[gina]

My daughter suffers from Raynauds and from what I've been reading heating isn't a priorty in New Zealand. Whilst surfing I did find a rental with what loooked like an old rad but I gather this isn't the norm. I've also noticed on the real estate sites that underfloor heating is in some houses, but have I read correctly, as it only seems to be in bathrooms. She is very hardy and does wrap up, and she is used to the cold coming from England, but I wouldn't expect her to have to wear gloves indoors (although I have read on one post that someone didn't need gloves for the outside but did wear them whilst watching tele!!!). Do the newer houses tend to have more heating or is it something more common in certain areas. Actually my daughter is here with me now and she has a tee-shirt on whilst I'm in a fleece, so perhaps the cold bothers me more!!!

[JandM]

The residents will answer you with insights from all areas, I'm sure. But on my two visits to New Zealand, in 2004 and then last year, five weeks each, the only radiator I saw was in my d-i-l's room in the maternity hospital. Heating and insulation are definitely issues for those of us used to them in the UK. There are several helpful threads on here, for instance http://www.emigratenz.org/forum/showthread.php?t=15156. Suffice it to say, we're planning on having to spend out on these features when we buy a house in NZ, unless we're lucky enough to find one that's already been dealt with, probably by a previous immigrant Brit.

[IanW99]

My daughter suffers from Raynauds and from what I've been reading heating isn't a priorty in New Zealand. Whilst surfing I did find a rental with what loooked like an old rad but I gather this isn't the norm. I've also noticed on the real estate sites that underfloor heating is in some houses, but have I read correctly, as it only seems to be in bathrooms. She is very hardy and does wrap up, and she is used to the cold coming from England, but I wouldn't expect her to have to wear gloves indoors (although I have read on one post that someone didn't need gloves for the outside but did wear them whilst watching tele!!!). Do the newer houses tend to have more heating or is it something more common in certain areas. Actually my daughter is here with me now and she has a tee-shirt on whilst I'm in a fleece, so perhaps the cold bothers me more!!!

There is a large range of different heating systems in use in NZ houses.

The 'traditional (english)' radiators are not very common at all.

What seems to be more common from a central heating perspective is 'gas ducted' heating where all the main rooms have one or more vents to provide the heating. But most houses don't really do central heating at all.

Best suggestion would be to look around at the various houses when you are in NZ to find out which options best suit you?

Ian

[jshack52]

Hi

Electricity is cheaper in NZ than in england. The kiwis i have met since moving over just say they use an oil filled radiator and that gives off more than enough heat.

I used one of these in my lounge in the UK before we got the central heating put in and found it gave off just as much heat as the central heating when it was finally installed, the only issue in the UK is the price of electricity. I have been told that this is not so much of an issue here as it is a bit cheaper - not had my first bill yet but will keep you posted when it comes if you like?

The house we have just moved into has not got heating and it is too hot for us at the moment - it being summer. It is a the dullest day we have had so far since we got here (not sunny at all today) and i am still hot and have the windows open.

Dont be put off the ideal house just due to the lack of heating as you can get oil filled radiators cheap enough in somewhere like kmart or the warehouse. I think maybe the insulation is more the issue here. Our house is about 5 years old so i assume it is insulated, the older houses tend to have more problems with damp.

hope this helps.

Jess

[Lupin]

Electricity is cheaper in NZ than in england. The kiwis i have met since moving over just say they use an oil filled radiator and that gives off more than enough heat.

Is it? Doesn't seem like it!

I wouldn't advise getting oil filled rads to heat a cold old house, without insulation you'll be heating the night sky, lol!

I'd look for a newer house or build yourself or budget for insulating and heating when you buy.

[incredible hulse]

Is it? Doesn't seem like it!


No, not for us either.

