Speaker 1: You're listening to the Resident build Up podcast with Peter
Speaker 1: Wolfcamp from News Talks at Bay.
Speaker 2: Even when it's dark, even when the grass is overgrown
Speaker 2: in the yard, even when.
Speaker 1: The dog is too old to bar.
Speaker 2: And when you're sitting at the table trying not to
Speaker 2: start have scissor hole, even when weave a band gone,
Speaker 2: even when you're there alone, house is a hole.
Speaker 3: Even when there's ghost Even.
Speaker 2: When you got around from the world, you let your most.
Speaker 4: You scream those broken plaints feeling from the wood.
Speaker 2: Locals when they're gone, leaving them, even when we bene
Speaker 2: even when you're in their alone.
Speaker 5: Well, a very good morning and welcome along to the
Speaker 5: Resident Builder on Sunday. My name is Pete worf Camp,
Speaker 5: the Resident Builder, and this is an opportunity to discuss, debate,
Speaker 5: just have a good old chin wag really about all
Speaker 5: things building and construction, which is pretty much what I've
Speaker 5: been doing for the last a couple of days or so.
Speaker 5: I've been in Wellington and as attending in fact MCing
Speaker 5: the New Zealand Institute of Building annual conference happened to
Speaker 5: be their thirtieth anniversary as well, so spending time with
Speaker 5: their members and delegates at the conference, And obviously when
Speaker 5: you go to a cons about building surveying, you tend
Speaker 5: to talk a lot about building. So a whole bunch
Speaker 5: of new ideas floating around inside the Noggan sort of
Speaker 5: an opportunity to catch up with industry experts, and that's
Speaker 5: what building surveyors are to talk about changes to the legislation,
Speaker 5: things that they see. Had a chance to chat with
Speaker 5: a gentleman by the name of Philo Sullivan, who if
Speaker 5: you recall all of the discussion around the leaky buildings,
Speaker 5: who and his company and his brothers who were very
Speaker 5: much at the forefront of pointing out, hey, look these
Speaker 5: things are going to be a problem. And you know,
Speaker 5: now sort of in semi retirement and all, I don't
Speaker 5: think you can quite let go of it. You know,
Speaker 5: a wealth of information, a wealth of knowledge, a real
Speaker 5: depth of perspective. If you've been engaged with us for
Speaker 5: forty years, you've got sort of long term view of
Speaker 5: what the industry looks like, what some of the challenges are.
Speaker 5: So anyway, a great couple of days in well actually beautiful, beautiful,
Speaker 5: beautiful day in Wellington yesterday. But we'll talk about Wellington
Speaker 5: ter on right. So if you've got a question, because
Speaker 5: I've now got a head full of new information, eight
Speaker 5: hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call anything
Speaker 5: that relates to building construction, getting projects done. Projects perhaps
Speaker 5: that didn't quite go the way that you were hoping
Speaker 5: that they would go. We can talk about that on
Speaker 5: the show this morning. Now a slightly different format to
Speaker 5: the program this morning. I may have mentioned last week
Speaker 5: that a couple of days prior to that, I had
Speaker 5: the opportunity to spend an hour here in the studio
Speaker 5: with the new Minister for Housing and Building and Construction,
Speaker 5: the Honorable Chris Pink. I'd reached out to his office
Speaker 5: to say, look, new minister, lots of new ideas, lots
Speaker 5: of talk at the moment around building and construction. Could
Speaker 5: I please get an interview with the minister? And their
Speaker 5: response was yeah, sure, Chris, we'll come into the studio
Speaker 5: on a Thursday afternoon and you guys can chat, which
Speaker 5: is exactly what we did. So that interview that I
Speaker 5: recorded last week i'll play after or between seven and
Speaker 5: eight this morning. It's fairly lengthy. The intention for the
Speaker 5: interview was that we had an opportunity to kind of
Speaker 5: stretch our legs and talk about a whole number of issues,
Speaker 5: and there are a lot I mentioned yesterday at the
Speaker 5: conference that I genuinely can't think of a time in
Speaker 5: the last ten certainly in the last ten years since
Speaker 5: I've been doing this program where the political aspect of
Speaker 5: building and building legislation has been as prominent as it
Speaker 5: is at the moment. So lots of discussion around sixty
Speaker 5: square meter granny flats without necessarily requiring a building consent,
Speaker 5: talk about changing parts of the Building Act to allow
Speaker 5: for We had a discussion around what's the difference between
Speaker 5: minor variations, amended consents and now minor adjustments. I think
Speaker 5: is a new thing that the Minister wants to introduce,
Speaker 5: particularly for multiproof. We got on talking about councils. We
Speaker 5: talked about joint and several liability. We talked about H
Speaker 5: one changes. This is probably the most topical of all
Speaker 5: of the discussion points that we wanted to touch on,
Speaker 5: so that will be in the next hour of the program.
Speaker 5: Which is also my way of suggesting that if you've
Speaker 5: got a question, you better get your skates on. Give
Speaker 5: me a call right now. Oh eight hundred and eighty
Speaker 5: ten eighty will take calls this hour. We'll do the
Speaker 5: interview with Chris Penk, the Minister, in the next hour,
Speaker 5: and then we'll continue with calls until we talk to
Speaker 5: climb Past. When I get here in the mornings, typically
Speaker 5: I log into my email. I have to say that
Speaker 5: the common theme and the emails for me this morning
Speaker 5: getting in here is can you please send me some
Speaker 5: plans for an oil box? Yes, I will work out
Speaker 5: some way that I can do that. I might have
Speaker 5: to redraw my hastily drawn sketch of what I ended
Speaker 5: up building, but I will try and get that underway
Speaker 5: and have those ready for you by next week. Righty oh,
Speaker 5: it's your opportunity to talk about all things building construction
Speaker 5: projects that have started that, like I say, I didn't
Speaker 5: quite go the way that you wanted them to. My
Speaker 5: thanks to a bunch of people that have emailed with
Speaker 5: thoughts on a few topics that we had last week
Speaker 5: around spouting and roofing and those sorts of things. Really
Speaker 5: appreciate your emails, but right now it is time to talk.
Speaker 5: Eight hundred eighty ten eighty is the number to call.
Speaker 5: So eight hundred eighty ten eighty you can text as
Speaker 5: well nine to nine two and if you'd like to
Speaker 5: send me an email, it is Pete at newstalksb dot
Speaker 5: co dot NZ. So Pete at newstalksb dot co dot
Speaker 5: in said, Pete, did you watch the All Blacks? They
Speaker 5: won again? Only just I didn't. Actually I don't have
Speaker 5: Sky right, so I don't get to watch the games live.
Speaker 5: But while I was cruising through the supermarket and starting
Speaker 5: to cook dinner, I had iHeartRadio on so I could
Speaker 5: listen to the game while I was circling through the
Speaker 5: supermarket and cooking dinner, and thought, Oh, this is going
Speaker 5: to be a regular old downtrow, isn't It didn't quite
Speaker 5: end up that way when I checked the herall before
Speaker 5: I went to bed, a little bit closer than we expected, right, Oat,
Speaker 5: But we're not here to talk sport. I don't mind
Speaker 5: talking sport, but no, we're not going to do that
Speaker 5: today on the show. We are here to talk all
Speaker 5: things building and construction. Be great to have your calls.
Speaker 5: Let's do it now. Eight hundred and eighty ten eighty
Speaker 5: is the number your new talks there'd be. Pete wolf Camp,
Speaker 5: isn't builder with you this morning? Little bit Kroakie. It's
Speaker 5: been a weekend of or week of conversation. So as
Speaker 5: I mentioned in Wellington yesterday in the New Zealand Institute
Speaker 5: of Building Surveys conference, so fairly extensive discussion. Well annual
Speaker 5: general meeting yesterday. Conference on Friday with a bunch of speakers.
Speaker 5: And the great thing with going to these types of
Speaker 5: conferences this one other ones that I've been invited to
Speaker 5: over the years, is the quality of the speakers. So
Speaker 5: had some just outstanding presentations on Friday which was really
Speaker 5: quite cool, including as it happens, Karen Reid, former All
Speaker 5: Black Captain, came to talk and then had some panel
Speaker 5: discussion with a couple of young people who are part
Speaker 5: of the Keystone Trust, and we talk to them a
Speaker 5: couple of weeks ago, so I kind of see the
Speaker 5: sense in these things. I've never been part of a
Speaker 5: corporate life, so I don't really do the whole going
Speaker 5: to conference every year type thing. But when you get
Speaker 5: an opportunity to sort of have a bit of a
Speaker 5: refresh and the introduction of new ideas makes a lot
Speaker 5: of sense. Oh eight hundred and eighty ten eight years
Speaker 5: that I'm going to call Yes, I'll just deal with
Speaker 5: this text quickly, Pete. The Minister is on record of
Speaker 5: promoting BCA's building consent authorities no longer undertaking physical building inspections. Pete,
Speaker 5: I've been building twenty years. There is no way complicated
Speaker 5: elements can be illustrated in detail with photographs, physical inspections
Speaker 5: and sure quality control and enables the BCA to identify
Speaker 5: work that's non compliant or needs improvements. In some cases,
Speaker 5: I take photographs of a few elements for a fire
Speaker 5: engineer during big jobs where they have confidence based on
Speaker 5: many site inspections. The Minister on TV has made it
Speaker 5: clear that he thought this would be more efficient for
Speaker 5: the BCA and for progress based on common sense and experience,
Speaker 5: I believe another disaster if adopted. Great show, Pete, listen
Speaker 5: every Sunday. Very nice of you to call. In fact,
Speaker 5: we do talk about that with the Minister, so that'll
Speaker 5: be in the next hour. I think it's going to
Speaker 5: be maybe slightly more nuanced as it happens at the
Speaker 5: conference over the weekend. I also hadn't chance to talk
Speaker 5: to a couple of council building inspectors and lead building
Speaker 5: inspectors and to get their take on it. As well,
Speaker 5: and I'll unpack that a little bit more for you
Speaker 5: in just a moment. Right now, it's your chance to
Speaker 5: have your say and to ask questions. Eight hundred and
Speaker 5: eighty ten eighties the number Joanna A very good morning,
Speaker 5: Hello Joanna.
Speaker 6: Oh good morning, Yes, hello Pete. I have used a
Speaker 6: rusing person to spray for like an and moss on
Speaker 6: my concrete tiles over the years, and I had it
Speaker 6: done recently and they are now telling me I have
Speaker 6: cracks in the concrete joints along the ridge lines that
Speaker 6: are holding me yes styles on And I'm just wondering
Speaker 6: whether is that sort of work common. The house is
Speaker 6: about twenty years old.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, yeah, because things move, right, Our houses move
Speaker 5: and settle over time. Typically, mortar is not terribly flexible.
Speaker 5: Saying that, yeah, I mean there is new additives that
Speaker 5: are elements to mortar today that we might use for
Speaker 5: what we call pointing of ridge caps and hip cat
Speaker 5: caps pardon me, that are slightly more flexible, but it's
Speaker 5: still reasonably rigid. Right, So if there's some settlement or
Speaker 5: we've had a really big blow or something like that,
Speaker 5: then you will get cracks. Now, individual cracks and the
Speaker 5: pointing are probably not a concern in terms of weather tightness.
Speaker 5: But if the individual cracks then mean that pieces of
Speaker 5: the mortar fall out, excuse me, then that might be
Speaker 5: a little bit of an issue. If pieces are falling
Speaker 5: out but just cracks themselves, I don't know that I'd
Speaker 5: be too concerned. Certainly, there's a couple of roofs on
Speaker 5: houses that I look after where you know, the pointing
Speaker 5: is probably fifty years old, right, and at this stage
Speaker 5: I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that it's causing
Speaker 5: any leaks. So something to be aware of, but I
Speaker 5: don't know that it becomes an urgent repair.
Speaker 7: No, Okay, that's interesting saying that, you know, if you can,
Speaker 7: if you trust the contractor, right, because I think the concern.
Speaker 5: That you might have, or if you don't have it
Speaker 5: other people listening to the call would have, is that
Speaker 5: you know, sometimes there are unscrupulous contractors who go turn
Speaker 5: up and they go, oh my goodness, it's in terrible condition.
Speaker 5: We've got here just in time, and for two thousand dollars,
Speaker 5: we can fix that for you, And they end up
Speaker 5: fixing something it's not really a problem. So you know,
Speaker 5: if you think that it's a genuine concern. Maybe get
Speaker 5: another contractor to give you a second opinion, and if
Speaker 5: both of them agree that, hey, look this is necessary work,
Speaker 5: I'd get it done because it can be a maintenance issue.
Speaker 5: But in some case, if it's twenty years old and
Speaker 5: unless pieces are falling out, I wouldn't be too concerned.
Speaker 6: No, there's nothing falling out. They've taken photos of the
Speaker 6: whole route.
Speaker 3: Well that's good.
Speaker 6: Yes, but I think I will get another opinion.
Speaker 5: Yes, it'd be wise. Yes, nice to talk to you,
Speaker 5: my pleasure. Take care. Jall. We one hundred and eighty
Speaker 5: ten eighty from one roof to another. Actually, Colleen, good
Speaker 5: morning to you.
Speaker 8: Oh hello, o pay. I have a nineteen thirty stucco house.
Speaker 8: It's a Spanish mission style, so that's got a flat roof, yep.
Speaker 8: And we'd had a leak in well water damage and
Speaker 8: the ceiling in one room which had been there for
Speaker 8: a long time, so we put on a whole We've
Speaker 8: got a whole brand new roof done or the roofing company, yep.
Speaker 8: I mean being in an old house. We thought that's
Speaker 8: the best scenario anyway. But in the process of redoing
Speaker 8: this ceiling inside the plasterers have said that there still
Speaker 8: moisture coming through, right, and the fact that we've got
Speaker 8: a whole brand new roof and guttering in this still moisture,
Speaker 8: I'm we're sort of confused as to where this water
Speaker 8: is coming from. We can get into the ceiling space,
Speaker 8: but not to the rest of the house, but not
Speaker 8: to this part of the house coming too, it's too low.
