Building a Home Links

It pays to look at energy efficiency before you start building your own home. A well-designed home usually needs less heating.  Many investments in energy efficiency are a lot cheaper when building from scratch than when you need to correct them in an existing home.

Guidance for Housing Design

Christchurch City Council - series of  design guides  including guidelines for sustainable building.

 BRANZ  booklet "Easy guide to Eco-Building" shows how to carry out residential construction projects with consideration for the environment including energy efficiency, while increasing building performance and comfort. They also have an eco building links page.

Waitakere City Council 's  "Sustainable Home Guidelines" provides a lot of useful information on energy efficiency and other eco-building issues for those building a new home or renovating an existing home.

Queenstown Lakes District Council  has released sustainable building guidance (July 2007) - has generic applications to the Canterbury region.

Your Building Design on the EECA Energy Wise  webpage gives illustrated tips for designing energy efficient housing.

Waitakere City, Hamilton and Kapiti Coast have Eco Design Advisors,  who are able to provide independent, factual and practical building information. This service is likely to be extended to other districts and regions including the Canterbury region in 2007.

Practical information sources

ConsumerBuild  provides independent and up-to-date information to the public about building, buying, renovating and maintaining houses in New Zealand.

Smarter Homes  (launched June 2007) contains information for existing or prospective home owners on how to design, build and renovate homes. Key topics include energy and water efficiency, siting and landscaping; and materials and construction.

Level  (launched July 2007) provides detailed practical advice for the building and construction industry about all the key aspects of sustainable building, including passive solar design, durable and eco-friendly building material choices and rainwater collection for use in the home. This site complements SmarterHomes and ConsumerBuild.

GreenBuild  is a national on-line resource for comparing the environmental and technical characteristics of building materials.

EcoBob  – a web site which provides users with accessible information on environmentally friendly living including ‘eco’ house profiles and businesses who provide associated products and services.

Practical Initiatives

The NOW Home  project from Beacon Pathway  aims to address both designing / building of new homes, as well as renovating / improving existing homes, in order to create affordable homes that are warmer, healthier, cheaper to run and kinder to the environment.

Meridian Energy's  Right House (www.righthouse.co.nz) includes a package of technologies with design and installation services to create high standards of comfort and health. The Right House process starts with the occupants (values, priorities and lifestyle) and then examines building aspects, design, passive systems, and active heating systems.

Switch  is a division of Solid Energy  and offers technologies include solar collectors and wood pellet boilers. Switch provides a range of hot water and central heating solutions for households, businesses and schools.

SolArchitect  and Powered Living  are examples of companies offering architectural services in passive solar and energy efficient design.

Building Performance

Green Star NZ is an environmental rating system for buildings which evaluates the design, fit-out and operation of a building against environmental impact categories. The process of the system, as well as other resources on green building, can be found on the Green Building Council  website.

EECA (the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority) - is developing the Home Energy Rating Scheme  (HERS) – due for release in November 2007.

The BRANZ Green Home Scheme  is an independently assessed certification scheme for the environmental performance of residential buildings.

Ethical Financing

Prometheus  has information on ethical investment including loan packages for the construction of energy efficient housing.

Westpac are also offering Green Home Loans.

For more specific links regarding water and space heating, visit Home Water Heating Links and Home Space Heating Links.