The Build Insite Podcast

Ask a builder what they like about fibreglass and the answer usually comes back the same: the price.

Back in the shearing shed at High Peak Station, just outside Christchurch, Luke and Dean sit down with Caleb and Brad from Terra Lana, the afternoon after touring the Terra Lana factory, made possible by McCormacks Australia.

Caleb covers where Terra Lana started, as a lighter retrofit product, and how the years since have gone into making the highest quality product they can. He explains how wool manages the moisture every home creates, holding that vapour in the fibre rather than the air pocket, so it keeps performing to its R value. Then what goes into a batt: oddments off the fleece, end-of-line carpet yarn that has never been walked on, and a polyester binder, thermally bonded, and backed by a long warranty.

Brad joins and takes on the hard part: shifting the habits of an industry that accepts the cheap, convenient product because on paper it meets the same code. He talks market share, the architects who value what Terra Lana stands for, and why every product they make is either biodegradable or recyclable. The crew get into the zero-waste factory, where offcuts go straight back to the start of the line and the plastic packaging comes back to be recycled into posts for vineyards and farms.

Luke raises mould and callbacks, and Brad explains how much water wool can take on before it loses its thermal properties. Caleb talks about the builders who put wool in their own homes but let the client pick fibreglass on price, and Dean makes the case for a minimum standard.

Brad finishes on what the upgrade really costs, how many sheep it takes to insulate a house, and why the difference is smaller than most builders think. His challenge to Australian builders: the product is here now through McCormacks Australia, so there's no excuse.

What you'll learn:

- What Terra Lana makes and how the business has changed over the years

Chapters:

Hosts: Dean Backman & Luke Callery

Listen to the Build Insite Podcast on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

This one goes back to where the insulation starts: on the sheep's back.

After a morning touring the Terra Lana wool insulation factory, Luke and Dean head out to High Peak Station, just outside Christchurch at the foot of the Southern Alps, made possible by McCormacks Australia. Hamish and Gemma farm about 10,000 acres there, running 4,200 Perendale ewes alongside deer and beef cattle.

Hamish explains why they breed Perendales, a small, hardy, dual-purpose New Zealand sheep with a bright white, hard-wearing wool, and how every fleece gets graded on micron, brightness, whiteness and length. The top grade goes into rugs that can be dyed any colour. The next step down is just as good in quality but not as pretty, and that's the grade Hamish reckons ends up in insulation.

Gemma talks about building their home 15 years ago with young kids and asthma in the family, and why wool insulation and wool carpet were never in question. Dean shares his own story of living in a badly built, uninsulated house. Then it's on to where farming is heading: Halter collars on the cattle, phone cameras that weigh a sheep, and why young people who understand the technology now see farming as a cool industry to be in. Luke draws the same line to the trades.

Dean finishes on the hard question: why should builders move away from fibreglass? Hamish's answer is that wool closes the loop. In his view it clears the air, it's flame retardant, and it breaks down in landfill within three years. His advice to anyone choosing products: don't get sold on the story, look at where they come from and where they end up.

What you'll learn:

Chapters:

Hosts: Dean Backman & Luke Callery

Listen to the Build Insite Podcast on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Part two, and this time the house is finished, sited and lived in.

An hour out of Christchurch at Springfield, Luke and Dean walk through a 70 square metre Whio Homes build with James and Leesa Anderson. It's an adaptation of their Piwakawaka design, delivered on the back of a truck just before Christmas and livable within four days of landing.

Full Foreverbreathe spec: Terra Lana wool insulation, Magnum Board inside and out, LVL framing, a Knightons plantation eucalypt floor and thermally modified radiata cladding and decking. James explains why every fixing in the build is stainless, how a proprietary bracing panel keeps an engineer off the job, and why they stopped trying to make Magnum Board look like plasterboard and made a feature of the joins instead.

