Skype can be used for face to face meetings with the ability to share screens, so if you have a smart phone or tablet you can walk me around your existing house while we discuss what you like and dislike about where you live at present. This gives me a very good understanding of how you occupy a space and how you live, much more than I could ever hope to understand from a meeting in my office. We talk about the layout of the house, the sun, the views, materials, budgets, the weather, with all of the arm waving and gestures that we would normally use to communicate if sitting down together, the only thing we cannot do is share coffee.

From this discussion I can prepare a brief, which is essentially a summary of your requirements and desires. I can view your site on Google Earth, usually weather data is available through a government agency and the only aspect that is difficult for me to pick up are the prevailing winds which you will need to describe for me. Again a smart phone or tablet tour of your site allows you to describe to me what appeals to you about your site, why you have chosen to live there, and what you hope to get out of it.

We can arrange for survey data through local surveyors, local planning regulations are usually available on line, and once we have all of the necessary data we begin the design process. This I present in a Skype meeting as initially very conceptual drawings which become more developed as we discuss them and develop computer models. My CAD software allows me to geolocate your new home and do full sun studies on it for your exact location. I can mass up adjacent buildings, plantings and other obstructions to determine any shading effect from these.

As we talk I can demonstrate and manipulate computer models on screen. The software that I use integrates fully with the free version of Google SketchUp so using either YouSendIt or Drop Box I can give you a copy of the model that you can view in SketchUp and review at your leisure so that you can give me informed and considered feedback, allowing us to hone the design so that it works best for you.

For construction documentation we then hand over to a local draughting agency or building contractor to complete the documentation to local codes and arrange for permits. Digital photographs and Skype meetings can be used for discussions during the construction process.

Language may be an issue, ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch sprechen and have a German national working for me who speaks in a curious blend of German and English while in the office, but I have found that for most native German speakers their English is much better than my German. It does help me understand their sense of humour a little better though.

Where there is a will, there is a way. I love a challenge so do drop me a line if you think I might be able to help.

Dean

From a quick appraisal it appears that lightweight regular shaped buildings on shallow piles with a braced perimeter foundation are likely to be the most cost effective solution for these sites, but each site will need to be individually assessed to determine the optimum solution.

When is a loss not a loss? Lawyer DUNCAN WEBB looks at the situation facing some homeowners in the residential red zone.

MP Lianne Dalziel has released a legal opinion I provided to her. It states my view that there is a good argument that some insurance policies require insurers to replace a property that would have been repairable had it not been located in the red zone.

Many red-zoned properties are not particularly badly damaged. Owners of those properties can either accept the Government offer of the rateable value of the property (option one) or they can sell the land to the Government for its rateable value and negotiate an additional payment from their insurer for the loss in respect of the building.

The conundrum for many homeowners in the red zone is that, even though their home may appear to be largely undamaged, they have in effect lost their home. Under “option two”, however, insurers appear to be paying out only on the basis of the actual physical damage to the property.

The question to be asked is whether insurers are obliged under the policies to pay for only the amount of physical damage to the property or whether they should pay for what is in effect the total loss of the home.

The key term of an insurance policy is its insuring clause – that clause sets out what must happen before the insurer has to pay. However, the clauses differ across insurers. One example from Vero provides that it will pay in the event of “accidental loss or damage to your home”.

What, then, is “loss” or “damage”?

Those words are presumed to mean two different things (otherwise one would be redundant). The question therefore is whether a house on red-zoned land is “lost” or “damaged” beyond simply the physical damage it has suffered.

In this regard, insurers appear to want to have their cake and eat it too. On one hand, they say that the Government offer is just that – an offer which is open to be accepted or not (and therefore the home is not lost).

However, the insurers are not repairing any properties in the red zone on the basis that the property must be vacated. It also appears that insurers will not continue to insure properties in the red zone.

The several arms of government confirm the fact that there is little option for homeowners in the red zone other than to accept one or other of the offers. Christchurch City Council has made clear that it will not continue to provide basic services.

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While, technically, building consents could be granted for properties in the red zone, the reality is that the barriers to this are insurmountable. Even the Building and Housing Department has indicated that Red is a “no-go zone” and it is not issuing standards for building on that land.

