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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Business South_May 2015

“New Zealand’s first 9 Home star rated homes will soon showcase the range of products, systems and design features that make them the most energy efficient and environmentally sound in the country. ”

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The Press_May 2015

“Being built in Church Square in the suburb of Addington, the home’s design has a nine out of 10 green-star Homestar rating”

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