Josh and Rachel built an energy-efficient home in the Adelaide Hills with Enduro, a builder specializing in Passive House construction. They completed it by May using recycled materials and a fast-track process, with project manager Sam Good keeping the tight schedule on track despite limited site access and the need to preserve existing trees.
Here in the leafy Adelaide Hills, Josh and Rachel approached us about building an energy-efficient home and being able to use some of their own recycled materials in the build. Most importantly, they wanted it done fast.
So our block of land was, was a huge part of our plans. We just wanted to be close to nature. We've preserved more than half the trees on the block, which was challenging to do with access, and our hope is that our home really blends with our space and sits well with the nature around it.
We particularly liked this block 'cause it was across the creek from that conservation area. There's a creek running through it and it's amazing.
It took us 2 years of weekend work to build our first home. We built a cabin on an island off Vancouver in Canada. And what I'm looking forward to is having someone else take a bunch of that work off my hands. And one of the reasons we decided to go with the architect and builder that we chose in the end was, was because of speed.
Rushing through the pre-contract stage of the project can lead to increased costs or unforeseen costs. The real key thing about this project is proving out the systems and procedures that we have for how we pull a project together and demonstrating that they can work when they're put under pressure.
Got a really good feeling from the beginning. We met Jackson on site and he talked it through with us and along with the architect.
And what really stood out about Enduro is just the experience building environmentally friendly homes, the high energy performance, the Passive House capability that we really didn't see anywhere else. My wife and I really got incredible impression of these builders are good to what they say.
Given the challenge—
Really amazing to see the progress after all these months of planning and seeing it out on paper, and I'm not very good at visualizing, so to see it go from that to, you know, 3D, This is the entrance to the bathroom.
Yeah, which is a slider.
Great view. Yeah, it's so beautiful. Oh my God.
Oh yeah, everyone's already commented.
With a tight schedule to keep, we quickly progressed through framing and got the house to lock up. Our project manager, Sam Good, is on site making sure that we keep up with the speedy schedule.
So we've started installing joinery into the house. Next week we plan on starting the tiling. We've had some timber floor delivered, first coat of paint's gone down, the floor's been ground for the exposed concrete, and we are looking on track for an early May handover on this project. If you have a look around on the outside of the building, you'll see how the building gets wrapped. wrapping the building has allowed us to continue doing work inside, so even without windows we're able to do all our first fix, so that's allowed us to continue on with the program to make sure that we can meet that, that time frame.
Inevitably when you're trying to make a really custom home and you're using lots of materials that are recycled and locally sourced and even from the property, you're going to have challenges. We were pretty impressed with how Endura was able to either make up time or get through some of the challenges and keep everything moving, moving forward.
Josh and Rachel have been able to make some changes as we go along with the build project, so we've, we've changed some cladding which they're going to supply, but we've been able to manage that and continue to keep working even though we may be still waiting on the supply of those items. So fairly flexible in the fact that if the client does need to make a change, then we can make that change for them.
I'm standing here in front of Josh and Rachel's completed build. We finished on time in spite of the challenges presented by this project. Yeah, wow, this looks fantastic.
It's pretty great, isn't it? Yeah, we're so happy with it.
Well, I mean, I think the home speaks for itself really. The quality is just amazing, the attention to detail is fantastic. We just feel it's really solid and, you know, it's gonna last forever and yeah, we love it and we're confident that if something shows up, Jackson will be there, you know, to sort it out.
Our decision to go with Enduro was obviously having someone with high integrity by our side and building the house for us made such a big difference. A lot of relationships with builders can often go a bit sour because of the challenges you do face, and in this case we ended on a really positive note and, you know, gone so far as to recommend Jackson to a few other friends, and it was just a great experience.
Josh and Rachel's Bridgewater project is a great example of how Enduro can deliver a quality specialist project on a schedule.
