank requires a valuation of the house as is, half made.
As well life insurances on some of the family trust members.
So the builder is waiting.
The bank is stalling.
We are plowing through the paper work.
Meanwhile we are paying rent.
The builder is probably paying interest.
and the house is not being built.

piersdad · « **Reply #12 on:** July 02, 2009, 10:02:45 AM »

the gib board finishers are here now and it is magic to see them work a single swipe of the trowel and a beautiful finish .
no sanding after
a exercise in efficient work skills
ie get it right first time and no extra work later

go to second page

piersdad · « **Reply #13 on:** July 08, 2009, 01:05:25 PM »

th gib boards and all the bits asociated with it are finished and the sanding person was here
he was finished in a day as the previus tradesmen were so good at their work there was just a skim over the surface of the gib board.
today the builder was back and he was putting the bottom boards to teh walls and such things as switchboard covers and door fittings.

piersdad · « **Reply #14 on:** July 21, 2009, 06:32:27 AM »

the painter has nearly finished the drain layers have laid all the storm water and sewerage drains and recently put all the down pipes so there is no longer water spilling from the roof
so the ground is drying out.
today i met the site organizer at the house and we have a date of 15 august as finish time.
in 2 days time the kitchen units will be installed and then the next week it starts to all happen with the electrical plumbing garage auto doors etc starting to get put in.
i have contacted a contractor to install the second water and power cable we did not install originally

Storydad.com

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