Speaker 8: So I'm just wondering as our best option to try
Speaker 8: and find this is to cut a hole in the
Speaker 8: fibrous plaster in the ceiling and go up that way
Speaker 8: and see if you can see where the water is
Speaker 8: coming from, or what's the best way to find where
Speaker 8: the water is actually coming from any ideas.
Speaker 5: The other challenge with this is defining, Like if the
Speaker 5: contractors have said we've seen more there's moisture there, it
Speaker 5: kind of depends a little bit on what they actually
Speaker 5: mean by that.
Speaker 8: So, for example, what happened was they'd put in the
Speaker 8: process of doing the ceilings. I've done keep ceilings in
Speaker 8: the house, and they've come to this part last. They'd
Speaker 8: put the shore seal on. Yes, and he says it's
Speaker 8: not drying out there and you can still see staining
Speaker 8: coming through, and in the process of that day there
Speaker 8: was more rain and it was getting more moisture coming through.
Speaker 8: I see that it was darkening. You know that the
Speaker 8: areas around there were all dark, where the rest of
Speaker 8: the roof was ceiling was was dry. Okay, Yeah, so
Speaker 8: it looks like water's coming through and it may be
Speaker 8: pooling in that area. I don't know, yeap, that would.
Speaker 5: Make sense, Okay. Now, the reason that I wanted to
Speaker 5: ask that is that in a roof like that, it's
Speaker 5: potent potentially you have two sources of moisture, right. One
Speaker 5: is obviously it rains and the roof's not completely weather
Speaker 5: tight and the water gets inside. The other is, because
Speaker 5: it's of the nature of the construction, you can get
Speaker 5: moisture trapped in there through lack of ventilation insulation being
Speaker 5: in the wrong place, right. So it's it's kind of
Speaker 5: atmospheric moisture that develops in the essentially condensation.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 8: So there's no there's no insulation in that part of
Speaker 8: the ceiling because it's too it was too low for us, right,
Speaker 8: So there is inlation other parts, but not there from
Speaker 8: that area. Yeah, I mean, you can the area is
Speaker 8: there is a space but it's just not space big
Speaker 8: enough for anyone to get into there.
Speaker 5: And knowing that type of so I presume if you're
Speaker 5: talking about nineteen thirty is house stucco, chances are your
Speaker 5: exterior walls go up and then you've got effectively a
Speaker 5: parapet maybe on two or three sides, and then the
Speaker 5: roof is inside that minimal fall running to spouting at
Speaker 5: one end right probably away from the road frontage. Okay,
Speaker 5: the contractors that came to do the rear roof a
Speaker 5: couple of things. One is did they offer any warranties
Speaker 5: and realistically they should have done. Have you invited them
Speaker 5: back to yes.
Speaker 8: I they supposedly came back this week. I've found them
Speaker 8: and told them or explained their situation. But the reason
Speaker 8: I'm ringing you is because we had a few other
Speaker 8: issues with it as well, and so I haven't got
Speaker 8: that much faith in them, although they are part of
Speaker 8: the Roofing Association and they rate and they do have
Speaker 8: a warranty. So I'm just trying to I thought, I'll
Speaker 8: just call you to try and pre empty a few questions. Yeah,
Speaker 8: sure this week and say, oh, this systems and the
Speaker 8: other thing.
Speaker 9: I guess to another area.
Speaker 8: I don't know. I know it's hard with the flat
Speaker 8: roof houses, but.
Speaker 5: They are, but there are ways around that, right, So
Speaker 5: you know they're challenging if you don't detail them right
Speaker 5: or if you don't use the right product. So was
Speaker 5: there corrugated iron on there previously? Most likely? And do
Speaker 5: you happen to know what the actual roof pitch is like?
Speaker 5: Has anyone ever done a calculation said, oh, this roof
Speaker 5: is If you feel like doing a bit of maths,
Speaker 5: that would be quite interesting to figure that out. So,
Speaker 5: for example, typically roofing corrugated iron is designed for roofs
Speaker 5: with at least about a seven degree pitch on them.
Speaker 8: Now, if you use it, I would say, So, I've
Speaker 8: been up on the road and there is definitely looking
Speaker 8: some you know some there is definitely some fall.
Speaker 5: I suspect knowing those types of houses, that in fact
Speaker 5: it's less than seven degrees, but it probably won't be
Speaker 5: less than three degrees. And so ideally, if you're somewhere
Speaker 5: in that spot between three degrees and seven degrees, you
Speaker 5: want to use a profile of corrugated iron called true oak,
Speaker 5: which has a taller profile. Right, So the distance from
Speaker 5: the top of the iron, you know, the crinkle, let's
Speaker 5: say from the bottom to the top is taller. It's
Speaker 5: about twenty three millimeters, which doesn't sound like a lot,
Speaker 5: but it's more than eighteen nineteen degrees, which is kind
Speaker 5: of where modern corrigid iron gets to and so it
Speaker 5: carries more water and it's more suited for that. So
Speaker 5: it'll be interesting to ask the contractor what profile of
Speaker 5: corrugated iron they use. The fact that they're a member
Speaker 5: of the Roofing Association is good because it does give
Speaker 5: you the opportunity if you're not confident about their ability
Speaker 5: to solve the issue, and it should be theirs to solve, right,
Speaker 5: is that you could then go to the Roofing Association
Speaker 5: and go could I ask one of your supervisors or
Speaker 5: assessors to come out and have a look at the
Speaker 5: quality of the work done by one of your members.
Speaker 5: And typically that way you'll get someone who's really, really experienced,
Speaker 5: and I know some of them who will come out.
Speaker 5: And if the original contractor is not able to determine
Speaker 5: where the leak comes from, you can draw on the
Speaker 5: experience of the association and they might be able to
Speaker 5: help you. But I think it's not unreasonable for them.
Speaker 5: If they've done the job and they've offered a warranty,
Speaker 5: it should be where the type end of story. There
Speaker 5: shouldn't be any expert.
Speaker 8: That's what I just wanted, some sort of a second option.
Speaker 5: And potentially what it is is it might not actually
Speaker 5: be about the roofing. It might be about the flashing junction. Right,
Speaker 5: So whether or not they've taken their flashings and gone
Speaker 5: to the top of the parapet, did they potentially replace
Speaker 5: the parapet flashings? Is that a source of leaks?
Speaker 8: Yeah, there was actually no fleshings along the parapets. Put
Speaker 8: fleshings on them.
Speaker 5: Okay, well that's a good thing, all right.
Speaker 8: Look, I think joined in the fleshing though.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but that's not unexpected. And again, if we know,
Speaker 5: typically would lap them one hundred and fifty mili, we'd
Speaker 5: do two beads of silicon and then fix them down appropriately.
Speaker 5: So you know, joins are okay, you just have to
Speaker 5: detail and execute them correctly. So look, I have to
Speaker 5: say having I was in a conversation earlier in the
Speaker 5: week about roofing and about roofing contractors, and you know
Speaker 5: the concern that a number of contractors are not part
Speaker 5: of the Roofing Association, at which time if you have
Speaker 5: a problem with them, you've kind of got nowhere to go, so,
Speaker 5: you know, unless you've got contacts for contractors. I think
Speaker 5: it's really important that people choosing contractors choose people who
Speaker 5: are a license registered LBPS or members of associations. And
Speaker 5: you've done that, which is great.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, actually from listening to your show, that's why
Speaker 8: I chose to on.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you for saying that.
Speaker 8: Well, it's one from the roof Association. I mean I
Speaker 8: didn't think I was going to need it, but now
Speaker 8: I'm thinking, well, actually maybe I will need it. Depends
Speaker 8: on what they say is when they come this week,
Speaker 8: and hopefully they'll be able to sort of.
Speaker 5: Get them back. I think it's really important. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: think it's really important. In fact, I think in consumer
Speaker 5: law you have to give the original contractor the opportunity
Speaker 5: to come and do the remediation. And if you're not
Speaker 5: confident with that, or even if you just want a
Speaker 5: second pair of eyes over it, contact the Roofing Association
Speaker 5: get them to come out and do a site visit.
Speaker 8: Yeah, good luck, Okay, Well, thank you for your.
Speaker 5: Having all right, no trouble at all, Take care, all right,
Speaker 5: all the best bar I think, oh eight one hundred
Speaker 5: and eighty ten eighty is the number to call. Will
Speaker 5: take a short break. I'll talk a little bit more about,
Speaker 5: you know, contract the selection straight after the break back
Speaker 5: in the my just quickly I can. The conversation I
Speaker 5: had this week was about a contractor that I know
Speaker 5: who rang me, who is acting on behalf of a
Speaker 5: client who, it's greatst respect, was probably an older woman
Speaker 5: on her own and had contracted someone to renovate the bathroom.
Speaker 5: And so someone turned up. They said, ah, this is great, yep,
Speaker 5: we can start sort of soon and I'll do everything.
Speaker 5: I'll pull the old one out, I'll do the waterproofing
Speaker 5: or i'll do the plumbing, I'll do the lining, I'll
Speaker 5: do the I'll fit the shower, I'll do the tiling.
Speaker 5: Da da da da da. Anyway, it's been a bit
Speaker 5: of a disaster. They've got leaks, they've got tiles falling off.
Speaker 5: It's been a really poor quality job all the way round.
Speaker 5: But of course, because the person's not licensed, certainly not
Speaker 5: licensed to be a plumber, and therefore they've broken the law.
Speaker 5: There probably don't have any qualifications in terms of the waterproofing,
Speaker 5: even you know, having attended a course on how to
Speaker 5: install that particular waterproofing. They're not an LBP, they're not
Speaker 5: part of any profit association, and so when you're looking
Speaker 5: for redress, where do you go? You've got no support.
Speaker 5: You can't go to an aid an organization and go look,
Speaker 5: one of your members has done X, Y and Z.
Speaker 5: So I'm really delighted to hear that, Colleen. In choosing
Speaker 5: to have, you know, something as important as an expensive
Speaker 5: as doing a reroof you look around for contractors who
Speaker 5: are professional and maybe have some professional association. So roofing
Speaker 5: is restricted building work, so someone should be an LBP,
Speaker 5: a licensed building practitioner. But the fact that they've then
Speaker 5: gone on to be part of an association, I think
Speaker 5: gives you some surety and it gives you somewhere to
Speaker 5: go when maybe things don't work out well. So that's
Speaker 5: good to hear from Colleen. Oh, eight hundred and eighty
Speaker 5: ten eighty is the number to call. Just a reminder,
Speaker 5: will take calls this hour next hour. I had the
Speaker 5: opportunity to do a fairly extensive interview with the Minister
Speaker 5: for Building and Construction, the honorable Chris Penk. We will
Speaker 5: have that interview for you after the seven o'clock news. Michelle,
Speaker 5: good morning.
Speaker 10: Morning, I love your love listening to a little woman.
Speaker 10: What we're about to get our deck be done. So
Speaker 10: this is the question about what to do. So we've
Speaker 10: currently got a queer deck. We have four decks around
Speaker 10: the house. Yes, we're going to extend one, et cetera.
Speaker 10: At the moment, you've got the ripped side up, and
Speaker 10: the reason we want to redo it is because what
Speaker 10: happens is it gets water in it, and then it
Speaker 10: gets moss and then we're having to constantly paint it
Speaker 10: and you know, like it grows.
Speaker 11: In the ale.
Speaker 10: So we've got bill designed that's going to start next week.
Speaker 10: They said, because initially we thought we would just get
Speaker 10: them play lift it, flip it over to its smooth side,
Speaker 10: because we actually want to paint it gray. We don't
Speaker 10: want to have that ground look the white the white house.
Speaker 10: So one of the said, well, what you know was
Speaker 10: been lifted up and then you know the flat side
Speaker 10: and then you know, get the paint and painted. But
Speaker 10: they also said there is a number of composite or
Speaker 10: some sort of other product that we could look at.
Speaker 10: So can you just advise because we're in a quandary
Speaker 10: as to do we just chuck it away and put
Speaker 10: a new product? If I do a lot of decks
Speaker 10: and showing us Yeah, so what would you recon mean
Speaker 10: is something that's gonna last that's not going to get
Speaker 10: that old dollar?
Speaker 12: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Sure, yes, I guess there's a couple of different approaches here.
Speaker 5: One is if I put my sustainability hat on, which
Speaker 5: is pretty important to me, then I'd go. You know,
Speaker 5: if you've got decking material that's durable and as well
Speaker 5: within its lifespan, and you can extend that life span
Speaker 5: by reusing it, that's a really good choice to make. Right,
Speaker 5: So you're not wasting a resource that you've already spent
Speaker 5: money on. You're not sending something to landfill, and I
Speaker 5: hope you wouldn't do that. You'd send it off to
Speaker 5: a recycling center. So if there was an opportunity, if
Speaker 5: the boards are in reasonable condition, if they for example,
Speaker 5: if they were screwed down rather than being nailed down.
Speaker 5: So I'm being practical here lifting boards that have been
Speaker 5: nailed down, you will get a bit of damage. If
Speaker 5: the boards have been screwed down. You can back the
Speaker 5: screws out, flip the boards over, you might even give
Speaker 5: them a bit of individual attention before you relay them.
Speaker 5: And so you know, cost wise and environmentally, that's a
Speaker 5: really good choice. So that's something consider. The other option
Speaker 5: is some of the composite boards, where there is a
Speaker 5: range of colors. I've used a couple of them over
Speaker 5: the years. The one that I've probably used the most
Speaker 5: is one from a company called out Dure, and that
Speaker 5: the benefits of that is that you will you will
Speaker 5: get a concealed fixed system, which is kind of nice.
Speaker 5: They have a slightly better slip resistance to them because
Speaker 5: of the way that they're made. So you know, if
Speaker 5: you take your queeler and flip it over and have
Speaker 5: the smooth side up, that will have less slip resistance
Speaker 5: than some of the composites. But if you know, if
Speaker 5: you're doing four decks and you're throwing away four decks
Speaker 5: worth of timber and then buying four decks worth of
Speaker 5: new material and you don't need to, I guess my
Speaker 5: heart would say do something to reuse what you've already got.
