Plan to lift insulation standards

Energy Minister Gerry Bownlee. Photo / Simon Baker

Companies that fit home insulation are starting their own training body to try and lift standards.

An initial audit by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority found problems with more than half of the 570 homes checked after being insulated under a Government top-up scheme.

Some problems were as minor as failing to leave an instruction manual behind but the authority said about half were more serious quality issues, including gaps in insulation, which can reduce effectiveness.

A full breakdown of the reasons homes failed the audit was not available yesterday, but Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee said missing just one point on a stringent 104-point checklist would result in a fail.

Making it harder was that some of the items on the checklist were contradictory - for example one required that no gaps were left in blanket insulation, while another required gaps to be left around heat sources, he said.

In some cases homeowners had asked for gaps to be left, for example around a manhole in the ceiling.

Asked if there was a case for increasing random checks of houses, Mr Brownlee said there was not.

He said the $300 cost of each audit would quickly eat into installers' profit margins if they were required to pay EECA to check every house.

As there were only 60 approved installers, a 10 per cent check rate was enough to get a feel for the work of each company, he said.

But Hamish Wilson, testing manager at Consumer New Zealand, said the problems identified in the audit suggested there was some reason for concern about the quality of installers' self-audits.

Under the scheme, installers must go through the 104-point checklist themselves and send a copy to EECA.

EECA then randomly rechecks a percentage of houses to see if anything was missed - the process which identified the latest issues, including 17 homes at risk of fire.

"The fact they found 17 with potential fire risk is quite a concern," said Mr Wilson.

He said it would be a "bit of a shame" if people had to check their own homes, as not everyone was fit enough to crawl around in their roofspace: "Maybe they [EECA] should check some more [homes]."

Meanwhile, Godfrey Hall, the chairman of a new insulation association, said insulation companies would be working with their competitors to lift standards across the industry.

Paul Apperly of Eco-insulation said a training programme should be designed in the next month and some of his employees would be among the first to go through it.

Mr Apperly said the EECA checklist was "quite rigid" but he said that was a good thing given the dangerously poor installation that was surfacing in Australia.

He said New Zealand had had tough standards from the outset, unlike Australia where new installers were "literally popping out of the woodwork."

Mr Brownlee said that Australia did not have pre-checks on installers as New Zealand did.

As a result of the first round of random checks, EECA decided to up random checks from 5 per cent to 10 per cent of houses.

Mr Wilson said it was positive that the EECA was checking quality of work.

To say that the first audit had indicated a massive problem was "a bit of a beat-up," Mr Brownlee said.

"I'm satisfied that the contractors know that we're not going to tolerate shoddy work and we've made it very, very clear that people will forfeit contracts if they continually miss on audit points," he said.