One of the three door panels being fitted together in the Rylock factory. Photo / Ben Crawford
One of the three door panels being fitted together in the Rylock factory. Photo / Ben Crawford
The Block NZ 2012 winner Ben Crawford and his fiancé Kylie are building their dream home. Share their proud moments and pitfalls here every week.
One of the major features in our living pod is the giant LevelStep Stacker door at one end of the room, which will allow us to slide the entire wall away, opening the house to the deck and bush beyond.
It has been a must-have feature since my sister Libby and I had an older version installed in our house on The Block NZ. We lived in that house long enough to experience first-hand how one of these doors can seemingly double the size of a room by blurring the line between inside and out.
Kylie and I have designed our living area around this custom-sized door to maximise our livable space and we've been waiting in eager anticipation for it to be installed. This was the week.
I was so excited that on Wednesday, I went to the Rylock factory to watch the team making our LevelStep Stacker. I was escorted along the factory floor to a huge frame taking up a sizeable piece of real estate among the machinery. To see it for the first time was quite a sight, and made me wonder if if it was maybe a little too big.
It is 6m long and 2.4m high, divided into three evenly sized door panels, which then slide back on top of each other and disappear over the outside of the house. It is brilliant, as not a single inch of room is taken up with folding doors or half panels that don't open so the opening space is maximised.
I spent a good hour watching the guys expertly craft together one of the door panels. Not wanting to outstay my welcome, I left them to it, thrilled to learn it would be on the first truck in the morning to our house, complete with a specialist installation crew.
Of course, I had to be there as it was fitted, so I took an extra-long lunch break from the office and watched the progress. Each door panel weighs hundreds of kilograms once glazed, so the first task was to fit a steel support beam along the length of the opening. Then it was a matter of easing the frame into place, fixing it off and fitting the door panels.
The Rylock team building one of the three door panels for our huge LevelStep Stacker door. Photo / Ben Crawford
The glass will be site glazed in the coming week but it is already a stunning feature we can't wait to maximise when we move in. The door panels glide effortlessly back over the cladding and the level step sill accentuates the seamless indoor-outdoor flow, guaranteeing plenty of barbecues and dinner parties will ebb and flow between the living room and deck over the coming years.
We had another equally important installation team on site during the week fitting our underfloor insulation.
The house is made from pre-insulated panels but these only form the ceilings and walls and, until this point, the floors have been a tad cold and naked. Given how well insulated the rest of the house is, we knew it would be irresponsible to not use the best possible products to ensure the thermal integrity of the house wasn't compromised. Up to 14 per cent of heat can be lost through your floors.
After some research, we settled on Mammoth Multi Underfloor. Before this construction adventure, we knew very little about insulation and thermal performance but we've become pretty well-versed in heat transfer and R-values, so it made sense that we use this unique, friction-fit system.
The Mammoth Multi Underfloor insulation uses a unique friction fit which maintains the thermal integrity of the insulation. Photo / Ben Crawford
Other products' insulating properties are compromised when they're stretched as they get stapled or strapped in the floor cavity but Mammoth Multi Underfloor is a self-supporting form of polyester. You simply cut sections slightly larger than the joist space and squeeze them into position. Friction then holds them securely in place. This also compresses the fibres and maintains the insulating performance and corresponding R-value.
Within no time at all, the Mammoth guys had fitted our house. And not a moment too soon - with winter knocking on the door, we're looking forward to moving into a toasty warm house, although the insulation will have its work cut out for it, as I will be hard-pressed to keep that LevelStep Stacker closed for too long.