Speaker 5: But then I'm coming very strongly from a point of
Speaker 5: view where I don't like to see us waste resources,
Speaker 5: and so I would favor reuse over purchasing you. But
Speaker 5: that's more kind of a political decision than a practical one,
Speaker 5: let's say. But yeah, some of some of the composites
Speaker 5: are very good.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and which someone lasts the longest, Like the slip
Speaker 10: thing has been an issue because these ridges, when they
Speaker 10: get wet that it's actually not a you know what
Speaker 10: I mean, that's why we're and isn't.
Speaker 5: That curious because typically we flip the boards up to
Speaker 5: have the rib side up because it helps stop slipping, right,
Speaker 5: But your experiences they actually get more slippery as a result,
Speaker 5: and doc to be fair, if I'm laying decking that
Speaker 5: has the ribs on it, I would typically put those down,
Speaker 5: but I often use I often flip them back up
Speaker 5: again if they're on the nose of a stair, so
Speaker 5: on the edge of a stair, just it helps with
Speaker 5: a bit of slip resistance. And it's a visual queue
Speaker 5: that there's a step here. So yeah, look, yeah, for
Speaker 5: what it's worth, possibly i'd probably if I was looking
Speaker 5: at it, i'd probably encourage you to reuse. But if
Speaker 5: you didn't, then you know, get the builders to lift
Speaker 5: it in such a way that potentially it could be
Speaker 5: sold and someone else gets to buy it, which would
Speaker 5: be great. And or you know, in the very worst case,
Speaker 5: if you are sending that material away, make sure it's
Speaker 5: going to a site that recycles it.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so just one more question mentioned they could put
Speaker 10: you know, we've been discussing what to do about it,
Speaker 10: but it's so much digging. If they also say, well
Speaker 10: we could replace it with pine digging, yep, it gives
Speaker 10: you you.
Speaker 13: Know, a because we do want to paint it the
Speaker 13: beas and beans. We get a lot of sunshine, and
Speaker 13: we in our last property we owned, we made a
Speaker 13: couple of mistakes. We put black outside in the pool area,
Speaker 13: which is we're going to be decking around this pool
Speaker 13: as well, and we painted it too whiter dead and
Speaker 13: it's got too hot.
Speaker 10: So we sort of want something that you.
Speaker 14: Know, there is flatness, move easier to just give it
Speaker 14: a quick hose to keep it playing. We don't want
Speaker 14: the moss as you yeah, and we don't want it
Speaker 14: to be too hot for the green tests not to
Speaker 14: be able to send or do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: So again, look, I certainly don't have a problem recommending
Speaker 5: soft woods like Pinus Radiata. I think it's really important
Speaker 5: to seal it, as in put in a penetrating oil seal.
Speaker 5: I certainly don't when you say paint, I presume that
Speaker 5: what you mean is staining, right, You're not actually going.
Speaker 15: To paint it.
Speaker 5: If you start painting it, you're just creating a lot
Speaker 5: of work for yourself and it'll be quite slippery. So again,
Speaker 5: Pinus Radiator good quality. That it definitely becomes a question
Speaker 5: if you get what you pay for right, So don't
Speaker 5: you know if you're going to get a cheap product
Speaker 5: or a cheaper or more cost effective product, make sure
Speaker 5: you look at it first, because certainly I've been to
Speaker 5: a job where the owner bought the decking themselves, thought
Speaker 5: that they'd got a real deal and it was just
Speaker 5: rubbish and we ended up having to send it back
Speaker 5: and buy something decent. So make sure you get some
Speaker 5: really good material. I've got to run, Michelle, But good
Speaker 5: luck with all of those eight hundred eighty ten eighties
Speaker 5: that I'm going to call Anthony, good morning.
Speaker 9: Good morning piece.
Speaker 5: Hey, how you doing.
Speaker 9: I've got a good I've got a question for you.
Speaker 9: My daughter is looking around to buy her first house,
Speaker 9: and we went to a few open houses. She found
Speaker 9: one new bill and it's my question, is the laundry.
Speaker 9: The laundry is a meet up by meta?
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 9: It's got no it's got notub or not sink or
Speaker 9: not provision for it yep. And is that okay? Is
Speaker 9: how they build them these days or do you do
Speaker 9: you have to.
Speaker 15: Have that in there?
Speaker 5: You don't have to have a laundry sink, right, They're
Speaker 5: really good to have, obviously, and there's a practical reason
Speaker 5: for having one. But you know, increasingly we're building more
Speaker 5: and more compact house is right, So something's got to
Speaker 5: give because we just don't have the floor space. So yeah,
Speaker 5: it's not a requirement in the building code as far
Speaker 5: as I'm concerned, or as far as I'm aware, to
Speaker 5: have a laundry sink.
Speaker 9: The other thing is because the laundry is as usual
Speaker 9: these days, it's under the stairs, yes, And it's got
Speaker 9: no height to mount the dryer right wall itself. Yeah,
Speaker 9: So what do you do with a dryer these days?
Speaker 9: Just put it in the.
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: And I mean there's probably other issues around, like, for example,
Speaker 5: I would hope that in a space like that, it
Speaker 5: has ventilation or extraction in it.
Speaker 16: They do.
Speaker 9: There's a little tiny thing other thing does bloody hell.
Speaker 9: It's about two hundred by two hundred. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Look, if it's a one fifty and it's a reasonable run,
Speaker 5: it'll be doing something and that's really important. Yeah, I mean, look,
Speaker 5: this is this is just one of the challenges we
Speaker 5: have with more compact living, right, And you know, you
Speaker 5: might I do. You know, I have space where we've
Speaker 5: got a bench and the appliances, and I can hang
Speaker 5: the dryer on the wall and I conduct it out
Speaker 5: through the wall to the outside. But in many modern
Speaker 5: apartments you can't. So I guess if it's not there,
Speaker 5: really hard to create it. But as best I understand it,
Speaker 5: there's no requirement in the building code to develop houses
Speaker 5: that allow for that. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Just one more thing. The switchboard. Electrical switchboard. I thought
Speaker 9: they had to be on outside these days, but this
Speaker 9: one is the inside the dining room.
Speaker 5: No much more common these days. And let's separate out
Speaker 5: two things here. One is the meter, right, which is
Speaker 5: where your man's run to, and it calculates how much
Speaker 5: energy usage you've got. The other is the distribution board
Speaker 5: increasingly distribution actually a meet yourself. No, it's not uncommon
Speaker 5: for them to be inside. Typically, if for the projects
Speaker 5: that I've been doing, I would try and put them
Speaker 5: in the garage. But a lot of modern medium density
Speaker 5: housing actually don't have a garage, in which case they
Speaker 5: end up maybe close to the front door, and the
Speaker 5: front door basically goes straight into the lounge, so you
Speaker 5: end up with them in the lounge.
Speaker 9: Yeah, this doesn't have a garage, so that's that's why
Speaker 9: it's not in the garage, I suppose, yep. Yeah, And
Speaker 9: just one way question, if I can this unit? She
Speaker 9: looked at she it's it's there's a five I think
Speaker 9: in the block and hers her one is at the
Speaker 9: highest point of the land, if you like, yes, now
Speaker 9: at the back seemed to me like there could be
Speaker 9: some water issues where the water is gonna, you know,
Speaker 9: on a heavy range water the backyard, it's got to
Speaker 9: go somewhere. It's obviously going to go down to the
Speaker 9: other units. How does how do you sort it out?
Speaker 9: And can they say, look, you have to keep your
Speaker 9: water on your property or how does it work?
Speaker 5: I guess only water that lands on your roof. Do
Speaker 5: you have to contain, right, So.
Speaker 9: That runs water on a grass or that's fine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, as long as it's not set up in
Speaker 5: such a way that it's an obvious nuisance. But in
Speaker 5: the end, you know, you can't stop water going downhill, right,
Speaker 5: So whether or not it's your property and or it's
Speaker 5: you're adjoined to your neighbor because you're in a multi
Speaker 5: unit development or something like that. So I think there's
Speaker 5: kind of a reasonableness to it. But what, for example,
Speaker 5: what you can't do is discharge your roof water in
Speaker 5: such a way that it becomes a nuisance for a neighbor.
Speaker 5: But if if and because chances are the water that
Speaker 5: is on your the house that your daughter might end
Speaker 5: up purchasing, that might come from the neighbor, right, So
Speaker 5: it comes from the neighbor onto this property and then
Speaker 5: goes to the next one. So as long as it's
Speaker 5: not deliberate, I think you're okay. All right, nice to
Speaker 5: talk to you, lovely to chat and good luck with
Speaker 5: the house hunting. All right mate, all the us take
Speaker 5: care bye bayh. We'll talk to Craig straight after the break.
Speaker 5: Quick text. Is there anywhere that you can go to
Speaker 5: check that the LBP is registered or do you just
Speaker 5: ask the LBP or the builder if they are. One
Speaker 5: of the best things about the LBP scheme is it's
Speaker 5: completely open, right, So you simply go to building dot
Speaker 5: gov dot nz forward slash LBP and then select search register,
Speaker 5: type in the name or they really the name of
Speaker 5: the person and it will come up. And if they're
Speaker 5: not there, they are not an LBP. If they were
Speaker 5: an LBP but have been deregistered for some reason, or
Speaker 5: their name has been taken off the current list, that
Speaker 5: will come up. And any other information about them like if,
Speaker 5: for example, they had failed to get re license in time,
Speaker 5: had their license suspended for a period of time but
Speaker 5: then reinstated. All of that's there. So building dot gov,
Speaker 5: dot nz forward slash LBP will give you all of
Speaker 5: that information. Like I say, you're either on it or
Speaker 5: you're not. I had to relicense the other day, so
Speaker 5: before I expired, I've done that. It's been accepted. I'm
Speaker 5: on the list. I'm number BP one two zero zero,
Speaker 5: nine to eight. It's as simple as that. Craig, good morning,
Speaker 5: good morning, haws a game, good things.
Speaker 15: It's bringing on Behalf a friend of mine who doesn't
Speaker 15: like ring up radio station. He's a little bit shy.
Speaker 15: He's old school. He's got a problem with this pool.
Speaker 15: As far as the council goes. Their property is down
Speaker 15: a right away down the bottom of a quite a
Speaker 15: large steep hill with their houses. They are the only
Speaker 15: one down there, and then it goes up a steep
Speaker 15: driveway to the main road, and then their broad is
Speaker 15: quite flat. But then all around the hill's feather about
Speaker 15: an one hundred meters up the hill, about kway from
Speaker 15: the house is the water reservoir. Right now, he's been
Speaker 15: told they need his failed his compliants for his pool.
Speaker 15: He's got a water meter, but they said he needs
Speaker 15: a backflow valve and there to stop the water going
Speaker 15: back into the system. And he's a little the confused
Speaker 15: because being on the bottom of the hell, how's the water
Speaker 15: supposed to go back up the hill to the reservoir.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, so I don't think council are concerned about
Speaker 5: the water going back up the councilor concerned about the
Speaker 5: water going down and through the main system. So if
Speaker 5: there's a requirement to have backflow prevention, which is essentially
Speaker 5: a device that stops water inadvertently being siphoned out of
Speaker 5: the pool and returned to the main system. Now that's
Speaker 5: and the principle behind it is reasonably sound, and we
Speaker 5: have them inside our houses. So, for example, a shower
Speaker 5: on a detachable hose right that you can handheld one
Speaker 5: has to have a backflow prevention device included in it
Speaker 5: because let's say you inadvertently lifted in at the bottom
Speaker 5: of the shower and it's sucked up water, it would
Speaker 5: siphon foul water back into the council line, into the
Speaker 5: main line. So all of these regulations are around protecting
Speaker 5: public safety by ensuring we don't have that. So that's
Speaker 5: a reasonable request from counsel to us for a backflow
Speaker 5: prevention device.
Speaker 15: Okay, I'll just excuse also been it's a bottom of
Speaker 15: hell and matter the pressure and the pressure in the
Speaker 15: water mains for how, I don't actually know how it
Speaker 15: would go back up the hill.
Speaker 5: It's not about it going back up because in the
Speaker 5: end that there are people downhill as well, right, and
Speaker 5: it's protecting those.
Speaker 15: He's the only one of the bomb the hill, He's
Speaker 15: the only one there.
Speaker 5: It wouldn't look if it needs backflow prevention, it needs
Speaker 5: backflow prevention. It's in the regulation. He just needs to
Speaker 5: go and do it, Okay.
Speaker 15: All right, it just doesn't make physical sense, that's all.
Speaker 5: It doesn't matter. It does despite the fact he's at
Speaker 5: the bottom of the hill. It's it's all about protecting
Speaker 5: public safety and I think it's important and if it's
Speaker 5: part of the regulations, then just get on.
Speaker 3: And do it. You know.
Speaker 5: I understand him asking the question. I do, but at
Speaker 5: a certain point it's it's there for a reason. Just
Speaker 5: do it and get them to do it, and get
Speaker 5: him to get on with it and get the Council
Speaker 5: off his back would be my approach. Good luck with
Speaker 5: all of that, mate, Oh eight, one hundred and eighty
Speaker 5: ten eighty ah, we might have time for one call
Speaker 5: after the break. We might do that. Then we've got
Speaker 5: the Minister Chris Pink joining us for an extended interview
Speaker 5: between seven and eight though looking forward to that. We're
Speaker 5: back straight after news, sport and weather. If you'd like
Speaker 5: to join us, stay tuned because we've got the Minister
Speaker 5: Chris Pink after the news your news talks. Here be
Speaker 5: just a very quick call before we go to the
Speaker 5: interview with Chris Pink. The Minister for Building and Construction.
Speaker 5: We'll have that interview in just a moment. Marie, Good
Speaker 5: morning to you. Hello Marie Elly, Yes, hey there, how
Speaker 5: are you doing?
Speaker 17: Good?
Speaker 9: Good?
