Posted by Ross Hill | 29 March 2008

Di Dahm

Blue Cove Homes

65 Comments

Tags: building, environment

Di and Michael Dahm are the husband and wife team behind Blue Cove Homes, where they specialise in building coastal homes around the Geelong area in Australia. They explain that a coastal home is more than just a property, but a lifestyle as more people move closer to the beaches.

Blue Cove Homes have won a number of awards including “Most Energy Efficient House” and “Most innovative Use of Steel” and finalists in a range of others including “Best Display House over $250,000″, “Greensmart Building of the Year” and “Greensmart Professional of the Year”. Here I’m talking with Di.

How did the Blue Cove Homes story begin?

Michael has always loved building; his father was a builder and was exposed to this as a young child. Michael has worked in an engineering background so is technically sound over a wide range of construction methods.

I have always loved colour, spent a lot of my formative years on the coast and just love it so much. Together we thought this was a great basis to form a building company that specialises in coastal design.

You have entered and won a lot of awards, what impact have those had on your business?

It has had a great impact on our business, building a house is generally one of the biggest things most people will ever undertake. This requires a lot of trust and technical knowledge, having been judged by your peers and winning awards has given us a lot of credibility.

What are your thoughts on business networking, and how can people make it worthwhile?

Knowledge is a powerful tool; networking exposes us to all sorts of people in different phases of their business life. It helps us learn, provides mentors, provides self confidence and is also a way of continually self evaluating your business.

Promoting “Green” products is a huge trend at the moment - how much of an impact do you think the green label has on potential customers and what does green mean to you in the building industry?

I think a lot of people are jumping on the “green” bandwagon as they think it is a good gimmick. I think consumers are far more environmentally knowledgeable and are almost demanding “green” aspects to their homes. We tend to take a back to basic approach by designing up to let mother nature work for us, i.e. correct orientation of the house, making sure we have plenty of cross ventilation etc

Blue Cove Homes specializes in building coastal homes. How have coastal towns been changing over the past few years and what do you think will happen in the future?

Yes I think they have changed, the dumpy shacks that you so often saw in coastal towns are being replaced. People are far more aware of the beauty of the coast and building guidelines have been strengthened. Height restrictions are now in place and lots of coastal developments have strict covenants and building guidelines. The down side is less land is available so prices will go up; this has a negative side to a lot of older residents who are being forced out of long standing homes by rate rises. Affordability is going to be an ever increasing issue for coastal land.

There has been a lot of conversation online about the advantages and disadvantages of Small Teams vs Big Teams. Blue Cove Homes is 3 people right now, is your vision to keep it small or would you like to take on more staff? Why?

I guess at the moment all our clients have almost unlimited access to both Michael and myself, with growth that will have to change. We think we have an excellent product and like all business growth is our aim. I guess our challenge is in that growth stage we don’t loose sight of the core values of Blue Cove Homes.