Source
https://www.branz.co.nz/pubs/bulletins/bu703/ — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)
BRANZ Bulletin 703 — Sleepouts exempt from building consent
Read this as CONFIRMATION that the sleepout pathway is NOT a Neobiome dwelling route
RT_340 was queued (low priority) to establish what the Schedule 1 sleepout conditions actually are, since OT_102 (BU704) named it as a “different exemption” but did not state it. Now stated: an exempt sleepout has no kitchen and no bathroom and can only be built where there is already a serviced home on the same site. So it is not a dwelling and not a community pathway — it is the consent-free ancillary sleeping room (guest room, bunk room, studio/office) subordinate to an existing house. Its Neobiome value is threefold: it closes RT_340, it supplies a small consent-free ancillary-building envelope, and it sharpens the earth-wall story (the sleepout pathway is more earth-accommodating than the Sch 1A dwelling one — see NI relevance). See below.
Summary
BRANZ Bulletin 703 (March 2026, 7 pp incl. cover) explains the Building Act 2004 Schedule 1 rules under which a sleepout may be built without a building consent. It sets out four exemption options: (1) a single-storey detached building ≤10 m²; (2) a 10–30 m² building of lightweight wall and roof materials; (3) a 10–30 m² kitset/prefab building designed or reviewed by a chartered professional engineer; and (4) a 10–30 m² building whose design/construction is carried out or supervised by LBPs.
The bulletin is explicit that these Schedule 1 sleepouts are a different exemption from the Schedule 1A small stand-alone dwellings (granny flats, ≤70 m²) covered by OT_102 / BU704: an exempt sleepout cannot include cooking facilities or any sanitary facilities (toilet, shower, handbasin with potable water), and can only be built where there is also a dwelling on site that has sanitation facilities. It also details the common conditions (smoke alarm, single storey, height/floor limits), the setback and fire-rating rules, the residual building-/resource-consent triggers (stormwater, soak pits, excavations, district-plan non-compliance), and the geographic-zone framework (earthquake / wind / corrosivity / climate zones) that governs design.
Key claims
- claim: "Schedule 1 of the Building Act 2004 lists building work that can be undertaken without requiring building consent. There are FOUR options for exempt sleepouts: (1) single-storey detached buildings not exceeding 10 m2 in area; (2) single-storey detached buildings with 10-30 m2 floor area built with lightweight wall and roof materials; (3) kitset/prefab buildings with 10-30 m2 floor area designed or reviewed by a chartered professional engineer; (4) buildings with 10-30 m2 floor area where licensed building practitioners (LBPs) with the appropriate licences carry out or supervise design or construction."
source_location: "1.0.1"
- claim: "Exempt sleepouts are NOT the same thing as tiny houses or small stand-alone dwellings up to 70 m2 (granny flats) because exempt sleepouts CANNOT include cooking facilities or sanitary facilities such as a toilet or shower or handbasin with potable water. Homeowners wanting to include these facilities must get building consent for the whole sleepout or use the exemption for small dwellings (the new Schedule 1A), which has different conditions. The small dwelling exemption is described in BRANZ Bulletin BU704."
source_location: "1.0.2"
- claim: "Conditions COMMON to all four Schedule 1 sleepout exemptions — a sleepout: can only be constructed where there is ALSO a dwelling on site that has sanitation facilities such as a toilet, shower, access to potable water (a previous MBIE determination has indicated this must be a HOME, and that other structures with sleeping areas, a kitchen and sanitary facilities such as a tramping club hut do not comply); cannot include cooking facilities or any sanitary facilities; must be fitted with a smoke alarm; cannot be more than one storey and cannot include a loft or mezzanine floor; must have a floor level no more than 1 metre above the ground, and the highest point no more than 3.5 metres above the floor level."
source_location: "3.1.1"
- claim: "The exemption for sleepouts up to 10 m2 has the fewest specific conditions: there is NO minimum setback to the legal boundary and any residential building for sleepouts up to 10 m2. Floor area in each exemption is measured to the inside of the external walls."
source_location: "3.2.1, 3.1.2"
- claim: "Fire (all sleepouts are covered by Acceptable Solution C/AS1): where an external wall is less than 1 metre from the boundary, the wall facing the boundary must have a fire resistance rating (FRR) of 30/30/30 - unless an automatic sprinkler system is installed. If the sleepout is less than 2 metres from the main home on the same property (measured from the cladding) OR less than 2 metres from a home on a neighbouring property, the sleepout wall will also need a 30/30/30 FRR."
source_location: "3.2.3"
- claim: "10-30 m2 LIGHTWEIGHT-MATERIALS option: 'lightweight materials' means only light timber framing or light steel framing, and only lightweight wall and roof cladding materials. Per NZS 3604:2011 the wall cladding cannot weigh more than 30 kg/m2 and the roofing cannot weigh more than 20 kg/m2. The minimum setback to the legal boundary and any residential building is 1 metre for all sleepouts 10-30 m2. If the work extends an existing single-storey detached building, the total net floor area cannot exceed 30 m2. Foundations can be concrete slab on ground or a timber suspended floor following NZS 3604:2011."
source_location: "3.3.2, 3.3.5, 3.3.10, 3.3.8, 3.3.9"
- claim: "The two professional-oversight options: KITSET/PREFAB 10-30 m2 - the manufacturer or supplier must have had the design carried out or reviewed by a chartered professional engineer (manufacturer responsibilities under Building Act s.14G). LBP 10-30 m2 - design by an LBP with a design licence or a registered architect, construction carried out or supervised by an LBP holding a licence for that work. Under the LBP option the work is NOT restricted building work (because building consent is not required), so LBPs do not have to supply a record of work but remain professionally accountable and the Building Practitioners Board's oversight still applies."
source_location: "3.4.1, 3.4.2, 3.5.1, 3.5.2"
- claim: "Even though a sleepout may not require building consent, its construction must comply with all applicable clauses of the New Zealand Building Code to the extent required by the Building Act - 'A sleepout is not a glorified garden shed - building a sleepout is like building a small house but without the plumbing and cooking facilities.' Because a sleepout is a HABITABLE space it must have, among other things, fresh air ventilation, natural lighting, thermal insulation, a safe escape path and a smoke alarm. For residential building work of $30,000 (including GST) or over, including a sleepout, there must be a written contract."
source_location: "1.0.5, 4.0.1, 4.0.3"
- claim: "Residual consent triggers. BUILDING consent may still be required for managing stormwater off the roof (connecting to a public stormwater drain or constructing a soak pit - a soak pit is itself likely to require building consent, with requirements set out in Verification Method E1/VM1). RESOURCE consent may be required where the sleepout or its intended location does not fully comply with the district/unitary plan, or for excavations (e.g. on steeply sloping land), or in some cases for a soak pit. All stormwater drainage work must be undertaken by a REGISTERED DRAINLAYER; the electrical connection between the sleepout and the house must be made by a REGISTERED ELECTRICAL WORKER and a certificate of compliance provided on completion."
source_location: "1.0.4, 5.3.2, 5.3.3, 7.0.1"
- claim: "District/unitary plan spatial constraints on a sleepout: daylight recession planes typically run at 45 degrees or 55 degrees from a point 2.5 metres above ground on the boundary, and no part of the sleepout can be above the recession plane (which may force a greater setback than the Schedule 1 minimum). Site coverage often needs to be less than 40% or 50% (range 30% to 60%). A minimum permeable area is common (example given: 30% of the surface area). Some urban residential zones require a minimum of 30-60 m2 of continuous outdoor living space directly accessible from the house, sometimes with a minimum dimension (e.g. at least 5 metres across)."
source_location: "5.1.1, 5.2.1, 5.2.2, 5.2.3"
- claim: "Geographic zones governing sleepout design (same framework as for any home): FOUR earthquake zones (1 lowest to 4 highest risk; map in NZS 3604:2011 Figure 5.4); FIVE wind zones - low, medium, high, very high, extra high - where wind is over 55 m/s (above the extra high zone) an engineer must be consulted for specific design; THREE exposure/corrosivity zones - Zone B (inland, lowest corrosion risk), Zone C (coastal, medium), Zone D (coastal, high; NZS 3604:2011 Figure 4.2) requiring stainless-steel fixings very close to the coast; SIX climate zones (warmest to coldest; in the H1 Acceptable Solutions and Verification Methods) determining insulation and window performance."
source_location: "6.0.1, 7.0.1"Neobiome Intelligence relevance
This source closes RT_340 and confirms the sleepout pathway is a dead end as a dwelling route — but it is not without use. Three findings, in descending order of consequence.
1. A sleepout is not a dwelling, and is even more constrained than the granny-flat rule
The Schedule 1 sleepout is doubly ancillary. Unlike the NES-DMRU granny flat (one self-contained minor unit per site) and unlike the Schedule 1A small dwelling (a stand-alone home, OT_102), an exempt sleepout cannot contain a kitchen or any sanitary facility and can only exist beside a dwelling that already has a toilet, shower and potable water on the same site (§3.1.1). The bulletin cites a prior MBIE determination that this neighbour must be a home — a tramping-club hut with sleeping/kitchen/sanitary areas does not qualify. So the sleepout cannot be a self-sufficient unit, cannot stand on its own, and offers no community-scale pathway whatsoever. This is the confirmation OT_102 flagged (§1.0.10) and the reason RT_340 was correctly ranked low: for a settlement of self-sufficient dwellings, the sleepout exemption is irrelevant as housing.
