-
Grahame Hollobon and Kathleen Bennett watch their home being demolished - Source: ONE News -
Related
It is absolutely miserable in Christchurch today. Actually, I think it's miserable everywhere. The majority of the North Island has a heavy rain warning, and it's been teeming down here all day.
I look damp, I feel damp and I smell like damp&but take solace in the knowledge that within a few hours, I'll be nice and warm in my nice warm flat.
But not everyone's so lucky. Since 2000, hundreds of homeowners around New Zealand have complained that their homes aren't quite as dry as they should be. It's been dubbed "Leaky Home Syndrome". Caused by shoddy construction work, water seeps into the inside of buildings causing irreparable damage. I can only imagine how upsetting it must be to have your new home destroyed by water damage&all the fault of shonky builders.
The majority of leaky home cases have been discovered in the North Island, but this week, for the first time, a South Island home was demolished after it suffered irreparable water damage.
We met with the elderly owners, as a salvage team stripped anything worth saving from the home. They'd first discovered the water damage a few years ago.
They'd returned home on a perfectly sunny day, only to find water leaking from their ceiling onto their piano. They'd looked at repairing costs, but it was cheaper for them to bulldoze the home and start from scratch.
Walking around the skeleton of the house was a pretty upsetting experience for them. As they showed us around, they found damage they previously hadn't even realised existed.
Over the past 15 or 20 years, water had turned wooden beams to cardboard, and there was damage in every single room of the house.
Even though they're losing their $400,000 house, the couple won't receive a cent in compensation. Because the house was built more than ten years ago, they fall outside the compensation threshold, and they find themselves completely out of pocket.
Experts say that's a massive problem for South Island home owners. In the South, we're actually no more immune to Leaky Home syndrome than our Auckland counterparts, but because the climate here is less humid, it takes a longer time for damage to set in.
Many more South Island home owners could be out of pocket in the future. If the damage takes longer than ten years to appear, they won't receive any compensation.
People in the building industry say we're in for a major shock in the South with more homes expected to fall at the arm of the demolition digger.
Building Minister Maurice Williamson says the Building Act needs a major overhaul, but it's already come too late for some.
Latest NZ News Video
-
ONE News Minute 9am update: May 26 (1:00)
-
Kids cough up $14m for Government (1:50)
-
Education ministry 'barbaric' (1:55)
