ADU
Accessory Dwelling Units
A guest house, a rental unit or additional living space, built to sit with the existing home rather than merely beside it.
Getting more out of a lot you already own
Maximize your property's potential with custom accessory dwelling units. Whether you need a guest house, rental unit, or additional living space, we design and build ADUs that seamlessly integrate with your existing home and provide versatile solutions for your needs. An ADU is the building type where Zenith's structural system shows its economics most plainly, because an ADU is small. On a small footprint the shell is a much larger share of the total cost than it is on a full house, so the decision about what that shell is made of carries proportionally more weight. A Composite Blocking System structure uses expanded polystyrene as the core of every member, sprayed with a sand and glass-fibre composite, which means a small building gets exactly the same specification as a large one rather than a reduced version of it. The other reason ADUs suit this method is speed of enclosure: the walls, the roof and the floor are one system, so the building is closed in as one operation rather than as three trades in sequence.
What an ADU has to answer
Whether it is for family, for rent, or for both over time. Whether it needs to read as part of the main house or as a separate building. How services reach it. What the setbacks and the lot actually allow. Those four answers change the design more than the interior specification does, and they are worth settling before drawings.
The same shell specification applies whether the building is an ADU or a full two-storey house.
ADU
Small buildings are not simply scaled-down ones
The mistake that costs most on a small build is treating it as a house with the numbers reduced. Circulation, storage and the position of the openings are all harder in a small footprint, not easier, and every one of them is fixed by the structure. Because a CBS shell is formed rather than framed, the openings and the geometry want to be resolved before the core goes up rather than adjusted afterwards. That front-loads the design work, which is the honest trade-off to know about before you start.