North Face Construction: Show Home - 8 Ngarara Rd, Waikanae, Kapiti Coast

A House for Life

This stunning 4 bedroom, Pavilion style home is much more than a beautiful place to live. Every care has been taken to ensure optimum energy saving for warm, healthy, low cost living.

Positioning - The house is North facing and so primed for good sunlight, and the pitches are built at the exactly the right solar angle (30 degrees). This is the optimum angle to maximise sunlight captured for this area of New Zealand.

Structure – Though mainly constructed from timber, polystyrene blocks have been used quite extensively to insulate the house better. The double glazed windows are also thermally broken to minimise heat transmission from inside to outside. Extra insulation has been built into the roof.

Heating – The DSHH system will act as the main system for hot water and heating. However, there is also a hydronic water boiler. This serves as a back up to the hot water cylinder, and is much more energy efficient than a wood burner, which releases too much heat to the room (up to 20kWh), and can be stifling. The hydronic water boiler only releases up to 8kWh into the room, yet delivers 20 kWh of water heating.

Electricity – 18 photovoltaic panels have been installed on the roof, generating free electricity.

Lighting – LED lighting has been used extensively in the house. LED lighting uses much less energy and lasts much longer than traditional light sources. The initial outlay will have been more, but when a 5 metre strip light uses only 9W, it’s a cost that will soon be recuperated.

Appliances – The washing machine, dryer and other appliances have all been purchased with energy saving in mind, using only those with a Five Star Energy Rating.

On average, New Zealand has about 2000 hours of bright sunshine each year - that’s a lot of free energy!

“If every house in New Zealand was energy efficient it would generate enough power in a year to look after a quarter of New Zealand’s residential electricity needs. That’s like taking the City of Wellington offline.” says Chris Beggs.

View the construction process from begining to end, click on the thumbnails to view more images.

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