There’s a lot involved in any new build, including planning kitchens, bathrooms and organising finance.

Learn from HOME Method member, Tatiana, as we dive into the detail of her sustainable new build home design, plus access tips on blower door testing and making smart material choices for climate.

Listen to the episode now.

Hello! This is Episode 370, and in it, I’m catching up again with HOME Method member, Tatiana, as she continues the journey of designing and planning her new family home in regional Queensland with her partner and three boys.

In Part 1 in the last podcast, Episode 369, we talked about keeping the design simple to suit their budget, making key layout choices, how Tatiana has found their budget constraints helpful to keep them on track, and collaborating closely with their building designer and builder. 

(And you can hear the beginning of Tatiana’s project journey shared in Episode 350 and Episode 351).

In this episode, we dive into more of the details, including exploring how Tatiana is thinking ahead about her kitchen and bathrooms, researching materials and layouts that will work for her climate, and looking at ways to minimise maintenance and avoid common pitfalls.

We also talk about navigating cost allowances, how to work with joiners and suppliers when budgets are tight, and where off-the-shelf items might make sense. 

And Tatiana shares her honest thoughts on finance, including the overwhelm many homeowners feel, and we discuss when and how to start meaningful conversations with a mortgage broker to support design decisions.

Lastly, we explore blower door testing, what it is, when to do it, and how it can improve building performance, especially in sustainable or airtight homes.

If you’re preparing for your own project and want to hear how to juggle big-picture planning with the smaller details, while keeping your budget and goals in balance, I think you’ll find this episode really valuable.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW.

Before we dive into the conversation, let me give you some context on timing. 

Tatiana joined HOME Method in May, 2024. We had our first conversation in Episode 350 and Episode 351 back in October 2024. And the conversation in this and the last episode occurred in July 2025. 

Tatiana is hoping they can be in their finished home towards the end of 2026.

You’ll hear me talk to Tatiana about blower door tests in this episode, and there’s a couple of things I want to clarify, because as I listened back to the recording of this episode, I felt there were a few things to add that will help more clearly.

And I’m going to point you to the episode I did with Jess Allen from Climasure about Blower Door tests as a resource as well – I’ll pop it in the links for this episode.

Tatiana asked the question of whether blower door tests need to be conducted by certified professionals, and I shared that they don’t, but I wanted to add a caveat to this that’s not specific to Tatiana’s project, but may be to yours.

So, if there are compliance requirements involved in your project that are triggering the need for a blower door test, then yes, it will need to be done by a certified professional. In some jurisdictions, building codes, energy efficiency programs, or rebates require the test to be performed by an accredited professional for it to “count.” 

Many builders who own Blower Door testing equipment are not certified in Australia, and they’re not required to be. However, if you’re doing something like aiming for 0.6 ACH to meet Passive House standards, then yes, you’ll need a certified professional.

The Air Tightness and Testing Measurement Association (or ATTMA) website has some more information about the different certification levels, and lists certified members. They cover Australia, New Zealand, UK, Europe, the UAE and Malaysia. In the USA, you’re looking at RESNET for your listings.

For many HOME Method members who aren’t aiming for certified Passive House standards, and are using the blower door test as an accountability and review process during construction, whilst also confirming the necessity for Mechanical Recovery Ventilation, they’re often using their builder to conduct the test, or they will outsource to a certified professional.

Hope that clarifies things for you! Let’s hear from Tatiana now.

This is the transcript of my conversation with Tatiana as she discusses planning her kitchen, bathrooms, and finance, plus we cover tips on blower door testing and making smart material choices for climate.

Amelia Lee
I noticed from some of the posts that you’ve made in the Facebook group for HOME Method, at the same time as nutting out these concept designs, you’ve also been chatting about some details. Like one of the things was looking at flush sills and whether you could accommodate that in your budget, and understanding wall makeups for your climate and how to get those outcomes. So, how have you been thinking about some of those micro details with the macro decisions that you’re making about these bigger things? What’s been the balance for you, and how have you been doing that?

Tatiana
I just wanted to get a bit ahead in looking for what’s out there. I don’t have, I guess, a particular course of action or something. It’s been more of knowing that we are getting closer to a point where I might be having to look at tiles and things like that. I wanted to see what the options were. And so, it hasn’t necessarily led to any particular decisions right now.

