Nothing marks the end of summer quite like the photo I snapped the other morning, a bucket I’d left outside overnight, now full to the brim after a decent downpour. It’s a simple reminder of two things: 1. Summer really is slipping away, and 2. Collecting rainwater doesn’t need to be complicated. This combination [...]
In Episode 4 of Smarter Glass, Better Living, I run a quick experiment that shows exactly why so many Kiwi homes feel cold, and why double glazing makes such a big difference. If you’ve ever stood beside a window on a winter night and felt the chill pouring off the glass, that’s heat loss. And [...]
If your home is cold in winter, stuffy in summer, or you’re waking up to condensation dripping down your windows, you’re living in a very common New Zealand situation. A large chunk of our housing stock was built with single-glazing, and it shows. The good news is, retrofit double glazing is one of the [...]
As a Licensed Building Practitioner, I’ve spent decades on the tools, from restoring old villas to building new homes, and one thing I’ve always appreciated is how a well‑designed swimming pool or spa can completely transform a backyard. It’s not just a hole in the ground with water in it; it becomes part of how [...]
Kia ora folks! If you're still living with single-glazed windows, chances are you're dealing with cold mornings, 'crying windows', and a power bill that makes you wince. The good news? You don't need to rip out your entire window system to fix it. Retrofit double glazing is one of the best bang-for-buck upgrades you can [...]
During winter, the thought of conserving water tends to be less of a priority given how much falls from the sky, but it is a great time to think of how we can use our rainwater tanks to mitigate the impact of sudden downpours on the public stormwater system.While it is more common now for [...]
Looking back, a few key events helped to shape my opinion around the usefulness of wearing safety footwear. Many years ago, on a Saturday afternoon, while working casually in my shed wearing completely unsuitable footwear, I almost took a decent chunk out of my toe with a circular saw I was using. Thereafter I [...]
Every effort we make, no matter how small, to move to a more sustainable future is worthwhile, in my opinion. While we often think about water tanks as being great big 25 or 30,000L tanks sitting in a paddock, the reality is that more and more tanks are being used in urban environments, and I [...]
I first encountered uPVC joinery in New Zealand over 25 years ago. We were doing an alteration to a rural property where the North American owners had committed themselves to using the best joinery they could find, which meant importing the joinery. Fast forward a quarter of a century and I'm delighted to see [...]
Some years ago, I was working with a client who wanted to add some sustainability focused features to their new build, something that was not common at the time. We added rainwater storage tanks to the new build for rainwater harvesting and re-use, however the compliance pathway was complex and there were many regulatory barriers [...]
