Healthier homes for Aotearoa
Abode’s new columnist, director of the Healthy Home Cooperation, Damien McGill, is on a mission to change the way we design and build homes in Aotearoa and is here to answer your questions on how you can create a healthier home.
I promote high-performance housing in my role with the Healthy Home Cooperation and volunteer with the Superhome Movement, where we work towards educating, advocating, and promoting the design and building of healthy homes.
My interest in building better homes goes back to my first home renovation in the 1990s, where I consciously renovated my first home to be as thermally efficient as I could make it. I was inspired by 10 years in the UK, where central heating is widely used, and every room is the same toasty temperature.
Recently the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) sought feedback on proposed amendments to the Building Code, aiming to make homes and buildings warmer, drier and healthier, with less impact on our environment.
The MBIE is looking to increase the minimum insulation levels for roofs, windows, walls and floors. They have suggested three options based on going halfway to international standards, comparable to international standards, or option three of going further than international standards.
The only real option is option three, as the comparison data provided by the MBIE is not always current. For example, the MBIE used 2017 Irish standards when Ireland had further updated their standards in 2020.
New Zealand code levels of insulation are often around one third of other countries with similar climates, such as England.
Homes built to code minimums do not achieve World Health Organisation (WHO) standards for internal indoor environment and acceptable internal room temperatures of 18 degrees Celsius for healthy people.
A recent study of more than 2000 New Zealand children has found nearly half are sleeping in bedrooms that are much colder than the recommended minimum temperature of 19 degrees Celsius.
The longer we delay the inevitable changes that must happen, the harder it will be to meet our climate change commitments, the more houses that will need to be retrofitted in the future, and the more these improvements will cost. The MBIE needs to develop a road map for change that signals the industry pathway for the next 20 years to ensure we are actually building warm, dry, healthy homes for people and planet well before 2050.
If you have any questions about building a healthy home, get in touch with Damien. He would love to answer your questions in this column.
Please take the opportunity in August, to experience warm, resilient, healthy homes during the Superhome Movement tours right across Aotearoa.
027 348 1110 | healthyhome.kiwi
