[H & Rick]

In NZ what kind of house do you live in?

Do you have any kind of heating?

What area do you live in?

What do you think of housing in NZ?

[sarahw]

Hi,

We live in Welly & I'd say 99% of housing here is wooden - you really wouldn't want to be in a brick house during an earthquake, believe me!! Some of the houses that look brick here are just brick clad.

Housing is poor in relation to US and European standards - it can be 5 degrees indoors before I put the heating on in the morning when its 4 or 5 degrees outside. Some mornings I go outside & its warmer out there - especially spring & autumn!

Double glazing is rare, not to say you can't find it but in relation to salary it costs a fortune & window sizes are very irregular here & quite large, for example we have 6 windows in our lounge alone - 1 is a patio door & 3 are bigger than any window we've had in the UK - our dining room has 3 large and 1 small window, bedrooms all have 1 picture window & a small window - to re-glaze a house with windows that size you're talking a small fortune!

Heating we have oil filled rads in the bedrooms, although next year we're hoping to get a DVS system (ventilation system throught the ceilings) with a heat element to heat one end of the house (we have 2 separate roofs on the house - higgledy piggledy place set over 4 floors), the lounge has a gas heater that we had fitted - kiwis only tend to heat the rooms they're in we've got used to wearing 3 or 4 jumpers at once in winter & cats on the lap help!! - our rental property before we moved here had 'central heating' which was air vented through the floors - very good system & most kiwis that came round couldn't belive how warm it was - but the hallways had no heating at all which seemed strange to me. However, on the plus side we don't have the heating on as much as we would in the UK - it can be the middle of winter & we might be too warm one evening to have it on - oil filled rads we only use for a couple of months a year in the bedrooms - baby's room excepted & the heating in the lounge probably for 4.5 months a year.

Insulation is another bugbear here - standards are less than in Europe etc. Our house has pink batts insulation, but when we have one roof space that is vaulted ceiling with no insulation & huge windows that are single glazed I wonder if there is any point really!

On the upside, we have all-day sun, lovely views & a way bigger house than we could ever have afforded in the UK - would I swap it for a smaller, brick-built, insulated, double glazed place? - NOPE! Love it - in fact I told my hubby that we'll only sell when we can't climb stairs any more since we'd need 4 stair lifts!! :o)

Here's a couple of pics:

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h136/sarahandersonz/House/House.jpg
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h136/sarahandersonz/House/View.jpg

[H & Rick]

Great looking house... :p

I'd love to wake up to that view in the morning..

[Brijan]

Hi Heidi

We live in a Brick and Cedar house, that is the ground floor has a skin of brickwork around a timber frame with Gib board (plasterboard) on the inside, the top floor has Cedar weather boards on timber frame with Gib board inside, we also have a lot of window area which is great in summer but does tend to let out all the heat in winter so its heavy curtains then.

We have Gas Central heating that heats the entire house although its not radiators its a warm air system, you can have a radiator system but they are VERY expensive to buy and have installed.

We live in the northen suburbs of Wellington in Khandallah, we see part of the harbour from our side lounge windows though the veiws not as good as Sarah's

We love our house and once we had the c/htg installed its great.

There are houses from extremes here, some you would have trouble keeping the curtains against the windows because of the draughts, some new houses are being built with D/glazing the thing i can't quite understand is why only living rooms are done and not the whole house? probably the cost

Enough about us someone else's turn now

Brian and Jan :)