this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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Kiwi firm designs low-cost, fast-build house (www.rnz.co.nz)
submitted 6 days ago by Dave@lemmy.nz to c/newzealand@lemmy.nz
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A New Zealand architecture company has designed a three-bedroom house that three people can assemble in six weeks for $335,000.

RTA Studio just constructed its first 'Living House' in Rotorua.

It is 85sqm and designed for quick assembly once the foundations are in place, the cost includes a functional kitchen with appliances as well as flooring, lighting, carpets and heating. It does not include the land value.

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[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

No mention of insulation, which should be a top priority for low income housing, otherwise the heating and cooling costs will be crazy.

I eventually found this site: https://livinghouse.nz/

It has this cost breakdown:

A screen shot of the cost breakdown. This is available as text after scrolling quite some way down the home page of https://livinghouse.nz/, or see link below

There's also this more detailed breakdown: https://livinghouse.nz/#living-house-cost-breakdown

It seems it does have insulation, as they allocate $15k for the cost of insulation including delivery.

Heating is via a heatpump (with power partly provided from the solar). The place is only 85sqm so it should be enough to keep it cosy, since it will have to meet modern insulation requirements. It also uses a heat pump hot water system which should save on the power bills.

Also, doesn't fisher and paykel have a fairly poor reputation for reliability?

Yeah I generally avoid them. Lucky thing is that the site explains that they are not builders just architects, you buy the plans from them then find a builder to build it. They have agreements with certain suppliers to bring down the costs but presumably you can decide to buy different appliances.

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Some oddly specific numbers there for the estimates. Would like to see some R values for the insulation, but $15k does buy a lot of good insulation, so its promising. (Edit: just saw your other reply, would have to see what the builders actually put in to know more)

I wonder how skilled one needs to be to assemble these houses? If the instructions are good, and its not too hard, could save some more money on the labor side of things? You can do your own electrical work in NZ right?

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

It seems you can do a lot yourself but you wouldn't be able to avoid an electrician completely. The thing that stands out to me is that you can't connect the house to the grid, and you can't connect new subcircuits. So you can replace existing hot points, but if you install new ones then you can run the cabling but need to have an electrician actually connect it to the power, and need the work to be inspected.

They talk about cutting the electrician time down to a few days for this design, I guess you could make it one day if you do the leg work yourself and just have them there for the inspection and connection.

For assembling, it seems like you should be able to do it with a few friends so long as you have a loader crane type thing. I presume you can hire those but I'm not sure what the class requirements are to drive them.