Eco-housing back to earth

By SIMON COLLINS

New Zealand's largest specialist rammed-earth home builder, Terra Firma Earth Homes, has gone into liquidation after problems on the Earthsong Eco-village project in West Auckland.

The Raglan company says it had a $2.3 million contract to build the first 17 homes at Earthsong, but had received only $1.5 million when it was forced to walk off the job in August.

It went into liquidation a day later, affecting about 20 people it employed directly on the Earthsong site, plus subcontractors.

However, Earthsong development coordinator Robin Allison said yesterday that Terra Firma had a fixed-price contract plus agreed variations of only $46,000.

She said the project was 75 per cent complete when Terra Firma walked out.

"We have certainly paid up everything due to them by the contract," she said.

Earthsong, described as "New Zealand's first eco-village", is planned to include 32 homes eventually on a 1.7ha site at 457 Swanson Rd, Ranui.

All the houses are being built with rammed-earth and untreated, chemical-free timber.

Terra Firma director Paul Geraets said he and his business partner, Kevin Grimes, were "naive" when they took on the Earthsong project after building only about 30 individual rammed-earth houses in the past.

"I have been building these houses for 12 years and been committed to sustainable housing for at least 20 years.

"I have got a lot of experience. This is my life's work.

"I guess, through our naivety, we were lulled into what we thought was a fairly safe, comfortable situation. When push came to shove, we realised that we were the fall guys."

He said the cost of the project escalated by $600,000 above the quoted price of $2.3 million because of errors in a spreadsheet which had been vetted by Earthsong's project managers, variations in the contract and a failure to buy untreated timber far enough in advance to dry it in time for the building timetable.

He felt under enormous pressure because the contract included a penalty of $2000 for every week that the project took beyond the scheduled completion date.

"We found it extremely unfair," he said.

But Robin Allison said Earthsong paid up front for the timber Terra Firm asked for when it started the project last December and set aside money to pay for more timber at the dates Terra Firma had said it would need it.

"We did have the money available at those dates but they didn't actually ask us for it at the time," she said.

She said the timetable and the use of project managers were conditions of a $2.8 million loan from the National Bank, which financed the project.

The initial 17 houses are now being completed by Akita Construction.

Mr Geraets is now working for a new company, Terra Firma Rammed Wall Construction, which has different directors to those in the company that was liquidated.

Eco Housing

Earth Homes