Speaker 17: Just a quick question on a rural property in the
Speaker 17: way kaddow. Yes, as the downpipe goes down and the
Speaker 17: water just sits in a puddle at the bottom, it
Speaker 17: doesn't go anywhere.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 17: Is that legal?
Speaker 5: I think it's probably not, because it's a house and
Speaker 5: you need to contain the water. But then you also go, well,
Speaker 5: hang on, who's that going to impact right only you.
Speaker 5: What it's going to do is make the ground damper
Speaker 5: and more saturated. It's a waste of resource if your
Speaker 5: rural chances are you want to capture that. So it's
Speaker 5: not great for the house. But in terms of its
Speaker 5: impact on other people, if you don't have a close neighbor,
Speaker 5: then it probably makes no difference at all to them,
Speaker 5: in which case it's kind of nobody's business. But I
Speaker 5: would still encourage you to collect that rain water, either
Speaker 5: with a water tank because that's sensible resilient, or to
Speaker 5: stop all of that water sitting around your house. I
Speaker 5: would direct it away from the house as far as
Speaker 5: possible without too close to the neighbor. Being too close
Speaker 5: to the neighbor, yeah.
Speaker 17: Now just a little puddle formed.
Speaker 5: Which is not great.
Speaker 15: Right.
Speaker 5: We don't actually want standing water around our houses because
Speaker 5: if it's outside you, away from the house, chances are
Speaker 5: it's also going to saturate the ground underneath the house,
Speaker 5: and that's not great in terms of trying to keep
Speaker 5: our houses warm, dry and comfortable. But more importantly, I
Speaker 5: think if you're rural and your depend are you on
Speaker 5: main supply mains supply for water? No, okay, then you
Speaker 5: know at some stage you're probably going to run out
Speaker 5: of water, And if you've wasted it by dumping it
Speaker 5: on the ground for all that time, go and grab
Speaker 5: yourself a water tank and capture it would seem sensible
Speaker 5: to me. Nice of you to call Marie all the
Speaker 5: very best. I'm very tempted to read out this text.
Speaker 5: I might save it for a bit longer. I don't
Speaker 5: want to bring the tone of the conversation down right now, right.
Speaker 5: It was my great pleasure last week to have an
Speaker 5: opportunity to spend almost an hour with the new Minister
Speaker 5: for Building and Construction, Chris Penk. He came into the
Speaker 5: studio and I said to him, this is an opportunity
Speaker 5: to kind of stretch our legs.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 5: So most of the time when we do interviews, it's
Speaker 5: all about quite quite quick. You know, we've going to
Speaker 5: race through this. This wasn't so this is a conversation
Speaker 5: that I recorded last week with the minister. We'll play
Speaker 5: this straight after the break. Chris, Welcome to the studio
Speaker 5: and thanks for taking the time to actually come in.
Speaker 5: I really really appreciate it. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: about I'm intrigued by this. So you spent some time
Speaker 5: in the navy, including the Australian Navy on submarines obviously,
Speaker 5: then there was a law career, entry into Parliament twenty seventeen.
Speaker 5: Now you've got a number of portfolios. I saw you
Speaker 5: at the Dutch Memorial as representing as Minister for Veterans Affairs.
Speaker 5: You're also obviously Minister for Building and Construction. I kind
Speaker 5: of feel like, how did you end up with that job?
Speaker 17: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I feel very fortunate for a start, and by the way,
Speaker 4: great to have a chat with you here. I thank
Speaker 4: you considerable audience, who I know hang on every word
Speaker 4: that you say in relation to these matters. Look, it's
Speaker 4: obviously a hugely important subject for the country. So from
Speaker 4: my point of view, to to be fortunate enough to
Speaker 4: be the minister as a great privilege. The short answer
Speaker 4: is because the incoming Prime Minister asked me if I'd
Speaker 4: like to do it, And there's only one answer to
Speaker 4: that question. But right, you know, I'm really delighted to
Speaker 4: have that. In terms of background, you know, I'm not
Speaker 4: a technical guy. I don't pretend to be any better
Speaker 4: than the average diy hack of a weekend. But having
Speaker 4: said there a little bit of background in the law,
Speaker 4: and particularly in relation to property law, and so having
Speaker 4: experienced some of these issues in terms of how the
Speaker 4: legislation the regulations are put together, including the costs and
Speaker 4: certainty and all those difficulties and that clients used to
Speaker 4: face in terms of you know, what it meant for
Speaker 4: them not to have laws that enabled them to do
Speaker 4: things quickly and easily and therefore more affordably.
Speaker 5: So in your practice law practice that was very much
Speaker 5: focused on property.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was actually and in a little bit of
Speaker 4: accident of history in terms if that was work that
Speaker 4: was available at that time, and certainly I enjoyed it
Speaker 4: and I wasn't to know, of course, that all these
Speaker 4: years later i'd have the opportunity within a political environment
Speaker 4: to help, you know, maybe make the laws and shave
Speaker 4: them a little bit. So, as I say, really pleased,
Speaker 4: it's a little bit of a natural progression. But also
Speaker 4: I'm humble enough to say that there's a lot that
Speaker 4: I know that I don't know, and every willing and
Speaker 4: keen in fact to ask questions of the people who
Speaker 4: out there doing the work.
Speaker 5: And to be fair, one of the things that I
Speaker 5: have noticed is that I've seen you at a number
Speaker 5: of conferences. I also know that you've spent a fair
Speaker 5: amount of time with different industry groups and seem to
Speaker 5: be willing to listen, which is great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think any government minister would be
Speaker 4: foolish not to frankly to be recognizing, you know, particularly
Speaker 4: in building construction, that the people who are by their
Speaker 4: nature very resourceful you used to come out with solutions
Speaker 4: literally constructive in their approach, and I think if you
Speaker 4: know you're smart as a policy maker, you get as
Speaker 4: close to those people as possible because they will tell
Speaker 4: you what's happening on the ground, sure where the barriers are,
Speaker 4: and look it's not that we can provide the answers
Speaker 4: that will please everyone all the time, of course not,
Speaker 4: because even industry itself has a range of different views.
Speaker 4: We might get into that in the discussion will certainly
Speaker 4: by missing you know, if you weren't engaged closely, you'd
Speaker 4: be missing as opportunities.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay. The other thing that I really appreciate is
Speaker 5: the fact that we can take some time because I
Speaker 5: think that one of the challenges with discussing building and
Speaker 5: construction issues is that we're looking for simple answers, and
Speaker 5: to be fair, they're not there right. So anything that
Speaker 5: you can summarize in a pithy headline is probably not
Speaker 5: worth really discussing. So there's lots and lots of detail.
Speaker 5: In preparing for this, I did a quick sort of
Speaker 5: Google search and went basically Chris Minister and building changes,
Speaker 5: and one of the things that popped up is something
Speaker 5: that in fact I was talking with a builder today
Speaker 5: about exactly this, clarifying the definition of a minor variation
Speaker 5: and introducing this idea of minor customizations.
Speaker 3: You just walk me through that. Yeah, So the.
Speaker 4: Idea is really trying to get the best we can
Speaker 4: out of the consent system as it currently exists, because
Speaker 4: of course, the big picture is that it's a difficult,
Speaker 4: expense of time consuming and uncertain to build in this country.
Speaker 4: And part of that is around the processes with consents
Speaker 4: of obviously need a building content in the first place,
Speaker 4: and inspections as I think that we might get to
Speaker 4: talk to certainly when there are changes along the way,
Speaker 4: be it in relation to products, maybe a better or
Speaker 4: a different products being found. Maybe you want the product
Speaker 4: that's available now, you know, a little reference and footnote
Speaker 4: to the plaster board shortagees COT of years ago, for example.
Speaker 4: But even in a business as usual kind of way,
Speaker 4: we want that flexibility because we reduce the delay, we
Speaker 4: improve choice and competition and therefore affordability. And part of
Speaker 4: the issue, it seems to me, is that when a
Speaker 4: relatively small change needs to be happen, happen along the
Speaker 4: way in terms of those products substitutions, you want that
Speaker 4: mine of variation mechanism which does already exist to be
Speaker 4: clear as q to predecessors of mine who worked with
Speaker 4: mb in others to institute that. But it seems there's
Speaker 4: not enough clarity of that for it to be used
Speaker 4: as often as we want, and certainly in the case
Speaker 4: of multiproofs, which you know, by their nature are a
Speaker 4: consent that can be used many times over for the
Speaker 4: same design, but you know a number of different times
Speaker 4: in maybe slightly different ways. We want to unlock the
Speaker 4: the potential of that and to be able to say, well,
Speaker 4: you can do something that's relatively small. You know, it
Speaker 4: might be substituting a product, as I've said, but also
Speaker 4: maybe in terms of design, if you're swapping a window
Speaker 4: for a door in a way that doesn't compromise the
Speaker 4: structural integrity, or maybe even you know, the design is
Speaker 4: the same but a mirror image, or might want to
Speaker 4: be north facing, you know, to suit the particular location.
Speaker 4: You know, we want to unlock all those opportunities without
Speaker 4: having a burdens and process that is tough for you know,
Speaker 4: the builder himself with herself in the consumer, but also
Speaker 4: of course from a BC a point of view, the councils,
Speaker 4: the building con sem authorities. You know, if we can
Speaker 4: take a bit of workload off them and relatively mundane,
Speaker 4: small scale, low risk stuff, then of course they've got
Speaker 4: more resource to focus on that which they should genuinely
Speaker 4: be engaged at okay.
Speaker 5: One of your other comments is that, look, currently it
Speaker 5: can take six hundred days to go from consent to
Speaker 5: code compliance certificate. That's too long. It adds costs. Broadly speaking,
Speaker 5: what do you think can be done about that?
Speaker 4: Well, I think there are a few different opportunities. One
Speaker 4: of them I just mentioned in Passing a minute ago,
Speaker 4: which was in relation to inspections anecdotally at least, and
Speaker 4: we're also trying to get the data to back this up.
Speaker 4: But oftentimes an inspection is ready to be to take
Speaker 4: place from the point of view of the person doing
Speaker 4: the work, and they simply have delays in terms of
Speaker 4: the inspection being able to take place because that's the
Speaker 4: availability of the council officers in particularly. You know when
Speaker 4: you're adding delays, because then the next part of the
Speaker 4: work can't proceed until such time as the inspection takes place.
Speaker 4: In passes, then you go, well, if you had a
Speaker 4: more streamline version of the remote visual inspecting divisibility that
Speaker 4: some bcas are already using, of course, then you can say, well,
Speaker 4: you know, if you dial in provided this bit of
Speaker 4: internet coverage at both ends, you can actually get a
Speaker 4: really quick update. Yes, everything's okay, fine to proceed and
Speaker 4: go ahead. So that's one little piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 4: But more generally, the picture is to have processes that
Speaker 4: allocate risk appropriately so that we don't have these undue delays,
Speaker 4: which of course add costs, particularly in the highest interest
Speaker 4: environments such as we've had the last year.
Speaker 5: Or Sure, just on the remote inspections. From what I've read,
Speaker 5: it seems to be that you are instructing bcas to
Speaker 5: take remote inspections as the standard method rather than the exceptions. Now,
Speaker 5: over the years, I've done remote inspections, but it's tended
Speaker 5: to be a rarity. So do you want to swap
Speaker 5: that around?
Speaker 4: Yeah, very much.
Speaker 3: That very much a swapping around.
Speaker 4: And the word we've used as default, and we don't
Speaker 4: know exactly what that means, and that's why we're consulting Sure,
Speaker 4: you know, to make sure we get that detail right
Speaker 4: and to recognize that in most cases we think it
Speaker 4: will be suitable, but not all. So the question of
Speaker 4: what default means, you know, what are the times that
Speaker 4: we want to carve that out? In the three main
Speaker 4: areas that occur to me is one, if you've got
Speaker 4: a builder who's less experienced or you know, frankly, in
Speaker 4: a couple of cases, SAD is trustworthy, so that that
Speaker 4: might be a situation we might insist on on having
Speaker 4: in person inspections, or if I have to flip that
Speaker 4: around more positively, for those who are able to be trusted,
Speaker 4: you know, the credible, respectable and so on, and I've
Speaker 4: got a good track record, maybe you can take a
Speaker 4: bit more liberty, so to speak, in terms of that.
Speaker 3: So that's one.
Speaker 4: And it might be that there's particular types of building
Speaker 4: or stages in a building in which it's desirable to
Speaker 4: have someone physically turn up in person and do the
Speaker 4: moisture testing or whatever, or you know, poke around in
Speaker 4: a way that isn't so easy in terms of you know,
Speaker 4: that remote visual way. And then the final category, I suppose,
Speaker 4: at the risk of standing obvious, is when the technology
Speaker 4: isn't available builder himself or herself is not comfortable, you know,
Speaker 4: for teaching old dogs nutrients, and that's tough in I
Speaker 4: suppose in that same category as where there might be
Speaker 4: limitations around internet coverage and so on.
Speaker 5: Right, one of the relatively early announcements from you and
Speaker 5: from your office was to say we want to allow
Speaker 5: for the importation of building products that come from similar
Speaker 5: jurisdictions to ourselves, and they can come in and be
Speaker 5: used in restricted building work as long as you can
Speaker 5: prove that they come from a you know, have a
Speaker 5: testing regime that's similar to ours. So rather than I've
Speaker 5: said this on radio and of times, you know, I know,
Speaker 5: you know European manufacturer that makes silicon that brings it
Speaker 5: into New Zealand, then it has to go to brands
Speaker 5: or to code mark for testing and they've got fifty
Speaker 5: years of development. So is that the sort of thing
Speaker 5: that you're looking at saying, look, you know a factory
Speaker 5: in Belgium that's been manufacturing this for fifty years, they
Speaker 5: probably know what they're doing. They should be able to
Speaker 5: you should be able to use that product here.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what we're looking to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I mean Belgium, I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 4: and not to prejudge it, but let's just say for
Speaker 4: arguments sake, we regard them as having a high standard
Speaker 4: of building. Their particular standards in relation to you know,
Speaker 4: whether it's waterproof, nature or strength or integrity are at
Speaker 4: as higher standard or higher than those in New Zealand.
