Cosy Homes is a Canterbury based, family run business which started with the goal to create more affordable home options. As the current offerings were not very successful at this, it required rethinking the construction of a home from the ground up. Through years of research and testing, we have questioned every aspect of home construction and created a home that is quick to build and affordable, while also being robust, comfortable and incredibly well insulated.
We build all of our homes at our production site at 108 Butchers Road, Kaiapoi and then transport them around New Zealand, so they are built for transportation, with integrated, telescopic lifting points and a robust steel chassis.
We focus on homes that are 4.5m wide (4.2m external wall-to-wall), which does require a pilot vehicle and transportation on the back of a truck (as opposed to towing on its own wheels), but we find that very occasional extra expense is far outweighed by the vastly increased functionality of a wider space that is appreciated every day. In essence, going from 2.5m to 4.2m wide transforms Cosy Homes from caravans into homes, and eliminates the need for mezzanine floors (typical in Tiny Homes) that are impractical for elderly or tall people. We currently build four different lengths – 9.1m, 11.1m, 12.1m & 14.1m to suit your needs.
Various exterior and interior claddings are available to suit people’s preferences and budgets.
We can provide off grid services, but this does cost more and requires more monitoring and maintenance than council provided services.
It is important to us that we keep the prices as affordable as possible while still maintaining the highest quality standards. The prices for our most popular 12.1 x 4.2m (50sqm) homes start at about $130,000 including GST, which can be $100,000 less than similar sized homes from other suppliers.
Even with this we are often told that we have the highest quality transportable homes available. We use NZ Color Steel, European kitchens, European highly insulated uPVC windows, NZ wool carpets, etc.
Cosy Homes are Registered Master Builders, we also employ Licensed Building Practitioners (LBPs) and have a full time LBP Designer on staff. We routinely get Building Consents for both our homes and the sites they go on. These Building Consents do not prevent them being transportable or even being vehicles on wheels, partly due to our innovative Cosy Foot, transportable foundation system.
Our Cosy Foot, transportable foundation system is a patent pending industry first – it is a series of affordable modular pads with an integrated height adjustment system. These pads can be laid on many challenging sites, and the height adjustment system means they can be levelled in about 5 minutes, or in the case of ground movement, the whole house can be re-levelled in about 1 hour. This is an engineer approved, and Building Consented solution, and we have extensive experience with making them work in various challenging ground conditions, with supporting documentation available. Partly due to Cosy Homes being comparatively light, minimal ground work is required, which usually entails replacing a small area of topsoil under each foot with compacted gravel. Cosy Feet are transportable – they can be picked up, moved and reused by only 2 people with no special tools required, leaving flat land behind, with only a few patches of compacted gravel. We also have experience with more traditional and permanent foundations, for specific requirements, e.g. in flood plains.
Cosy Homes was founded by Eric Woods, who has an extensive technology, Research & Development and product development background, with First Class Honours Degrees in both Biochemistry and Applied Computing. This technical background has enabled us to develop innovations such as the Cosy Feet system.