Compared Genesis against our old provider (Scottish Power) and Genesis charge (after discounts) is 86 cents daily charge and then 18.9 cents per kwh. Scottish power seems to have loads of plans so just chose the most expensive and they are 13-16pence daily and 8.8-9.4pence per kwh. Quite a bit cheaper in the UK in real terms.

I would agree with the insulation and despite having central heating would recommend double glazing above anything else

[zardell]

Electricity is cheaper in NZ than in england.
not had my first bill yet but will keep you posted when it comes if you like?






Hope you're not in for too much of a shock, but in winter there is no way that I would use an electric oil filled fin heater. Couple that cost with the cost of running the dehumidifier 24/7 to combat the damp atmosphere (you can't effectively heat damp air) and it would simply cost a fortune. And how many would you need to run to heat different parts of the house?

We lived in a brand spanking new 3 bed / 2 bath single storey home with very efficient insulation, but it would have cost far too much to run oil filled heaters.

I'm with Lupin and Incredible on this one.

:exit

Julie

xx

[Potato]

Unlike lots of people here I live in a "drab rental" (and no, it's not depressing at all :D ). So installing central heating, insulation and double glazing is not an option.
In Wellington, I have found a few nights over the last few weeks to be really cold, and I've slept under a duvet, top sheet and wool blanket.
IME, being cold in NZ winter (and spring, and autumn, and......summer ;) ) is just part of the lifestyle! You'll see in Nelson, they are banning open wood fires. So there's been a big market in alternatives. Guess what? Central heating as we Brits know it is just not mentioned.
I personally am not a big fan of heat pumps. Pump your warm air around the house at fairly large cost to yourself, then when you turn it off the warmth is gone in minutes. Compare that to central heating. I also dislike the little overheard hot air blowers they sell (for about $100) for your bathroom. On a cold day, it's very nice to stand under it, but the problem is it only warms you up if you stand....directly under it. The effect is negligible in the rest of the room.

You can buy some fairly efficient (marked with stars) gas heaters which I have found to work surprisingly well. Of course, they only heat the air, again. But the one I have it pretty darn good.

Electric powered oil heaters have been mentioned.

I agree very much with a statement I once read on here. Paraphrased:

"Kiwis are more likely to attach a fan to the ceiling to blow the warm air back down, then congratulate themselves on their ingenuity- rather than properly insulating their loft in the first place."

Some of my suggestions may sound very "studenty", I'm afraid:

Buy cheap/second hand rugs to put on the floor, if you don't have underfloor insulation.....works surprisingly well.
Buy lots of second hand wool blankets.
Get some Merino products for wearing in the house.
Use the "layering" principle for clothing, thin layers better than one thick layer.

Failing that, just open some doors and windows (and your fridge ;) ) and let the warmer air flood in and circulate.

I may have painted a drab picture, it's not that bad really, and if you own your own house then you'll have more options than I do.

[nippa&pippa]

I also suffers from Raynauds while I was in UK, but since I arrived in NZ, I have not experiences it yet (phew!!) why? I don't know.

[richard]

Hope you're not in for too much of a shock, but in winter there is no way that I would use an electric oil filled fin heater. Couple that cost with the cost of running the dehumidifier 24/7 to combat the damp atmosphere (you can't effectively heat damp air) and it would simply cost a fortune. And how many would you need to run to heat different parts of the house?
....

It works fine for us. We have a log burner and heat pump in the main living areas and an oil heater in each bedroom. In the winter we run the oil heaters for 2-3 hours in the evening and 2 hours in the morning on a timer.

We were quoted $15,000 to put gas or diesel central heating in to a four bedroom house. If you assume that oil heaters cost $50 per month more or $600 per year more than central heating to run (which I suspect they don't) then it would take 25 years to get back the installation cost of the central heating. Oil and gas prices are only going to keep going up so the cost of running these will get higher and higher.

[Familyofmonkeys]

You can buy some fairly efficient (marked with stars) gas heaters which I have found to work surprisingly well. Of course, they only heat the air, again. But the one I have it pretty darn good.



