Student built home on market

Prospective homeowners are scrambling to buy a student-built Wairarapa UCOL Expo home that comes complete with all the latest mod cons and will be sold for charity.

Students on the 2012 pre-trade construction programme built the two-bedroom home last year at their Masterton campus under carpentry lecturer Peter Van der Veen, said programme co-ordinator and lecturer Brett Tickner.

He said the home boasts a gas hot water system that runs independent of power, Solatube lighting, surface-mounted led lighting that includes innovative LED strip details, full insulation that surpasses compliance codes and exterior waterproofing that features weatherboards built on a cavity system.

The house also has been built using a number of low allergenic materials that will be of special benefit to asthma sufferers.

Numerous national firms and Wairarapa businesses, including Masterton Mitre 10 Mega, have helped deck out the home with whiteware, kitchen appliances, a heat pump, flooring and household furniture.

Everything bar "the table and chairs" would be included in the purchase of the home, he said.

The home is sited at the Masterton campus and was open for viewing over the past weekend, he said.

The home also would be open for viewing on Wairarapa UCOL Open Day on January 25 and the last two weekends this month.

Should the house remain unsold by the end of the month, it will be relocated to a new subdivision in Carterton, where the home's new address will be 2 Walnut Lane.

Mr Tickner said the location would be fully landscaped and decking also would be built and the house and land sold as a complete package in a charity auction in March.

Mr Tickner was unable to put a value on the house, or the house and land package, and said building of the next home at the Masterton campus would begin with 2013 students in March or April.