Tuesday, June 30, 2015

开发商成片开发的新盘,如Universal Home在Rodney以及Long Bay开发的新楼盘,也有问题吗?


Q: Have you found any major issues for houses being built within large developments such as houses built by Universal Homes in Rodney or Long Bay?

A: In general, it is true that well reputable building companies with long building history tend to deliver good quality buildings.

When it is unfair to say that small and newly established building companies tend to build poorly, it is a truth that most of problem new builds are built by un-experienced new-comers or small developers.

Reasons are obvious. Sole traders or small developers tend to cut cost by reducing management inputs or completely ignore construction management. It is also common for some small building companies or spec owners to limit their construction management in price bargaining only.

This finding is not a secret for most buyers. This is why spec house built by large reputable companies are selling more in general. You get what you pay for. This is also a universal rule of thumb for housing industry.


Here is a very interesting topic: Can small building companies, sole traders, individual developers and the like build as good as other well established building companies? I will talk about that during future coming events. 

Monday, June 29, 2015

If the building does not have a cavity, the building will have leaking problem sooner or later. Is that correct?


Of course, not.

Even under current NZ Building Code and related building standards, as long as design risk is low enough (simple plan and form, within low wind zone, single story, wide eave and etc), a building’s exterior wall cladding can still be installed without cavity.

Looking at the whole NZ building history, majority of buildings were built without cladding cavity. Most of those building have been well performed without suffering major weathertightness issues.

Looking at buildings built during so called “leaky building era”, i.e. during 1995-2004, not all buildings built without cladding cavity suffered weathertightness issues. in fact, most buildings built without cladding cavity have been well performed.

Solutions for solving leaky building issues have never been only limited to providing cladding cavity only. Every single recladding project will not just involve providing cladding cavity, but also incorporate some redesign of inadequate details, rectification of defective structural details, repair of non-weathertightness related defects, make good to poor workmanship and etc.


From building inspection point of view, cladding cavity has never been a major factor for us to determine if a building is “leaky”. If we are satisfied in terms of design, construction, workmanship, maintenance and etc for a building, we will regard the building as “weathertight” regardless it contains a cavity or not.