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.”
ends