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“NZ’s building standards are over 20 years behind; and it’s making us sick.”

That comment by Damien McGill of the Superhome Movement, sums up the reasons behind the launch of the Healthy Home Guide on November 24, 2020.

“The problem is exacerbated due to the current New Zealand Building Code being used by over 95 per cent of the industry as the standard to target, rather than the legal minimum requirement,” McGill told Stuff in the weeks preceding the launch.

Check out the full Stuff article highlighting the Healthy Home Design Guide released 24 November 2020:

The project leader says producing the guide was expected to take 18 months, but the team went all out to finish it in seven months, despite Covid restrictions. With input from more than 70 professionals around the country, the guide looks to banish cold, damp and mouldy homes by improving design and construction standards.

“We also have to stop designing 300 square-metre homes with a fourth or fifth bedroom that we really don’t need. Instead, we just need quality; something warm, dry and resilient.

“Money spent on large houses that just meet minimum building standards, which require considerable heating, would be better spent on building smaller, sustainable houses, that are airtight, with thermally broken door and window joinery installed in the right place.”

The Superhome movement wants our houses to provide the best living environments possible, with houses that “stand strong, are resilient, durable, and efficient in size and cost”.

McGill says the guide provides recommendations for healthy, resilient, low-carbon homes that are simple to achieve, and don’t require an arduous and costly rating or certification.

A healthy home is described as one that has high IEQ (indoor environment quality). This is determined from four key metrics: thermal comfort (temperature), visual comfort, acoustic comfort (noise transfer) and indoor air quality.”

The Superhome movement wants our houses to provide the best living environments possible, with houses that “stand strong, are resilient, durable, and efficient in size and cost”.

McGill says the guide provides recommendations for healthy, resilient, low-carbon homes that are simple to achieve, and don’t require an arduous and costly rating or certification.

A healthy home is described as one that has high IEQ (indoor environment quality). This is determined from four key metrics: thermal comfort (temperature), visual comfort, acoustic comfort (noise transfer) and indoor air quality.”

McGill says our homes can significantly influence our health and wellbeing, sentiments supported by Asthma New Zealand CEO Katheren Leitner, who wrote the foreword for the guide and welcomes it as an encouraging development.

“We can’t keep running away from the inadequacies of the Building Code,”Leitner says. “It simply facilitates the ongoing practice of allowing the worst building you can build, to be done so legally, and this is making us sick.”

Asthma NZ’s mission is a 50 per cent reduction in asthma and COPD hospitalisation by 2029.

“With 87 per cent of our patients living in housing unfit for human habitation we are counting on you to help us achieve this mission,” Leitner says in the forward. “For every year that we achieve this mission we will enable the Ministry of Health to spend half a billion dollars of savings on improving our health system, so we all have access to the medications and treatments we need, when we need it. Nothing else matters when you can’t breathe.”

Date: 31/10/2020

FULL ARTICLE ON Stuff

Christchurch architectural designer Bob Burnett founded THE SUPERHOME MOVEMENT about five years ago, with an eye on how future housing should be built.

The organisation runs tours showing off homes built to standards significantly above the building code, and lobbies Government to raise standards.

Burnett says New Zealand’s building code is decades outdated and the nation’s housing needs to improve fast.

“Hopefully, in 30 years, we won’t be 30 years behind other parts of the world like we are now. We have got a lot of catching up to do.”

Burnett says Christchurch’s mindset “needs to change” from “pushing out further with subdivisions”.

“It’s not sustainable on a number of levels in Christchurch. It needs to start with urban planning and walkable neighbourhoods. Some road layouts in the new subdivisions are wrong for good housing, sections need a long boundary facing north.”

He says while Christchurch’s urban design rules demand that front doors in multi-home complexes face the street, there are no building code requirement for homes to face the sun.

“A hundred years ago villas were built facing the street, and we’re still doing it. We’re building houses with windows facing south … it’s ridiculous.”

Burnett says another issue is the small-scale nature of Kiwi home building. He points to group home builders acting as retailers while contractors – “anyone with a cellphone, a ute and a dog” – do the work.

In contrast, factory-built modular or panellised components have been standard in many countries’ housing for years, he says, increasing efficiency and bringing down costs.

He points to a company in Japan building more homes than New Zealand’s total.

“There’s a lot of research and development. They approach it like they build cars – it’s a lot more sophisticated.

“We are still banging bits of wood together. Possibly, it’s the Kiwi attitude of ‘that’s how we’ve always done it’.

“How do we turn this around? We can show the rest of the world how we can produce zero carbon, energy efficient homes.”