The building blocks of new Christchurch?

• Marty G
• 13 years ago
• Categories: disaster, housing, housing insulation, jobs
• Tags: christchurch earthquake

Me and others: So how come the government seems to have no plan for rebuilding Christchurch or desire to get one?

Righties: Well, um, Key’s awesome and, anyway, what’s your plan, smart-arse ?

Me: I’m not the government, rebuilding Christchurch isn’t my job. But here’s where I would start.

So, there are three big problems facing Christchurch

• unemployment: on top of the 13,000 people that were already unemployed in Christchurch a quarter of Christchurch’s workforce is out of work right now because of the quake. 5,000 of their jobs are permanently gone, while 45,000 jobs are closed now but hope to re-open. All those lost wages are going to destroy consumer demand and more jobs will go as a result.
• lack of temporary housing: winter is coming and there are a lot of people in homes that are no longer properly weathertight. Crapping in a long-drop will be a whole lot less fun as it gets colder. A lot of people have left Christchurch but they can’t all stay away for long, there’s not a capacity to accommodate 70,000 people in other cities. And then there’s all these workers that are supposed to come from out of town, where will they live?
• skills shortage: Where are we going to get all these skilled workers for rebuilding? 3,400 building industry workers have left for Australia alone in the last year. What’s meant to draw them back? Higher wages? Yeah, right. After the floods, there’s plenty of building work over there and the pay’s 50% higher.

Here’s the solution to all three problems: the HiB building system

Those clever Germans came up with this idea. Wooden frame ‘bricks’ that slot together like lego to form walls and are then filled with different types of insulation depending on the need. This award-winning system was chosen to rebuild homes in the US city of Greensburg after a Force 5 Tornado flattened it.

The advantages of this system are nearly endless:

No need for special building skills or equipment. Quick to assemble – after the concrete base is set, a complete house can be up in two weeks with a small unskilled crew overseen be a professional builder (see this video). Super-insulated, eco-friendly, natural materials, healthy to live in, earthquake-resistant. (here‘s a good powerpoint show on the advantages)

They’ve even got a basic ‘HiB shelter‘ model for quick erection in crisis situations that costs only $30,000 and can later be deconstructed with the blocks used again in permanent buildings.

If I were Key, I would get on the blower to the Germans, get a licencing agreement from them, then call up Fletcher Building  – who, in the absence of government leadership, have already shown the initiative to come up with a plan for 1,000 temporary homes – and see if they can’t start turning out the wooden parts. Get them shipped down to Christchurch, have employ teams on block assembly, others on prepping the temporary sites, and, finally, construction crews.

By the time the emergency housing need is sorted there should be a good understanding of how many new houses will be needed and where they can be constructed. There will be an experienced workforce ready to go and they can start building full, permanent homes using the HiB system.

Meanwhile, the skilled building workforce has been largely freed up for work on commercial buildings. Although they, too, can be built with HiB if they’re three floors or less.

Frankly, I don’t know why we’re not building State Houses with this system already. It’s a brilliant way to get communities involved in building their housing and so quick to go up. The housing shortage in Auckland could be fixed at the same time as Christchurch’s.

Or we could just wait and see if the invisible hand will magically do it for us.