Blog 32: Joinery update

Exterior Joinery

April is a month full of holidays, Easter, Anzac day - short work weeks one after the other, so it’s really a half month in New Zealand from a productivity perspective.

The holidays and short weeks in April 2019 coincided with the loading of our joinery into the long haul removals truck in Mosgiel and it’s more than 1,100km journey from the bottom of the South Island up to us in the North Island. So timelines continued to stretch out for our joinery… and the delivery originally targeted for mid February* actually arrived on the 30th of April. * As noted in a previous blog, the container with our glass didn’t make its original shipment date in Germany in December, and in the end didn’t arrive in NZ until mid-March - our first exterior joinery delay.

The good news, hiding in the continued delays, was that the house was wide open for drying out the plaster base coat inside the house, and we had plenty of other work to do so there was no impact on the critical path for the overall build.

You probably have a question lurking in your mind at this point… 1,100kms! couldn’t you get the exterior joinery from a local supplier in Hawkes Bay? The answer unfortunately is no, as we are building to passivhaus design principles so the European profile, tilt and turn solid wood, high spec (U and R value) glazed doors and windows are critical for our house design to work. In Hawkes Bay, New Zealand that meant a non-local supplier and significant transport from whoever we ended up choosing.

Our chosen supplier Thermadura, shipped in all of the passivhaus certified timber, glass and hardware from Germany and assembled it in their Mosgiel factory in New Zealand, before delivering it to our house site.

We tested the limits with our design brief and the sliding door units are the tallest ever built by Thermadura, and the overhead windows are top instead of bottom hung to provide for maximum opening with our ceiling raked at 25 degrees. Thermadura supported us every step of the way with good advice, clear boundaries on what was and wasn’t possible and then delivering on quality.

The over height doors presented some challenges, but solutions were found.

There was only one truck that could transport the sliders long haul and “almost” upright, so we had to exercise some patience regarding its availability/schedule.

With the largest of the slider units weighing in at over half a ton fully glazed weight was also an issue as we didn’t want to damage the wooden frames and sashes by using strops and cranes - so the sliders frames and glass were shipped and then after being man handled into position, they were glazed on-site.

And last but not least was how to get them all up our driveway…

We had a plan b in place to offload all of the joinery and glass from the long haul truck at the roadside, lean the joinery up against a neighbours stockyards and then reload the individual units one at a time onto a joinery A-frame trailer and drive them up the hill using a 4WD.

In the end we were millimetres away from activating plan b.

The delivery day dawned, damp and windy - not ideal conditions for manhandling wooden joinery and double glazing! Price’s Removals driver Ryan called us on-route, and we made sure we had everything ready…

Ryan arrived at the gate late morning in his 8 wheeler long haul removals truck, he took a long.. hard… look at the drive and then, in true kiwi style, decided to give it a go…

Ryan is a champion, 3 metres back, 3 metres forward again to get 1 centimetre further around the first bend, Nils guiding him every bite - another champion. 2 hours in total just backing the truck up the driveway, legendary!

It took several hours and 9 people to get the truck unloaded, and the glass, slider frames and fully glazed window units all safely secured (not yet installed) on-site. Many hands made for “lighter” work, certainly not light work.. and we also bought 6 window sucking handles to help us pick up the glazed units more easily and safely.

We also unloaded other shipments that had been loaded into the truck around our load.. and then having shifted our joinery out we reloaded with Ryan, so he could carry on up the country.

The next big challenge, as the sun was headed rapidly towards the horizon, was getting the truck back down the driveway, forwards this time.. and so another hour later Ryan, thankfully exited the front gate in the dark!

This was the end of the beginning, a huge day and major milestone behind us.. Of course there was plenty more to do, manhandling the joinery up into position, fixing the frames into the openings plumb and level and then glazing the sliders and completing the sills, reveals and flashings around each window and door unit..

Thankfully we had Everitt on-site helping Pat and Nils, and we also called on Felix and Piers to help us out on the day we lifted all of the frames into the openings.

A few days later we had Vitali arrive from Mosgeil, for two days work glazing the large sliders on-site. He did a great job and worked really late to get completed on Friday night.

Plenty of detail work still for Pat after putting them in the holes, with sills, reveals, flashings etc.. - and more plaster work for the internal reveals on the doors and windows. The deep reveals are a collaboration between Pat and our clay straw specialist for curves, Alessandra - they look beautiful with the base plaster coat in place.

Interior Joinery

After getting in quotes we have selected Parkhill Joinery to build our internal doors and door frames, and Hortops Joinery are building our benches and internal window sills.

Our doors, door frames, bench tops and window sills (3 are window seats), are all being built bespoke in solid timber. We are using old rimu and matai native timber planks, that were once fence railings enclosing a huge stockyard.

The timber was delivered in May and build is underway at time of writing at both joinery factories..

Water blasting a fence pailing, before and after… beautiful native timber

There will be another blog update soon for the interior joinery after installation :-)

Blog 32: Joinery update

Exterior Joinery

Interior Joinery

1281 Maraetotara Road, Maraetotara RD12,

Havelock North 4294, New Zealand