Against this background, there is a very good argument that a property on red-zoned land is lost, even though the actual physical damage to it is small. By virtue of the earthquake, owners have, in substance, been deprived of the use of their homes and they are, for all intents and purposes, lost.

The law terms a situation where, although the property may still exist, it cannot be repaired or recovered and enjoyed as a “constructive loss”. Where such a constructive total loss occurs the insurer must provide the benefit under the policy to the insured.

General insurers do not insure land. However, the damage to the land is not of itself what triggers the obligation of the insurer to pay (in fact, many red-zoned properties stand on land that is not significantly damaged).

Rather it is the fact that the chain of events which started with one or other of the Christchurch earthquakes has resulted in the owners of homes being effectively deprived of those homes. One of the main cases in this area is Raincar v Frigmobile.

Their export-quality scallops had not been kept at the right temperature (though no change in their quality was perceptible) and they therefore were rejected for export. The question was whether the scallops had been “damaged”.

The court found that there was a physical change in them which mean that “that the usefulness was impaired and the value reduced”. The principle is the same here. The houses in question have clearly suffered damage which has meant that their “usefulness was impaired and the value reduced”.

The damage to the houses cannot be remedied by repair by the insurers for all of the reasons set out above. However, this does not relieve the insurer of their obligations to compensate fully under the terms of the applicable policy.

While the insurer cannot be repairing or rebuilding the home on the land, most policies provide for rebuilding on other land or, in some cases, a cash settlement. It may also be open to insurers to move the buildings on to new land (owned by the insured) and to reinstate them. However, the cost of such an endeavour is likely to be prohibitive.

This approach is radically different from that adopted by the insurers to date. A real concern is that the problem is spread thinly across many homeowners and no individual homeowner has the resources or wherewithal to take on their insurer. Insurers are large (and well funded) bureaucracies that by necessity adopt a particular stance in respect of any given issue.

Insurers do not seek to deprive homeowners of their entitlements under the policy. However, they are geared to provide the benefits under the policy as construed by the insurer, and no more. There is no motivation to explore arguments (legal or otherwise) that might lead to greater benefits for the insured.

In respect of the red-zone offers, that stance is also affected by the agreement that exists with Government. While the amount of money at stake for an insured may be significant, it may not be enough to embark on an arduous course of litigation against an insurer.

A lack of advocacy is a fundamental stumbling block for a robust argument about the proper obligations of insurers in respect of red- zoned properties.

When the parties in dispute were the insurance industry and EQC (over whether EQC insurance reset after each event) the parties were able to seek a declaration from the High Court. In the present case there is no entity able to take such an action on behalf of the red-zoned insured.

The Insurance and Savings Ombudsman can consider complaints from homeowners against insurers up to a value of $200,000. But, given the importance of this question, it may be that if it were put before the ombudsman the insurer would remove it to the High Court as a test case (as it is permitted to do). If this were to happen, the insurer would have to pay the legal costs of the insured.

In the absence of some intervention, it does not appear that this question is likely to come before the courts soon. It is also the case that time is running out on the red-zone offers (even with the recent extension given by the Government).

The best advice to owners of red-zoned properties is to read your insurance policy carefully and look for the insuring clause.

If the clause refers to simply “loss” or “damage”, there is a strong argument that this relates to the entire value of the home where it is unable to be repaired by the insurer. Predictably, if you think that you are in such a position, speak to your lawyer.

The legal opinion can be found at: img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/ 1204/Lane-Neave-Legal- Opinion.pdf.

One position will be for a highly experienced senior technician with a solid understanding of construction using both timber frame construction and also alternative materials. This person will be open to the idea of new and developing building systems and technologies but able to appraise them with a critical eye to determine their suitability for use with the aim of continuing to develop better ways of building to create increasingly better quality living environments for our clients.

They will be capable of taking a project from the initial concept through to completed CAD documentation, obtaining consents, and also undertaking site observation and dealing with contractors. A moderate amount of client contact will be involved, and supervision of technical staff plus dealing with outside contract staff and consultants.

The second position is for a part time person capable of combining interior design with some office management and a small amount of general administration. This might at first seem like an odd combination of roles but I have found from experience that a person with an understanding of the creative process and having experience in the industry makes for a much better office manager.

