# Forum Home Renovation Structural Renovation  Harkaway Homes

## silentC

Has anyone out there had dealings with this company?  Harkaway Homes  
I like what I've seen so far. No BS on the phone, very helpful. Just wondering/hoping someone might have built or know someone who has. Seem to be more prominent in Victoria. They've won a Master Builders Excellence in Housing award 4 years running.

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## simon c

> Harkaway Homes... Seem to be more prominent in Victoria.

  Harkaway is a small town in Victoria, close to Berwick/Narre Warren (ie just East of Dandenong), which would explain the Victorian prominence. 
I've no idea of their reputation, but woul dit be the same people who were doing your job or would they subcontract it to a local?

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## silentC

They're kit home suppliers, so most of the work is done in their factory in Melbourne or Sydney. They then freight it to you and erect the frame. You do the rest (or you arrange your own subbies to do it for you).

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## Gumby

They have built quite a few homes over the last 15 or so years , both as specs and as orders in the Rowville area which is close to where I work. 
 I haven't heard any bad reports

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## ozwinner

Never heard of them..  
Al

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## Grunt

> Never heard of them..  
> Al

  They got Al's seal of approval.

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## ozwinner

Wheres Zed?? 
Harkaway Harkaway Harkaway, in a jungle a mighty jungle.................. 
Al  :Biggrin:

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## numbat

I also have not heard of them but their web site and their houses look very impressive. 
 Good luck. 
 Cheers

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## IanA

Their documentation is well prepared and presented. Always a good start. 
A work colleague built one of their houses and had only good words for the company. 
Harkaway may be able to tell you about any of their jobs in your area, if their clients have consented for this info to be available. Talking to customers is always worth the effort.

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## Toggy

IanA, 
 I seem to have read somewhere recently an article about the new insulation?? regulations; and even this mob (as well as all other kit homes) admitted that to comply with the new regs the houses would most likely have to have double glazing.    Do  you know anything of this claim? 
 Ken

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## silentC

Geez, I hope not. If so, it would apply to all houses, not just kit homes. A kit home is really just a package deal that supplies all the bits, you have to build it yourself and it is up to the owner builder to make sure it complies. 
I know wall insulation is now a requirement - in NSW anyway. Harkaway doesn't supply interiors, so insulation isn't part of the deal. The other mob we're looking at is PAAL and they supply everything including the garden taps. You get 100mm batts for the ceiling and 75mm for the walls included in the price. No double glazing though.

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## Rocker

Double glazing? You must be closer to the Antarctic Circle down there than I had thought  :Biggrin:   
Rocker

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## Termite

> Wheres Zed?? 
> Harkaway Harkaway Harkaway, in a jungle a mighty jungle.................. 
> Al

  I think you might have the wrong song mate, there was one many years ago by Dinah Lee, something about Dooway Harkaway  :Biggrin:

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## simon c

> IanA, 
>  I seem to have read somewhere recently an article about the new insulation?? regulations; and even this mob (as well as all other kit homes) admitted that to comply with the new regs the houses would most likely have to have double glazing.    Do  you know anything of this claim? 
>  Ken

  From July 2005 all new houises in Victoria need to have a 5 star energy rating and a method of water conservation (eg rainwater tank). Until then, all new houses need to have EITHER a 5 star rating OR a 4 star rating and a method of water conservation. 
I'm not sure of other states and it depends which climate zone you are in. 
Info is on www.abcb.gov.au

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## IanA

Toggy, SimonC is close to the mark. 
It is extremely difficult for a house with a timber floor to achieve a 5 star rating. The use of double glazing may be necessary in order to get it across the line. 
Simon mentions the climate zone, and this is important in the software used to assess the star rating. Double glazing in Darwin would be absurd, but would probably be good stuff in any area that has low winter temperatures. (Orange, Armadale and Bathurst would be good candidates in NSW but probably would be of marginal value in Sydney.) 
SilentC, you are correct in saying that the problem does not apply just to kit homes. I'm not sure if Harkaway have an option to build on a concrete slab, but it would be worth checking out.
There are a number of products on the market that attempt to address the problem of insulation under a timber floor, not a simple one to solve. I seem to remember this issue being tossed around in an earlier thread.
Wall and ceiling insulation has been required in Vic for many years. (More than 15 years I think.)

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## Rocker

SilentC, 
When I lived in Colorado, where the winter temperatures can fall to minus 30°C, the living room in our house, which extended out over sloping ground, had a wooden floor. The floor was insulated by thick fibreglass batts between the floor joists. As far as I remember, the batts were held up by twine nailed to the joists. The insulation seemed to work pretty effectively. 
Rocker

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## silentC

The energy star rating stuff has been in force in Sydney since July last year but it is just filtering it's way down here. I don't think we are going to need double glazing here though, we don't get that hot or cold. 
We can build a kit home on whatever floor we want. They don't provide the floor, so you build a slab or raised floor, or whatever you want. I must admit we would prefer a raised floor because we'd like floorboards, however it will probably be cheaper and more 'star rating' friendly to build on a slab.

