Week 1 – Time Lapse (Site Preparation)

Underway

It’s been quiet over the last few weeks since we received Council Consent to start building, but we’ve had a few challenges to overcome.

We had been working furiously with our eco Engineers, Green Being, to try and get New Zealand made (thermally broken aluminium) compliant to the Passiv Haus standards. Unfortunately the day after we got consent, we realised that they just weren’t going to work in their current state, and are now importing our windows from Germany. It was one step back, two steps forward.

Thanks to Oleg at Warm Windows, we will now be using a PVC suite which will have triple glazing. This meant that our architects S3 had to udate all the details for the windows and doors, and resubmit through Council.

We also had another engineer check over all the calculations for the wind loading on the Photovoltaic Panels, to ensure that the deisgn for the I-Beams from NZ Wood was going to be strong enough (to allow for both uplift, and the extra weight created by wind against the panels). Luckily these were all fine.

We received the updated Consent last week, and we’re all go. Paladium Homes have booked in our diggers for Monday next week (16th) to prepare the site, and the water tanks should be turning up the next day to be buried in the back of the section.

The blog will now come to life shortly with photos, and monthly videos of our progress, and more detailed information.