Then the numbers. Energy modelling put a Foreverbreathe three bedroom at 25 per cent less power to heat than a standard build, and overheating at 0.1 per cent of the year against 8 per cent. One small split system does the whole house. James makes the case for why this isn't Passive House: no mechanical ventilation, no chasing airtightness, natural materials doing the work instead.

What you'll learn:

Chapters:

Hosts: Dean Backman & Luke Callery

Listen to the Build Insite Podcast on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Day two of our New Zealand road trip, and this time the build site is under a canopy.

Luke and Dean head out to Whio Homes in Christchurch, made possible by McCormacks Australia. James and Leesa Anderson build high performance modular and transportable homes out of a 100 foot container barn, and every one of them goes to the Foreverbreathe specification.

They walk us through why they detail their own frames, how a finished house gets jacked up and trucked out over the fence, and how a team of five staff turns out 12 to 15 homes a year with room to more than double that on a second shift. James makes the case against building to code minimum, and explains why sealing homes up airtight has trapped the off-gassing from petrochemical products inside with the people living there.

Then it's into the detail: LVL framing, Magnum Board as the rigid air barrier, Terra Lana wool insulation, clay-based paint, wool carpets, thermally modified cladding, and the jump in cost from aluminium to uPVC to timber windows. Leesa finishes on one of their biggest challenges: convincing clients that bigger isn't better.

What you'll learn:

- Why a canopy and shipping containers can do the job of a multi-million dollar factory

Chapters:

Hosts: Dean Backman & Luke Callery

Listen to the Build Insite Podcast on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

A running shower, no fan, and a mirror that won't fog up. That's when the ForeverBreathe system stops being theory.

We're still in Christchurch with Kelly and Andrew from Premium Homes for part two of our New Zealand road trip, made possible by McCormacks Australia. If you missed part one, go back and listen to that first.

This time the conversation moves from the wall build-up to what it's actually like to live and work with the system. Kelly and Andrew unpack where the ForeverBreathe specification came from, why HealthBased Building owning it takes risk off the designer, and what the air quality monitors in their homes are picking up. A box of door handles, a courier bag, a bench being wiped down: all of it sends TVOC readings spiking, which raises the question of why we keep building with those materials in the first place.

There's also an honest look at the hard part: getting plasterers and painters to follow a process that's slower and less forgiving than gypsum and acrylic, and why they now certify trades before letting them near the product. Plus the bathroom demo, the carbon numbers, and the answer to the question everyone asks: what does it cost?

What you'll learn:

Chapters:

Hosts: Dean Backman & Luke Callery

🎧 Listen to the Build Insite Podcast on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

First time the Build Insite Podcast has left Australian soil. And we've landed in Christchurch for a good reason.

This one's a special episode. Luke and Dean have packed the mics and headed across the ditch for a New Zealand road trip, made possible by McCormacks Australia. Huge shout out to Glenn and the McCormacks team for getting us over here. We're recording inside the Premium Homes display home in Christchurch, and a lot of the products you'll hear about are already available in Australia through McCormacks.

Our guests are Kelly and Andrew, school mates turned business partners who started Premium Homes nearly 20 years ago after Kelly, a sparky by trade, got sick of wiring houses that weren't plumb or square. They walk us through what the Christchurch earthquakes did to the local industry, how New Zealand's leaky home crisis unfolded, and why the push for airtight homes is setting up the next round of problems: sweaty walls, hidden mould and what the Americans have called sick building syndrome for two decades.

Then it's into the ForeverBreathe system itself. Magnum board inside and out, wool insulation in the middle, breathable paint, and no vapour barrier at all. It goes against everything most builders were taught, but the numbers on moisture handling, R value stability and energy performance are hard to argue with.

What you'll learn:

Chapters:

Hosts: Dean Backman & Luke Callery

🎧 Listen to the Build Insite Podcast on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Two years out of his time and Jake's already running boys on site. Matt reckons the trick isn't finding good tradies, it's giving them a reason to stay.

