Hon Dr Nick Smith

Minister of Housing

13 August 2013

Last of Wellington’s state houses made warmer

Housing Minister Dr Nick Smith today visited one of the last state houses in the Wellington region to receive insulation under Housing New Zealand’s nationwide Energy Efficiency Retrofit Programme.

“This two-bedroom property in Avalon, Lower Hutt is receiving blown ceiling insulation and under-floor insulation to make it warmer and drier for its tenant,” Dr Smith says.

“There are economic, health and environmental benefits of insulating homes. These are savings in power bills, healthier tenants resulting in fewer hospital admissions, and reductions in New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“Our first priority has been to get our own house in order by getting the insulation of state houses up to standard. This has involved insulating 46,000 state houses at a cost of $76 million, including 2,500 in Wellington. The programme includes installing ceiling and under-floor insulation, hot water cylinder wraps and pipe laggings and stays for windows to ensure homes can be properly ventilated. This programme is 99 per cent complete. We will spend the rest of the year doing a stocktake to ensure no properties have been missed.

“There are some properties that it is not practical to insulate because they are multi-storey apartments, have flat roofs, concrete floors, or limited access under the floor. We are helping these households by ensuring they have adequate heating options by installing solid wood burners, convection heaters, heat pumps, radiant heaters or reticulated gas heaters.

“This Energy Efficiency Retrofit Programme of 46,000 state houses is complemented by the Government’s Warm-Up New Zealand programme to insulate privately-owned homes. This was further boosted in Budget 2013 with an additional $100 million targeted at low income households. These two programmes will deliver 320,000 warmer, dryer homes for 800,000 people.”

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