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Steel technology offers solution to NZ's leaky home problem
By GARRY SHEERAN - Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 31 August 2008
The rest of the world is getting the message; lil ol' New Zealand, born and bred on radiata pine, just isn't. The message that steel-framed houses are better than wooden-framed homes.
Steel-framed houses are stronger, cheaper, quicker to build, won't warp or twist in the sun or absorb the winter rains. They are also less likely to leak, and if they do, they won't rot.
In some parts of the United States, around 70% of new houses are built with steel frames; in Australia the figure is about 20% and growing fast. But in the land of the log, you won't find many steel- framed homes at all.
The irony is that a small, specialist Auckland-based technology and engineering company is a world leader in developing technology to build steel- framed homes, and is exporting its successes to an appreciative world.
Howick Engineering has achieved a major breakthrough into the British construction market with a contract to build the tallest, cold rolled steel frame structure in the UK.
It's an 11-storey student housing project in London's East End which is being manufactured in far-away Gloucester in modular form with the help of Howick's state-of-the-art, computer-controlled framing machines.
The brainchild of brothers Bruce and Alan Coubray, the machines were built in the company's premises in the south- eastern Auckland suburb of Howick and then exported to the UK.
The machines use computer inputs to roll, punch and form sheet steel into complex components for the frames of walls, roofs and floors.
What goes into the machine at one end as flat rolled steel emerges from the other as a complex rigid structure with precisely located holes and fixing points for plumbing and wiring. They allow a building frame to be assembled off-site in much the same way as a Meccano structure is put together.
The frames then arrive on site as pods, with individual rooms fully fitted out with carpets, furniture, and even the bathroom fully equipped.
The pods are then assembled on the concrete floor and presto - you have a steel-framed building ready to go.
Bruce Coubray says the house-building industry in New Zealand is where the motor vehicle industry was in places like Britain half a century ago.
"Then they made cars with wooden frames, till they got wise with steel and the motor vehicle assembly line, and we all know what a precision instrument the modern motor car is," he says.
"But when it comes to homes, and especially in New Zealand, we labour on in the same old way and all to often - and unfortunately - get the homes we deserve," says Coubray.
The Coubray brothers began designing and manufacturing their steel framing machines around a decade ago. But they established their engineering business more than 30 years ago and made individually ordered machines to perform tasks such as mincing meat, and bending and cutting shoes.
Then the impact of CadCam in the architectural and building industries in the past two decades was quickly adapted by the Coubrays for the framing machines.
Now on the floor of their Howick engineering premises are framing machines bound for Russia and Finland. Last year Kiwi ingenuity was to the fore in the building of the 2000-room Atlantis Hotel at Palm Jumeirah in Dubai.
The Royal Tower Hotel had 1267 bathrooms installed at a rate of 38 units a week, with a net 900-man reduction in on- site labour required.
Howick Engineering, with 20 employees, turns over $10 million a year and the production line has so far produced more than 160 framing machines which have been exported to 28 countries.
The company has recently opened its own base in the UK.
Why, then, isn't Howick Engineering doing better business in New Zealand? Partly a cultural thing, say the Coubray brothers. "We have long had a close association with radiata pine."
But things may be starting to change with the "leaky homes syndrome" placing new emphasis on the specification of components like frames and trusses, with dwindling timber supplies, escalating housing costs, and the lobbying for alternative building materials based on health and safety issues.
Bruce Coubray reckons an individual home could cost around $25,000 less to build with steel frames. Homes that rolled off an assembly line like motor vehicles could cost up to 25% less, he says.
One major home building business that is using steel frames is Golden Homes, which in the last six months has bought three framing machines from Howick Engineering.
In the meantime, the world is providing the Coubray brothers with plenty of good business.
By GARRY SHEERAN - Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 31 August 2008
The rest of the world is getting the message; lil ol' New Zealand, born and bred on radiata pine, just isn't. The message that steel-framed houses are better than wooden-framed homes.
Steel-framed houses are stronger, cheaper, quicker to build, won't warp or twist in the sun or absorb the winter rains. They are also less likely to leak, and if they do, they won't rot.
In some parts of the United States, around 70% of new houses are built with steel frames; in Australia the figure is about 20% and growing fast. But in the land of the log, you won't find many steel- framed homes at all.
The irony is that a small, specialist Auckland-based technology and engineering company is a world leader in developing technology to build steel- framed homes, and is exporting its successes to an appreciative world.
Howick Engineering has achieved a major breakthrough into the British construction market with a contract to build the tallest, cold rolled steel frame structure in the UK.
It's an 11-storey student housing project in London's East End which is being manufactured in far-away Gloucester in modular form with the help of Howick's state-of-the-art, computer-controlled framing machines.
The brainchild of brothers Bruce and Alan Coubray, the machines were built in the company's premises in the south- eastern Auckland suburb of Howick and then exported to the UK.
The machines use computer inputs to roll, punch and form sheet steel into complex components for the frames of walls, roofs and floors.
What goes into the machine at one end as flat rolled steel emerges from the other as a complex rigid structure with precisely located holes and fixing points for plumbing and wiring. They allow a building frame to be assembled off-site in much the same way as a Meccano structure is put together.
The frames then arrive on site as pods, with individual rooms fully fitted out with carpets, furniture, and even the bathroom fully equipped.
The pods are then assembled on the concrete floor and presto - you have a steel-framed building ready to go.
Bruce Coubray says the house-building industry in New Zealand is where the motor vehicle industry was in places like Britain half a century ago.
"Then they made cars with wooden frames, till they got wise with steel and the motor vehicle assembly line, and we all know what a precision instrument the modern motor car is," he says.
"But when it comes to homes, and especially in New Zealand, we labour on in the same old way and all to often - and unfortunately - get the homes we deserve," says Coubray.
The Coubray brothers began designing and manufacturing their steel framing machines around a decade ago. But they established their engineering business more than 30 years ago and made individually ordered machines to perform tasks such as mincing meat, and bending and cutting shoes.
Then the impact of CadCam in the architectural and building industries in the past two decades was quickly adapted by the Coubrays for the framing machines.
Now on the floor of their Howick engineering premises are framing machines bound for Russia and Finland. Last year Kiwi ingenuity was to the fore in the building of the 2000-room Atlantis Hotel at Palm Jumeirah in Dubai.
The Royal Tower Hotel had 1267 bathrooms installed at a rate of 38 units a week, with a net 900-man reduction in on- site labour required.
Howick Engineering, with 20 employees, turns over $10 million a year and the production line has so far produced more than 160 framing machines which have been exported to 28 countries.
The company has recently opened its own base in the UK.
Why, then, isn't Howick Engineering doing better business in New Zealand? Partly a cultural thing, say the Coubray brothers. "We have long had a close association with radiata pine."
But things may be starting to change with the "leaky homes syndrome" placing new emphasis on the specification of components like frames and trusses, with dwindling timber supplies, escalating housing costs, and the lobbying for alternative building materials based on health and safety issues.
Bruce Coubray reckons an individual home could cost around $25,000 less to build with steel frames. Homes that rolled off an assembly line like motor vehicles could cost up to 25% less, he says.
One major home building business that is using steel frames is Golden Homes, which in the last six months has bought three framing machines from Howick Engineering.
In the meantime, the world is providing the Coubray brothers with plenty of good business.
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