Home sweet home built in under week
A Wanaka company says it is able to put together a new home in a matter of days.
Entrepreneur Peter Marshall, who co-founded Eftpos NZ, has launched a modular home product he hopes will offer an easy way to overcome the housing shortage. Nautilus Modular constructs homes from interchangeable, prefabricated modules.
The key benefits are speed and ease of construction but they are also priced at the lower to mid-range of the market, the company says. Modules are manufactured off-site using a specific mould and then transported.
They are based on standard dimensions to minimise off-cuts and wastage. Once on site the buildings are connected and weatherproofed, before being clad with corrugated iron.
The company says the homes can be lived in within one to three days. The designs are based on pavilions that can be extended or joined together, and can be used for residential, community and commercial buildings. Each pavilion is made up of a number of small modules.
The single pavilion options range from a 52-square-metre, one-bedroom option to an 88sqm three-bedroom option.
The multi-pavilion options range from a 104sqm three-bedroom option to a 182sqm six-bedroom option.
These are still under development, as is a two-storey pavilion featured on the website.
Marshall said the homes were priced to be affordable.
The universal module costs just north of $1100 per sqm excluding fitout, installation and cladding. The standardisation of the modules does not affect a client’s ability to personalise a design, because all module variants will fit together and there is no limit to the number of modules that can be used.
Marshall said the system was ‘‘extremely efficient’’.
The construction model in New Zealand was overpriced, inefficient and generated a lot of waste, he said.
As a result, New Zealanders faced multiple challenges from affordability to lack of supply and building consent delays.
The company hopes to establish a number of factories across New Zealand if the demand is strong enough. Currently, it has one testing plant in Wanaka equipped with one mould.
It has the capacity to produce a onebedroom home every 10 days.
‘‘This technology is capable of producing thousands of high-quality homes and buildings each year,’’ Marshall said.
The company will seek CodeMark certification, which provides assurance for new building products. It will also seek Multiproof Certification through the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, which would ease the building consent process for people using the modular system to build a home.