Browse Forums Building A New House Re: 100% Pure New Zealand. A Kiwi build journey 68Jul 20, 2020 1:06 am powersquad ... our kitchen splashback and feature walls tiles in ensuite, kids bathroom and guest WC is 'Metaline Iron Matt' ~ https://www.odintiles.com.au/catalogue/bathroom/metaline/?attribute_patterns=corten Thanks! We're using something really similar for our kitchen splashback: https://www.cottodeste.com/collection/metal Our is also the iron colour, and we're using a single 3m long tile between the bench and overheads. We're also using the same tile for some external feature cladding. I wondered whether you were using the same - I haven't seen anyone using these large format tiles as a splashback, which they are perfect for! I might go and have a look at the one you're using at Odin Tiles. They're about 10 minutes from me. Re: 100% Pure New Zealand. A Kiwi build journey 69Jul 20, 2020 8:31 pm The tilers (praise their hard work) successfully cut and installed the 2nd tile on top. It was nerve wrecking as the tile is very heavy and also thin. They still have to grout and also cut at each end of the tile at bottom for power points to be installed there which is also nerve wrecking so they have to do it very slowly. The extremely nerve wrecking part will be when the rangehood installers come to install the behemoth of the rangehood we have bought. They have to spend close to 10 minutes drilling each hole for each screw to hang the rangehood against the tile. It will require 2 installers and due to the time it’s going to take to install the rangehood and cutting few bricks out by kitchen slider which is where the external wall motor will be installed, the install cost alone for rangehood is close to $1200. The rangehood itself was also our most expensive appliance purchase as well so fingers crossed the install goes well. The plumber also finished off the external tap connections on each side of the external fences with nice looking copper pipes. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: 100% Pure New Zealand. A Kiwi build journey 70Jul 22, 2020 8:32 pm Rangehood and external wall motor have been installed today. The rangehood is big and so far on level 3 and 4 it’s a little loud when standing in front of it. We are hoping that once the place is filled with furniture the noise will die down a bit or at least that our extraction requirements will be met on level 2 or below. We cannot hear it’s external wall extraction motor just outside the kitchen so that’s great. The LED strips on the rangehood light up the bench below it really well and the baffle filters are nice quality and easy to remove. Wall caninet mirrors have been installed. Gas califont unit has been installed. Builder has installed shelving in our storage cupboard. Sparky and plumber will be all finished by Friday. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: 100% Pure New Zealand. A Kiwi build journey 71Jul 22, 2020 8:44 pm powersquad Rangehood and external wall motor have been installed today. The rangehood is big and so far on level 3 and 4 it’s a little loud when standing in front of it. We are hoping that once the place is filled with furniture the noise will die down a bit or at least that our extraction requirements will be met on level 2 or below. We cannot hear it’s external wall extraction motor just outside the kitchen so that’s great. The LED strips on the rangehood light up the bench below it really well and the baffle filters are nice quality and easy to remove. Wall caninet mirrors have been installed. Gas califont unit has been installed. Builder has installed shelving in our storage cupboard. Sparky and plumber will be all finished by Friday. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Looks pretty good installation. The tradies have done great job. Is that rangehood Falmec ? What is the model number if I may ask. I am still deciding between Falmec and Schweigen. Any feedback? Thanks Re: 100% Pure New Zealand. A Kiwi build journey 72Jul 22, 2020 8:56 pm Thanks Ozshaz The rangehood is Sirius. The exact model is linked below. We went with the SEM7 external motor as we specifically wanted a wall mount external motor and also the SEM 7 wall mount model met our extraction rate criteria and looked the best. Browse through their website below and they have plenty of different models with internal and external motors. We have a fully intact roof on our house with no extraction fan grills etc at top as we went side wall mount gear for all our extraction bathroom, toilet and kitchen due to simply not wanting any risk of Non roofer trade going up there and not doing a great job at flashing and overtime we develop leaks on the roof. Once our roofer finished installing the roof, no one has ever been up there or requires to go up there at all. You cannot go wrong with either Sirius or Falmec tbh. From my research both the Sirius and Falmec are ahead in terms of extraction performance compared to the Schweigen. Sirius and Falmec are readily available in Australia. It was actually a struggle for us to source this very specific Sirius model with external motor in NZ. The warranty is good on Sirius at 6 years if you use their semi rigid or rigid ducting which is actually really good quality. My advise is to go with biggest duct size rangehood motor so we went with below model because it takes a 200mm ducting and so does the SEM7 external motor natively. Always avoid using any ducting size reducers which a lot of electricians or rangehood installers love to use because it makes their life easy but basically the bigger the duct size, the better performance and the quieter it will be. Reducers create more noise and affect extraction performance. https://siriusbrand.com/rangehood/1200m ... rangehood/ Re: 100% Pure New Zealand. A Kiwi build journey 73Jul 27, 2020 8:57 pm The builder has given us today handover date of 7th of August. Plumber has finished all his work and sparky only has an hour worth of work left on Thursday to finish. Bathtub, wall taps, kids bathroom basin, water pump for all water taps pressure in house and outside taps, track light above kitchen island and induction cooktop have been installed. The leftmost track light in kitchen photo towards left wall which we plan to hang a large painting or photo in front of those recessed media boxes there appears over bright in photos but in person it’s fine. We have noticed an issue looking at the floor though in some areas where there is a small gap visible between skirting and laminate. It’s a little annoying as we paid quite a bit for laminate install so we are guessing that laminate has been installed short. Best fix I imagine for this is for us to rip out the existing 60mm high and 10mm thick skirting and replace it with 60mm high and 18mm thick skirting. Skirting itself is cheap and comes pre primed but removing it will be PITA and then need to paint it again. We can live with it likely though! