Plan for housing units could affect Chch couple’s reliance on solar panels

Corrine and Athol O’Connor have lived in their Somerfield house for 20 years now, using solar panels to power their day-to-day living.

But when they heard about plans to pull down the house next door to make space for five units, they grew concerned their solar panels would be covered with shade.

“The solar panels are our main concern, we just don’t want anything blocking them,” Corrine said.

“We want to keep [them] functioning and having reduced power and, if they start building anything that’s going to block them, then we may as well not have them.”

The O’Connors became aware of the planned development in September when the house next door to their back section on Strauss Pl was hosting an open home.

Out of curiosity Athol, who is partly retired, went to have a look.

After talking with the property manager, she discovered the house was being leased until May-June before being pulled down for five units.

Since then, Corrine has been emailing Christchurch City Council trying to get more information on the development, particularly if the units would be more than one storey, but said she had received the same response each time.

Council staff said in an email to Corrine there is a resource consent currently being processed to construct five residential units. However, they were unable to say if the units would be more than one storey as it was still being processed through resource consent.

“We’re okay with single-storey places but building five is just phenomenal,” Corrine said.

“I thought if it’s going through resource consent that they would have an idea of what they were going to be building but we’re not being told.”

Spreydon-Cashmere Community Board chairwoman Karolin Potter said while the board supports intensive housing, they’re not particularly supportive of the Government’s new housing rules allowing three storeys.

The Government’s new bill on housing intensification, which allows buildings of up to three storeys on most sites in cities without any need for resource consent, comes into play in August.

“Three storeys could well take out someone’s sunshine on their roof and we would have a great deal of sympathy for that,” Potter said.

“We think two storeys is enough in the intensive housing areas at the moment.”

Potter said she would be surprised if the development was single storey, which was a shame in another way as some people with disabilities won’t be able to move into houses that are two-storey or more.

“We are sympathetic to this person,” she said.

“We are very supportive of solar housing and she should be able to put it on her roof with some surety that the sun will always be available.”

When Corrine posted to a community Facebook group, she received 75 comments from others sharing similar concerns.

The O’Connors said the solar panels have saved them a lot of money with power and were quite a cost to get installed.

“We don’t want to move and if it’s going to block our sun then we’re not going to be very happy about that,” Corrine said.

“Being consulted would have been nice and being told would have been nice as well, but none of that.”

The O’Connors were also worried about the number of cars needing to park on the side of the road if more units were put in.

The couple said they “love it here” but weren’t sure what could be done about preserving their solar panels.

“We just need to know what’s going to be built there and whether we have any option to stop any two-storey housing being built to block our solar panels and whether we have any rights on that,” Corrine said.

“We’re trying to find out what we can because that really concerns us.”