CONTACT:
Larry Tomkins, Freelance Real Estate, 027 477 7747.
AUCTION:
Saturday Feb 11, 12.30pm.
For most people, planning the dream home involves collecting scrapbooks of their favourite looks, briefing an architect and builder, and letting them get on with it. For Ruth Fustier and Cardell Fisher, it was a little more complicated. For a start, they needed a hill. Or thought they did.
"Cardell is a DIY type, and he wanted to build an underground house. This was before TV's Grand Designs; he'd seen a book with a design in it. But we couldn't find a suitable hill," says Ruth of their search for land more than 22 years ago.
"I had a couple of horses, so when we went to this block, down a long right of way, it had the barns, water and a small flat, so we thought we could make that work."
And work they did. The couple, who had full-time jobs in Howick and the city, commuted for four years while they researched a sustainable design for their flat land, 20 minutes from the Drury motorway exit on the way to Waiuku.
Cardell discovered the earth house building in Nelson, the couple found a hands-on course at the Whangarei quarry and, rare for those days, architects Kristina Cope and Miles Allen of Earth Building South Pacific who had worked with the medium. They settled on using poured earth blocks -- which could be assembled and stockpiled -- rather than rammed earth which required continuous building.
For 18 months, Ruth and Cardell made the 600 x 300 x 300mm blocks in the garage on evenings and weekends, Miles bringing in helpers from time to time to teach the trade.
The house, built on an insulated concrete pad to keep everything dry, is in a welcoming U-shape around the courtyard. Deep verandahs protect the house, and occupants, from summer sun and winter rain, but allow low sun to penetrate in the colder months.
Image 1 of 4: Setting out to build a house inside a hill led one couple to make a home out of mud.
Solar panels and a wetback heat the water, a north facing two-metre wide sun space collects the sun's heat and releases it into the house, a ventilation system circulates air while 15,000 gal water tanks minimise utility costs.
"The saying is that earth houses need a good hat and a good pair of gumboots," says Ruth. "The verandahs keep off the rain. The walls are good at retaining heat -- in the winter it gets down to 14 or 15 degrees, in summer it's only late teens, even when it's in the 20s outside. Apart from the Stanley in the kitchen, we don't have another fire or heater in the winter."
The couple used Japanese cedar from timber yards up the road for the striking sarked cathedral ceilings, with a mix of timber and aluminium for the windows and doors (the house was completed in early 1998, before double glazing was common in the North Island). Window seats in the living room and bedroom provide more cosy sun-spots around the house, while bi-fold doors open up the living and bedrooms to expand breezy summer living to the courtyard.
The courtyard design means both the bedroom and living wings get sun. In most rooms both internal and external walls have been left as exposed, finished, blocks, with just tile walls in the bathroom for waterproofing.
The bathroom features a reproduction claw-foot tub and vintage-look basin to continue the modern country look.
The garden, carved off the original Martyn Wright farm, has a delightful gravelled walk that Ruth and Cardell built on the site of the original cottage which had burnt down some years before. The spot has been used for family weddings, and is a favourite now for a late summer evening glass of wine.
The adjoining property, sold off in 2006, had commercial flower beds -- proteas, lucadendrons and hydrangeas -- but the couple now just have a small greenhouse, raised beds and prolific orchards for their own use. Ruth no longer has her horses, but the barns have good facilities and there are still three large well fenced paddocks.