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: 100% Pure New Zealand. A Kiwi build journey 74Jul 28, 2020 5:44 am Looks great, love the black and white theme, ours will be similar! Re: 100% Pure New Zealand. A Kiwi build journey 75Aug 11, 2020 5:52 pm alexp79 I see. I don't know why in Australia/NZ virtually no one is installing flooring first before installing kitchen and built-in furniture. Same applies to tiling after vanities are installed. I have asked same Question to my builder. He said factory maid kitchen & vanities have base profile error & it will easy to do adjust on slab by adding extra spacers & silicon them. after tiling it will look cheap. Honestly, I am not agree. I am CAD engineer & CNC is my subject. I know most of kitchen makers are now using CNC to cut sheets which has +/-0.05mm tolerance. Re: 100% Pure New Zealand. A Kiwi build journey 76Aug 19, 2020 3:10 pm powersquad Very slow progress this week. Weather has been bad. Lots of rain. Roof was due to be installed couple of days ago but rain hampered the efforts. Hopefully Thursday and Friday are going to be clear days for roof to be done by. We bought both our bathrooms and WC shower systems and taps from Germany. It was a lot cheaper even after paying customs/duty and shipping charges. The shower systems have built in thermostat as well. We went with all Grohe for bathrooms and WC tapware and shower systems. The rain shower is big (310mm) in diameter so covers the entire body very well and has two different spray options. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Hi powersquad the house is really coming great ! I am following some of your selections for our house and I thank you for your updates. I was planning to use the Grohe Smartshower system for our Master ensuite and was bit confused of what systems should I use. Do you have any details of what you had ordered. Does the whole system consist of Rapido smartbox (https://www.grohe.com.au/en_au/for-your-bathroom/rapido-smartbox/) + The front end thermostat ? Or everything comes in as one unit. I am planing to use the 3 button plate to control 2 overhead showers and 1 handheld. I hope my understanding of the application is correct. May I ask how did you order it and approximate cost for it ? I can see Reece are selling it for $2K - https://www.reece.com.au/product/grohe-smartcontrol-concealed-thermostat-3-button-9508896?query=grohe%20smart%20control Appreciate your assistance ! Thanks Re: 100% Pure New Zealand. A Kiwi build journey 77Aug 19, 2020 9:00 pm Hi Ozshaz . Thank you. We have now moved into our new home as of last Sunday and we still have plenty of landscaping work to do. I will take some driveway pics and upload that sometime this week. The Grohe shower system is honestly really amazing. We love using the rainshower and also the handheld. You are correct in that the rainshower photo I posted in an earlier message provider rainshower and also a massage shower. These are controlled by individual buttons on the 3 button thermostat model that you have linked. The third button like you correctly mentioned is for our Methven Aurajet AIO rail shower. We use all three at the same time. It is amazing shower experience. We went with the circular model 3 button thermostat though while the one you have linked above is the square design. We went with the circular design because we also imported all our other bathroom and toilet tapware from Grohe which have circular caps so it matches the design for rest of our fittings. We bought our Grohe fixtures from couple of places depending on the stock availability. insansi24.de and xtwostore.com They are both German suppliers and remove EU VAT from final checkout prices. We had to buy each bits individually. From memory each shower system which includes the Rapido smartbox, smartcontrol thermostat 3 button in Chrome, Rainshower 310 smartactive in Chrome, Rainshower smartbox was all up just under NZD$1000 per bathroom shower so we spent all up $2000 for 2 bathroom shower systems. This included delivery and GST (15% when it arrived in NZ by customs). The total system here for 1 bathroom in NZ was $3000. We bought 2 of these systems. Saved $4000 These are the Grohe codes we purchased. The Grohe product codes across the world are the same so you will easily be able to search for exactly what we purchased. Rainshower - 26475000 Rainshower Smartbox - 26484000 Thermostat - 29121000 Rapido Smartbox - 35600000 If you are also wanting to know the Grohe wall taps we bought for basins, bathtub then these are below. When we purchased the colour options had just been introduced so they were out of stock everywhere and very expensive. We were happy to stick with Chrome as it has a nice coating to it so avoids finger mark anyway. Grohe Essence 183mm - 19408001 Grohe tap's inwall connectors - 23571000 Edit - Couple of pieces of advice I can give you. I hope your plumber is knowledgeable and honest. Our plumber had both qualities. He was straight up honest and said he has never install this complex shower system before. In reality if you watch the animated install video from Grohe that are on Youtube, it is very straight forward. He got another of his plumber friends to install the shower systems because he did not wanted to disappoint us with a