[clodestar]

How much should we budget for cost of insulation on 3/4 bedroom house in Wellington area for insulation if necessary ?

[tick tock]

I live in CHCH so can not help on info re Wellington, but as I speak. sorry write.. I have E-Can installing my underfloor and Ceiling Insulation. We got a large subsidy so look and see if Wellinton Council have a program to do this type of thing

[johnandbethcox]

What do you mean "we got a large subsidy"? Do I understand correctly that the city council gave you a subsidy to do renovations on your house?

[tick tock]

They gave us a rebate on the insulation and installing a woodburner. CHCH is trying to get people to change from open fires. To get the sub on the log burner we had to have all the insulation checked and brought up to standard.

[Nathan]

ChCh specific energy efficiency site
http://www.cea.co.nz/index.html

has good general info, but v good for ChChers, i think
has a link to the subsidies info

[jess]

I haven't found a subsidy like Chrischurch's CEA in the Wellington region (or through my Kapiti coucil). The only thing I've found is the national govt. program to help with insulation costs, from the EECA (Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. There's a good overview of that here (http://www.nailed.co.nz/Insulation_Grants_961.aspx?pageid=961).

We don't qualify for that, because you have to be eligible for a Community Services Card to get the insulation subsidy. To be eligible for the Community Services Card you have to earn below the thresholds listed here (http://www.workandincome.govt.nz/get-assistance/csc/income-thresholds.html). If you qualify for the card, you may be able to get govt. assistance to help cover your insulation through the EECA.

If anybody knows of another organization in the Welly region helping out with the cost of adding insulation to older homes I'd love to hear about it.

(We're planning to just buy extra insulation for the ceiling and under the house, and a hot water heater wrap to do it ourselves since we don't seem to qualify for assistance of any kind. We'll probably put plastic over windows as well. The woodstove does a good job of heating our open plan place, but I am quick to get cold, and would like all the 'pink batts' I can get! :)

[sarahw]

Have a look at Poly Palace - they do underfloor insulation in the Welly area from the recycled polystyrene in the area so it works out cheaper than those who manufacture it (plus you'll probably end up with part of the set from King Kong or LOTR under your house!!) - I've heard it works really well from friends who have it, but am afraid I can't advise on price. Also our house was fully insulated with Pink Batts a few years ago, but before we bought the house, so again, I can't let you know a price - I think it would very much be dependent on the size of house (regardless of bedrooms a 3 bed house can vary in size a lot & how many walls/how much ceiling space you have - which can be very unpredictable - for example our house has 8 outside walls 4 of which are 3 stories high & we have 2 completely independent roof spaces so it would cost a heck of a lot different (probably double) than a 1 storey square bungalow with the same amount of bedrooms to insulate...

[richard]

The Council (Environment Canterbury) sponsored site is here:-

http://www.ecan.govt.nz/Our+Environment/Air/Home+Heating/Clean+Heat+Project/

We have just had a quote from them for underfloor insulation and a replacement for our log burner. We can get a subsidy of around $800 on the above because we 'use a log burner as the main source of heating in the main living area".

[westi]

We had Ecan round too and they guy was really helpful. We would have got a subsidy of $1200 but have decided not to take it because we would have had to lose the wood burner in the lounge, and if there was a power cut.........

[Super_BQ]

When we were having insulation put into the walls in our house, i've noticed none of the fiberglass insulation packaging showed any "R Value" figure. It just came in bails where you unroll the insulation. Is this a conspiracy? All the insulation I saw in Canada had printed values of ie. R20, R40, etc. on the packaging.

Sound batts (fibreglass insulation that is suppose to isolate the noise between rooms) is a popular sell in NZ. We have it in many of our rooms in the ground level but... I think it's just a gimmick because the insulated rooms upstairs are no worse with noise transfer.

If the fiberglass is more dense, they they should at least advertise the "R Value" per a specific width or am I missing something on these 'pink batts' being sold at Placemakers/Bunnings/Mitre10 etc?

[richard]

We had Ecan round too and they guy was really helpful. We would have got a subsidy of $1200 but have decided not to take it because we would have had to lose the wood burner in the lounge, and if there was a power cut.........

That is why we are using the subsidy to get another woodburner installed. Ours is over 20 years old and the air baffle doesn't open properly.

When we were having insulation put into the walls in our house, i've noticed none of the fiberglass insulation packaging showed any "R Value" figure. It just came in bails where you unroll the insulation. Is this a conspiracy? All the insulation I saw in Canada had printed values of ie. R20, R40, etc. on the packaging.

.....

If the fiberglass is more dense, they they should at least advertise the "R Value" per a specific width or am I missing something on these 'pink batts' being sold at Placemakers/Bunnings/Mitre10 etc?

I think the plastic packaging surrounding the bales of Pink Batts that I installed had a small sticker on with the R rating.

[suebeenz]

Found a related story in the herald

http://subs.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10429474

("Energy-efficient houses will cut power bills 60 per cent")

[Oregonkiwi]

Is this a conspiracy? All the insulation I saw in Canada had printed values of ie. R20, R40, etc. on the packaging.

am I missing something on these 'pink batts' being sold at Placemakers/Bunnings/Mitre10 etc?

Yes, you're absolutely right, it is a conspiracy.:roll

There's some info about insulation R ratings here
http://www.pinkbatts.co.nz/faq.asp