Latest / Best of Business / Bruce Weir: urban planner and strategic development expert on the rise in overheated terraced houses

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Bruce Weir: urban planner and strategic development expert on the rise in overheated terraced houses · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks Ed be
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  Speaker 2: Right when it comes to building design and planning in
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  Speaker 2: New Zealand, we just don't seem to be getting it
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  Speaker 2: quite right, do we. A story in The Herald has
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  Speaker 2: raised concerns, highlighting an issue with overheating houses. The problem
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  Speaker 2: is impacting tens of thousands of terraced houses in Auckland
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  Speaker 2: and I'm sure another sunny parts of New Zealand. One
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  Speaker 2: man who warned of this issue years ago is independent
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  Speaker 2: urban planner, designer and strategic development expert Bruce Ware And
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  Speaker 2: Bruce joins me now, good.
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  Speaker 3: Morning, Good morning friendships.
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  Speaker 2: So tell me how long ago did you see this
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  Speaker 2: issue coming?
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  Speaker 3: Oh? Look, I to be honest, I was aware of
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  Speaker 3: it as a young graduate. And you know, we were
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  Speaker 3: sort of I was quite a sort of classic system.
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  Speaker 3: We could see the difference between new buildings and traditional buildings.
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  Speaker 3: But you know, I fell into the trap myself when
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  Speaker 3: I build a house twenty five years ago, and even
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  Speaker 3: as a freestanding house on two levels of getting overheating
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  Speaker 3: issues and certain parts of the house. So learned the
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  Speaker 3: hard way.
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  Speaker 2: What is the main issue around how these houses have
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  Speaker 2: been built.
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  Speaker 3: Look, fundamentally, it's a different way of constructing. So the moment,
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  Speaker 3: we're talking about very very compact footplates and we're talking
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  Speaker 3: about party walls. So one of the issues we start
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  Speaker 3: with is the way we even lay out developments for them.
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  Speaker 3: So we've got a sort of a suburban mindset and
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  Speaker 3: we're trying to do an urban development, and that's where
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  Speaker 3: the issue arises from fundamentally.
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  Speaker 2: So it's insulation, for example, let's throw that out there.
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  Speaker 2: We know that there's a lot of regulations now about
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  Speaker 2: the insulation that you need to have in a new build.
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  Speaker 2: Is does that calls an issue or that calls a house,
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  Speaker 2: doesn't it?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that calls a house. So when you and it
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  Speaker 3: definitely makes a contribution. But the problem you have is
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  Speaker 3: that if if you sort of get back to the
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  Speaker 3: basics of it, you want windows and doors, and that's
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  Speaker 3: all great, but you're in a really compact living and environment.
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  Speaker 3: We all know that heat rises, and we and you
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  Speaker 3: know that we want soul again and all those good things,
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  Speaker 3: but you want some at different times of the day
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  Speaker 3: and for different reasons. So you want morning sun to
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  Speaker 3: warn the house up and you want at a cooler
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  Speaker 3: in the afternoon when it's blazing into your living court.
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  Speaker 3: And we sort of but everybody's been told that north
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  Speaker 3: facing is the best and to have big lots of
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  Speaker 3: glazing and you know, passive soul again and all those
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  Speaker 3: good things. The problem is when once you get to
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  Speaker 3: three level dwellings, you imagine it's heat compounding as it
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  Speaker 3: rises up the building, and unfortunately, by the time you
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  Speaker 3: get to top levels, it's getting pretty damn hot. Particularly
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  Speaker 3: like you said, in Auckland and Hamilton and Tarong and
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  Speaker 3: places like that. You just have to get.
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  Speaker 2: Airflow, gotcha. So the main issue is the size of
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  Speaker 2: the windows that we face north so that we get
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  Speaker 2: all this beautiful sunshine, but we haven't thought about how
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  Speaker 2: we're going to move that air through the house. Is
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  Speaker 2: that right?
