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A South Auckland man believes the tamperproof gas monitor he took a year to develop will detect illegal drug laboratories making methamphetamine before they can contaminate a house.
Ken Hetherington spent the last year developing the Anrai monitor which detects two of the gases given off when methamphetamine is cooked and sends out a silent alert.
The monitor could detect gasses from an illegal lab within two minutes and send a silent alert to a monitoring station and the police.
Mr Hetherington, an engineer, began looking at the problem after a friend rented out his house and was then faced with a bill for thousands of dollars cleaning up after it was contaminated by toxins from a clandestine drugs lab.
"We just couldn't believe that not only is the landlord a sitting duck waiting for this to happen but the amount of innocent parties affected by the contamination - children and so forth."
Mr Hetherington said last year another house in Hamilton cost $120,000 to be decontaminated after police found an illegal lab.
The illegal labs meant houses often became uninsurable. Details of the decontamination could also go on the land information memorandum (LIM) report held by the local authority, making it hard to sell or rent.
The Anrai monitor cost $1300 to buy and had a monthly monitoring fee of $28. It could detect gases within two minutes.
"The more cooking that goes on in a house the more the contamination embeds into the absorbent materials first, your gib (wallboard) your carpets, drapes and so forth. But then it also etches into the formica benchtops and your stainless benchtops."
He said many landlords borrowed 85 per cent to 90 per cent of the purchase price of investment properties and could not afford to have them empty or the bills from cleaning up an illegal drug lab.
The monitor had the potential to be installed in hotels, motels, storage units, holiday homes, houses and campervans.
- NZPA
