A Mount Cook property I managed renovation works on had a freestanding brick pillar holding up one end of a pergola, built sometime in the 1960s with no visible reinforcing and no connection to anything below it. It had survived every wind storm the site had thrown at it. What made the engineer stop and […]
Earthquake Strengthening and Garden Structures Read More »
A Ngaio couple asked me to look at a retaining wall on a section they were about to list for sale. The wall looked fine. What worried the eventual buyer’s lawyer wasn’t the wall itself – it was that nobody could produce a consent, a code compliance certificate, or so much as an invoice for
Keeping Records of Outdoor Work for Resale Read More »
I once sat in on a driveway consultation in Brooklyn where the contractor answered every question with “don’t worry about that, we’ve done hundreds of these.” He probably had. But that answer told the owner nothing, and by the end of the visit neither of us knew where the stormwater from that new driveway was
Hiring for Outdoor Work: Questions That Sort People Out Read More »
A Karori owner once handed me three quotes for a bank stabilisation and path job and asked which contractor was overcharging. The honest answer was none of them – the three had priced three different jobs, because the owner had asked each contractor to “have a look and give us a price” without writing anything
Getting Comparable Quotes for Outdoor Work Read More »
Three quotes landed on the same kitchen table last spring, all for the same retaining wall and terrace job in Newtown. One was $18,400. One was $31,900. One was a single line: “Outdoor landscaping works – $24,000.” As the person the owner had asked to manage the job through to completion, my first task wasn’t
What a Landscaping Quote Should Break Down Read More »
Two quotes came back for what I thought was close to the same job: a low block retaining wall near the back boundary, maybe fifteen metres long. One came in under $9,000. The other came in past $16,000 for what looked, on paper, like the same wall. I rang the second contractor half expecting to
Site Access and Why It Changes the Price Read More »
My sister’s section in Churton Park sits on ground heavier than mine, and when she had the back lawn re-laid she went straight from bare dirt to turf on the same weekend, keen to get it done before a family gathering. That lawn was a bog by the following spring and a cracked, hard patch
Lawns on Heavy Soil: Drainage Before Seed Read More »
A mate of mine relaid a courtyard in Miramar four years ago, over what he was told was just a sand bed on the clay underneath, because that was how the original patio had gone in decades earlier. By the second winter the pavers along one edge had dropped enough to catch a wheelbarrow wheel,
Paving on Clay: Bedding, Falls and Movement Read More »
The first deck I paid for on this section had piles that were barely 400 millimetres out of the ground, and it never gave me a moment’s trouble. The second one, off the back of an addition, needed piles closer to two metres to reach level ground below a bank, and within a year of
Decks Over Slopes: Piles and Bracing Read More »
The first path I put in on this section ran straight down the slope at what felt like a reasonable angle, from the top of the drive to the back door. It felt fine in the way a driveway feels fine when you are walking down it upright and paying attention. It stopped feeling fine
Steps and Paths on a Steep Site: Gradients That Work Read More »