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  Speaker 3: Pretty much? So? I mean, when you think about it,
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  Speaker 3: we actually built terrace hous I mean, terrace houses have
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  Speaker 3: been built for hundreds of years around the world and
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  Speaker 3: in similar climates to what we've got, and in fact,
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  Speaker 3: we did it really really well, you know, in early
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  Speaker 3: Auckland and other traditional centers, and then it lost favor
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  Speaker 3: and we went into a suburban model. And weaned and
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  Speaker 3: we had sprawled, and now we're coming back in and
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  Speaker 3: we're trying to retrofit, and we're trying to intensify and
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  Speaker 3: where it's really great for developers and they can make
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  Speaker 3: a better margin and all the rest. But the problem
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  Speaker 3: is is the standards standards are designed for something, well,
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  Speaker 3: they're just not fit for purpose fundamentally, and so you
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  Speaker 3: and even the way we lay out our developments, you know,
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  Speaker 3: if you're lucky enough to do a greenfield's development and
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  Speaker 3: you're putting in terrace houses, you want to try and
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  Speaker 3: get a wider house so that you get as much
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  Speaker 3: opportunity and efficiency for you know, obviously venting it. But
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  Speaker 3: you'll see most of the terrace houses that have done
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  Speaker 3: long and.
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  Speaker 2: Narrow, Yeah, totally one with the garage at times, you.
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  Speaker 3: Know, exactly exactly, and so you've got the limited opportunity
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  Speaker 3: to vent it. We don't put in service cause so
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  Speaker 3: we can't retrofit. We can't retrofit sort of any of
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  Speaker 3: the good things like HIV and the other thing that's
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  Speaker 3: really bad in my opinion is we have really mean
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  Speaker 3: floor to floor heights, so you can't even put in
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  Speaker 3: ceiling fans and move air around, so you can't cheaply
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  Speaker 3: mechanically ventilate, and so you have all these compounding little
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  Speaker 3: things that are coming along and creating just basically pretty
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  Speaker 3: much a crisis, to be honest, it really is, and
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  Speaker 3: it's very hard to go. You can never get higher
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  Speaker 3: ceilings back once you build a building. That's it. So
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  Speaker 3: the issue really is at resource consent level. You know,
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  Speaker 3: you've got to get the fundamentals right and then you
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  Speaker 3: pick up the detail at building consent.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not feeling hugely hopeful about the answer to this question,
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  Speaker 2: but is there anything you can do to existing houses
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  Speaker 2: director the overheating issue?
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  Speaker 3: You can, you can, it's you know, hate being negative.
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  Speaker 3: It's not cheap like, it's not as bad as the
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  Speaker 3: leaky building. But firstly, you've got to help reduce the
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  Speaker 3: sunlight coming in. And what's happening at the moment is
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  Speaker 3: you go around some of the streets and you'll see
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  Speaker 3: that people have closed the curtains in the middle of
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  Speaker 3: the day on a boiling day. A. They're so close
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  Speaker 3: to the street they need privacy, but also they need
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  Speaker 3: to keep the sun out. So putting shades or shrouds
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  Speaker 3: around windows and doors, it makes a mess of difference,
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  Speaker 3: particularly overhead anything canopies. The other thing you can do
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  Speaker 3: is we can put ceiling vents on, you know, like
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  Speaker 3: you see the spinners on top of industrial buildings that
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  Speaker 3: sit there and suck the air through the building. The
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  Speaker 3: issue there, of course is that people close doors for privacy,
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  Speaker 3: so you know, rooms still heat up, so you can
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  Speaker 3: do things. You can also put an external extract events
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  Speaker 3: into rooms, you know, as everybody knows though, when you've
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  Speaker 3: got a sort of floor fan or something, they're pretty
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  Speaker 3: ineffectual at moving year around, so you kind of need
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  Speaker 3: all of it going at the same time. And obviously
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  Speaker 3: then you get into really expensive mechanical ventilation. I'm not
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  Speaker 3: a huge fan of the hivs and those sorts of
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  Speaker 3: systems because you have to close all the windows and
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  Speaker 3: doors for them to work effectively. But the main thing
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  Speaker 3: is getting airflow. The more airflow you can get through
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  Speaker 3: the more and kicking it outside, sucking it in from
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  Speaker 3: a cold area and and getting it up and out
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  Speaker 3: through the roof is probably the best and cheapest way
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  Speaker 3: you can I have seen actually some examples from overseas
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  Speaker 3: where they used you can buy now very very slim
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  Speaker 3: seiling fans. I haven't seen them in New Zealand, but
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  Speaker 3: they and I'm not sure if they're that great, but
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  Speaker 3: that is an option. And the other one is putting
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  Speaker 3: a service core on the exterior of a building. I've
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  Speaker 3: seen them dressed up to look like chimneys where they
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  Speaker 3: put heat pumps inside what you'd think as a fireplace
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  Speaker 3: and running piping up the outside. But yet again, you're
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  Speaker 3: you know, you're in the probably tens of thousands of
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  Speaker 3: dollars to fix the solutions problem which could have been
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  Speaker 3: avoided fundamentally.
