LBP Skills Maintenance, April 2024 — for all LBP's | Starting your own business can be a daunting task and often we learn on the job. You’re confident on the tools and know you can do a great job on-site, but ensuring your business practices are up to scratch is just as important for building a successful business.

Are we driving blindly forward with our eyes firmly focussed on the view in the rear vision mirror? Our energy future is not going to be as it has been in the past.

This first article in a series of five reflects on recent Pro Clima Knowledge Zone webinars and aims to highlight how changes in one area can impact other code clauses. We point out some of our industry's common mistakes and discuss how to address them. 

Selecting NZ made products provides a level of assurance that suppliers who use offshore production are unable to fulfil. Additionally, the economic benefits are retained in New Zealand and fed back into local communities.

Insights into the complexities of Low E coating and their importance in making informed choices.

One critical area of waterproofing is to ensure the detail you use to seal the penetrations for the shower mixers/taps and their associated outlets not only completely seals the penetrations from water ingress from the outside, but will also provide protection to the wall cavity.

Fiona Caulfield, Declare Manager New Zealand, looks at how Declare labels can help us understand how safe a building product is to human and environmental health.

Plumbing or electrical services that penetrate a CLT panel result in a hole in the fire cell for the service to pass through. The hole for the pipe or cables needs to have a PFP product applied to it to prevent the spread of fire beyond that fire cell.

Many missed the release in April by Statistics NZ which calculated 43,200 homes received council sign-off (CCC) in 2023. This was a 20% increase on the number of homes completed in 2022, and was the result of the long tail of the 50,000 consent approvals in 2021/22 delivering high levels of building site activity and building product sales into the fourth quarter of 2023. Delve deeper and the data reveals far more about how we’re building and what has to change to meet the increasing demand for homes in New Zealand.

This month I look at using aerated autoclaved concrete for intertenancy walls + we have a new round of the Medium Quick-Fire Quiz.