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## seriph1

Interesting that I JUST this minute binned some old Harkaway stuff in my vain effort to clean up....... 
I have met the Harkaway people and feel they are at the top end of their market in quality. WHen I visited their display home in Pakenham(?) it presented beautifully which is to be expected - importantly, get really clear about what they do and what you have to do. From memory their prices were ok.  
What type of home are you interested in as they do have a range. 
If youre trying/hoping to get a true period feel, then consider the ceiling heights they have and have a very close look at the originals youre trying to emulate. They do have an outer-wall-system that goes a long way toward recreating the right look, but you know .....  
have fun   :Biggrin:

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## Grunt

Hey Darren, 
Have you had any more dealings with Harkaway? Ms. Grunt and I are seriously thinking about putting one of these on our property. We've bought a couple of these Kit Home mags and Harkaway had great looking houses. 
Thinking I might take a year off and project manage the building process. Gotta be better than doing this computing stuff. Damn I hate computers. 
Grunt

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## seriph1

hi mate 
duck down and see their display home - it is pretty good. Let me know if I can help. 
have fun

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## silentC

We decided on Kitome in the end. Really came down to cost. Harkaway are providing a top end product, with timber windows and so on. Unfortunately, when we looked at how much it was going to cost, we decided that for what we need to build (attached dual-occupancy about 50 squares in all) we simply couldn't afford to go with Harkaway. 
I would have loved to have built one of their houses (something from the Pavillion Courtyard range). From the few conversations I had with them, it sounded like they are right into working with you on the floor plan, they almost force you to change it to suit your needs. I was impressed from that point of view. 
The rule of thumb is to double the kit price and that gives you the rough finished cost. Go and have a look at their display house down there, I have no doubt you will be impressed.

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## Flower

I have loved the Harkaway Homes for many years. We are currently looking at the option of extensions at our home in Nrthn Victoria. 
The 45 year old house is a flat roof rectangle of 15 squares at the moment, and we want (and are only allowed) to ad 40 m2 or one room to the existing dwelling. We also want to put on a gabled/pitch roof and a double garage with a bedroom above which will adjoin the house. The house is currently on a mound and build on stumps with a timber floor. 
The entire look we want is the Harkaway House - Pavillion Roofline with a verandah around the house. The end shape will effectively be a L. 
As the current house is basically a box, we were wondering if it might be possible to simply kit over/around the existing house using the Harkaway kit as I understand the kit is simply the exterior of the house? 
Cost wise not worth it? Barking up the wrong tree? Any ideas or thoughts?

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## silentC

Best thing would be to contact them. Their kits are certainly not "out of the box" in that they tailor each one to the customer, so I don't see any reason they wouldn't do it.

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## Groggy

As an aside, Beechwood homes went belly up this week.

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## dazzler

Hi 
looked at building one of these a few years ago.  Seemed professional.  One thing I liked was they had developed a hardiplank material that looked exactly like federation weatherboard.  Not sure if it was correct, but they suggested that it was only made for thier homes and not the general market.

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## seriph1

Flower - you definitely would not need to wrap your house in a Harkaway product  -  study their design and note those elements that you love then create your own, better design. One thing though  -  what do you mean by "only allowed to add 40 square metres"? If you only have a 20 square home, it will be a challenge to make it look like a 33 square Pavillion..... or am I missing something here? .... probably am  :Biggrin:  :Biggrin:  :Biggrin:

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## Flower

Hi Seriph, 
Our house is restricted on renovations due to the area it is located in - a flood area, you can only add 40 m2 on ground floor.  We will also be adding a double drivethru garage 6x12m  with a master bedroom and ensuite upstairs, so it will be a bit bigger.  The measurements will be 28m x 22m which will include the verandah. 
With further investigations, I feel that it wouldn't be the best option, it would be cheaper to use the same format but source the materials locally. 
Many thanks

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## ausdesign

Personally I've had no direct dealings with Harkaway & I don't want it to sound like an endorsement but the feed back I've had over the years is that they are good.
In Vic from the start of this month additions need to achieve a '5 Star Energy Rating Level'. If the extension or reno is greater than 50% of the existing then the entire home needs to be upgraded to comply. 
Just thought I'd throw that in.

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## belter

silentC my niece in Wangaratta and a friend here in Bairnsdale have both built Harkaway homes and they are beautiful. You can have concrete slab or stumps if you want a timber floor. I went down and looked at their display homes at Officer- just out of Berwick on the outskirts of Melbourne- a month ago. They encourage you to go owner/builder because it's cheaper but if you don't know any builders, plumbers etc. they recommend tradesmen who have built these homes before. You can change the floor plan to suit your tastes- as long as the exterior walls remain the same. They operate out of Sydney too so it might pay for you to contact that mob. They gave me a lsit of homes for different suburbs/regions of Melbourne/Victoria and you could drive past and see what the different designs look like completed and what folk had done with them on the exterior but you can't knock on the door and ask for an inspection. (Understandably). They had some special deals going when I was down there- upgraded the ceiling height from nine to ten foot etc. but dropped the price a few thousand- that sort of thing. You can build in timber or brick and if you wanted to change something- eg. put in double-glazed windows-then they would subtract the price of the original windows they supply and you go get your own from your chosen supplier (I think). The design I like was $80,000 for a 17 sq. house (including verandah) and they said to double the price to get an idea of what the house would cost fiished. Don't know how accurate this is as both couples I know who built these did a lot of the work themselves.Double glazed windows aren't a bad idea if you live in a cooler climate- they keep the internal temperature more even thereby cutting down on heating/cooling costs- and cut noise down considerably. And when you consider that electricity is going to go the way of petrol sooner rather than later, (in other words- skyhigh) they are probably a good investment. Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Belter

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## sikmrex

My brother in law was the draftsman for Harkaway homes for many years (left about 12 mnths ago). Very professional company with a quality reputation!

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## chuth77

I just love the look of the Harkaway homes. About the only thing that I didn't like was that they wouldn't extend to include a garage. They suggested they could build one on the side as it would detract from the house. My viewpoint.. by having a second structure, it already takes away from the house. 
Anyway, we liked their designs so much, I've spoken to them a number of times about things like roof pitches etc... They've been more than helpful in providing the information and suggestions.  
I have since found someone who has built with them and they were very impressed!@

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