Wood Watch

One of Wellington City Council’s building consents managers has a passion for wood that was stoked by a previous career as a carpenter.

According to Robert Tierney, the council’s Manager of Major Projects and CBD Building Consents and Licensing Services and wood fan, “wood basically gets into your blood”.

And he is building his own house using macrocarpa cladding.

“Wood is like the backbone of New Zealand construction, he says. “Timber-framed housing has proven itself for nearly two centuries.”

“When you look at houses made out of good quality timber you can be confident that they, if well maintained, they will last for centuries, whereas there are a large number of other products that require a lot of maintenance and may not last as long people think they are going to. Some alternative products are made to be ‘fit for a purpose’ and suit the modern throwaway culture”.

“Whereas with timber, people were historically building homes to pass on to their sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters. Now the average span people stay in a house is five years.”

Despite the advent of synthetic materials, approximately 90 per cent of the houses viewed by the council’s inspectors are timber-framed. Timber is not a product that’s going to disappear, he says. “People have tried to replace it with synthetic material but these have always had their limitations.”

As a Wellington-based consents manager, Tierney says wood really holds it own in that city’s challenging environmental conditions, with their extremes of wind and earthquake proneness. “Wellington for an engineer is probably the ultimate sort of test.

Another advantage wood has over its competitors is that it lends itself to environmental design.

He believes there are three keys to achieving sustainability in homes: insulation, insulation and insulation though the issue of sourcing the timber from a renewable forest is another major consideration.

Robert Tierney’s Top Tips for Gaining Building Consent:

• The number one tip is whatever you are planning to build, make sure you communicate with the council at the earliest instance. Tierney says the council actually offers the best free advice around. Building officers are on hand to give advice though making an appointment is advisable. “I always say to people, whether you want a beautiful timber deck in your back garden or a brand new house, that’s your end result, just work back from that and start to fill in all the gaps about how you are demonstrating your project will ultimately meet building regulations. These are the things we will need information on and need applications for but here are some things you need to consider.”

• The quality of the documentation can often create problems. The council is currently working with the industry to find out how this process can be made easier for applicants. “We acknowledge that there is an industry practice around how they document drawing specifications, but this doesn’t really align with what we have to do in terms of documenting how it complies with the building code,” Tierney says.

• Building inspectors look for reasonable grounds in measuring compliance. “We are not there on a 24-hour basis to inspect every single nail that goes in.” Inspectors conduct a random audit, which takes about 10-12 inspections for a brand new house. Each inspection lasts about 30-40 minutes, which means they can’t view all aspects of the construction and this where problems can arise. For this reason, inspectors now take meticulous note. Tierney says this system makes the builder take more responsibility, “it’s up to him to be conscientious and say yes I’ve gone through and used all the correct material as specified”. “We now often encourage the builders to use a cellphone with a camera or a digital camera to keep their own records. We’ll come in and do the majority of the inspection but if there’s something we didn’t see and they have 20 photos to show it, then that gives us the reasonable grounds we need to establish that they’ve complied.