The interior design will be design for kitchens, bathrooms and interior spaces for the houses designed within DBA, selecting finishing materials and colours. It is important that there is a strong link between the original design brief and concept that flows through to the internal spaces so I have a very strong preference for these areas to be developed early in the design phase.

The office management will involve programming of work and keeping projects on schedule, co-ordination of outside consultants, and monitoring the progress of building consent applications.

Please contact me regarding these positions if you are interested. Time frames are open as I believe it is better to find the right people than rush into things.

If you are considering using our services in the future please contact Dean for a preliminary discussion on your project and time frames at dean@dbarc.co.nz or (03) 337-1713.

He comments that they were recently required to design a glass canopy for a library where it had to be safe to walk on so that taggers would not be harmed when tagging the building!

This sets out a range of solutions for repairs and rebuilding foundations and floor slabs for TC1 and TC2 zoned land. TC3 areas need individual geotechnical investigation on each site and while they are still working on solutions for TC3 there is no reason that I can see why you cannot have the geotechnical investigations started now. In the event that your land is actually consistent with TC2, then a TC2 solution can be used. If you test at TC3 then an engineer will in many cases be able to design a suitable foundation. Personally if I was in a TC3 situation I would be pressuring my insurance company to get the tests done now, and get the information to an engineer. The worst that can happen is that you end up with the information before you need it but there is every chance that you might be able to start repairs/ rebuild.

The other great thing about this document is that it sets some actual measurements around normal shrinkage cracks and settlement that occur in every building so that insurance companies will have greater difficulty in arguing that some cracking or settling was already present, and council officers and overly cautious inspectors will not be tying up structural engineers with forensic examinations of minor damage or normal shrinkage cracking that may have already been present for years.

There are also building consent application procedure changes with the introduction of the Licensed Building Practitioners scheme on 1st March 2012 that require extra documentation to be filled out, plus they also now require that we submit a report on the methodology of construction. This will easily add another 3-4 hours per job, multiply that by 65000 for the numbers of houses in Christchurch that need to be rebuilt or require consentable repairs and we have created the requirement for another 97 – 130 man years of unproductive administration work necessary before building or repairs can start.

They are wiring them up to some electronic systems that measure the amount of daylight present and adjust the output of the LED’s to get the required amount of light in the spaces. For offices these can go as far as having motion detectors so that when a space is unoccupied the lighting levels ramp down until a person enters.

They are getting predicted power consumption levels that show significant savings, plus when combined with the lower maintenance requirements due to the long bulb life they can show that the extra cost in fittings is paid back very quickly.

The biggest concerns are that it is still a new and evolving technology and there has been a huge variance in the quality of fittings they have looked at, and there is some conjecture over the actual life of the bulbs which are tested under `ideal’ conditions, plus colour consistency is still an on-going issue.

There are apparently an uncountable number of factories in China producing LED so the quality is bound to increase while the cost reduces. Our regulations for recessed downlights have recently changed so that all downlights must be able to be completely covered with insulation. This causes heat build up within the light fitting reducing the life of an ordinary incandescent bulb but since LED’s run much cooler there is little doubt that LED will become the dominant lighting method in the near future.

The production machinery has arrived and set up will be completed by mid March, and the appraisals for NZBC compliance are being completed by Colin Prouse and his team at BEAL. I strongly believe that this type of construction is the future of building in New Zealand as it provides so many benefits in a very simple system.

Insulation ratings for walls of around R4.0 (final values to be determined by BEAL) for a 165mm thick wall with no thermal bridging, very high air tightness levels, won’t support mould, won’t rot or rust or burn, is totally non toxic, and has very high structural resistant to earthquakes – it is almost impossible to find a down side to this product other than its newness to the market.

The response to MagRoc from people within the industry has been very enthusiastic to date and as soon as we have a project under construction we will have an open day for public viewing – stay tuned for details.

We are designing in MagRoc now for residential and commercial projects in the Christchurch area, SI West Coast, Queenstown, and with several very interested parties in the wider Auckland area. If you wish to find out more about the possibilities call Dean on (03) 337-1713.