Because I’m dependent on being told, “This is what you can spend on that.” And so I don’t want to get too hung up on one thing and then finding out, “Oh, well, you can’t do that.” But I guess I just wanted to have an idea of what’s out there. And one of the triggers has been our own switch. The layout of the wet areas has meant that there is a potential for the shower rooms to not have windows, to not have direct light access from windows. One, because that’s a western wall. And two, because it just hasn’t lend itself to that, which worries me, because we’re in a hot area, and so then that means mould. And I don’t particularly appreciate the dark shower. And so, that led to, “Right, okay. So what are my options, other than changing the layout and potentially moving a shower to a place where we can have a window?” Because then, obviously, that affects other things. “If we were to keep the showers where they are, what can we do?”

So one would be alright, minimising the grout. So, our current on switch has got subway tiling. Thanks, but no thanks, not again. So, right? So that’s one. One is we’re not going small tiles and we’re minimising grout. And so then, the question was, “Right, so what’s the minimum amount of grout that I can have?” And that’s where my phone was listening to me and started throwing me ads from wall panels. And so, like, “Oh, right. So, what is this?” And so then, I went down a little bit of a, not much of a rabbit hole, really, but just a few options there where you can just find big panels that essentially give you no grout, and you get samples. So, yeah, it’s been a bit more of like, “Okay, what are my options if we have to deal with this scenario and what am I looking for? What’s the way that we could make it work? So if it’s going to be dark, does the Code allow us to have a skylight? Yes. And so what type of skylight?” Then someone very helpfully in the Facebook group mentioned that skylights can get to like, $10,000 or something installed. I’m like, “Well, no, well, that’s not happening. So we need to look for a different option.”

It’s not for looks. It doesn’t have to look amazing in the shower. It just needs to do a job, which is allow natural light in. And that can be done less expensively than your normal big window. And then the other option was like, “Oh, well, so can we minimise the grout? And what options are out there?” So yeah, it’s been a bit like that. It’s just been what jobs do I need the materials to do, and is there something that would allow me to do to get those jobs done in those areas? That’s how I’ve gone about it. But at the same time, I haven’t really got too stuck on those things just because I’m waiting for a bit more information to see what my budget is in different areas, and see what I can actually work with.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And I like the way that you’re thinking about it, because it is a process of information gathering, and it will help you. All of this research is something that tends to need to be done. And so if you’re trying to get ahead of it, rather than having to crunch it all into the actual decision-making time frame when you’re given it, it can certainly set you up to make more confident decisions. As the builder, based on them giving you that square metreage that they feel that you can work to to deliver your budget, have they got any benchmark kinds of kitchens or bathrooms or supplies that they work with or anything like that that they can point you to to say, “Oh, look, in the thoughts of giving you that square metreage amount, I was thinking that your kitchen is going to be similar to this kind of kitchen.” So that they can manage your expectations around that. Is there any opportunity for them to do that kind of thing?

Tatiana
Yeah, there is. So we don’t have a great amount of suppliers here in town. There’s a few cabinet makers in town, and there is one particular that he works with a lot, but we both have agreed that that’s probably going to be out of budget for us. So, it’s an interesting conversation because with the company that he works with the most, it tends to be a bit more expensive. However, they do provide some services that all the ones that are a bit lower budget don’t, like the actual design of the kitchen and the actual input, and pretty much what you do with your house, but with a kitchen. The company that he works with the most, they do do that, and so, that’s time that translates in what you pay at the end of that. Whereas some of the other options, and one option I have worked with myself before, but that option of designing, like them offering the whole guiding you through the design of the cabinetry, that’s not there with the other options. And I guess there’s a middle ground, because for the current house that we’re in, I did most of that thinking for that cabinetry in those renovations, both the kitchen and the media room, they do have a fair bit of cabinetry and the ensuite.

So when it comes to cabinetry, I’ve driven that. And I’ve said, “This is what I want, and this is what I need, and I want these cupboards to be able to keep these kind of appliances that are these sizes,” and things like that. So I’ve done that. I don’t know why I feel like I could do that. But I’ve done it. And it would be nice to have that, like a second mind, like a third person giving feedback into that. But I think it’ll have to be the same way for this. I guess I would say, I do have ideas on how things could work. And I don’t know if it is unfortunate or not… It’s just the reality, I guess, that I’ll just have to dig a bit deeper myself, and just make sure that I’m making calls that are including with what I know are including what I think need to be included. And so, yeah, that’s really where it is at with that.

