Fact sheets and brochures

We all want a warm, comfortable home, but many New Zealand houses are difficult and expensive to heat to healthy temperatures.

Around 35% of the energy used in the average New Zealand household goes on heating your home. If your home doesn't have adequate insulation (like the majority of our homes), a lot of your heat is just wasted.

Improving your home's ability to keep in the heat and smart use of a clean, efficient heating system will make your home more cost-effective to run and warmer and healthier to live in.

Are you in the market for a new home? Whether you're buying or renting, it's worth considering how warm and cheap to run a home will be, before you commit to it.

Use this handy checklist to give you an indication if a home you're looking at is likely to be an energy-guzzling icebox or a warm, comfortable, energy efficient haven.

This checklist will help assist you with a quick home assessment.

The list identifies steps for you take, so you can assess - the state of your ceiling insulation, how it is looking under the house and your water heating situation.

Repairs to earthquake damage on your home through the Canterbury Home Repair Programme can expose hard-to-access areas like wall cavities, skillion or flat roofs, and suspended floors, creating the opportunity to install insulation. 

Although you will need to pay for any insulation being installed that wasn’t there before the earthquake, the repair process is a great opportunity to get insulation fitted into these places that are normally tricky to access.