New House build

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Stan

929 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1314339 29-May-2015 20:53

Avatarz: Wow, some great feedback and information. All very much appreciated.

Definitely going to look and visit both Logan homes and Branderson. Never heard of them but worth looking into after the recommendations.

Also keen to see what Lattitude is all about too.

Have a friend that has been involved in building projects so once I get a feel for what we want to who to go through can bounce all the details off him and get him to look into the finer details.

Great start, thank you.

We supply the Hamilton branch of lattitude homes with the occasionally with heating they have always been good to deal with...

bfginger

1268 posts

Uber Geek

#1327858 19-Jun-2015 13:48

billgates: First floor master bedroom to have an outdoor deck/alfresco also with Eurostacker door with LevelStep Sill from Rylock.

NZ aluminium joinery often has poor seals on sliding doors and windows. I don't know what Fletchers' new system is like but I'd want to see it first before installing one. I know someone with a 2000s ranchslider who is going to replace it because it leaks air.

Carpets in all rooms including home cinema and laminated timber everywhere else including kitchen and first floor gallery/hallways. Tiles in all the toilets, bathrooms across the house.

Tiles in bathrooms are causing big problems with the waterproofing of most installations being botched. If you get tiles you need to be really careful to make sure it's done properly.

Viridian Planitherm Low-E glass for Windows (thermal broken) and Pacific Thermal suite window frames from Rylock.

Ask for argon gas. Planitherm is a good choice but it isn't a single product.
http://uk.saint-gobain-glass.com/products
Different low-e glasses have different qualities. You probably want high solar gain low-e on the northern side or else you lose a quarter of the passive heating from those windows. It's really important for northern windows to be shaded from direct sunlight in summer or else they let huge amounts of heat into the house. With normal windows the eves can do that but floor to ceiling windows and ground floor windows on a two storey property sound more tricky.

I don't think Fletchers (Rylock) supports multi point locking windows so look into that. The normal window catch on NZ aluminium windows provides very little security. Nulook and Fairview/Elite do do multi point locking windows.
Single point locking front/back doors with the strike held in by a cm of wood are even more useless. Tilting doors are good as you can answer them without opening the door.

Unfortunately the odds of someone trying to break into that kind of house in Hamilton are high.

Lots of Windows in general around the whole house on both floors.

It's unlikely any of those windows will have an R value much above R0.7 compared with the R3.2 in the walls. High end window frames with triple glazing may get over R2 but you have to pay for those. Northern windows help with heating, others not so much except windows on the western side in particular can cause overheating on summer afternoons so low solar gain glass or an awning may help with that.

mclean

581 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#1327915 19-Jun-2015 16:26

Apart from all the other benefits of using an architect, a hidden one is that you get a set of details drawings/specs which you can use to invite tenders from builders on a competitive basis, with all of them quoting apples instead of apples and oranges. I reckon that competitive tendering on detailed drawings will usually recover for you the architect's fee.

mattwnz

20153 posts

Uber Geek

#1327918 19-Jun-2015 16:31

mclean: Apart from all the other benefits of using an architect, a hidden one is that you get a set of details drawings/specs which you can use to invite tenders from builders on a competitive basis, with all of them quoting apples instead of apples and oranges. I reckon that competitive tendering on detailed drawings will usually recover for you the architect's fee.

I have been through this recently, but found that the franchise builders aren't good at doing this, and include a lot of their own item/materials rather than those specified, which they buy in bulk. The franchise builders also were a lot more expensive. The big benefit of an architecturally design is that the house is built for the client and site, for the sun, rather than a cookie cutter design that is replicated often hundreds of time when you buy a plan from a franchise builder.

floydie

474 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1329432 22-Jun-2015 18:41

We built wirh classic builders. got a great house much cheaper than others. fowlers were the worst. thier contract was so loose that we worked out about 20grands of variations due to thier dodgy way of wording it

classic on the other hand were great. all variations were quoted in writing before going ahead and the pricing was reasonable. we even bought a heap of appliances through them as they were cheaper than anywhere else.

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