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  Speaker 2: I mean adding putting in, as you mentioned, a heat
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  Speaker 2: pump that use as an air conditioner, is that going
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  Speaker 2: to have an impact?
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  Speaker 1: Oh?
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely, Just bear in mind they have limited distance though,
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  Speaker 3: so you've got to actually put in multiple ones if
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  Speaker 3: you're up three levels, so you know, and then you've
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  Speaker 3: got to maintain it. And we're really talking about a
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  Speaker 3: cost effective solution and affordable housing solution and people, I mean,
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  Speaker 3: this is the other part of it, isn't it. People
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  Speaker 3: have these huge mortgages on these tiny properties and then
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  Speaker 3: we're asking them to find another twenty thirty thousand dollars
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  Speaker 3: to fix a problem that should not have Arisen.
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  Speaker 2: Would you think in a new modern Bild you wouldn't
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  Speaker 2: be dealing with how you know able to happen? Bruce
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  Speaker 2: has someone that have dropped the ball here.
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  Speaker 3: Look, it's when you think about it, urban development that
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  Speaker 3: we're talking about. The form that we're talking about has
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  Speaker 3: been it's associated with a recent building boom, you know,
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  Speaker 3: and it's and it's been basically brought on by councils
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  Speaker 3: initially not wanting the density, and then when it did occur,
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  Speaker 3: they've tried to retrofit existing suburban rules to kind of
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  Speaker 3: manage it. And the National Policy Statement on Urban Development
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  Speaker 3: only came out three and a half years ago, you know,
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  Speaker 3: that actually provides some sort of guidance and structure around
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  Speaker 3: how this is to occur. So there's been a sort
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  Speaker 3: of a dropping off the ball at a regulatory level
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  Speaker 3: and a kind of a hubrious I guess of not
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  Speaker 3: actually looking at what works and what doesn't work and
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  Speaker 3: why you do it. And it's different to standard planning rules.
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  Speaker 3: So I think national policy, sorry, national standards is absolutely
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  Speaker 3: crucial in this. And also I guess some better controls
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  Speaker 3: and plans for medium density living, which is what we
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  Speaker 3: call it in the business.
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  Speaker 2: Are there any other issues? Yes, sorry, sorry to interrupt
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  Speaker 2: with I just want to get there any other issues
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  Speaker 2: that you've identified in current building trends you know that
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  Speaker 2: you would like to see a change on as well.
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  Speaker 3: Oh look, I you know there's so I come in
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  Speaker 3: from a sort of a holistic perspective, and we've got
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  Speaker 3: all of this density coming in and we're increasingly reliant
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  Speaker 3: on mechanical ventilation, let alone electric cars in our environments,
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  Speaker 3: and we want What we're doing is we're starting to
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  Speaker 3: construct houses that only work for people of a certain
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  Speaker 3: age group for a certain period of time and a
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  Speaker 3: certain elk. And in Europe now they require that a
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  Speaker 3: or that they don't require. They're encouraging all countries to
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  Speaker 3: install a lift. Core doesn't mean you have to put
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  Speaker 3: in a lift, but you allow buildings to accommodate for
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  Speaker 3: people who are less able, who can age in place.
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  Speaker 3: You know, I think that's a really good thing. It
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  Speaker 3: means buildings get a fraction bigger, but it's a really
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  Speaker 3: good future proofing. We like I say, we need more
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  Speaker 3: and more power, but our power grids really under stress
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  Speaker 3: and we shouldn't be reliant on the power grid. Why
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  Speaker 3: aren't we mandating solar and batteries on medium density complexes.
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  Speaker 3: You know that you have a level of resilience there.
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  Speaker 3: And of course I think fundamentally our floor heights, our
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  Speaker 3: floor heights are too low on very small spaces. You know,
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  Speaker 3: it's the cheapest way to make a small space feel
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  Speaker 3: bigger is to lift the ceiling. Yeah, but also you
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  Speaker 3: can put in a ceiling fan, which is cheap. It's
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  Speaker 3: a couple of hundred bucks versus you know, ten thousand
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  Speaker 3: dollars for a heat pump system.
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  Speaker 2: So, Bruce, you have given us an awful lot to
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  Speaker 2: think about. Thank you so much for your time this morning.
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  Speaker 2: A lot to think about, especially if you are looking
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  Speaker 2: at buying it terraced house or in the planning phases
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  Speaker 2: of building one. That was Bruce Ware there who was
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  Speaker 2: an independent urban planner, designer and strategic development expert.
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