Speaker 4: Then we say, well, there's no reason we shouldn't rely
Speaker 4: on those. So there's two elements. One is credible and
Speaker 4: that's what we've referred to in this case, and the
Speaker 4: other one is comfortable. So is it also the case
Speaker 4: that the jurisdiction, you know, the physical geography means that
Speaker 4: we can compare like for like, do they have seismic
Speaker 4: risk if we're talking about products that relate to structural
Speaker 4: and are they coastal in the same way that New
Speaker 4: Zealanders if we're relating to moisture in a way or
Speaker 4: high wind zones, neither see and so on. So it
Speaker 4: won't be uv absolutely good, good, good example. So that's
Speaker 4: the work that's going on at the moment. And if
Speaker 4: I had a dollar for every time that the devil
Speaker 4: in the detail was used in relation to that, then
Speaker 4: and we wouldn't need the building livery at all. But
Speaker 4: you know, that's that's the kind of work that we
Speaker 4: need to do at that detailed level to unlock you.
Speaker 3: Know, a whole heap of opportunity.
Speaker 5: So is that you can do that right now or
Speaker 5: is this legislation in place but not hasn't become law yet.
Speaker 3: Well, the legislation exists.
Speaker 4: So this this very week we have the opportunity, and
Speaker 4: in fact it will be in the coming few weeks
Speaker 4: that will have its first reading in Parliament, so the
Speaker 4: public will have a chance to have their say on that.
Speaker 4: And the idea of that legislation once it passes through
Speaker 4: the parliament early or mid next year is to say,
Speaker 4: now we've got a structure that says we can add
Speaker 4: in for example, Belgium or wherever we can take our time.
Speaker 4: Let's get the easy, low risk stuff across the line first.
Speaker 4: Let's get best bang for buck. You know, in some
Speaker 4: products will naturally be more able to be important. Just
Speaker 4: the shaer size and scale and geography in relation to
Speaker 4: supply chain issues will naturally lend the system to be
Speaker 4: really helpful in some cases, less helpful in others. But
Speaker 4: you know, we've got to do everything we can to
Speaker 4: try and get things moving in a way as I say,
Speaker 4: that doesn't compromise your safety, quality and sustainability.
Speaker 5: Right because you know we do. We don't have a
Speaker 5: great record with innovation. Sometimes in New Zealand, as soon
Speaker 5: as you start talking about it, people will talk about
Speaker 5: the leaky building crisis. And I'm sure that people are
Speaker 5: saying to you, hey, we don't want to go down
Speaker 5: that track again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one hundred percent, and that's a very fair consideration.
Speaker 4: And of course without playing that off and saying for
Speaker 4: a second that we want to reduce quality or for
Speaker 4: that matter, sustainability or safety. We do also have an
Speaker 4: issue with building affordability in this country, so we don't
Speaker 4: have the luxury of saying everything's fine as it is,
Speaker 4: with construction costs having increase forty one percent since twenty nineteen,
Speaker 4: for example, and a whole range of other stats that
Speaker 4: we could reduce, the fact of the.
Speaker 3: Matter is we do need to do something different.
Speaker 4: But the good news is I think we can actually
Speaker 4: make some real productivity gains by opening up for competition
Speaker 4: rather than by lowering the standards that exist here in
Speaker 4: New Zealand.
Speaker 5: In terms of protecting the consumer, is the introduction of
Speaker 5: the building Product Information requirements part of that process, so
Speaker 5: that as a consumer I should be able to find
Speaker 5: out exactly what this is and what it's supposed to
Speaker 5: do easily.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's very much the philosophy of that change.
Speaker 4: And to give credit where it's due, that came in
Speaker 4: prior to the current government and it's a good system
Speaker 4: we think overall, albeit with some nuance that we need
Speaker 4: to explore around the provenance of the materials. What I
Speaker 4: mean by that is what we don't want to do
Speaker 4: is have the unintended consequence whereby if a person we
Speaker 4: know an entity spends their time, the energy, their money
Speaker 4: investing and doing that due diligence to find a good
Speaker 4: product from overseas bring it to the market here, and
Speaker 4: if we require them to disclose that beyond obviously the
Speaker 4: characteristics of that product in the way that the consumer
Speaker 4: would want, then actually all you're doing is losing them
Speaker 4: their competitive advantage of the commercial sense, and of course
Speaker 4: the problem with that is then not going to be
Speaker 4: incentivised to do that. So we're looking at that aspect,
Speaker 4: and that was an issue that the National Paty and
Speaker 4: Opposition identified. But we think overall, in the interest of
Speaker 4: informed consent, a consumer choice, it's a good thing overall,
Speaker 4: and we certainly think that will align quite nicely with
Speaker 4: those opening up of competition and availability of the overseas
Speaker 4: products too cool.
Speaker 5: This is probably the biggest topic that I wanted to
Speaker 5: discuss with you. You have said, hey, I want MBI
Speaker 5: to go and urgently investigate the cost of the changes
Speaker 5: to H one of the Building Code, saying houses are
Speaker 5: costing up to fifty thousand dollars extra the quotas builders
Speaker 5: frequently raise concerns with me over the new requirements within
Speaker 5: Clause H one of the Building Code that they're adding
Speaker 5: tens of thousands of dollars onto the cost of a house.
Speaker 5: Also frequent reports of moisture and overheating, which are leading
Speaker 5: to increased energy uses, making these requirements counterproductive. Can we
Speaker 5: take a deep dive into this? First up, what's the
Speaker 5: thinking behind rolling back each one?
Speaker 4: Well, if you think about the purpose of what we're
Speaker 4: trying to do, it's to maintain quality, sustainability and health
Speaker 4: outcomes and so on.
Speaker 3: But also we need to have more affordable building.
Speaker 4: So it's a problem for me if I say that
Speaker 4: we need affordable building, but I hear reports for those
Speaker 4: who are intimately involved in the process, and as a
Speaker 4: committed to earlier you know, I'm listening to the people
Speaker 4: who are actually out there on the tools doing the
Speaker 4: work who tell me that you know, multiples of tens
Speaker 4: of thousands of dollars extra that you spend. And by
Speaker 4: the way, of course, any dollar that you spend you
Speaker 4: have to repay to the bank in a mortgage two
Speaker 4: and a half times, let's say easily, So you know,
Speaker 4: an additional twenty thousand dollars if it's as little as that,
Speaker 4: is fifty k that you've got to repay.
Speaker 3: So you know, we've got to take this really seriously.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 4: So I can't in good conscience are those issues that
Speaker 4: are raised with me, and including when you get to
Speaker 4: you know, particularly further north in the warmer climbs, and
Speaker 4: you get the moisture issues arising from the fact that
Speaker 4: we've got insulation requirements out of step with ventilation requirements.
Speaker 4: So it seems to me there's a problem. We're reviewing
Speaker 4: that because we want to see exactly how beast we
Speaker 4: should handle that, And look, I want to take a
Speaker 4: nuanced approach. I don't want to be in a zone
Speaker 4: where we have to take a binary approach of rolling
Speaker 4: it back entirely and suddenly we're back when we were
Speaker 4: late last year. And certainly there's no question that we
Speaker 4: go all the way back to the mid nineteen seventies
Speaker 4: when there's no requirement at all. So let's just you know,
Speaker 4: not engage with that straw man. But you know, if
Speaker 4: we say that, it might be that we need more
Speaker 4: of a differentiation in New Zealand, so that in Northland,
Speaker 4: for example, where the local mirror is rightly concerned about
Speaker 4: the affordability and frankly the usefulness of the regulation, versus Southland,
Speaker 4: you know, we need a nuanced approach. Geographically, it might
Speaker 4: be that we need to point people more towards modeling
Speaker 4: and calculation methods which allow more nuanced as opposed to
Speaker 4: saying here's a schedule that means that the following boxes
Speaker 4: must be ticked regardless of the additional cost, which is,
Speaker 4: you know, at a quick and dirty route, but isn't
Speaker 4: getting those good results. And then finally, the other sort
Speaker 4: of exerc I suppose on which we could slide the
Speaker 4: scale one way or the other is to say, well,
Speaker 4: it might be within the schedule method where it says,
Speaker 4: you know, literally, according to a matrix, this is the
Speaker 4: family broken window, this is the concrete slab with insulation.
Speaker 4: Then we say, well, maybe some of those are better
Speaker 4: being for back than others. And so we're a bit
Speaker 4: less prescriptive in terms of how those would be used.
Speaker 5: Because much of the response what I've found fascinating and
Speaker 5: I really have enjoyed this. Part of the sort of
Speaker 5: public discourse on this issue is that we've had lots
Speaker 5: of groups come forward and kind of put their colors
Speaker 5: to the mast. Right. They've gone, Hey, Green Building Council, brands,
Speaker 5: News of Building Surveys, Passive House Institute, a whole bunch
Speaker 5: of industry bodies have all come forward and said, we
Speaker 5: don't think this is a good idea. There is no
Speaker 5: need to wind back the H one regulations. But they
Speaker 5: have also gone on to talk about exactly what you've
Speaker 5: talked about. The schedule method is what I think has
Speaker 5: kind of tripped everybody up, because suddenly outcomes you've got
Speaker 5: to have R six point six in the ceilings everywhere
Speaker 5: across the country, regardless of climatic zones. And you've got
Speaker 5: trust manufacturers freaking out and building different trustes. You've got
Speaker 5: developers thinking I can't make my house next one hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty millimeters higher, and so on. I'm just wondering
Speaker 5: whether some of the people that might have got in
Speaker 5: urea about these changes to H one are also those
Speaker 5: people who just want to use the schedule method. Why
Speaker 5: don't we just ditch the schedule method and tell everyone
Speaker 5: to use the calculation and modeling method.
Speaker 4: That's a option on the table, and we're viewing precisely
Speaker 4: because we want to know the right approach, and it
Speaker 4: might well be that that's the really straightforward method to
Speaker 4: take forward.
Speaker 3: But having said that, I would just say, at the
Speaker 3: risk of.
Speaker 4: Immediately undermining my own point, which is essentially endorsing yours,
Speaker 4: is that we also have to think, then, well, you know,
Speaker 4: does everyone have access to the calculation and modeling method.
Speaker 4: The funny thing is I've sat down with the Green
Speaker 4: Building Council and looked at that, and actually it's looks reasoningly.
Speaker 3: Straight, really be honest, but people don't know that and.
Speaker 4: Aren't prepared to use it, then we need to bring
Speaker 4: them along with us, because come moment, it is just
Speaker 4: a binary discussion, which is frankly unhelpful. And you know,
Speaker 4: when people weigh in on one side or the other
Speaker 4: and make inflammatory comments, then we're not going to get
Speaker 4: a good public policy outcome. And I'm committed to that,
Speaker 4: and I don't I'm not sort of going to resolve
Speaker 4: from that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And look, I would agree with you. I think
Speaker 5: I can sort of understand and I like to try
Speaker 5: and take a step back and go, you know, why
Speaker 5: do we have the rules that we have?
Speaker 14: Right?
Speaker 5: And I've always taken that approach that, you know, as
Speaker 5: someone who has to obey the rules in terms of building,
Speaker 5: I'm always curious as to why do we have the
Speaker 5: rule that we have most of the time and the
Speaker 5: building X starts because we want to protect the people
Speaker 5: that inhabit that space. So that's sort of where I
Speaker 5: start from. And then I look at the schedule method
Speaker 5: and go, well, I understand that we still want sort
Speaker 5: of simplistic, in the best possible way approach to building.
Speaker 5: Where we go you should be able to take three
Speaker 5: six o four, open it up and build a house,
Speaker 5: and we don't want to let go of that. But
Speaker 5: maybe that's because we do need to build better than
Speaker 5: you can just build by opening a book. So I
Speaker 5: think the modeling and calculation method it's not as indecipherable
Speaker 5: as it was years ago. I can almost understand it
Speaker 5: to be.
Speaker 3: Blad Well, that's a ringing endorsement.
Speaker 4: So that's a point where I made thank you the Minister.
Speaker 5: Chris Pink with me in the studio today. Will be
Speaker 5: back after the break. I want to just off the
Speaker 5: back of something you mentioned there, the binary thing. One
Speaker 5: of the things that I found fascinating, having been engaged
Speaker 5: with the industry for as long and promoting discussion, is
Speaker 5: that we do tend to have a real binary approach
Speaker 5: that as soon as I say I've got an idea,
Speaker 5: the instant response from another part of the sector is, yeah,
Speaker 5: but I've got an idea, And because we've both got
Speaker 5: an idea, one of them's got to be wrong. Are
Speaker 5: you fighting your way through that? Are you finding that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a little bit of that.
Speaker 4: You know, there's least of that with those who are
Speaker 4: actively engaged in buildings find really interesting, you know, the commentariat,
Speaker 4: and you know, frankly, those who approach these questions from
Speaker 4: a political or an ideological lens, they are the ones
Speaker 4: who are really binary because they've got some sort of
Speaker 4: point to prove one way or the other. And actually,
Speaker 4: the most helpful thing is to engage reasonably with people
Speaker 4: who are in the game using these methods.
Speaker 3: In the case of the H one question, YEP to
Speaker 3: be resolved.
Speaker 4: And actually, you know, I think there is a lot
Speaker 4: of good will out there to do things better, but
Speaker 4: no one wants to build a house that's leaky or
Speaker 4: damp or cold and so on, you know, and it
Speaker 4: amuses me when you know, I've received quite a lot
Speaker 4: of quite shorty emails, as you can imagine. And you know,
Speaker 4: one category was, oh, you know, I grew up in
Speaker 4: the mid ninety seventies and it was under insulation. I said, well,
Speaker 4: that's lovely, but with all due respect, that's not at
Speaker 4: all on the table.
Speaker 3: At number two.
