Building a Bach
Introducing the first in our series from The Crib Collective as we follow the journey of a group of friends building a lake house in Taupō.
Friends band together to build a sustainable holiday home
Building a holiday house has always felt like a pipe dream. Growing up, our holidays were crashing at a family friend’s house or pitching a tent somewhere. But here we are halfway through the build and seeing our lake house come to life.
Investing in family memories
It might seem a little reckless to invest in a holiday pad when we haven’t even renovated our family home yet; we have a 100-year-old bungalow that feels like it will take 100 years to renovate. We weighed it up and yes, we could have invested into something with a financial yield. But we’ve chosen to invest into the bank of family memories instead. Definitely a decision we made with our hearts, not our calculator!
The Crib Collective
We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves to make the dream come to life and keep costs down. The most significant is that we’re building our holiday home with friends: my husband Rico and I with our good friends Marianne and Sean Falconer. We’re good mates, have holidayed together over the years and have similar values and experiences. It’s a model of collective shared property ownership we think makes a lot of sense from a sustainable perspective. How many times have you been to the beach and seen holiday homes sitting empty? For our crew, aptly titled ‘The Crib Collective’, the reality is that we won’t be able to get away every weekend or school break with work, family, school and social commitments. By sharing our lake house as two families, we know it will get used more. Manaakitanga is important to all of us too, we want to hold this house lightly and use it to bless others with the fruits of our labour; we’re pumped to be able to share it with friends and family so they can enjoy a break too.
Our ethos
From the get-go, the ethos was to build this holiday pad with community and sustainability in mind.
We are focused on making cost decisions based on quality and durability to ensure less waste in the long-term, and while we are all inspired by good design, we are making decisions that we know we’ll love long-term, not based on fads. We will add style with unique design features we create, while keeping the interior and exterior style stylishly simple.
It goes without saying that building a home with friends halves the costs for all of us and keeps financial stress down. We’ve kept the house footprint down to 160m2 (plus attic space, aka marae-style living and sleeping room for friends) as every metre added onto the build, adds around $2500 to the cost.
Design decisions
Designing a home for two families to enjoy took some consideration. We drew up our plans and then worked with two architect friends who analysed the layout and offered insight to optimise the spaces. The layout of the home easily accommodates two families with separate wings for each family to ensure privacy and space. A combined living, dining and kitchen area ensures we have adequate space to hang out, share meals, and enjoy each other’s company. We signed a Shared Property Agreement so we all have a good understanding around how this will work practically and respectfully – we’re all about sustainable friendships too!
Sustainable focus
Building material has been a central consideration in ensuring our footprint is light, with sustainability at the forefront and a focus on energy efficiency. The building envelope – the walls, roof, flooring, windows and doors of the house – is probably the key aspect of the design, as it dramatically impacts on energy performance and efficiency.
Our draughtsman created a sunshade map, and we spent time camping at the land last summer to figure out the positioning of the home, so we can get the most benefit from the sun, and enjoy ideal shade in the peak of summer. We’ve almost doubled the recommended external wall thickness, and almost doubled the insulation with Pink Batts. This will help keep the home warm and it shouldn’t require extensive heating. With large sliding doors in every bedroom, lounge and kitchen, and generous windows throughout, we’re making the most of the views and the indoor-outdoor flow and will have plenty of ventilation for the hotter months. In the winter months, doubleglazing and some toasty window treatments will maximise the views while minimising the heat loss. We’ve built a recess into the front lounge from the deck for a shaded spot to enjoy in the summer.
Mac is back
The key aspect of sustainability we unanimously agreed on was for the use of untreated macrocarpa and lawson cypress for the framing and trusses, exterior cladding and wall coverings. For most Kiwi-built homes, H3-treated pine is used for framing, inside and out, and for weatherboard cladding for the bungalowstyle home. H3 is a preservative treatment that is a known irritant, and for us, building a home using it makes little sense. We opted for using untreated, plantationgrown macrocarpa, which naturally resists insects and is resistant to decay. It smells amazing, looks stunning and we can rest easy inside our home made with untreated timber. My Dad owns MacDirect, so I’ve been passionate about sustainable plantation-grown mac for many years. It’s exciting to use it in our own home! MacDirect has recently achieved GradeRight verification to supply SG8 framing, and our builder and co-owners were super keen to make that choice too.
Going fully sustainable isn’t something we are able to achieve right now on our budget, but we are giving it our very best shot with the choices we’re making about things like our effluent system, setting up urbanmac vegetable gardens, and tank water. Watch this space!
Follow the build
Over the coming few columns, Holly will share more in-depth insights into different areas of the home they were able to make better choices on that are less harmful for us and the environment. Follow on Instagram for regular updates on their progress as they share their build journey.