Problem is a by-product of burning gas is water. So you end up adding more moisture to the atmosphere, which would not be ideal in an already cool & damp environment. If you lived in a draughty house, I suppose at least in should be better ventilated....arn't draughty old villas supposed to be the best ventilated homes?

[Familyofmonkeys]

It works fine for us. We have a log burner and heat pump in the main living areas and an oil heater in each bedroom. In the winter we run the oil heaters for 2-3 hours in the evening and 2 hours in the morning on a timer.

We were quoted $15,000 to put gas or diesel central heating in to a four bedroom house. If you assume that oil heaters cost $50 per month more or $600 per year more than central heating to run (which I suspect they don't) then it would take 25 years to get back the installation cost of the central heating. Oil and gas prices are only going to keep going up so the cost of running these will get higher and higher.

While it is true that gas prices keep on going up, alot of modern gas heating systems can be converted to run from bio-fuel later on when it becomes widely available.

Would you mind saying what kind of central heating that quote price was for? We are investigating hydroponic underfloor heating (and other heating types too) for an entire 4 bed house. So far installation seems to be between $11,000 and $15,000 depending on system, and how many independent circuits we want. Running costs also look very good as you can run it at a much lower ambient temperature to warm room up compared to other types of heating, as warm air starts where you want it i.e. at the floor level. Also not to be confused with the expensive to run underfloor heating that some houses have in the bathrooms.

[Potato]

Problem is a by-product of burning gas is water. So you end up adding more moisture to the atmosphere, which would not be ideal in an already cool & damp environment. If you lived in a draughty house, I suppose at least in should be better ventilated....arn't draughty old villas supposed to be the best ventilated homes?

Yes, it is a problem for us. We have been looking at those DVS things that seem to be fairly popular. Hopefully the landlord will help out :)
I have been told that NZ houses last a long time because they can breathe.

[zardell]

We have a log burner and heat pump in the main living areas and an oil heater in each bedroom. In the winter we run the oil heaters for 2-3 hours in the evening and 2 hours in the morning on a timer.


Yes, running the oil heaters as you do I'm sure is fine, but I should have pointed out that I was of the assumption that Jshack52 had been advised to use them as the only heat source and I still maintain that this would not be cost effective.

Always ready to be corrected though...

Julie

xx

[incredible hulse]

While it is true that gas prices keep on going up, alot of modern gas heating systems can be converted to run from bio-fuel later on when it becomes widely available.

Would you mind saying what kind of central heating that quote price was for? We are investigating hydroponic underfloor heating (and other heating types too) for an entire 4 bed house. So far installation seems to be between $11,000 and $15,000 depending on system, and how many independent circuits we want. Running costs also look very good as you can run it at a much lower ambient temperature to warm room up compared to other types of heating, as warm air starts where you want it i.e. at the floor level. Also not to be confused with the expensive to run underfloor heating that some houses have in the bathrooms.
We got gas central heating put in (Brivis vented system). We had a quote for the whole of the bottom level of our 5 bed house (293 sqm) and also to do 2/3's of the house. These were about 8.5 and 6.5k respectively - the first one would have included zoning options and a bigger burner. We actually went with the latter and got a heatpump (largest Fujitsu wall mount unit) put in the other end of the house.
Observations are;
- Very impressed with the gas system - costs about 100-150 dollars a month to run in winter (one for a couple of hours in evening and morning). It is a little noisy when igniting (mounted in loft space) however.
- Not impressed by heatpump; heat doesn't distribute between rooms as well as expected and quite draughty in operation (feels like cool air if directly in front of unit).
Whilst you probably won't get the fiscal returns on the gas system as opposed to running oil rads it was the better option for us as we have quite large rooms and the rads were not upto the job. It also will add a little to the value of the house hopefully and gas prices are cheaper than electric (currently).

