Warm, Sustainable and Healthy Living
MAXRaft® slabs are designed to help you live in a home with greater levels of comfort, increased energy efficiency and health benefits for you and your family. For too long in New Zealand we have ignored the benefits of insulation within the residential building industry.
A MAXRaft® is like a bath tub of insulation that acts like a thermostat for your home, giving you a comfortable temperature all year round and saving you $$$ on energy bills.
Homes today need to have more than just an aesthetic pleasantness about them, they need to provide concrete benefits to you and your family.
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Engineered specifically for your section
All MAXRaft slabs are designed specifically for the home and the land. Following the Canterbury and subsequent earthquakes it was clear that design of foundations is critical and the most important step in ensuring their is minimal risk to housing. With our independent BRANZ appraisal you can be confident that MAXRaft® ticks all the boxes.
We have teams throughout New Zealand to install the MAXRaft® slabs, alternatively we also have a supply only option available to builders who prefer to do their own foundations or have their own relationships in place with a slab contractor.
We get it, you want a nice TV!
There are items in construction that are replacable, unfortunately the slab is not one of them! We encourage everyone to think about the design of the home and structure first, then move on to the "fun stuff". When building your home we encourage everyone to really think - what is our priority?
Asthma and respiratory diseases are two of the leading causes of death in New Zealand and this has been related to our construction industry. 1 in 7 children have Asthma and the cost to treat respiratory diseases every year is 6 billion dollars.
As heating costs grow, and the environment impact of fossil fuel use becomes clearer, using a MAXRaft® insulated foundation is more energy efficient and can save you significant amounts of money on an ongoing basis, all the while reducing your carbon footprint.
MAXRaft® insulation provides a complete thermal break between your foundation and the ground around it. this reduces the transfer of energy from your home into your flower beds, allowing you, not the surrounding environment, to dictate the temperature within your home. If a thermal break is not created, you could lose the same amount of heat as leaving a window open in the middle of winter. Why heat the atmosphere?
Through using the right insulation you can save hundreds, even thousands, per year off your energy bill to heat your home. Floor insulation is the easiest and most cost effective way to retain heat in your home. We have found that an Insulated floor combined with In-slab heating is by far the cheapest, most rewarding way to heat your home. It should cost around $100 per month to heat the average sized home! One of our clients has calculated the cost of underfloor heating for his home at 60.2c/m2 per month. Forget the expensive wall hung heat pumps, warm your whole house from the ground up.
Even without underfloor heating, a MAXRaft® insulated concrete foundation can act as a heat sink for your home. This regulates the temperature changes in a room allowing you to maintain a consistent, comfortable temperature.
Outside cold can easily travel through a traditional foundation, causing thermal bridging, and creating uncomfortable cold spots within your home. MAXRaft® fully insulated foundations offer superior performance when it comes to thermal bridging, resulting in consistent temperatures throughout your home with reduce cold spots, which optimizes energy efficiency.
People feel more comfortable when the heat is at their feet, and it is slightly cooler at their head. By allowing the slow release of heat from your foundation, MAXRaft® maintains this balance ensuring you enjoy that warm comfortable feeling.
The additional heat retained in your foundation also reduces the ability of damp to rise at the juncture of wall and foundation. This in turn leads to a warm, comfortable living environment without that damp presence in the air.
Reducing the heat loss from your home ensures it is warmer, drier & healthier which reduces its occupants' exposure to cold and moisture. There has been much study on the triggers for asthma sufferers and it has been proven a properly insulated, warm, dry home greatly improves the symptoms.
A warm floor is also very important for people with poor circulation, those who are inactive for long periods of time, for children who live closer to the floor, and for babies and the elderly as they cannot keep themselves warm as well as healthy adults.
World Health Organisation recommends a minimum of 18°C for living areas and 16°C for bedrooms, 30% of New Zealand homes being built today don’t meet these standards. MAXRaft® makes it easier to maintain these temperatures and reduce those doctors bills.
As seen above, MAXRaft® helps retain heat in the foundation and thus leads to a higher temperature at the junction of wall and slab when compared to traditional methods. This higher temperature reduces the likelihood of moisture condensation building up in these corners, and thus avoids the buildup of spotty mold.
All MAXRaft slabs are fully engineered for the site they are built on. You can trust that our enginers are considering all aspects of the site and structure, including whether the site is TC1, TC2 or on Expansive Soils.
The design of our infill, combined with the perimeter footings, allows underfloor heating to work up to 40% more efficiently by lessening the heat loss each time it nears the outside of the house. The effectiveness of a MAXRaft insulated slab used in conjunction with underfloor heating was discussed in the Autumn 2014 edition of the Building Innovations NZ magazine (page 5).
Not only does MAXRaft increase the efficiency of underfloor heating, the installation of the underfloor pipes themselves can be done in a quick and effective manner by attaching them directly to the MAXRaft, reducing the installation time and allowing the concrete covering to be maintained at a regular 100mm depth.
MAXRaft is a must if you are grinding or polishing your concrete floor. The slightly lengthened curing process arising as a result of the MAXRaft® insulation results in a stronger slab. With correct positioning of eaves and windows, an exposed concrete floor with MAXRaft® insulation can act to warm up your home in winter and cool it in summer.
