How this house was built in 13 hours

PHOTO: Flexi House in Central Otago, Cromwell. Photo: Flexi House

It took just 13 hours for a Wellington company to build a weather-tight home from the foundations in Central Otago.

Flexi House believe their system could be a solution to the housing crisis.

Founder André Heller tells Jesse Mulligan he set up the company after finding it unaffordable to invest in his dream home.

“I wanted to invest in a high quality good home and not have to renovate it and so I thought well if we could start small and then add to it over time, that would be the perfect solution for us so that sort of kick started it [the idea].”

Using what he had learned from infrastructure design in the UK, Heller says he saw a chance to ease Aotearoa’s housing crisis.

“The only way to scale housing is we have to standardise parts and design in a product mindset … and if we design house by house, and subdivision by subdivision, we won’t get there.

“We have to design a system that allows for flexibility and change and that can morph and adapt to whatever is required.”

That’s why their homes start as one-bedrooms which can be scaled up later, Heller says.

“What we’ve done is we’ve broken down all of the areas of a home into their rooms and then from rooms, we’ve broken them down into panels. So we’ve got floor panels, wall panels and roof panels typically.

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“We’ve worked out a way how we can mass produce those panels and arrange them in different formats so we can change and create different typology in homes, to create unique design outcomes for customers. But it allows us to mass manufacture those components.

“You can’t even tell it was built out of panels; all of our joints are completely seamless.

“We’ve actually incorporated a lot of architectural detailing that you wouldn’t get in a traditional build in a normal constructive home in New Zealand … and we’re using a lot of high-quality materials.”