New local show Moving Houses has everything that New Zealanders love – property, renovation, and big trucks.

Host Clarke Gayford is along for the ride as 10 houses are uplifted and make their long trek to new locations, all around the country.

“I think we went as far as Ruatangata, sort of inland from Whangārei, all the way down to Tuatapere which is right down by Cosy Nook and Nightcaps, in the deep South,” says Gayford.

Once the house is in situ, the series continues to follow the home and its new owners as renovation begins – a sort of Grand Designs meets Convoy concept.

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Some of the houses are turned into businesses but most are destined to become homes again.

“There’s a great couple in Queenstown who bought this very old, I think it’s a Presbyterian, church and they had to bring it down the Devil’s Staircase.

“It’s just a remarkable old building with so much history and they’re turning that into a usable workspace where it was otherwise falling into disrepair and no longer really serving its function.

“Most of the houses when we get to go and see them afterwards, you wouldn’t have a clue that they have been torn in half and put on the back of a wobbly truck.”

For the drivers and crew, moving the houses is pain-staking and time-consuming work. The dwellings are transported at night and sometimes negotiating obstacles on the road, such as other vehicles or trees, can be a nail-biting experience as they move centimetre by agonising centimetre.

“The guys who actually move the houses are super slick and they do know their limits,” says Gayford.

“But some of the places that they’re taking these houses haven’t obviously had houses go down those roads before.”

The trailers have hydraulic lifts that can tip the houses to extreme angles to manoeuvre around corners or over other impediments.

“The remarkable thing is that this is New Zealand technology,” says Gayford. “In fact, we export those trailers around the world.”

Gayford, who rides in the truck cab for these overnight missions, says the biggest danger is not the house taking a tumble off the trailer but other vehicles on the road.

“A lot of them just either don’t understand or don’t react properly to the pilot vehicles up ahead and they just keep driving as if nothing’s coming the other way.”

When a house is removed it can be a spectacle for the whole neighbourhood. The relocation of a villa from Clonbern Road in Remuera, Auckland in one episode draws people out of their homes to farewell the grand old girl.

“That was a historical landmark to many on that corner with its great big leadlights, and people navigate by homes when you’re in a small community.

“For it to move as is, that is a huge moment for some of those people that have lived there for many, many years.”

For the television presenter, who also hosts Fish Of The Day, tagging along with the truck drivers of Moving Houses was something of a childhood dream come true. He says growing up on a small farm out of Gisborne he would beg the drivers collecting grapes for a ride.

“They would take the grapes into the big vats and drop them off and do a big round circuit and so I would hitch a ride and do a big loop with these truck drivers as a kid and that was kind of the ultimate for me.”

He says daughter Neve doesn’t appear to have inherited his love of big rigs, although she does have a few vehicles in her toy collections.

“She was playing with a koala car yesterday that (Australian Prime Minister) Scott Morrison had sent over so she’s got a few cars and trucks in her array of toys.”

Gayford and his partner, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, spend their time between their home in Auckland and Wellington.

“We’ve tried to base ourselves mainly in Auckland, but it does get a bit tricky getting that balance right and so we sort of split it up depending on when the parliamentary sitting weeks are, just to make life a bit easier so that Jacinda doesn’t have to stress about travelling all the time,” he says.

As keen fans of renovation, he and Ardern “got stuck in and did as much as we could,” when they bought their first home together.

But working on this series has also made him consider the possibilities of relocation.

“You can’t not get involved in that and start thinking about how you would apply yourself to it and what you would do.”

Moving Houses, TVNZ 1, Tuesday October 12