We also have underfloor heating (in hallways, 2 bathrooms; probably about 40-50 sqm) but never run it as it was unbelieveably expensive. I suspect this is a different system to the one you are looking at though

All that said the real thing to get (imo) is double glazing. It's amazing how quickly the houses cool down without it (Our house is very well insulated elsewhere).

[richard]

...
Would you mind saying what kind of central heating that quote price was for?

We got two quotes and they came to within a few hundred dollars of each other. The quotes were for traditional central heating with a boiler, either LPG or diesel, and radiators in each room.

The quotes were both around $15k and that was just for heating. If we wanted the hot water cylinder replaced and plumbed in to the boiler we would have paid closer to $18k.

[richard]

Yes, running the oil heaters as you do I'm sure is fine, but I should have pointed out that I was of the assumption that Jshack52 had been advised to use them as the only heat source and I still maintain that this would not be cost effective.

Always ready to be corrected though...

Julie

xx

When we first moved in to our house we only had a log burner so we used that in the evenings and at weekends then bought the oil heaters for the bedrooms.

Because the house was cold in the mornings we bought a large oil heater for the living room/dining room and put it on a timer so that area would be warm first thing. The log burner took at least 30 minutes to start kicking out heat so if you were heading off to work it was a waste of time and effort.

When we bought some wood last winter I counted the logs as we moved them around to the back of the house then divided the cost by the number of logs. I worked out that each log cost around 40 cents and since each log only burns for around an hour they are probably more expensive to use than an oil heater!

A heat pump is a lot cheaper to run (not taking in to account the initial purchase price) but I prefer the warm glow and dry heat from the log burner. We are lucky because we have both options.

The other problem with central heating is that there is a large up front investment that isn't likely to be recouped if you decided to move house within a few years.

[Super_BQ]

Electricity is cheaper in NZ than in england. The kiwis i have met since moving over just say they use an oil filled radiator and that gives off more than enough heat.

The issue of heating in NZ homes has been addressed many times in the past on this forum. An easy search for these threads will yield more information.

I've been seeing lots of TV advertising about trying to make Kiwi homes more energy efficient. Most common way is through insulation or use of different devices such as heat pumps to make NZ homes more comfortabel. However, to this date i've not yet seen any new homes that have undergone considerable changes to warrant the large increase in efficiency.

I want to make it clear that it's not really ideal to take any existing home and converting them to be more energy efficient. I know this may be a blunt point but the key stumbling block lies in how NZ builders continue to build the same way as they did in the past. Two key issues comes to my mind:

1) Framing construction in NZ has not changed for the past century and even the newest homes today are built where the wall studs always have 'dwang's between them. Likewise between the floor joists too. Though this may appear to be a benefit for increasing the strength of the wall, it also plays a huge disadvantage in curbing the energy transfer from the inside of the house to the exterior of the house. This energy loss is conducted from the gib board (dry wall) though the studs and dwangs which then transfers through the exterior cladding.

Also the dwangs are a major obstruction in installing heating ducts for central heating.

2) Open frame roofing. If you look closely to the roofs of almost every NZ resident home, they are not built where the roof atic space is AIR TIGHT. The tiles or 'colour steel' roofing material does not seal any air (and also water) from getting into the attic space. That is, though each tile laps over each other, hot air still escapes between the cracks. Furthermore, the eaves around the house are also vented which means a strong gust of wind can blow all the hot air away in the atic space.

Corrugated iron roofs also have a different problem in keeping heat in the house. Elementary science shows that metal alone is not an insulator but rather a conductor, so like the principles of large audio amplifiers for your home stereo, they rely on a large "heatsinks" (made of aluminum or copper) to dissipate the heat away.

In reply to the quote above, if you think electricity prices are cheaper in the UK. Power prices in BC (Canada) are around 7 cents/kW/hr. A rational person would think that with such cheap power prices, they could leave their heaters on 24hrs/day. But in fact, houses in Canada have a far higher energy efficiency rating than any house built in NZ. It's not unusual to see tripple pane windows in the newer homes and for decades, exterior framing built on 2 x 6 studs so you can fill enough insulation in the walls.