Amelia Lee
Yeah. Well, remember, inside Interior Design 101, you have access to the Kitchen Design Challenge. So that is a really good run through of thinking about your kitchen design. There’s also a bathroom design challenge piece of content in there as well, so that can help with your bathroom. And you’re always welcome to post inside the Facebook group any plans or sketches of the bathrooms or the kitchens, those kinds of things. There’s lots of people inside the community. They’re super helpful, and I can always provide feedback and thoughts on what you’re thinking about with your kitchen design, what I think will work, what I think you need to be reconsidering, and those kinds of things. So they’re tricky because they are cost intensive areas, so they can feel very challenging. And you know that you want to really get them right, because when they don’t function properly, they frustrate you day in, day out.

But I think that, in terms of managing the cost and getting the pricing right, I think it’s important to have some drawings before the builder does that final contract sum. Because chances are he may put the price of the kitchen in as a provisional sum that gets finalised once the joiner prices it. And you just want to know that what you’ve designed is going to marry in with what the provisional sum is. So I really like that you’re understanding that the builder needs to help you understand what their budget is for then delivering on this budget that you’ve got overall for the project. And at the same time, you want to make sure that the ideas that you’re coming up with are marrying with that budget. So I think once you have the concept design fixed, and you know that you’re starting to look then at your elevations and your roof form, then you can probably find that you can very quickly then jump to these areas and start to think about, “Okay, what does this kitchen design look like? Can I actually meet with the joiner that you’re planning on using?” They may not have a design service, but the builder could potentially say to you, “Look, if you’ve got some sketches, then yes, they can give us some rough prices, and we can make sure that we’re moving on track.”

And see that you can try and create some of that collaboration as well. Because you might find that the joiner says, “Oh, look no, that’s going to be $10,000 – $20,000 more. But if we do X, Y and Z, you can pull it back.” And I was chatting with Jan and Landon for the podcast recently as well, they’re looking at using a Laminex kitchen in their project, because they feel it’s super affordable, it’s also super durable. And so, you’ve got lots of options with creating affordable outcomes in your kitchen, and getting it to work. And so, I think there’s lots of scope for you. You’re probably not as on your own as you were in previous ones, because you weren’t a member of HOME Method then.

So you’ve got lots of support around you to get it right. And with your bathrooms, are you thinking, or you’ve parked it at the moment? Because you could do off the shelf vanities as well. That’s also an option, that you could actually just buy pre-made vanities for your cabinetry in your bathrooms and things like that. Have you considered whether you might do anything like that, or you’re hoping that you can have a custom design?

Tatiana
So the builder was very clear that he will not touch Ikea kitchens. It’s probably just in the unlikely events of where things can go wrong and it all falls on him having to fix and stuff like that, which I understand. So, kitchen is probably out of the question in that regard. But other things, I think it is a possibility. I would definitely consider it.

It is a matter of whether the cupboard maker that we’re thinking we’re going to go with, who I have worked with before in the renovations for this house, whether he’s willing to do that with me. He did some IKEA things in combination with custom made for our en suite. And there wasn’t any issues then, and there was no frustration for him in dealing with that stuff or anything like that, including the basin was an Ikea product, and all the head cabinetry was IKEA. Just the bottom cabinetry was custom-made. So I think there is option for that, and I think, if we can work it in a way that it is clear that is not going to be a headache to put together, then I would like to think that I can convince him to try it.

Amelia Lee
I love that he’s been clear right from the outset, though, in terms of managing your expectations around that. I mean, that bodes really well for his standards and his expectations about how he wants to work, and his understanding of his responsibilities inside the contract as well, and helping you understand where you’ve got to work and what you’ve got to do. So that’s really brilliant.

Tatiana
Yeah, I appreciate that too. Because, again, it just limits my options, so I’m not running crazy just trying to grab here and a bit from everywhere. It’s just, well, that’s not an option anymore. So okay, awesome. What is within my range of options? And we’ll work with that.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, I love it. Now, do you want to have a chat about financing and thinking about financing? Is that just something you’ve parked for the moment because you haven’t had the bandwidth to dive into it? Like, what are your thoughts with how you need to navigate that to get ready for construction start?

