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. 

In New Zealand, approximately 10% of the population relies on rainwater collected from roofs for their daily water needs. There are also an increasing number of projects looking for sustainable and cost-effective solutions to harvest rainwater as a reliable source for drinking water. The key to ensuring the safety and quality of water lies in proper collection, storage, adherence to regulatory standards, and the crucial step of effective filtration.

Skills maintenance, April 2024 — for all LBPs | What you need to know when repairing flood damaged buildings and carrying out work under the schedule 1 exemptions of the Building Act.

Recent modelling by Jason Quinn of Sustainable Engineering found that improper glass choice and orientation could lead to over 33% increased risk of this specific house design overheating, as evidenced by the graph. What are some options that will reduce the risk of overheating from solar gain?

Recent membrane testing and technology allows some systems to work at lower falls. This creates an impact on the design scenarios in which the overall roof buildup has a height limitation.

In this article we look at some of the elements included from Version 3.0 onwards of the Ministry of Education's Weathertightness Guidance document which would be deemed ‘above code’, and discuss the whys, hows and wheres of their practical application.