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With winter on the way, it’s a good time to prepare your rental property to meet the healthy homes heating standard.
If you own a rental property, you must meet the healthy homes standards by the compliance date, beginning 1 July 2021. These standards aim to make rental properties warmer, drier and healthier. There are five standards that must be met to improve heating, insulation, ventilation and drainage, stop draughts and reduce moisture entering the premises from outside.
New healthy homes standards for rental properties
To meet the requirements of the heating standard, you must provide one or more fixed heaters that can directly heat the main living room, which is the largest room that's used for general, everyday living.
Because every region and property layout in New Zealand is different, your heating requirements will be unique to each rental property.
It’s about having fixed heaters that are an acceptable type and meet a minimum heating capacity in kilowatts.
To work out how to heat your rental to the standard, Tenancy Services has created the heating assessment tool. Once completed, the tool will confirm the capacity of heater you must provide to meet your obligations. The tool will ask you questions about:
Heating assessment tool (external link) — Tenancy Services
Before you get started, you’ll need to:
It’s a good idea to read through the heating assessment tool guide from Tenancy Services beforehand to help get your measurements and calculations right.
Heating assessment tool guide (external link) — Tenancy Services
In some circumstances, you may not have to add more heating. This would apply if you have one or more existing heaters that:
Connor is the landlord of a property in Invercargill with an open plan lounge and dining area. This is the main living room in the rental. There is an existing electric heater that was installed in January 2016, which is fixed to the property and directly heats the main living room. Connor checks whether it is an allowable heater under the heating standard. He notices it has a thermostat and heating capacity of 2.0kW, and concludes it is an allowable heater. But Connor still doesn’t know if the heater is enough to meet his legal obligations under the healthy home standards.
Connor uses the heating assessment tool to determine if the heater has sufficient capacity to heat the area. As the property’s lounge and dining area are open to each other, the total space makes up the ‘main living room’ area that Connor needs to consider.
He realises he needs to provide extra heating capacity of 3.0kW to heat his living room. The heating standard only allows a 'top-up' if the required extra capacity is 1.4kW or less, so the 'top-up' option doesn't apply to him.
Connor decides to purchase a 5kW heat pump for the space. He leaves the existing electric heater in the property, as he is planning to increase the size of the main living room in future. In the meantime, it’s available to the tenants to use if they wish in addition to the new heat pump.