Part 2 with Matt and Jake from MS Constructions picks up on what happens after the apprenticeship ends. Jake talks about stepping into project management, learning the construction manager's side of the job, and copping the odd older tradie who walks straight past him to talk to someone who looks the part.

Matt gets into the systems side of the business. He's brought WonderBuild and AI into MS Constructions with help from Adam at WonderOps, and his crew are now running site diaries, photos and timesheets from their phones. His reasoning is simple: automate the background so the office team can spend more actual time with clients.

There's also a solid stretch on why builders need to stop hiding. Matt's built a network of builders around Australia he can ring about anything, and both he and the hosts make the case that asking the same question to a different person is often what finally makes it click.

What You'll Learn

Chapters

Hosts: Dean Backman & Luke Callery

🎧 Listen to the Build Insite Podcast on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Five carpenters. Four hours in the car. One day off the tools. That's what education looks like when a builder actually means it.

Matt from MS Constructions has driven his team down from the Vic and New South Wales border to the Bowens Rethink Building Hub, and he's brought his qualified chippies and construction manager with him. Joining him is Jake, who did his apprenticeship under Matt and has since watched two major NCC changes land inside his first few years on the tools.

In Part 1, Matt talks openly about scaling the business back, why turnover stopped being the scoreboard, and how hiring for attitude instead of skill changed the way his crew shows up every day. Jake shares what it was like coming through an apprenticeship with no clue what he wanted to do, and what he's learning now about condensation, wraps and passive principles that simply weren't taught a few years ago.

There's also an honest conversation about mistakes. Matt reckons he doesn't trust a builder who says they've never had a problem, and he explains why pulling failed work apart with his team has become one of the most valuable training exercises in the business.

What You'll Learn:

Chapters

Hosts: Dean Backman & Luke Callery

🎧 Listen to the Build Insite Podcast on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Day one on site, and there's asbestos. What happens in the next ten minutes tells a homeowner more about their builder than anything in the tender.

In this second half of the conversation at Callery Creek House, Zoe and Andrew get into the part of a build that most people only understand in hindsight: how communication actually works between a homeowner and a builder, and what happens when it doesn't. We recorded this on handover day, with the keys about to change hands, so everything is still fresh.

They share the advice they'd give anyone about to sign a building contract, from working out your own values before you start researching, to visiting an open home and talking to a builder's current client. There's also a warning about builders juggling too many sites at once, and a strong case for getting every site meeting decision confirmed in writing.

It's not all process. Zoe wrote a blessing and had it embedded in the concrete pour, which landed at the threshold by pure chance, and a gum leaf left a perfect stencil in the burnished slab that they chose to keep. We also talk about the night Zoe found herself at the Master Builders National Awards as a current client, watching her own builder go up on stage.

What you'll learn:

Chapters:

🎧 Listen to the Build Insite Podcast on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Most build stories get told by the people getting paid to be there. This one comes from the couple who lived in the middle of it, for nine months, with three kids and a dishwasher in the bathroom.

In this episode we're sitting at the finished marble benchtop of Callery Creek House with Zoe and Andrew, the homeowners. It's a rare thing to hear a renovation unpacked from the client's side of the table, and they don't hold back. We cover how a "bit of a tizzy up" turned into a full two storey extension, why an 18 month design process was worth every minute, and what it actually feels like to live on your own building site while it's being built around you.

Zoe brought a long held commitment to sustainable design and passive house principles to the project. Andrew brought a refusal to let her compromise on them. Between the two of them, and an architect willing to design for performance, the brief was set well before a builder was ever engaged. That timing turns out to be one of the biggest lessons of the episode.

We also get into how they chose their builder, what almost sent them in a different direction, and the one thing that ultimately got Callery Building over the line. Spoiler: it wasn't the glossy finished photos.

What you'll learn:

Chapters:

🎧 Listen to the Build Insite Podcast on: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.