Speaker 4: You know, there was also the category that says, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, I've lived in a house for the last
Speaker 4: five years. That's really good because it's insulated and got
Speaker 4: double glazing, and that's really important we retain that. And
Speaker 4: I said, well, that's lovely, because actually that's the method
Speaker 4: that's you know, at most we're going to particially go
Speaker 4: back to. So, if anything, they've endorsed my approach, even
Speaker 4: though they've come at it from quite an aggressive political
Speaker 4: angle to to point out how how bad and wrong
Speaker 4: I am in my thinking.
Speaker 3: So you know, I'm not bothered by that. I know
Speaker 3: that we need great.
Speaker 4: Affordability as well as the sustainability et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: So I'm determined we can get there. And I really
Speaker 4: think if we listen to the people who are engaged
Speaker 4: in doing this work because they approach the question in
Speaker 4: good faith, they know the costs involved will get to
Speaker 4: a good place.
Speaker 5: So obviously, all of this discussion around H one and
Speaker 5: any change that might be made, when what's the timeline
Speaker 5: for that, well, the reviews.
Speaker 4: Taking place as we speak, and then after that depending
Speaker 4: on what the result is, and and you know, the
Speaker 4: political decision making, which I can't really prejudge in terms
Speaker 4: of time frame or result. You know that that's a
Speaker 4: little bit how long is a piece of string kind
Speaker 4: of question, but it would it could be quite a
Speaker 4: quite a quick change because it's such a regulation rather
Speaker 4: than needing an active parliament, so it could be a
Speaker 4: matter of months as opposed to you know years.
Speaker 5: Okay, your sense of where it might go at this stage.
Speaker 4: I'd be surprised if we end up with exactly what
Speaker 4: we've got now, but I'd also be surprised if we
Speaker 4: were to roll it back entirely. And you know, I've
Speaker 4: got to be careful. I don't predge sure discussions by
Speaker 4: the Manistereoc colleagues, so maybe I'm about out and know
Speaker 4: them even expressing that expectation but we'll end that was something.
Speaker 3: I think it's going to keep everyone happy right now.
Speaker 5: This might be more in Chris Bishop's realm, but the
Speaker 5: sixty square meter granny flat, and I don't find that
Speaker 5: an offensive term. I think people the reason that they
Speaker 5: were built in originally nineteen sixties and got that phrase
Speaker 5: was because ideally they were a minor dwelling that allowed
Speaker 5: family members to live there on the same property. So,
Speaker 5: for want of a better term, let's still kill them
Speaker 5: granny flats and not be upset about that. How much
Speaker 5: of a difference do you think that might make in
Speaker 5: terms of either supply, affordability and so on. There's obviously
Speaker 5: been some research.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it'll make a difference in two ways. And by
Speaker 4: the way, I've got to give credit to New Zealand first,
Speaker 4: with whom when combustion this was an idea very much
Speaker 4: pushed forward by them, and Chris Bishop and I are
Speaker 4: both really keen on getting it, you know, into the
Speaker 4: statute book the laws land as soon as possible, so
Speaker 4: he owns the resource management side effectively and then the
Speaker 4: building construction side relating to building consens is the bit
Speaker 4: that I have, so you know, and it's a joint
Speaker 4: venture obviously.
Speaker 3: Look, I think it'll make a difference in two ways.
Speaker 4: One is that it will provide a bit more housing
Speaker 4: supply and therefore affordability. In a related point to that
Speaker 4: is that it provides a bit of extra work for
Speaker 4: a construction sector that is asking for a pipeline. It's
Speaker 4: asking for some quick ones, and by quick I mean
Speaker 4: by the way not having to wait for a resource
Speaker 4: concent and the building consent.
Speaker 3: They'll be able to get on and.
Speaker 4: Do it, you know, the day after that law has passed,
Speaker 4: or actually if the smart and working in an off
Speaker 4: site kind of man, that could be doing it right now.
Speaker 4: So it's a little bit of a quick and dirty
Speaker 4: way of providing some assurance and frankly, some work to
Speaker 4: a sector that's crying out for it right now. And
Speaker 4: then the other category is actually I think more interesting
Speaker 4: in a way because there's a bigger picture testing of
Speaker 4: a hypothesis that says, if you've got a structure that
Speaker 4: is relatively low risk because we're talking about a single story,
Speaker 4: you know, relatively small, an existing parcel of land, so
Speaker 4: it's not difficult from a development point of view, you know,
Speaker 4: and hopefully not geotechnically either that actually you don't need
Speaker 4: to have that sign off by way of either type
Speaker 4: of consent. So it's a bit of a testing of
Speaker 4: the model of a trusted provider being trusted and having
Speaker 4: that qualification be it licensed building practitioner, plumber, guess for
Speaker 4: a drain layer, eltrician and so on, doing that work,
Speaker 4: simply providing the answer to council. And you know, look,
Speaker 4: it's not gonna completely change the game in either of
Speaker 4: those ways, but we think it's a step in the
Speaker 4: right direction.
Speaker 5: Just in terms of council. One of the things that
Speaker 5: may not necessarily it's not necessarily building in construction, but
Speaker 5: it impacts on all of us who are building is
Speaker 5: councils and the relationship that we have with counsel, either
Speaker 5: through the consenting the inspection process. And again taking a
Speaker 5: step back, what I've come to appreciate is that ultimately,
Speaker 5: when things go wrong and the developer's gone and the
Speaker 5: business has gone, and the product manufacturer has gone, it's
Speaker 5: counsel that our last man standing. And that relates to
Speaker 5: that whole thing around joined and several liability. So if
Speaker 5: you were the person who's always going to hold the
Speaker 5: can you would be incredibly cautious and that's what counsels are, right.
Speaker 5: So is there a way forward that you were the
Speaker 5: government of thinking about where maybe we change joint and
Speaker 5: several liability?
Speaker 4: In short, yes, I don't think the system works well
Speaker 4: as that is currently designed.
Speaker 3: And this is not a new idea, by the way.
Speaker 4: I think sure previous ministers have made noises in this
Speaker 4: regard and haven't ultimately gone through and done that. And
Speaker 4: you know, it's a government decision that I can't prejudge again,
Speaker 4: but suffice to say, we do recognize the problem and
Speaker 4: we're keen to do something about it. So if the
Speaker 4: problem is a lack of certainty and consistency from the
Speaker 4: point of view of those who are doing the building
Speaker 4: and an in frustration of getting different interpretations of the
Speaker 4: same building code according to which side of a council
Speaker 4: boundary you're on, or if you take the point of
Speaker 4: view of council as a building consent authority, as you
Speaker 4: rightly point out, they have to be cautious, you know,
Speaker 4: and as rate payers we should thank them for that
Speaker 4: because to be the last man standing, which is to say,
Speaker 4: to have joint and several liability, which could mean one
Speaker 4: hundred percent of the cost of a defect in the
Speaker 4: event that the developers pockets and the builders last seen
Speaker 4: on the horizon in a puff.
Speaker 3: Of smoke with the ute and dog.
Speaker 4: Then actually, you know that there's a huge responsibility for
Speaker 4: a council, and some councils well resourced to do that.
Speaker 4: They might have a rate payer base and a staffing
Speaker 4: resource that and therefore some specialization within that that supports it.
Speaker 3: Others much smaller.
Speaker 4: Frankly, it's a huge burden on them, and they would
Speaker 4: rather be shot of it.
Speaker 3: I think, all of them, to be honest.
Speaker 4: And it's never the case that I meet with local
Speaker 4: government and they don't raise this with me. So I think,
Speaker 4: you know, there are other models we could explore. One
Speaker 4: has been put out there as in sort of a
Speaker 4: more of a national kind.
Speaker 3: Of consenting authority.
Speaker 4: Maybe is to sort of funnel applications and get the
Speaker 4: certainty and consistency that way. Or it might be that
Speaker 4: we have more of a market based system where the
Speaker 4: private certifiers who already do the work as contracted by
Speaker 4: the existing building content authorities might be able to be
Speaker 4: approached directly. Now we've got to be careful of course,
Speaker 4: whatever the system design is that we are providing a
Speaker 4: genuine assurance on top of you know, the builder developer
Speaker 4: marking their own homework.
Speaker 3: But by the time you add and you know, some
Speaker 3: kind of.
Speaker 4: Disciplines around insurance, credibility, balance sheet that enable us to
Speaker 4: trust some more than others. Maybe it's the case that
Speaker 4: we can be a bit more forward looking in terms
Speaker 4: of the way that we require things to be certified
Speaker 4: by a council. Because you know, they hate this, you
Speaker 4: know this is this is bad news for them. I've
Speaker 4: got all the risk, none of the reward, and I
Speaker 4: think they'll be you know, looking forward to conversation that
Speaker 4: we're having, I think quite soon in the public's us.
Speaker 5: You know, we're not the other the only sort of
Speaker 5: western first world nation that builds houses, right, So look
Speaker 5: around the world and there's different models and a lot
Speaker 5: of them seem to be focused on insurance.
Speaker 12: Right.
Speaker 5: So as a contractor, I can't build without insurance. If
Speaker 5: I'm a designer, I can't do that without insurance. All
Speaker 5: of the contractors are insured. If there's a problem, the
Speaker 5: homeowner rings the insurance company and they chase the contractor.
Speaker 5: Is that a way forward?
Speaker 3: It's a possible way forward.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the role of insurance is something we
Speaker 4: need to think about as an exercise and risk galication.
Speaker 4: And of course all these questions are the ones at
Speaker 4: risk galication, so very fair to ask the question. I
Speaker 4: think in terms of comparing that with some of the
Speaker 4: systems overseas, we do have a smaller market in New Zealand,
Speaker 4: so we're less attractive immediately to insurers. We're also very
Speaker 4: hazard prone if you think about the direct relationship of
Speaker 4: our earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, tsunamis and all that exposure that
Speaker 4: you have in New Zealand, more so than in every
Speaker 4: country in the.
Speaker 3: World other than Bangladesh.
Speaker 4: By the way, you know, from an assurance point of view,
Speaker 4: we're not that attractive to ensure building works. So I
Speaker 4: think it would need to be a nuanced conversation. But actually,
Speaker 4: I mean I've been having it already with a number
Speaker 4: of key players and excuse me, an insurance sector. Yeah,
Speaker 4: because if they're not if they're not up for it,
Speaker 4: then they ain't gonna work. But having said that, if
Speaker 4: there's an assurance they can provide, you know, the professional
Speaker 4: indemnity that you've already referenced that that some occupational licensing
Speaker 4: goes along with then then yeah, let's let's think.
Speaker 5: About how that can fit in, because I think there's
Speaker 5: another advantage that as well, which is also regulating the industry,
Speaker 5: because if you are a person that does poor quality
Speaker 5: work and you've had a number of claims, then maybe
Speaker 5: you won't get licensed or you won't get insurance, and
Speaker 5: therefore you won't be working. And you know, I'm sure
Speaker 5: that you've seen shoddy work. I certainly have, and we
Speaker 5: need to be able to get rid of people like
Speaker 5: that from the industry.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And I think that's a really good point to make,
Speaker 4: because the quid pro quo of trusting those who are
Speaker 4: credible and respectable is actually maybe we need to be
Speaker 4: a lot harder on those that are use the shorthand
Speaker 4: vernacular cowboys and who are ripping people off, who are
Speaker 4: making us nervous from a whole system perspective, as well
Speaker 4: as leaving people very vulnerable to do with the value
Speaker 4: of their biggest asset they'll ever own, and know as
Speaker 4: relatively unsophisticated people who need a roof to live under
Speaker 4: the head, they've got to make a decision, and we've
Speaker 4: got to provide some protection and actually a little bit
Speaker 4: of that could be the stick as well as the carrot.
Speaker 3: In terms of those who are doing good work and
Speaker 3: those who aren't. And you know, frankly, if we have
Speaker 3: a situation at the.
Speaker 4: Moment where you have a couple of pretty poor practitioners
Speaker 4: who are going around ruining various different building projects and
Speaker 4: leaving a trail of heartache, you know we need.
Speaker 3: To weed them out.
Speaker 4: So I'm unreally keen to try and do that as
Speaker 4: part of an overall reform that sees rusk allicated appropriately.
Speaker 5: The LBP scheme has been around since I got registered
Speaker 5: in twenty twelve. It's probably around a little bit longer
Speaker 5: than that. Do you see scope to extend or expand that?
Speaker 5: Like one of the vision for it seemed to have
Speaker 5: been that if you like myself, I've got a site
Speaker 5: license and a carpentry license. Therefore I'm seen as responsible
Speaker 5: and professional and all the rest of it. Hopefully, so
Speaker 5: should I be able to take on more responsibility and
Speaker 5: do more of my own inspections or have lesser inspections
Speaker 5: to do? You know, is that something you'd look at
Speaker 5: extending the LBP scheme.
Speaker 4: Potentially I think we need to make the system meaningful.
Speaker 4: You know, there's got to be some reason to have
Speaker 4: that status. And if it means, for example, in relation
Speaker 4: to the Grandy Flat proposal, that it is LBPS as
Speaker 4: opposed to anyone else who might rock up and fancy
Speaker 4: their ability to whack a couple of bits of wore
Speaker 4: by two together, then then we say, well, that's meaningful,
Speaker 4: and therefore we need to check that we've got the
Speaker 4: standards and the robustness of that certification. And so that's
Speaker 4: an example of how I think we can actually force
Speaker 4: people to take it seriously and then not saying it's
Speaker 4: not taken seriously at the moment, but you know, it's
Speaker 4: got to be meaningful. There's got to be some weight
Speaker 4: attached to that sure, and because it seems to me
Speaker 4: that there's a an amount of restricted building work quite
Speaker 4: unquote that has actually undertaken under supervision in a way
Speaker 4: that's not necessarily reflecting that.
Speaker 3: Kind of level of assurance we want. But I also
Speaker 3: think this fits into a.
Speaker 4: Broader question that we're also looking at, which is self certification,
Speaker 4: so that anomally, for example, that plumbers can't self certify.
Speaker 5: You know, I understand that's going to change though. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and we've seen plumbers.
