Business South May 2021

80 | BUILDING Canterbury - Keystone Construction Eco home challenging, rewarding build T Kelly Deeks The thermally efficient eco home was built to maximise the sun with exposed concrete floors, thick walls, upgraded insulation, and high vaulted ceilings with large windows. • Doors • Facades • Canopies • Balustrades • Partitions • Windbreaks • Glass Floors • Frameless Showers “From Specification through to installation, our team can help you today!" The most informed advice and experience in frameless glass systems and concepts t: 03-943-8700 w: viridianglass.co.nz Roofline Canterbury Ph 349 8439 · www.roofline.co.nz For all your roofing and cladding contact Contact us by calling 03 375 0700 firstsmartwood@firstchch.co.nz or firstchch.co.nz Get in touch to find out why we’re Keystone Construction’s trusted supplier of Aluminium, Thermally Broken & Klima uPVC joinery. T he type of home Christchurch’s Keystone Construction likes to build has different and interesting elements to its construc- tion, and that’s exactly what the company got when it was asked to build an eco home at Karamū, Riccarton Park. The home has been designed by Tell Architecture with a lot of thermally broken el- ements. It has been built to maximise the sun and retain heat inside the home with different elements like exposed concrete floors, thick walls, upgraded insulation, and high vaulted ceilings with large windows to let in as much sun as possible. Keystone Construction managing director Tim Nutgeren says being challenged on a pro- ject is also a highlight for Keystone Construc- tion, which Tim says is lucky to run a team of five builders who share in the passion and enthusiasm Tim has for his projects. And the challenges began at the beginning of this project, with property valuations requir- ing Keystone Construction and Tell Architec- ture to work together to make changes to the design and build to make it financially viable. Once the price was right, issue of the title took longer than expected, and two days out from pouring the foundation concrete, we went into Covid lockdown. “We had anoth- er hold up when we came back, as we had to redo a lot of our framework and boxing because it had sat in the weather for too long,” Tim says. Next was putting together the structural elements that were central to the building for its eco properties. “Things look a lot different on paper than they do in a practical sense, and we had to be quite innovative when it came to putting this home together. It wasn’t a standard design, and it isn’t a standard home.” Tim says the Keystone Construction team is an innovative bunch, and they enjoy thinking