A rating tool for new and existing homes: scoping report now out
Industry-wide agreement on the need for action to address New Zealand’s cold, damp and unhealthy homes has led to a collaborative effort to develop a rating tool for new and existing homes.
A single rating tool was seen as a critical foundation to drive change with its aim to be a simple, easily understood web-based interface for consumers. It would combine a ‘star’ rating and an annual estimate cost of operating for energy, water, etc. for a home with its current features, in order to achieve the WHO standard of an 18°C average indoor temperature.
Working together, New Zealand Green Building Council, BRANZ and Beacon Pathway have taken the first step toward the development of a single rating tool. The team have just released a report, Development of a Single Residential Rating Tool for New Zealand, which scopes why New Zealand needs a rating tool, what criteria it could include, options to ensure wide scale efficient delivery, and most importantly how this could help improve the quality and performance of New Zealand housing stock while setting a best practice benchmark for new housing.
This foundation work has identified the need for a single rating tool that rates both new and existing homes and which:
- Facilitates improvement of existing stock by clearly delivering useful retrofit priorities to consumers, and aligning with the Government’s home insulation fund and other relevant programmes.
- Encourages action by providing consumers with information on the choices or actions they can take and the estimated costs and benefits of these actions.
- Provides achievable and consistent advice and standards over time that enables the building and construction industry to produce, install and maintain solutions that deliver real results for homeowners and occupiers.
- Enables the use of an online web-based tool that generates information on the expected building performance based on data about the house (as entered online by the user).
- Is a free or low-cost self-assessment so that acts as a “one-stop-shop” experience for consumers (i.e. connects the user to additional information and market solutions).
- Is objective and technically robust, while being easy to use.
A draft rating tool framework created by a joint industry/government Technical Working Group is included.