faulty install so show your plumber the animated install video from Grohe before purchasing it. Second advise is without knowing what kind of water pressure you get in Australia and in which city you live in as water pressure varies is to buy a water pump as you can imaging running all three showers under 1 system at same time, someone else is using the other bathroom and taking a shower or running tap in kitchen and you may get a drop in pressure. We also purchased and installed the DAB E.SYBOX via the plumber. We get 0 pressure drops with both bathrooms running all three buttons on the thermostat at same time, kitchen taps running, guest toilet basin tap running and water irrigation system going. Re: 100% Pure New Zealand. A Kiwi build journey 78Aug 19, 2020 9:55 pm powersquad Hi Ozshaz . Thank you. We have now moved into our new home as of last Sunday and we still have plenty of landscaping work to do. I will take some driveway pics and upload that sometime this week. The Grohe shower system is honestly really amazing. We love using the rainshower and also the handheld. You are correct in that the rainshower photo I posted in an earlier message provider rainshower and also a massage shower. These are controlled by individual buttons on the 3 button thermostat model that you have linked. The third button like you correctly mentioned is for our Methven Aurajet AIO rail shower. We use all three at the same time. It is amazing shower experience. We went with the circular model 3 button thermostat though while the one you have linked above is the square design. We went with the circular design because we also imported all our other bathroom and toilet tapware from Grohe which have circular caps so it matches the design for rest of our fittings. We bought our Grohe fixtures from couple of places depending on the stock availability. insansi24.de and xtwostore.com They are both German suppliers and remove EU VAT from final checkout prices. We had to buy each bits individually. From memory each shower system which includes the Rapido smartbox, smartcontrol thermostat 3 button in Chrome, Rainshower 310 smartactive in Chrome, Rainshower smartbox was all up just under NZD$1000 per bathroom shower so we spent all up $2000 for 2 bathroom shower systems. This included delivery and GST (15% when it arrived in NZ by customs). The total system here for 1 bathroom in NZ was $3000. We bought 2 of these systems. Saved $4000 These are the Grohe codes we purchased. The Grohe product codes across the world are the same so you will easily be able to search for exactly what we purchased. Rainshower - 26475000 Rainshower Smartbox - 26484000 Thermostat - 29121000 Rapido Smartbox - 35600000 If you are also wanting to know the Grohe wall taps we bought for basins, bathtub then these are below. When we purchased the colour options had just been introduced so they were out of stock everywhere and very expensive. We were happy to stick with Chrome as it has a nice coating to it so avoids finger mark anyway. Grohe Essence 183mm - 19408001 Grohe tap's inwall connectors - 23571000 Edit - Couple of pieces of advice I can give you. I hope your plumber is knowledgeable and honest. Our plumber had both qualities. He was straight up honest and said he has never install this complex shower system before. In reality if you watch the animated install video from Grohe that are on Youtube, it is very straight forward. He got another of his plumber friends to install the shower systems because he did not wanted to disappoint us with a faulty install so show your plumber the animated install video from Grohe before purchasing it. Second advise is without knowing what kind of water pressure you get in Australia and in which city you live in as water pressure varies is to buy a water pump as you can imaging running all three showers under 1 system at same time, someone else is using the other bathroom and taking a shower or running tap in kitchen and you may get a drop in pressure. We also purchased and installed the DAB E.SYBOX via the plumber. We get 0 pressure drops with both bathrooms running all three buttons on the thermostat at same time, kitchen taps running, guest toilet basin tap running and water irrigation system going. Awesome !! Very Very thanks for the information and for sharing your experience !! This has clarified a lot of questions I had and was bit confused with the system but now its clear. As suggested I will run this pass the plumber first to see if they understand and would be ready to install. Its a great feeling to be in the new house after seeing it through construction and I am sure you would be enjoying every bit of it. Looking forward to more of your photos. Well Done ! Re: 100% Pure New Zealand. A Kiwi build journey 79Oct 15, 2020 1:48 am Can't wait to see final pictures - the house looks amazing! I had to laugh with how many times you've said you're getting things from overseas. I say that ALL the time. We're getting tiles, bricks and doors from the US; appliances from the UK; cabinetry from the Netherlands and Poland...crazy! I couldn't find anything like my bricks here; and since I was getting a container load anyway, I threw in the tiles (which were half the price of them here); and a door (which was 1/4 of the price, though admittedly, not as schmick). Re: 100% Pure New Zealand. A Kiwi build journey 80Oct 15, 2020 8:53 pm Stunning Your outdoor lighting and deck is inspiring. Love the way the up/down beams over the bricks, just beautiful https://thomasarcherbuild.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html - Thomas Archer Homes - Custom Nouveau 41 Any advice on how to ensure the kit home granny flat that im thinking of buying will get council approval. The kit home companys wont release plans without a deposit and… 0 7108 That sucks! Hope it all works out. Good to move away from steel anyway for all your reasons, but it's also thermally poor. 16 17723 Thank you so much everyone. This all makes a lot of sense. I guess when you talk to a builder who butters up everything to look very polished, you get to start believing… 8 17157 |