The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends a minimum indoor temperature of 18˚C.
By installing heating that can reach this temperature on the coldest days of the year, we should then be able to keep warm all year round.
In New Zealand there have been changes to the Healthy Homes Standards. These were updated in 2022. Read more here
They include changes to the heating, ventilation, and moisture ingress as well as drainage standards.
These changes apply to properties with a healthy homes compliance deadline on or after 12 May 2022.
There are also changes to the heating standard generally to enable smaller heating devices to be installed in certain types of properties, to better reflect how they retain heat.
The heating assessment tool has been updated to include these changes.
All other types of rental properties continue to use the original formula. Landlords of all properties will be able to use the heating assessment tool to calculate their heating requirements.
Find out more about updating the heating standard information in the compliance statement
Ventilation Standards in bathrooms and kitchens
The ventilation standard now allows properties with certain continuous mechanical ventilation in kitchens and bathrooms to meet the ventilation standard.
If your home was built with a continuous mechanical ventilation system, to meet the standard it must:
- be designed to vent extracted air continuously from residential property to the outdoors, and for a kitchen or bathroom, extracts the air directly from the room, and
- have been installed in the property or a tenancy building that first received building consent on or after 1 November 2019 and was part of that original building consent, and continues to meet the requirements of the building consent.
Alternatively, if your home has been renovated and now includes a continuous mechanical ventilation system, to meet the standard, the system must:
- be designed to provide ventilation for multiple rooms and to continuously vent extracted air to the outdoors, and
- extract air directly out of the kitchen and bathroom, with an exhaust capacity of at least 12 ℓ/s in the kitchen and 10 ℓ/s in the bathroom. The actual flow rate may be varied (manually or automatically), in response to the demand for ventilation.
Recirculating systems (products like HRV and DVS systems), or fans that do not extract to the outdoors are not suitable to meet the ventilation standard.
For more information about the Healthy Homes Standards in New Zealand read more here
Healthy homes should be important to us all.
After all, our children deserve the best that we can provide for them in the uncertain world of pandemics and climate change.
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