Located in the heart of Gibbston, Central Otago, the newly opened Kinross Barrel Room brings together wines from five boutique wineries in the area — Coal Pit, Hawkshead, Valli, Wild Irishman, and their own Kinross wines. The new building features a cellar door with underfloor heating to keep visitors cosy through the Otago winter, and a wine library room which requires a constant temperature of 16 degrees. To achieve the temperature control required throughout, Kinross chose to use MAXRaft 320 insulated floor slabs for the 309m² floor.

“The clients were wanting to build a cellar door where people can come in and do wine tastings and experience this beautiful building,” explains Mike Thurston, Builder, RMT Builders. “The fully insulated slab from MAXRaft was chosen as we have underfloor heating in the slab and there’s also a wine library room where the temperature stays around 16 degrees, so we have to make sure heat isn’t lost in the slab, and that there are no room temperature variations.”

MAXRaft is an ideal insulated slab solution for projects built on less stable ground. The system features a continuous insulating layer beneath the slab and to the exterior surfaces, and can be engineered to meet H1 requirements of different projects. In the case of the Kinross Barrel Room, the MAXRaft flooring was engineered to meet an R-value of 3 — and MAXRaft are pleased to share that they now offer a MAXRaft Plus+ option designed specifically to meet the requirements of upcoming NZBC changes where embedded underfloor heating is specified — with the ability to achieve R-values up to 4.03 depending on the design.

For the Kinross Barrel Room, which is clad in schist veneer, RMT builders installed a conventional schist footing, followed by the MAXRaft slabs. “As MAXRaft isn’t designed to carry a load of 200mm schist veneer, we poured the schist first, which provided a flat surface to mount the MAXRaft flooring,” explains Mike.

Having worked with MAXRaft over the years, Mike appreciated their service, reliability and ease of install. “MAXRaft slabs are easy to work with, which makes it easy,” he says. “I’ve been using them for all my slabs over the last four years — they offer good service, they’re always on time and the slabs are easily installed.”

The stunning Kinross Barrel Room opened in November 2022 to excellent reviews. Hidden beneath the beautiful polished concrete flooring, the MAXRaft slab plays a key role in maintaining the optimum temperature in the wine library and ensuring thermal comfort for visitors year round.

“It came out amazing,” says Mike. “It was an awesome project to be a part of and the clients are over the moon.”