SmarterHomes - helping New Zealanders build, and live, more smartly

A new website designed to help New Zealanders live in healthier, cosier and more cost-effective homes is up and running.

Whether you're building your dream home, doing up an existing one or looking for easy ways to improve your quality of life, the SmarterHomes website  offers advice on how to have a home that's 'smarter' in every sense of the word.

Tips on smart design, building and the way you live in your house will give you the benefits of a healthier, more energy-efficient and cheaper-to-run home.

Smart homes sell

Smarter homes are the way of the future. Increasingly, home buyers and renters are demanding homes that are energy-efficient, comfortable, healthy and enjoyable to live in. By understanding what home owners and occupiers are seeking, you'll be setting your business up for a more prosperous future.

What is a smart home?

A smart home creates less waste, uses less energy, costs less to run and is warmer, drier and healthier to live in. Smart homes are a good investment and will last well into the future while being kind to the environment.

Smart homes need not cost more or be less comfortable. In fact the opposite is true. For example, orienting a new home to capture the free heat and light of the sun is a simple and cost-free thing to do at the design and construction phase. Adding insulation when re-lining walls during renovation will add little to the total cost of the work, but will reduce annual heating bills and increase the warmth of a home for years to come. Features like double-glazing or a solar hot water system are more expensive initially, but these costs can be recovered through lower energy bills over time.

It's also hard to put a dollar value on the improved comfort, warmth and health that can result for New Zealand families.

Why SmarterHomes?

Everyone wants to live in a healthy, warm and dry home that's affordable to run. And we all want to play our part in reducing environmental impacts.

The sheer variety of available information in the marketplace means we often don't know where to start. Choosing the smartest products, systems, procedures and practices can be challenging. And of course, each home is as different as the needs, interests, values and priorities of the people who live in them.

SmarterHomes has been designed to cut through all the information clutter when making decisions about building, renovating, buying or renting a home. The website provides authoritative, objective advice, enabling people to make the choices that are right for them. It includes a HomeSmarts Calculator so that users can customise their searches and information needs according to budget priorities, current renovation or building projects, and major problems they want to solve in their homes. The calculator also allows users to prioritise these issues and problems by running a simple home health check.

Who is SmarterHomes for?

SmarterHomes is for anyone who owns or rents a home, is looking to buy or build a new house, or is renovating their existing home. It provides authoritative and objective information to help in decision-making when selecting materials or choosing a new home and provides links to information that will help with the technical details involved.

What information does SmarterHomes provide?

SmarterHomes provides information on energy efficiency, water efficiency and passive design solutions to make the most of the sun's free heat and energy. It offers advice on how to design a healthy home that has lower energy bills each month, selecting water and energy-efficient appliances and heating systems, and reducing moisture (hence mould and mildew) in the home. It provides wide-ranging tips from simple things people can do to improve their home at little or no cost, to easy fixes and worthwhile investments that need the input of building professionals. The site also gives advice on landscaping, selecting materials and construction methods.

There are plenty of examples, case studies and tools to help people make the right choices for their specific projects.

SmarterHomes www.smarterhomes.org.nz  was developed to form a wider resource in combination with two other websites: Consumer Build www.consumerbuild.org.nz  a one-stop shop for consumer advice on building, renovating and maintaining homes; and Level www.level.org.nz  a more technical resource for industry professionals.

Smart homes are good for the environment

Housing significantly affects the environment. Residential buildings in New Zealand consume 12 percent of the nation's total energy and a large proportion of water. The materials used in homes, from framing timber to carpets, draw on natural resources - the manufacture, transportation and eventual disposal of these materials all place pressure on the environment.

Smart homes are kinder to the environment. If we save energy in our homes we reduce the demand for electricity, so that less needs to be made from burning fossil fuels such as coal (a process which emits the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, leading to climate change).

If we use less water in our homes, this helps to protect waterways and reduce the need for new dams and reservoirs.

Smart homes are also designed well and use sustainable building materials, so that they are less wasteful and less harmful to the ecosystems around them.

Smart homes are better for our health

New Zealand houses are well-known for being colder than the recommended temperatures for a healthy living environment. Warmer homes are much better for our health, and heating your home doesn't have to cost the earth if you do it smartly.

A recent Wellington School of Medicine study confirmed cold homes affect our health and that warmer homes create a far healthier environment.

The study looked at people living in uninsulated houses who had recent symptoms of respiratory illness and measured the impacts after some of their homes were insulated.

The people living in insulated houses reported feeling generally better, took fewer days off work or school, had reduced coughing and wheezing, and made fewer visits to their doctor. The study also found that insulated houses were significantly warmer and drier and used nearly 20 percent less energy than uninsulated homes.