Here’s a question as we come into winter: What do you expect your average electricity billto be?  A couple of hundred dollars a month?

Maybe you’ve got a big house that’s hard to heat and it ends up costing $300 to $400 a month.

Tonight, Campbell Live wanted to show viewers a new three-bedroom home that when completed, will be New Zealand most energy efficient house ever; a house claimed to be so efficient, the electricity bills are predicted to be nothing.

The big question: why aren’t all new homes built to this standard?
John Sellwood travelled to the suburb of Addington in Christchurch to meet the builders, architects and owners of a house with a Homestar rating of nine – a rating that has never been given before.

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Late in 2014 the New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA) in Canterbury challenged proposed new rules in the Christchurch City Council’s district plan that would require new homes to be built to a minimum Homestar 6 rating. They claimed this would add unnecessary cost to the building process. If the Building Code doesn’t require these levels of performance, why should Christchurch City Council?, they asked.

Doesn’t have to cost a lot. The assertion that building a new home to reach a Homestar 6 rating would make it unaffordable looks only at the purchase price. Compared to a typical Christchurch house, Architects Jasmax calculated the additional cost to build a Homestar 6 home would add a little under $6,500. That’s around 2%.

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The other is a 152 m2 2-storey home built using insulated precast concrete panel thermomass construction carefully detailed to eliminate thermal leakage, for example, bolts are nylon instead of steel to avoid thermal conductivity. It too features PV solar and
high-performance glazing and has a solar wall (collector) to prewarm fresh air, which is then fed into an ERV (energy-recovery
ventilation system). Both houses incorporate key dimensions and features of the Lifemark standards for
enhanced functionality and safety for all ages and abilities.

Thicker wall framing standard The timber homes Bob Burnett designs have thicker wall framing as standard. These are
multi-purpose – they improve thermal An environmental home integrated into bush at Allandale, Banks Peninsula.
Two 8-star homes The first is a modest 113 m2 timber-frame home with four bedrooms and two bathrooms (see cover). Variations in ceiling heights provide a perception of space making it feel larger than you would

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They are to be used as demonstration homes and as a communication tool for a new initiative which brings together industry expertise in the energy efficient, environmentally sound home design and construction with the target to construct 1000 homestar 7 or above homes in 3 years. These 10 homestar rated homes also demonstrate the varying levels of specification that may be implemented for 6, 7, 8, 9 stars with associated levels of build costs and running cost which consequently have differing payback periods and end property values.

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