Tatiana
It’s a mix of it sounds so big, I don’t want to deal with it, so I’m procrastinating. So there is a reality of I’ve got lots of other things building-related that seem a bit more pressing for today, like for the moment. Whereas finances seem to be still a bit like, in somewhat the future. But an element of that is also procrastinating because it feels so big, and I don’t know where to even start. So it’s like, “Ah, I’ll just keep thinking that it’s just in the future, and I’ll get to that at some point.” So the outcome of that is that I haven’t really delved into the topic much.

I do know that I did ask my husband whether we could go and, like, start the conversations again with the mortgage broker, and he said that the last time he had approached him, he had said, “I need something a bit more substantial to work with,” which we don’t have yet. So there is that as well, in terms of waiting and being able to tackle that conversation fully, because we don’t have anything more substantial as of yet.

Amelia Lee
What do you mean more substantial? What do you think the mortgage broker was needing?

Tatiana
I’m not 100% sure. I think, probably more in the context of a bit closer to what do we actually need? Why are we actually thinking we will need for the build?

Amelia Lee
Yeah.

Tatiana
Which we’re not 100% sure. And, I would say, confirming whether we will include our current house as part of that mortgage package, or whether we’ll keep it aside from that. So, yeah, I would say, probably in between those two things is where more clarity is required. Because we’ve said, “Oh, this is what we’re thinking we can put in, but we don’t know how much the building is going to cost. So, yeah, it’s a bit tied up. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation there. But yeah, I think we need to come down with some numbers for him.

Amelia Lee
I mean, it is a chicken and egg. But at the same time, you’re going to have a ceiling on what you can spend based on your financial position. So, it’s not like this is a bottomless exercise for the mortgage broker to do.

How much choice do you have around mortgage brokers in your area?

Tatiana
There is one in town, but we have been dealing with one that’s just on the closest city-ish to us. They have a good reputation. People seem to be happy with them when we have asked about them, not that we have asked a whole lot, but when I have talked to a couple of different people, they’ve had good experiences. So I don’t know if there is more than them. Again, all of this is so new to me, and, like, my first question is, “Why do we even need a mortgage broker? Like, what do they do?”

Amelia Lee
Yeah. Well, the benefit, I find, of chatting to a mortgage broker about your finances and conversations around lending generally, is that they’re not your bank. So you can have very frank conversations with them and they can almost act out as an advisor outside of the system. Good mortgage brokers will have access to lots of different lending options. So, sometimes it can be tricky if a mortgage broker is particularly attached to one or two banks and then only has a small sliver of opportunities for you to potentially finance through. When they’ve got different options that they know about and can access. And there are also some mortgage brokers, unfortunately, will provide advice based on what they’ll make the most money out of as well. So, good mortgage brokers don’t. So, they act as your agent, and impartially for you to then understand what the best avenues are for you to go about your lending. But, I think it’s really worthwhile. There’s a couple of things that you can do. So, one is having an understanding of what your existing assets are worth. And it could be that you’re just having conversations with local real estate agents about properties in your area and how yours might benchmark against it.

Because if you have to use your existing house, or any existing property that you own, as equity for your financing, you will get a valuer assessing that anyway. So just being able to have that information based on local real estate values can be helpful, and it’ll be a question that the mortgage broker potentially asks anyway. So, what are your current assets worth? I think too, gathering together information, if you don’t have it at hand, about things like looking at your income, your expenses. They will make calculations based on averages of what the average family spends in lifestyle expenses, as to what your borrowing capacity is, what your repayment capacity is. But you can also, of course, then go in with more when you’re trying to get it across the line. At the end, you can go in with more specific information about your position. But it’s helpful to have that together.

I think too, you would have seen the conversation potentially in the HOME Method Facebook group, where one member, they were literally at the 11th hour of finding out, and the valuer came in with a considerably lower value than what they needed on their future projects. So the valuer, as part of you getting that final hurdle of financing, the valuer will actually value what you’re going to build. And because this Homee was doing a sustainable home, and making some decisions about building envelope and those kinds of things for longevity and performance that were quite different to the kinds of properties that were in that area, the value was in recognising those as a value add, and the valuation came in quite low. So, they were missing, they had a gap in their finance. And at the 11th hour, their mortgage broker then looked at alternative lenders and got, I think, another valuer in to assess it with that in mind. And so, they were then able to secure the funds that they needed to to get that to work.