Speaker 4: We've said that openly, and you know, it does seem
Speaker 4: an anomaly that they don't have that level of trust
Speaker 4: competing with for example, electricians or a guess who have
Speaker 4: done the same with trade who may be the same
Speaker 4: person but doing network, you know, in that different place
Speaker 4: on the site. So you know, we want to remove
Speaker 4: those anomalies. We want to move in the direction of
Speaker 4: trusting people who have proven through qualification and experience, professional
Speaker 4: body membership and so on, that they can be trusted.
Speaker 5: It's fair to say, like every incoming government, people arrive
Speaker 5: with a whole bunch of ideas, and it seems that
Speaker 5: you and all of your colleagues have all come in
Speaker 5: with things that they want to change. So you, for
Speaker 5: your role, give me your top five things that you
Speaker 5: want to change as Minister for Housing and Construction or
Speaker 5: Building the construct.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we've talked about a couple of them already and
Speaker 4: I think you know, with as you could probably hear
Speaker 4: in my voice and hopefully your listeners can too, some
Speaker 4: passion around you know, reforming systems to make it easier
Speaker 4: and more affordable to build. So part of that is
Speaker 4: the product thing, and you know, if we elevate that
Speaker 4: to high level, it's all about competition, as recommended by
Speaker 4: the Commerce Commission. And then you talk about the Grani flax,
Speaker 4: which I think is an interesting step in the right
Speaker 4: direction that won't solve all the problems of the world,
Speaker 4: is going to be a useful test case in terms
Speaker 4: of some of those assurance mechanisms outside the consenting process.
Speaker 4: Number three I think would be the consent system itself,
Speaker 4: in the administration of the of the building consents and
Speaker 4: cccs and in everything between. By the current structure sixty
Speaker 4: seven different authorities to monitor compliance with the single code
Speaker 4: simply doesn't make sense.
Speaker 15: There we go.
Speaker 3: I've said it, so I'd better change it now.
Speaker 4: And part of that, I think remote visual inspections strategically
Speaker 4: are helpful because apart from providing some greater efficiency along
Speaker 4: the ways and reducing those delays and frustration, you also say, well,
Speaker 4: and if we're going to take that approach, then you
Speaker 4: can have more of a regional model, maybe even a
Speaker 4: national model that says work that's being done in a
Speaker 4: particular part of New Zealand if it can be verified remotely,
Speaker 4: then actually you can have a specialized building concent officer
Speaker 4: who may not live in the same geographical area, who
Speaker 4: may not be within driving distance, can actually monitor the
Speaker 4: performance of that and so that degree of specialization as
Speaker 4: well as general availability and efficiency resource as hopefully you
Speaker 4: know part of that story about remote visual inspections. So
Speaker 4: you've allowed me I think five, and I've got the
Speaker 4: three to the other two I think would be in
Speaker 4: relation to sustainability, and I know that you know, per
Speaker 4: the H one conversation, that is controversial because because I'm
Speaker 4: not prepared to recommend anything that would increase the cost
Speaker 4: of construction and make it unaffordable for people to own
Speaker 4: their home. And I know blatantly putting this in residential gyms.
Speaker 4: And there's a commercial sector as well, be office, retail, industrial,
Speaker 4: and then you've got the infrastructure. But you know, as shorthand,
Speaker 4: if we want to have those good outcomes but can
Speaker 4: achieve them in a way that's good for the environment,
Speaker 4: good for the economic bottom line as well, then I
Speaker 4: think we should be smart enough to try and achieve
Speaker 4: that and then just surround it out with the final one.
Speaker 4: But no less than the others, I suppose, because it
Speaker 4: is a big question for New Zealand seismic risk you know,
Speaker 4: earthquake praying buildings up and down the country, including in
Speaker 4: some zones that are you know, we think, according to
Speaker 4: the current science less seismically active, a huge opportunity cost
Speaker 4: be it in the big cities, with Wellington being you know,
Speaker 4: in danger of becoming a ghost town, but also you know,
Speaker 4: smaller regional centers we're a very high proportion of buildings
Speaker 4: are both heritage listed but also earthquake prain and which
Speaker 4: is no realistic prospect on the current settings then anything
Speaker 4: good will happen there. And we've got a tsunami fel
Speaker 4: excuse me mixing my natural disaster metaphors of lack of
Speaker 4: compliance in that space. So we're providing by way of
Speaker 4: legislation and extra four years at least or you know,
Speaker 4: four years and then possibility of extra two years for
Speaker 4: people to get up to stand it. But in the
Speaker 4: meantime we're also reviewing the rules to see if we
Speaker 4: can make it a bit easier, a bit more practical,
Speaker 4: and frankly again more affordable for people to be able
Speaker 4: to comply in a way that recognizes life safety without
Speaker 4: imposing extra additional cost.
Speaker 5: Which sounds risk based rather than just a blanket. Right,
Speaker 5: You've all got to get to sixty seven percent of
Speaker 5: new building code something like that, yeah, or new building
Speaker 5: standing all right, thank you. Last question, Like, I've been
Speaker 5: involved in the sector for a long time and one
Speaker 5: of the things that I really enjoy about it is
Speaker 5: that generally the people that are in it are often
Speaker 5: really passionate, really engaged. How have you found sort of
Speaker 5: this extra engagement with the building sector.
Speaker 3: Exhausting but good? No, I love it, I really do.
Speaker 4: And my diary is full of different meetings behind closes
Speaker 4: or conferences with hundreds of people or more of a
Speaker 4: retail environment I suppose if you want to put it
Speaker 4: like that, like the home show recently in Auckland, that
Speaker 4: was a great opportunity to wander around and see what's available,
Speaker 4: see what people are thinking, and everyone from big you know,
Speaker 4: really serious players who invest a huge amount of money
Speaker 4: in make New Zealand a great built environment. And then
Speaker 4: you know, just to resort to cliche. You know you've
Speaker 4: allowed me granny flats. I'm going to go with number
Speaker 4: DA as well. So you know, everyone's everyone's interested, and
Speaker 4: everyone's got a stake in it.
Speaker 3: And if you talk about the.
Speaker 4: Number of people employed directly and directly GDP percentage likewise.
Speaker 4: But then of course you say, well, we all have
Speaker 4: gotten in trust because we all live in the built environment.
Speaker 4: We work, live and play in places that people have built.
Speaker 4: So it's easy to be passionate and it's easy to
Speaker 4: get that from those who are doing the work. So
Speaker 4: that's what I really enjoy about it.
Speaker 5: Mister Chris Pink, thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 5: Thank you your news talk set. But you we're back
Speaker 5: straight after News Sport and we're the top of the
Speaker 5: hour at seven at eight o'clock. Oh maybe we have
Speaker 5: to go for a little bit longer, so Chris Pink,
Speaker 5: the minister was with us, and we'll take some calls
Speaker 5: and some discussion on that straight after the news as well.
Speaker 5: A couple of really good texts that have come in already.
Speaker 5: Where have we got some? Oh and also, by the way,
Speaker 5: all of this is available on the podcast or it
Speaker 5: will be a little bit later on today. So if
Speaker 5: there was something in my conversation with the Minister which
Speaker 5: I'd said beforehand, you know, this is an opportunity to
Speaker 5: sort of stretch our legs and discuss at some depth
Speaker 5: and with a little bit of time some of these
Speaker 5: really important issues, because I think one of the frustrations
Speaker 5: with people in the building sector when we're involved in
Speaker 5: sort of you know, public discussion about this, particularly around news,
Speaker 5: there's no criticism of news. We're always trying to explain
Speaker 5: something that's really really complicated in a very short period
Speaker 5: of time and that's not that easy to do. So
Speaker 5: I think in this instance here it was a great
Speaker 5: opportunity to allow him the space to explain what they're
Speaker 5: trying to do him as the minister, they as the government,
Speaker 5: as the coalition government, and that was I found quite
Speaker 5: useful and I was thinking, well, I was listening to
Speaker 5: the interview, it might be an opportunity to also go
Speaker 5: along and get Chrissip to join us on the show
Speaker 5: at some stage as well. So I'll see if I
Speaker 5: can organize that for you at some stage. But if
Speaker 5: you'd like to listen back to that interview, it will
Speaker 5: be available on the news Talk ZB website and the podcast,
Speaker 5: or it will be available as on iHeartRadio as well,
Speaker 5: but certainly it'll be up a little bit later on
Speaker 5: Today Your News Talk ZEDB. We got news, sport and weather,
Speaker 5: Your News Talk SB. Welcome back to the program. My
Speaker 5: name's Pete wolf Camp, Resident Builder. This is a show
Speaker 5: all about building and construction and projects that you might
Speaker 5: get underway or that are underway that aren't going particularly well.
Speaker 5: Possibly some issues, challenges, legislation, anything to do with building
Speaker 5: and construction. We can talk about that on the show
Speaker 5: for at least the next twenty two minutes. Then we're
Speaker 5: going to jump into the garden with Rod climb Pasta
Speaker 5: from eight thirty this morning. So if you've got any
Speaker 5: gardening or entomological questions, anything about the wonderful world of bugs,
Speaker 5: then we can talk to rud about that from eight
Speaker 5: thirty this morning. But right now the lines are open.
Speaker 5: The number to call eight hundred and eighty ten eighty.
Speaker 5: In the last hour of the program, my apologies seem
Speaker 5: to be a bit of a technical issue just right
Speaker 5: at the end of the show. There I had the opportunity.
Speaker 5: I reached out a little while ago to the Ministry
Speaker 5: for Building Construction and to the Minister Chris Pink and said, look,
Speaker 5: it'd be really nice to be able to get the
Speaker 5: Minister to come in and have a bit of a chat,
Speaker 5: and in the end their invitation was, well, look we
Speaker 5: can the minister will come in come into the studio
Speaker 5: on a Thursday, we had a conversation. Replayed that conversation
Speaker 5: to you just a little while ago. If you want
Speaker 5: to go back and listen to it, it will be
Speaker 5: up as a podcast are in the day, because certainly
Speaker 5: there was a lot of detail in it, and my
Speaker 5: intention with the interview with the conversation was that we
Speaker 5: would have time to discuss things that are not easily
Speaker 5: dealt with in sound bites. Nothing wrong with sound bites,
Speaker 5: they're really important, obviously, but sometimes these things take a
Speaker 5: little bit of time to discuss. So a couple of
Speaker 5: really interesting things for me that came out of it,
Speaker 5: certainly the discussion around perhaps having a look at the
Speaker 5: usefulness of the schedule method. Just if you're wondering what
Speaker 5: that is all about. There is basically three ways to
Speaker 5: prove compliance with the H one regulations. H one is
Speaker 5: all about energy efficiency in our buildings, and the reason
Speaker 5: that we want our buildings to be more energy efficient
Speaker 5: is that it costs a lot to heat them and
Speaker 5: it uses a great deal of energy. So if we
Speaker 5: can make them more energy efficient, one of those ways
Speaker 5: is by increasing the insulation standards and the performance level
Speaker 5: of the houses, we will reduce energy costs in the future.
Speaker 5: We're already in an energy crisis right now. Then you
Speaker 5: can understand why that's actually a really important thing to do.
Speaker 5: And then there are other benefits like warm, dry, comfortable.
Speaker 5: That's a really good thing. And so if you're sitting
Speaker 5: there designing house, you kind of have three broad options
Speaker 5: to calculate the energy usage or the insulation requirements for
Speaker 5: the house. So there is the schedule method, which is
Speaker 5: essentially a tick box approach, right, and in the schedule
Speaker 5: method it got changed recently. So the standard for ceiling
Speaker 5: insulation across all of the country, every basically every type
Speaker 5: of house is R six point six. Now that's about
Speaker 5: almost three hundred millimeters of insulation that you need to
Speaker 5: get into the ceiling. And then the walls changed marginally
Speaker 5: to all around R two R two point zero. Now
Speaker 5: R six point six is a lot of insulation. And
Speaker 5: there is a law of diminishing returns in terms of insulation,
Speaker 5: and I think it tops out around four point eight,
Speaker 5: So anything above that is not actually giving you much benefit,
Speaker 5: but for some reason it's there. In the schedule method
Speaker 5: so if you just want to design a house using
Speaker 5: just the schedule method, you end up with our six
Speaker 5: point six and the ceiling. Now, if you go to
Speaker 5: the calculation method, which is where you do calculation of
Speaker 5: size of windows, type of walls, type of roof, insulation, orientation,
Speaker 5: all of these sorts of things, you can arrive at
Speaker 5: some different figures and you might find using the calculation
Speaker 5: method that in fact you can comply with the code
Speaker 5: and have ceiling insulation. Pick a number R four right now,
Speaker 5: it's a lot different to our six point six. Then
Speaker 5: the next step up is that you do modeling, which
Speaker 5: is slightly more complicated and more involved. It'll give you
Speaker 5: a much more nuanced look at the building, but it
Speaker 5: is in terms of its success, accessibility, and its cost,
Speaker 5: it is considerably more expensive and it's done by people
Speaker 5: who are I suppose it's a higher level of analysis, right,
Speaker 5: So not many peopeople will use the modeling method. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 5: when I was at the conference New Zealand Institute of
Speaker 5: Building Surveys Conference yesterday, I was in Wellington on Friday
Speaker 5: and Saturday, I was chatting with someone who does this modeling. Right,
Speaker 5: the modeling and the calculation and I had thought that.
Speaker 5: You know that one of the reasons we kept the
Speaker 5: schedule method is it made doing these calculations H one's
Speaker 5: compliance accessible because the cost of doing either the calculation
Speaker 5: or the modeling was prohibitive. Anyway, were chatting away, he goes,
Speaker 5: we can do and we do the calculation method for
Speaker 5: a new home six to seven hundred dollars. Now that's
Speaker 5: in the scope of building a house and going through
Speaker 5: design and compliance and all the rest of it. That's
Speaker 5: not an unaffordable amount of money. And I think knowing
Speaker 5: that adds weight to my suggestion than in fact the
Speaker 5: schedule method. I it just dump it right, Just get
Speaker 5: rid of the schedule method. Make sure that every single
Speaker 5: house is calculated or modeled, and the calculation cost is
Speaker 5: not that great, and it's not indecipherable, and it's not
Speaker 5: hard to do. That's where I would come from. Oh,
Speaker 5: eight hundred and eighty ten eighty is the number to call.
