Tyre house rolling on

MARK TAYLOR/Waikato Times

HOT HOUSE: It's just over three years since Brian and Karen Gubb began work on Kandoit, their ground-breaking Ngaruawahia earthship-style house built out of old tyres, bottles, cans, clay and recycled materials.

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A Ngaruawahia house built of tyres, bottles and other recyclables is attracting worldwide interest. Bruce Holloway updates progress on a remarkable project.

It's just over three years since Brian and Karen Gubb began work on Kandoit, their ground-breaking Ngaruawahia earthship-style house built out of old tyres, bottles, cans, clay and recycled materials.

Today the unique building believed to be the first council-approved tyre house in New Zealand is almost recognisable as an alternative-style mansion, fittingly nestled in the foothills of the Hakarimatas on Waingaro Rd.

Progress has been slower than originally planned, though its construction on a shoestring budget is providing international inspiration, with a steady stream of overseas visitors and volunteer workers attracted to a project in which almost everything is unconventional.

"We were hoping to be living in the top half by Christmas, but it didn't work out," says Karen. "Hopefully we will be in by May."

Internally, most of the clay-rammed tyre walls have had their initial coat of adobe plaster. Internal wiring and plumbing have been acquired from the defunct Fagan's poultry farm in Ruakura, while timber and outside paving have been recycled from the Huntly wharf.

Wine and gin bottles from the Huntly recycling centre add colour and light to the adobe mud plaster, while squashed aluminium cans help aerate the clay and act as an adhesive shelf for the final layer of plaster over the top of chicken wire.

In the kitchen, a vegetable garden irrigated by grey water from the sink, grows around the bench, facilitated by the greenhouse style frontage.

"I love the atmosphere it creates having tomatoes and silver beet growing in the kitchen," Karen says.

Dutch visitors Niels and Cynthia Hunefeld are among those who have taken time to hunt out and study the Gubbs' labour of love.

"It's absolutely amazing," Niels says.

"Holland is too bureaucratic to ever allow this, but it is great to see someone pioneering the concept in New Zealand.

"We were looking at ideas for a sustainable house on the internet and tracked this one down.

"It is really appealing to us, to find a family building something like this."

For their ceiling, the Gubbs are using recycled poultry farm corrugated iron, lined with Batts.

Kandoit is also evolving as a braille house of sorts.

Brian Gubb's eyesight has been steadily fading during the course of his construction work.

So he's taken the liberty of inserting rows of nobble glass bottle bottoms into the concrete or rammed earth floors so he can feel his way around the house in his bare feet later in life.

"There is still a long way to go, but we are now at the stage where everything you do, you can see major progress," he says.

"Most of all, it now feels like home."