So, this is the thing. There can be some flex in it, but until you start actually having the conversation, you’re not going to know what your hurdles are going to be. And so, what you might potentially have to pull together to demonstrate that you can A) repay the money that you want to borrow, and B) that the property that they’re leveraging off is actually worth what it’s going to be worth. So, my suggestion would be to start the conversation again with the mortgage broker. You know roughly what you want to spend on the home. At most, I reckon, you’ve got a range of $50,000. We’re not talking we could spend 400k or we could spend 800k. Like, you’ve got a narrow range of what you know you want to spend, and that’s going to be something that they can work with. And then they’re going to look at what your incomes are, what your current assets are, and then it’s a case of you saying, “Okay, if we’re going to get a construction loan for this project, what are we going to have to come up with financially before that construction loan kicks in? What are going to be the steps that that construction loan is going to need to follow?”

So, there can be this tricky thing of some banks needing to see a contract before they will give you that final lending. But you need to pay a deposit before that contract. Like, there’s some chicken and egg things that happen in that signing process in some instances. But you understanding the methodology of that, and we’ve got a document inside HOME Method that takes you through what the options could be at that contract point, that you could get pre-approval now for an amount, and then you could get that pre-approval updated every few months so that you know that you’re always across. Should there be any changes to lending rules, should there be any issues with values in your area, all of that kind of stuff, in my mind, that would serve you well, so that you know that the product that you want to use in terms of the borrowing, and that the values that you’re working on are actually in alignment with what you can then get at the actual contract point. And so you can have all of that.

And yeah, I know that one of the challenges for you, Tatiana, is because you haven’t grown up here, a lot of this feels very new. But you’re super smart, and you wrap your head around really complex things very quickly. I just feel like this is a hurdle that feels really unfamiliar. So it’s just a case of taking some time to sit with somebody and ask all the questions. So you start to then understand the concepts, and then you can go back with more questions. And you just got to give yourself some space and time to be able to do that, I think.

Tatiana
Yeah, okay, all right. And so you’re saying, pre-approvals can be done at almost at any stage of your building, like even where we’re at at the moment with just constant design?

Amelia Lee
I think that the mortgage broker at this point would probably say to you, “Look, based on this product, and this lender, and your situation, I know we could get you access to this amount of money.”

Tatiana
Yes.

Amelia Lee
And so, this would be the product that you’d be accessing, and this is what it would look like.

Tatiana
Well, so, with that, we did do that exercise, and that’s what gave us the initial figure of our budget, which is what we’re working with. And then the conversation with the builder, it was based on that first conversation where he did an initial assessment, I guess, of our financial situation, which was not including the equity of this house. Which is a big deal to me, because that tells me, if we were to include this house, I would like to think that that might significantly increase. And so, I also think that there is probably a conversation internal here with my husband, as to that part of the conversation, like, “What do we actually want to do with this house?” Because I would say that if we do have more capacity, then that affects some of those decisions on the planning of the house that we don’t need to be so tired about if we had that, like, “Oh, right, okay, so we can have higher walls.”

Amelia Lee
You can make some of those value based decisions for yourself knowing that you’ve got scope to.

Tatiana
Without going from 200 to 500 per square in a blink of an eye kind of thing, but it would mean just like, okay, we can just potentially have a bit more breathing room.

Amelia Lee
And once you’ve got that estimate based on the building form that you and your team have designed, then with the fit out that you’re thinking at the standard and quality that you want, that’s then the number that you start massaging and going, “Okay, well, could we lift the ceiling? Could we look at what we do with this cladding versus this cladding?” And I sense that you will actually start moving quite quickly because of the preparation that you’ve done to this point. You’ll be making decisions quite quickly about some of those internal things. So it potentially feels quite slow now, because you’ve been taking a while to get this footprint to work and the floor plan to work within the footprint, working with that constraint. But once some of those decisions start getting made about the roof form, I think that you’ll start moving. You’ll start moving quite at a pace.

