Before starting anything in the way of building on your lifestyle property make sure you consult The Building Amendment Act 2008. Your local council should be able to help you out with this.

As long as you work within the guidelines of the 2008 act and your activities cause no adverse environmental effects, you can do almost anything. Almost being the operative word here – so check, double check – and then check again.

Because the Council is responsible for the management of the effect of activities like building they look to control things like house location and number of houses, location of farm buildings and stock yards, how you manage the disposal of household sewage and stock effluent, discharges to ground and water,  burning of open fires,  distance of shelter belts and plantation forestry from boundaries and noise.

This list is only indicative so in case we have not been clear enough: check with your council. And don’t be surprised if you find there are particular or additional controls in areas that have special landscape or ecological importance.

The Building Amendment Act 2008 does contain some minor changes to the scope of building consent exemptions in the Building Act 2004 that you need to be aware of.

The Amendment Act clarifies the scope of Schedule 1, which sets out the types of building work that are exempted from needing a building consent. The building work still needs to meet the minimum standards in the Building Code. The intention of Schedule 1 is to exempt building work that is considered low risk and minor, and where the compliance costs of obtaining a consent are out of proportion to the costs of doing the work and any benefit from having the work inspected.

The Amendment Act makes the following changes to Schedule 1.

1. DURABILITY WEATHER TIGHTNESS:

A building consent is required for building work relating to the durability of a building – that is, the ‘repair or replacement’ (other than maintenance) of materials such as exterior cladding and roofing that has failed durability standards in the Building Code. This generally means most or all of the building material has rotted or rusted, or failed in some way, within 5, 15 or 50 years.

Some people and councils have allowed replacement of leaky home exteriors to be carried out without a building consent. This is a big risk, as the underlying design problem causing the leaks may not be addressed, and the problem could recur (with no redress possible from the council, since they didn’t issue a building consent or inspect the building work).

A building consent is not required for normal maintenance, such as replacing putty around windows or repainting a building’s exterior. Nor is a building consent required to replace a damaged pergola with comparable materials - see issue 17 of Codewords for more examples.

2. NETWORK UTILITY OPERATOR (NUO) EXEMPTIONS:

The Building Act 2004 acknowledges that NUOs such as Transpower build bulk quantities of power poles and towers across New Zealand using the same design and process that is subject to the oversight of expert engineers and other statutes. This means it is inefficient to require a building consent from each local authority.

The Amendment Act clarifies that NUOs (or similar organisations, such as councils with water distribution or roading functions) do not need a building consent for:

• motorway signs

• stopbanks

• certain culverts and similar simple structures.

Section 9 of the Building Act is also amended to clarify that the following NUO systems are not considered ‘buildings’, and so they do not require building consents:

• pylons

• free-standing communication towers

• power poles and telephone poles.

Individuals and organisations that are not NUOs require a building consent for any of these building works.

3. OTHER BUILDING CONSENT EXEMPTIONS:

Drains: A building consent is not required for temporary access points in non-NUO drainage systems (eg, it has always been intended that a drainlayer can access a ‘manhole’ in the drainage system that runs between the NUO drainage system at the street and a building).

Small dams: A building consent is not required for small dams. ‘Small’ roughly means smaller than a rugby field-sized dam that holds water up to the goal posts’ cross-bars (most farm dams).

Hot water systems: A building consent is required for the ‘repair or replacement’ of a hot water cylinder that is connected to an auxiliary heating source (such as a log burner or solar panel) and where the cylinder is not ‘open-vented’ (eg, the cylinder uses a valve to release pressure rather than allowing water to escape through a pipe).

Each local authority will still have discretionary power to consider a building consent exemption on a case-by-case basis.

The Amendment Act also clarifies that the Department may investigate complaints and issue ‘determinations’ that involve local authority decisions to grant or refuse a building consent exemption under paragraph (k) of Schedule 1.