February 26 2009
Media Release

Measuring the Cost of Leaky Homes: Reclads aren’t the only option.

Ian Holyoake of Moisture Detection Company welcomes Governments initiative of quantifying the size and cost of the leaky homes problem. Owners have been waiting a long time for some good news – although it’s short of recognition of their plight and certainly not a “cheque’s in the mail” pledge.

One group that has already in part carried out this exercise is Project M – a privately-funded multidisciplinary group of leading weathertightness experts, council and industry together with building owners. They are currently studying over 1000 NZ homes with discrete invasive diagnostics and monitoring equipment – checking for building performance with permanent Mdu moisture probes. This is the first step in understanding what is wrong and what makes things right.

The results, says Holyoake, confirm several things:

The Leaky Building Syndrome has identified our building standards have declined to the point that some buildings deteriorate at an unacceptably fast rate.

1. Reclads aren’t the only option
2. Most people by far remain confused and are doing nothing.
3. This is typically because the mainstream solution of recladding is far too expensive and unjustifiable in many cases
4. Delaying taking action merely increases the overall impact on health and repairs.

Background: Reclading has become the default repair option by many experts. For owners however this has meant the cost of repairing as a reclad is often higher than total building replacement. However houses in Project M studies show that the average home has only 4 areas of decay – surely not enough to warrant spending $250,000 or more pulling walls apart that aren’t damaged – or replacing the building complete.

Many properties that have been reclad have been advised so based on incomplete evidence on the actual situation of the property. In order to advise an appropriate remediation solution there is a need for a better assessment using high-caliber building diagnostics techniques at the outset before decisions are made – such as the ones used in Project M studies.

The Step Up Group has been formed following a number of monitored and quality-assured successful case studies of a series of solutions applied to some of the 1000 Project M homes. Costs of these types of remediation have been as low as $15,000 for apartments and $25,000 for some homes.

This has dramatically increased the affordability for repairs so owners who would have otherwise done nothing have progressed forward in a pragmatic way without losing their shirt.

ENDS

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