Massaging, yeah. Yeah, I definitely think that that’s worth the conversation. I do. I think for pre-approval, you’ll need more information. You’ll need something a bit more concrete in terms of drawings that the builder can price more formally. But that’s not necessarily months and months and months away. You might find that having a conversation about the roof form with the builder and the building designer, that very quickly, you start to lock in what the overall footprint, floor plan and external form of this home looks like. And then the builder can then do a pricing estimate based on what that building form is, what the materiality of it is, and then what the fit out of the various items inside it is. And so, you will have, then, I think, a pretty robust number that might have a bit of room in it in terms of what it could be. But you’ll have something that’s then actually based on a building form that you’ve designed, rather than it being benchmarked against other projects.

And so, trying to bring the financial conversation alongside of that will just help you be more confident about hitting go on things. And you want to know what, financially, the finance looks like, and what the timeline of approval process looks like for financing before you submit to Council. Because you don’t want to submit to Council something that you can’t afford to build. So, it’s that kind of stuff, I think, that’s going to be useful to have. And it can just feel like you’re holding a lot of balls in the air. Nothing’s really locked in. You’re having to hold a lot of information and a lot of only semi-made decisions. And that can feel uncomfortable. It really can. So, trying to give yourself some grace in all of that is super important, and understanding what are the levers that will push something over the edge.

The only way that you can understand that is by understanding the scope of what’s involved in that piece of the puzzle.

Tatiana
Yeah, okay.

Amelia Lee
It’s been a chunky conversation. All right. Now, I’m just looking at my notes, and I can see, I had one last question, which was anything else that you want to discuss, and you were asking about blower door testing, and can you get them done anywhere in Australia? You saw that there’s some authorised people to do the test, but does that mean that they only can do the tests, or that other might do it, but the reports are not legit? And then what would they be legitimate for?

Which is a really interesting question. So yeah, to answer your question briefly, there are people that are certified to give blower door tests. And there’s a listing. I can’t remember the name of the website at the moment, but I can find it to pop in the resources and to send through to you. There is a listing somewhere online of people who are certified to do blower door tests. However, I know that not everybody uses somebody who’s certified. But to be able to do a blower door test, you do have to do some training. So it’s not something that you can just buy online and then just start doing. You do need to have some training in order to do it. And because it punches out data, there’s a screen that shows you the reading, then there’s a level of confidence. And I mean, this is the thing. If you’re not getting a proper volumetric understanding of it, then I think that the reading will look less favourable than more favourable, if that makes sense.

So, the main thing is just having a conversation with whoever’s in your area that does them, or near your area, as to what their experience is, how they run them, all of that kind of stuff, how regularly they do them. But I know lots of builders who now have the kits, and are doing them, and have had training on doing them, and they’re not necessarily getting certified, because it’s not like they’re going to go out and do them for other people. They’re doing them just as part of their building methodology so that they can test it during their project.

Tatiana
Yeah, okay. I was reading on one of the, I think, it’s sustainable building or something, a website. I can’t remember the name.

Amelia Lee
Sustainable Builders Alliance? That one?

Tatiana
I think so, yes. And so, in the process of stepping you through the building steps and stuff, when they’re talking about performance construction and a checklist that a builder can follow and all of that, and they’re saying, if you want to change the culture of your building team, just tell them that you’re going to do a blower door test and that you they’re going to have to go fixing where they’ve poked through holes through the wrap and all that sort of thing. And I did have a bit of a chat to our builder about that. He hasn’t done a blower door test before. But it got me thinking, what exactly is the stage at which you would do a blower door test, where you would actually bring the tradies and go around? Because he asked me that question, and I thought, maybe at lock up? But then, there’s a lot of holes in that time. And so then, do you have the plaster on? But if you do, then how do you actually go fixing things? So I don’t know. So it just gave me that question as well. What is the time to do that test?

