by
February 10, 2020
Using The calculator is time-consuming and not easy, and will put off a lot of people from doing it themselves, which will be good news for the now defunct meths testing industry. You can see already on the web new businesses charging $150+ to do an assessment. Whether or not they will do the best job for a customer or look after themselves is another matter. We think that understanding the errors in the tool is important, as well as what other options are available to help our clients minimise the compliance cost (e.g. installing doors as above).
The biggest issue in complying with the HHL is heating. This is the most expensive part of the new regulations and requires a complex assessment using a calculator on the Tenancy Services website. Everything from walls to windows to glass doors must be measured. There are also issues around sloping ceilings and the extent of the space to be heated. For Example, one house we have brought up to HH Compliance had an open plan kitchen and lounge connecting to an entrance foyer. The space then continued down to the garage level, as well as along a corridor going the whole length of the house. As the entire space to be assessed was over 90m2, the owner had to install new doors (costing about $1,000) to seal off the lounge as this then meant only one HP was needed.
There are a lot of (frankly) weird assumptions incorporated by MBIE into the heating capacity tool. For example, a pre-1978 house uses an external wall assumption of R0.5, but an internal wall is assumed to be less at R0.4. It makes no sense at all that part of the inside of the house is considered colder than the outside. Equally, if you have an internal ceiling then the R-value is assumed to be the same as having no insulation at all, so the calculator assumes an outside temperature above, but above might be another whole floor, and above that, a ceiling insulated to R3.6 in a modern building! There is certainly an argument to be made in such circumstance (if it makes a difference to the cost).
This Is part of a larger problem with the default values used in the calculator, the worst example being that houses built after 1978 were required by law to have external wall insulation rated R1.5, yet the calculator uses a default of R1.0, which is just not correct.
Differences in R ratings have the most impact on heating requirements at these lower R-ratings,so this error makes for big increases to the end result of the assessment. The output from the calculator highlights any deviations from defaults so they do need to be justified. We use the defaults except where we have documented proof of it being better insulated (this can be as easy as documenting when the house was built).
Only very small and modern lounges will be able to have an assessment of 2.4kw or below and thus avoid the need to install a heat pump. If you do have this assessment then a small thermostat electric heater will do the job of complying. This should not cost more than $250 for the heater, with a little more on top for a handyman's cost to permanently fix it to a wall, and the heater can be just plugged into an existing power socket. It is also important to note that if there is an existing heat source (you will have to be able to document its output capacity and it must have a thermostat) then a fixed electric heater may also be used to top-up the existing capacity as a low cost means of complying.
Continued in Part 2