Speaker 5: I got a bunch of texts about this. Let me
Speaker 5: just read one, which was an interesting one. Here we
Speaker 5: go listening to your interview with the building minister. My
Speaker 5: question to you after that is ten he knows what
Speaker 5: he's talking about. One, he's faking it till he makes
Speaker 5: it from Lee. Look, I actually and I had had
Speaker 5: this opinion prior to this, because I've met Chris Penk
Speaker 5: at a couple of different events. I've listened to him
Speaker 5: speak a few times. I think he's genuinely engaged in
Speaker 5: the process. I think he's got a pretty good handle
Speaker 5: on it. I thought that he spoke pretty well about,
Speaker 5: you know, understanding the difference between the schedule method, the
Speaker 5: calculation method, the modeling method. So yeah, I don't know
Speaker 5: whether i'd give him a ranking, but I certainly wouldn't
Speaker 5: say that he's faking it till he makes it. I
Speaker 5: think he genuinely knows what he's talking about and is
Speaker 5: more importantly engaged and wants to learn. And I know
Speaker 5: from a number of other sources that he's actively been
Speaker 5: engaged with sitting down with industry groups. Because I missed
Speaker 5: him and I met him at the New Zealand Green
Speaker 5: Building Council event at the beginning of the year, the
Speaker 5: Housing Summit, and I said, look, so you're in you're
Speaker 5: a new minister. People would be getting in your ear
Speaker 5: every day. How do you know who to listen to?
Speaker 5: That was anyway we've got a long and lengthy discussion
Speaker 5: on exactly that RDIO. Let's get back amongst it. Oh,
Speaker 5: eight hundred and eighty, ten eighty. We take building calls
Speaker 5: until eight thirty. Then we're into the garden with redcloinb
Speaker 5: passed Catherine, Good morning, Good.
Speaker 11: Morning, Pete. I've got a situation where a builder has
Speaker 11: built well, developer has built three houses next to mine. Yes,
Speaker 11: and of four year years now without offense, he took
Speaker 11: down the fence to develop his property. He keeps saying,
Speaker 11: put it out, But it's been four years now, how
Speaker 11: long can I go? Should I go without a fence?
Speaker 11: And I'm totally exposed to the three property more than
Speaker 11: lacking privacy now.
Speaker 5: Which is a bit frustrating. And I say this with
Speaker 5: genuine kindness, I suppose, and hindsight's always twenty twenty, right.
Speaker 5: What would have been quite good when the developer first
Speaker 5: approached you is to get in writing a promise from
Speaker 5: the developer to replace the fence by a certain date, right,
Speaker 5: and then you could have you know, it's quite reasonable
Speaker 5: in a development to maybe have to remove an existing
Speaker 5: fence and possibly you'll get one that's better than the
Speaker 5: old one. All of those sorts of things, you'd put
Speaker 5: that down in writing. You'd have an agreement and the
Speaker 5: developer would say, okay, well, look I expect to finish
Speaker 5: most of my construction by this state. We'll be doing
Speaker 5: landscaping here. The fence will be in by the state,
Speaker 5: and then the day after that you can knock on
Speaker 5: the door and go, hey, you promised that I would
Speaker 5: have a new fence by the state. Here's the email
Speaker 5: to back it up. When are you starting the fence?
Speaker 5: The hard thing is, you know, it's difficult to get leverage. Now,
Speaker 5: that's the tricky thing saying that. Do you have any
Speaker 5: evidence of your conversation with the developer promising a new
Speaker 5: fence at all that you could go back and remind
Speaker 5: them of, Oh, well.
Speaker 10: He said it all along.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I know not Well do I have evidence, well.
Speaker 5: A text message or you know, did you write a
Speaker 5: diary note for example, Hey, chatted with the developer and
Speaker 5: he told me that it would be six months ago,
Speaker 5: and if that's eighteen months ago, then you could go
Speaker 5: back and remind I just think in these sorts of things, Unfortunately,
Speaker 5: dealing with developers, you need to get in and writing.
Speaker 12: You need to.
Speaker 5: You know, have something that you can go back and
Speaker 5: sort of provide evidence of.
Speaker 11: Really, but I mean it's four years surely a leg
Speaker 11: to stand on over time.
Speaker 5: I'm just not sure where you would go legally, you know,
Speaker 5: because if nothing was written down, if no promises were made,
Speaker 5: I'm you know.
Speaker 11: But but you know, he has taken out my fense.
Speaker 11: And it's about the trees that I said these are
Speaker 11: to be left, but he took them out. But yeah, no, no,
Speaker 11: I didn't get anything in writing. I trusted him. Well,
Speaker 11: I wouldn't you.
Speaker 5: To be fair when it comes to construction. Have a
Speaker 5: healthy skepticism, right, get everything in writing?
Speaker 11: Oh well I should have taken the advice of my mother.
Speaker 11: Trust no one.
Speaker 5: It's not about not trusting people. It's just about being
Speaker 5: a bit pragmatic, I guess, and a healthy skepticism of
Speaker 5: human nature is the way that I put it. But look,
Speaker 5: I think you know you might find you might find
Speaker 5: that you have some redress under the Fencing Act, and
Speaker 5: so that's probably your next best bet is to just
Speaker 5: have a read through a little bit of this stuff
Speaker 5: around the Fencing Act, write a letter saying, hey, look
Speaker 5: you did on this date remove the fence you did
Speaker 5: promise me under the Fencing Act. I'm now serving you
Speaker 5: with a notice that you have this amount of time
Speaker 5: to reinstate it, given that you removed it. Try that
Speaker 5: so quote the Fencing Act. Quote the Fencing Act. See
Speaker 5: if that gets some action. All the best you, Catherine,
Speaker 5: You take care, all the very best. Hello Lucy.
Speaker 11: Hello.
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 16: Neighbors who have two downpipes from the guttering yep, going
Speaker 16: straight down to the ground.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 16: There's no The water is not vented anywhere except to
Speaker 16: the concrete, and of course it flows under the fence,
Speaker 16: which the whole piece from the corner of their house
Speaker 16: down towards their front lawn is concrete, right, And my concrete,
Speaker 16: which is sort of laid in large squares, is now
Speaker 16: sinking right right.
Speaker 5: In terms of the property law, it is the responsibility
Speaker 5: of the homeowner to control stormwater discharge from their property. Right,
Speaker 5: So they are technically in breach of that. And you
Speaker 5: could go to council and ask counsel to come out
Speaker 5: and have a look at that, and they may issue
Speaker 5: a notice to fix.
Speaker 8: Yes.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so that's the best.
Speaker 16: When the extension was first done, there was a garden
Speaker 16: along the side of their house right, and the original
Speaker 16: owners put the gutter water down the pipe, there goes
Speaker 16: the event to the toilet. Yeah, but they had to
Speaker 16: change that when the house was sold, and that's why
Speaker 16: for the last it's been years.
Speaker 12: But it's.
Speaker 16: Now I'm on my own. You notice the place is yeah.
Speaker 5: No, and no look at it. And it's really really
Speaker 5: frustrating when a neighbor, you know, blatantly disregards the requirements
Speaker 5: around stormwater and it becomes a nuisance to you. But
Speaker 5: I would say, maybe if you've got the opportunity next
Speaker 5: time we have some decent heavy rain and you see
Speaker 5: that flooding coming to your place, just take a quick
Speaker 5: photograph of that and then.
Speaker 15: Go to the.
Speaker 16: But I've deleted them, okay because I spoke. I did
Speaker 16: speak to him, yeah and oh yeah, yeah, okay, but
Speaker 16: nothing's happened.
Speaker 5: Yeah. No time to get counsel involved, Lucy, Yes, time
Speaker 5: to get counsel. Let us, let us show how you
Speaker 5: get on and hopefully counsel will be helpful in this
Speaker 5: particular instance. Good luck with that. It is eight twenty
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Speaker 5: news stork ZB We're a couple more calls before we
Speaker 5: go to the garden and we'll jump in with redclimb pass.
Speaker 5: But Cindy, you've got a bit of an issue with
Speaker 5: an LBP.
Speaker 12: Yeah, so we've had a bit of a journey with
Speaker 12: an LPP builder, and we contracted this guy to build
Speaker 12: a minor dwelling on our property. And he came in
Speaker 12: and he started building, and we got to the cloding
Speaker 12: stage and the claud my husband sort of looked at
Speaker 12: the clouding and thought, that doesn't look right. And interestingly,
Speaker 12: their clouding came with a full booklet on how it
Speaker 12: needed to be, how it needed to be put up. Anyway,
Speaker 12: my husband called the council, he killed it, called another
Speaker 12: builder and the architect, and they all came up and said, no,
Speaker 12: this is cowboy, and it got a complete fail. So
Speaker 12: we went back to the builder and said, you know,
Speaker 12: we need all new cludding. It's going to be all
Speaker 12: put up, and he basically said, I'm not coming back.
Speaker 12: Find another builder. But you know, interestingly, at the very beginning,
Speaker 12: we had signed a contract, we had done all the
Speaker 12: right things, and we were giving him, you know, gradual
Speaker 12: payment throughout the project. And what ended up happening and
Speaker 12: this is what I don't understand, Like, you know, you
Speaker 12: get to this point and it feels like there's no
Speaker 12: recourse because he didn't come back. We had to find
Speaker 12: another builder and he owed us seventy thousand dollars, and
Speaker 12: you know, in the end, we went to a solicitor
Speaker 12: who drew up, well, his solicitor actually drew up a
Speaker 12: settlement that we were meant to be paid the money
Speaker 12: by December last year. But nothing. It's like he knows
Speaker 12: now we've gone to a deck collector and he's paying
Speaker 12: house fifty dollars a week. I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 12: just there just doesn't seem to be like, even when
Speaker 12: you've done the right thing, it doesn't feel like there's
Speaker 12: anywhere to turn.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the mind of dwelling that you got this
Speaker 5: LBP to do, did that have a building consent? Did
Speaker 5: it require a building consent?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 5: So it did require a building consent? Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 5: The other thing is have you gone to the disciplinary
Speaker 5: board of the Licensed Building Practitioner scheme?
Speaker 12: Well, that's the interesting thing. And what we found out
Speaker 12: later that this guy had done this before, right, And
Speaker 12: so what happened was when his solicitor drew up the
Speaker 12: settlement saying that we'd get all our money by December
Speaker 12: last year, they had a confidentiality clause in there that
Speaker 12: we weren't to talk to anybody about it. So sphin king. Oh, well,
Speaker 12: you know we're going to get our money, so maybe
Speaker 12: that's okay. Well, I mean, now we're ten months down
Speaker 12: the track and we still haven't Yeah.
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, now I wonder do we do that? Yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm wondering whether because you know, look, lbp's like that
Speaker 5: really really annoy me, and they bring the entire system
Speaker 5: into disrepute, right, And so I think name and shame
Speaker 5: is a good thing. So I don't want you to
Speaker 5: breach your agreement, but I would go back to your
Speaker 5: lawyer and maybe say, look, given that no payment or
Speaker 5: very little payment has been made, we are not going
Speaker 5: to abide by that non disclosure, and we are going
Speaker 5: to go to the Licensed Practitioner Board and make a claim.
Speaker 5: And and I think they would probably uphold it, in
Speaker 5: which case either he would have his license suspended or
Speaker 5: would be struck off in some cases. But it will
Speaker 5: also then become a matter of public record, which I
Speaker 5: think is really good, so that someone else searching that
Speaker 5: person's name later will be aware of their pass performance
Speaker 5: and be warned. Great, but it still leaves you in
Speaker 5: a really really awkward situation, which is terrible. And you know,
Speaker 5: I suppose ideally, we'd hope that the LBP registration scheme
Speaker 5: would prevent this type of thing. That's probably a little
Speaker 5: bit naive, and in your situation it hasn't, which is
Speaker 5: really really unfortunate. But look, I think that you should
Speaker 5: go and take them to the LBP disciplinary board, but
Speaker 5: you would need to then make sure that you're not
Speaker 5: getting yourself in legal trouble by doing so.
Speaker 15: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And look, maybe.
Speaker 5: You know, and now, in the conversation with Chris Pink
Speaker 5: that we had in the last hour, one of the
Speaker 5: things that we started to talk about is, you know,
Speaker 5: should we move away from counsel being responsible right for
Speaker 5: all of this to a more insurance based one, because
Speaker 5: if it was in your instance right, and if the
Speaker 5: LBP had have had proper insurance to cover that work
Speaker 5: and the work was poor, you could have gone to
Speaker 5: the insurer and the insurer would have gone, yep, I
Speaker 5: understand the claim, he is the money up front, right,
Speaker 5: and then chase the builder for it later. But at
Speaker 5: least you would get redress and allow you to move
Speaker 5: on rather than this nonsense of fifty dollars a week.
Speaker 12: Absolutely, I mean, we you know, we did look at
Speaker 12: the insurance options right now everything, and it was like no,
Speaker 12: just a complete dead end.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, hey, thanks for bringing that to our attention,
Speaker 5: and please let me know how you get on. And
Speaker 5: I really do think if you can take it to
Speaker 5: the disciplinary board, I think it's a really good idea. Right,
Speaker 5: we're going to jump into the garden now. Just before
Speaker 5: I do, I got this lovely text from Marie earlier
Speaker 5: on Dear mister Wolfcamp, my husband Ray, it's his sixty
Speaker 5: fifth birthday today. Could you please send out a greeting.
Speaker 5: He's a huge fan of News Talks dB, especially as
Speaker 5: it happens myself and Rudd. And then she says, tod
Speaker 5: sense from Marie. So Ray, very very happy sixty fifth birthday.
Speaker 5: Enjoy that, Buddy Gold card mate.
Speaker 1: For more from the Resident Builder with Peter Wolfcamp, listen
Speaker 1: live to News Talks' b on Sunday mornings from six,
Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio