Double Watch House

Project Refresh

Cook, Hillary, Kupe, Shackleton, Cobham, McKenzie, Rutherford, Batten, Scott, Hathorne... whatever your Watch, you'll remember the importance of your Watch House from your time at Outward Bound.

Watch Houses give students a place to relax, reflect and hang out with friends, before and after their days activities.

Project Refresh Anakiwa aims to not only upgrade the current Watch Houses we have, but build a whole new double Watch House, meaning another 336 students can experience the magic of Outward Bound every year.

We currently have four purpose built double Watch Houses, housing eight Watches.

Bookings have consistently been increasing which is resulting in us housing students in non-purpose built Watch Houses to accommodate 10 Watches for most months of the year. These are of a lesser standard and miss some key ingredients such as proximity to the central school and drying rooms.

Our quality control surveys have been showing lower accommodation scores from students housed in the two Watch Houses that are not purpose-built.

We want to ensure all of our students have the same comfortable and functional accommodation. To do so, we need to move the weatherboard staff house closer to the staff village and build a new double Watch House on that site.

McKenzie Batten 1

Stage one

Relocate and refurbish the current weatherboard instructor house closer to the staff village.

Stage two

On this vacant site we will build a new double Watch House.

To ensure we achieve accommodation that is fit for purpose and has a light footprint we will work with Marg Robinson Architectural Design, a trusted company Outward Bound has worked with in the past.

The Watch House will include two 14-person bunk rooms, with separate gear store and meeting room, two drying rooms, and two bathrooms that each contain one accessible bathroom facility.

We aim to make the Watch house 60% energy efficient by using:

Space heating of the bunkhouses and meeting rooms with a centrally located heat pump that has four outlets and two ceilings fans.
A wall mounted heat pump, air to air heat exchanger and ceiling fan in the drying rooms.
A hot water system that uses an Econergy heat pump water heater.
Photo voltaic panels (PV Panels) fitted on the north facing roof.

Stage three

Complete the upgrade of the existing Watch Houses!

Here's a sneak peak of the new Watch House plans

Watch house plans

Keep reading about Project Refresh Anakiwa

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