Amelia Lee
Most who proactively do a blower door test and build with air tightness in mind, will do the blower door test once the external wrap has gone on, but it’s not internally lined. So when you’re using a vapour permeable membrane class four, and you put that external wrap on, that creates some weather resistance on the building. And so builders who build this way, will work towards getting that external wrap on very quickly, so that they can then have a weather-resistant interior, they could be keeping the timber frame dry, and they tape all of the holes and all of those kinds of things in the wrap. And then they’ll do certain tests, like pour water over the wrap to make sure that the water is shedding off, so that any water that gets in or moisture that gets in underneath the cladding or underneath the roof will actually track its way out, and they can see that before they’ve added any cladding or roofing to the building. And then they’ll also do a blower door test at that point to see what level of air tightness that they’re getting.

Generally what happens is, once you add the internal lining of the plasterboard, you’ll actually increase the air tightness from that point. But like you’ve observed, if you don’t do it at the point before the internal lining goes on, it’s very difficult then to get to anything that you can actually fix should you find that you’ve got big holes in the building envelope. So, they’re much better served by doing it when they’ve just got the external wrap on. And they do it at that point. But there’s a podcast episode with Jessica Allen, where she talks through blower door tests and how they work, and all of that kind of stuff, because she’s actually a consultant that does them for ClimaSure in South Australia. And so, she actually talks through how it works. And I’m just trying to think what else. I know that if you asked the question inside the HOME Method Facebook group, I guarantee you’d get lots of HOME Method members who would share with you exactly when they got it done in their build and how they made it work.

Because I know that it’s hard. I know of some builders who are contractually committing to certain levels of air tightness, or at the very least, contractually committing to including that blower door test as a data point in their process. But some builders are very resistant to it. So it’s really great that you’re having the conversation with your builder now about it, and you’re setting the expectation that you want this to be part of your build process. My hope is that that builder is then going and doing some education about, okay, well, how do I actually build for air tightness? What is this going to mean for how, for example, the external wrap needs to go on? Because in the work that I do with builders, I see that they actually have to learn how does that wrap get installed? What does my team need to know, in terms of making sure that they’re not punching holes in it left, right and centre? How are we going to finish around windows, at the floor edge, all of that kind of stuff? They’re getting training to do that.

And you’ll find, if you are using, for example, a ProClima wrap, ProClima generally supply through other builders. So, you don’t walk into a hardware, generally, to buy ProClima, like you do most other building materials. You generally go to a smaller supplier in your area. And I’m finding that those builders that supply ProClima will often come and help train the builders that are using it for the first time. So there’s a really lovely collegiate approach, and a general belief that we want to see the industry improve this way. And so they do go above and beyond to help builders use the ProClima products with their teams. And I’m seeing builders running training days. There’s a lot of builders that I’m seeing at the moment there that are really loving using, for example, the ProClima products, or whatever they’re using, but they’re getting the ProClima supply out, and then they’re also allowing other builders in their region to come to their sites to learn about it.

Because I feel that with any kind of thing like this, that it’s about improving the industry, improving building envelope, improving sustainability, improving building performance. There’s a rising tide floats or boats approach, where people just want to know how to do it better, and they’re willing to collaborate to make that happen. So if your builder is open-minded like that, you’ll probably find that he can very easily tap into some local networks of people who are doing it already.

Tatiana
I will ask the question, and we’ll see. We’ll see how we go with it.

Amelia Lee
Awesome. Okay, well, I know that we’ve been chatting for a long time. So we might wrap up there as the latest update. And it’s been so awesome to hear how everything’s been going. And obviously, there’s been some chunky conversations that we’ve had about a few things. I know that we can continue the conversation in the HOME Method Q and A’s in the Facebook group. So, Tatiana, thank you so much for being here and for sharing where things are at. It’s been really awesome to catch up with you.

Tatiana
Thank you for your time.

Amelia Lee
Bye.

RESOURCES

Tatiana’s previous episodes on the podcast:

• Episode 350 ‘New Home Build with Affordability and Family in Mind, with Tatiana’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-new-home-build-affordability/ 
• Episode 351 ‘Trusting a First Time Builder with your New Home Build, with Tatiana’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-trusting-first-time-builder-new-home-build/ 

Access the support and guidance you need (like Tatiana did) to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home inside my flagship online program, HOME METHOD >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/the-home-method/

Learn more about how to interview and select the right builder with the Choose Your Builder mini-course >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/choose-your-builder 

My free ’44 Ways’ E-Book will simplify sustainability for you, and help you create a healthy, low tox and sustainable home – whatever your dreams, your location or your budget. Access your copy here >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/ways