Firth’s FlowPave in first ever 10 Homestar rated house

The 140sqm, two-storey home in Addington, Christchurch was designed and developed by architectural designer Bob Burnett who is part of the SUPERHOME movement - an industry-led initiative to promote and normalise better quality and energy efficient homes that significantly exceed code minimum through open source sharing of design, new technologies and construction information. The target is 1,000 new homes around the country that achieve ratings of between 6 and 10 Homestar.

 Starting from the slab, Bob chose energy efficient building concepts and products. “Energy efficiency, thermal comfort, a healthy indoor environment, sustainability and affordability should be basic requirements for a home – and Homestar’s independent rating is an important measure to demonstrate sustainability credentials,” he says.

“As we were nearing the end of the build we contacted Firth for the supply of a permeable paving solution to meet the strict Homestar requirements,” explains Bob. “Ninety percent of the site must be permeable.

Firth has several permeable options and we chose FlowPave 200mm x 100mm x 80mm in Black Sands as it has an enlarged nib on all four sides which creates very good drainage capability. It was a bit of a tight schedule in the end to get the house finished for the launch and Firth were very good in getting the pavers ordered, made and delivered in just two weeks.

We were very grateful to them for the supply of a really good product and the speed in which they delivered it.  We also used one of their contractors, Kreisel Contracting, to lay the pavers and they also did an amazing job working around the clock to get it finished in time.”