2. What it does give Neobiome: a consent-free ancillary-building envelope
Where a community build includes serviced homes, the sleepout exemption is a genuine CapEx-relief lever for accommodation overflow — guest rooms, extra bunk rooms, a home office/studio — built without a building consent and without a code compliance certificate. The usable envelope, read verbatim:
| Parameter | ≤10 m² option | 10–30 m² options (lightweight / engineer / LBP) |
|---|---|---|
| Building consent | None | None |
| Setback to boundary / any residential building | None (§3.2.1) | 1 m (§3.3.10) |
| Max height above floor | 3.5 m (§3.1.1) | 3.5 m |
| Floor above ground | ≤1 m | ≤1 m |
| Storeys / mezzanine | 1, no loft/mezzanine | 1, no loft/mezzanine |
| Kitchen / bathroom | Forbidden | Forbidden |
Not free of everything, though: the full Building Code still applies to a habitable space (ventilation, natural light, thermal insulation, safe escape, smoke alarm, §4.0.1); the electrical link to the house needs a registered electrical worker + a CoC (§7.0.1); stormwater/soak-pit work can re-trigger a building consent and drainage must be done by a registered drainlayer (§5.3); and a written contract is required at ≥$30,000 incl GST (§4.0.3). District-plan recession planes (45°/55°), coverage caps (30–60%) and permeable-area minima bite the same as for any building (§5.1–5.2).
3. The earth-wall story is sharper here than for a dwelling — a reading, not an assertion
OT_102 established that a Schedule 1A dwelling must have a frame “of lightweight building products, being steel or timber” — a hard requirement that excludes rammed earth and CSEB outright. The sleepout pathway is more accommodating: the steel/timber-framing + ≤30 kg/m² wall-cladding cap applies only to the lightweight-materials option (§3.3). The ≤10 m² option (§3.2), the engineer-reviewed option (§3.4) and the LBP-supervised option (§3.5) carry no material-weight or framing restriction in the bulletin — they substitute engineer/LBP oversight for the prescriptive cap.
⚠ Flagged as a reading, NOT encoded
The bulletin does not say “an earth-wall sleepout is exempt via the LBP option”; it says the weight cap is specific to option 2, and that options 1/3/4 rely on size / engineer / LBP oversight instead. The inference — that a small (≤10 m²) or engineer/LBP-designed earth-mass sleepout could be building-consent exempt where an earth-mass dwelling cannot — is a strong reading of the option structure, not a stated rule. It also does not escape the Building Code (thermal insulation, structure) or the common conditions. Useful as a note that earth construction has a consent-free door for ancillary buildings that it lacks for dwellings, but do not encode a feasibility flag on it without the Schedule 1 text or a determination.
Net for the model. RT_340 resolved. No new NI input cell is filled — a sleepout is not a dwelling and carries no costed figure — but two entity pages gain precision: the consenting framework gains the sibling-pathway detail it was missing, and D04 gains the ancillary-building envelope (heights, setbacks, fire rule) plus the earth-wall nuance. data_quality: verified — read verbatim from the BRANZ PDF.
Research targets
Documents to retrieve
- None new worth queuing. The bulletin references a prior MBIE determination on the “must be a home” condition and the standard suite (NZS 3604:2011; Acceptable Solutions C/AS1, E2/AS1, E2/AS4, B1/AS1; Verification Method E1/VM1; H1 AS/VM; Build 180 on boundary-wall FRR) — all marginal to Neobiome and available on demand; not proposed as RTs.
Research gaps
- None. This source resolves RT_340 (the BU703 sibling-pathway target); it raises no new quantitative gap for the model.
Notes
data_quality: verified— authoritative BRANZ publication (not AI-prepared), read verbatim viapdftotext -layoutat ingest; every quoted condition and figure checked against the PDF. No retrieval-provenance block applies.urlblank — no confirmed public URL captured. BRANZ bulletins are distributed via BRANZ Shop (www.branz.nz); ISSN 2537-7310 (Online); InDesign creation date 6 Mar 2026.- Relationship to OT_102 (BU704): strict siblings on the same axis (both are Building Act consent exemptions), but different instruments — BU703 = Schedule 1 sleepouts (≤30 m², no kitchen/bathroom, must sit beside a serviced home); BU704 = Schedule 1A small dwellings (≤70 m², a stand-alone home). BU703 is the pathway OT_102 named at §1.0.10 as “a DIFFERENT exemption with different conditions.” Complementary, not duplicative.
- Contrast worth carrying: sleepout max height is 3.5 m above floor (vs 4 m for a Sch 1A dwelling) and setback is 1 m / none (vs 2 m for a Sch 1A dwelling) — the sleepout envelope is tighter on height but looser on spacing.
Connections
Links to
Sources (1): OT_102
Referenced by
EDT domains (1): D04: Sustainable Habitat & Building Technology
Concepts (1): Regulatory Consenting for Off-Grid Communities…