Though these homes may appear to be built super air tight, the question of stale air comes in. I am speaking for those homes using LPG/Natural Gas central heating. The furnace heater itself serves many functions than just to heat the air. Apart from ducting heat into each room, the cool air from the register is mixed in with the outside air from another duct - this is done at the 'heat exchanger' in the furnace. But before the stale air reaches to the heat exchanger, the air passes through (an optional dehumidifyer) and air filter that you replace each year - you will be surprised how much dust this filter catches. Also the issue of water vapours from burning gas is expelled in another small tube that runs outside so no additional humidity is added into the house, nor any stale air.

Will such building techniques come to NZ? I don't believe so as it's far too costly to build this way in NZ. Building materials, cost of compliance, re-training tradesmen, inspections, etc will kill it. There are already a lot of tradesmen in NZ that don't know how to build a leak free home - due to the invasion of plaster exterior cladding. Leave these houses in hot climates like in California or in the Middle East.

[Familyofmonkeys]

Not sure about a couple of your points here:


1) Framing construction in NZ has not changed for the past century and even the newest homes today are built where the wall studs always have 'dwang's between them. Likewise between the floor joists too. Though this may appear to be a benefit for increasing the strength of the wall, it also plays a huge disadvantage in curbing the energy transfer from the inside of the house to the exterior of the house. This energy loss is conducted from the gib board (dry wall) though the studs and dwangs which then transfers through the exterior cladding.


Whilst thermal bridging is an issue in any construction technique, but it is not specifically the dwangs or studs that are the issue, but any heat conducting point going from one side of your thermal barrier to the other.



2) Open frame roofing. If you look closely to the roofs of almost every NZ resident home, they are not built where the roof atic space is AIR TIGHT. The tiles or 'colour steel' roofing material does not seal any air (and also water) from getting into the attic space. That is, though each tile laps over each other, hot air still escapes between the cracks. Furthermore, the eaves around the house are also vented which means a strong gust of wind can blow all the hot air away in the atic space.


Attic spaces are meant to be vented. As far as I can tell it is a building requirement for modern UK homes. One reason for this is that it prevents the build up of moisture in the roof space. Also, you should not be concerned about warm air being blown out of the attic space. the idea is that ceiling insulation should prevent warm air from reaching your attic in the first place. The amount of thermal buffering provided by having warm air in the attic is so tiny it is of no real benefit.

[Super_BQ]

I still beg to differ. The better solution is to use thicker studs like 2 x 6 and do away with any dwangs. But kiwis have this obsession that a house with more rooms sells for more $. So the thicker walls would only take the room size or 1 less room away. If thermal barriers are an issue, how many aluminum framed windows are built with a thermal barrier? (where the inside framing is completely isolated from the exterior aluminum framing? I've not seen any in NZ and they still install these in the most modern home.

Regardless how much insulation you put in the atic space, heat will always rise through it. Having a reasonably air tight room means that the roof material itself can act as another insulation. I'm sure hot water flasks would be less effective if the outer casing allowed for the outside air to blow through it. But I think we can all agree that there is a huge upfront cost in building more efficient homes. But since the average kiwi home changes hands every 6 years, there's not real incentive for anyone to overly invest into building their home.

I'm being repetitive, so if people want a more comfortable centrally heated home that is energy efficient, you really have to start designing houses that are based on proven concepts. Look for other countries that have a huge change from their summer to winter climates.

BQ

[Familyofmonkeys]

if people want a more comfortable centrally heated home that is energy efficient, you really have to start designing houses that are based on proven concepts. Look for other countries that have a huge change from their summer to winter climates.


Very True. Trying to convince some NZ builders that it is actually worth doing things 'differently' can be a bit of a challenge though :roll