Nick Clements: YourQS Author on the Government overestimating the cost for new home insulation standards

A new report has found Government vastly overestimated the cost of new home insulation standards. 

Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk is considering rolling back the H1 insulation requirements brought in last year amid reports they add up to $40 thousand to build costs. 

But research by New Zealand Certified Builders and others, shows the requirements can add as little as $2,200 to the cost of a three-bedroom house. 

Research author Nick Clements told Ryan Bridge the Government's approach looked at the very maximum, which isn't realistic. 

He says they instead looked at the minimum they could do to meet the standard. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Remember the insulation debate new h one insulation standards. The
Minister Chris Penk said, well, he didn't say, but he
quoted figures that it could be around forty to fifty
thousand dollars extra to meet the new standards per house
that's been built. He said that in July, and now
we've had some numbers done. It could cost as little

(00:21):
as two thousand, two hundred dollars to add to a
new three bedroom house. That's according to Quantity Surveying, your
QS who put the numbers together for ebos and New
Zealand Certified Builders and Nick Clements is YOURQS author. Nick,
Thanks for being with us this morning. Reilly, tell me
what is that two thousand, two hundred dollars estimate? What

(00:43):
is that for?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
So that's the cost impact of meeting the new ah
Onne standard, which changed for the twenty twenty three last year.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Is this for the country wide? The average? How big
a home are we talking?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
It was a two bedroom about one hundred and forty
square meter two story. Our three bedroom, two story one
hundred and forty square meter home based on the Orkhan
regions are sort of the upper half of the North.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Island, Okay and is this if you if you start
the work on the H one from design phase.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah. So with H one, there's two ways of complying
with the standard. There's something called schedule method and then
the other option is calculation method. So how I describe
it to peoples, there's four different levers that a designer
can pull to enable them enable their design to meet
the standard. And those levers are the insulation and the

(01:42):
thermal performance of the floor, the walls, the windows, or
the ceiling, the roof. And if you do it by
schedule method, it basically pushes all of those lead leavers
to ten. So it basically ensures that the building complies
by making sure everything is up to a particular standard.
But what the calculation method allows a designer to do
is work out the film performance of that particular building,

(02:05):
so that design that a size floor area, wall area,
window area, and then they can pull each of those
levers individually to meet a design criteria so it meets
the performance required for the standard. And the thing is
that each of those levers has different costs. He'd click
on that lever costs a different amount of money. And
what we did with the exercise, where is basically looked

(02:27):
at each of those leavers. I looked at what was
the in that case, what was the minimum we could
do to meet the standard, and what was the cost
of each of those ex changes. And so you're able
to basically it's a bit more refined than what the
schedule method is. The schedule method puts everything basically the
most extensive option, really okay, whereas the calculation method you
can refine.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
So you haven't obviously done a lot of work on this.
The minister hadn't. He was using numbers that were given
to him by a few random builders. Is there any
way it could cost forty to fifty thousand dollars for
a house, a three four bedroom house, as he's indica,
I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
No, No, it would seem it would seem pretty high.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Is there a difference? Can you are there? Is there
an allowance for a difference per region, because it's obviously
warmer up north than it is down south in these standards.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah, in the in the code is what they call
us that our rating, which is the indication of the
film work performance. And so you've got to meet a
different a venue down south than you do in the
in the North Island, right, but it wouldn't and it
would be more extensive to meet that higher avalue because
you've got to have a higher performing component to get there.
But I don't think. I didn't actually do the exercise
on the other parts of the country, but I don't

(03:36):
believe it would make that much of a difference.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
All right, thank you very much. A few times this morning.
Sounds like the Minister will be taking this one on board.
Nick Clements of us, the your QS, author of the numbers.
They've run the numbers on the new H one insulation
standards and found actually it's a fraction of what we
were led to believe.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
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Speaker 1 (03:58):
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