Top renovations and repairs to warm up and weatherproof your home

Residential


The cold and damp weather of New Zealand has a lot of ways to encroach into your home. Unused chimneys, drafts around windows and doors, rising damp, failed sealants, missing roof tiles—and those are just the most obvious culprits.


Escaping warmth and invading damp are going to concern anyone looking to buy your home. It pays—literally—to ensure that you find and fix these problems.

These are just a few places to start.



Insulation

There’s a reason it’s becoming law requiring all residential rental properties to have ceiling and underfloor insulation installed by July 2019: it’s one of the most effective ways to keep warmth inside your home—in fact, you might be surprised by how much of a difference it makes.

A lack of insulation in the roof and walls, for example, can account for up to 60 per cent of total heat loss from a home, with windows and floors making up the remainder.

It can save residents money too. A fully insulated house only needs half the heating of an insulated one, while adding ceiling insulation alone can save the homeowner up to $400 a year.

Combine that with underfloor insulation and you’re guaranteed to impress any buyer with lower energy bills on the mind and a warmer winter in their future.



Window seals and hinges

Common window sealants last for about 20 to 25 years, so older homes may need a reseal. Otherwise, you might suffer from water ingress and heat escape—never a positive thing to pop up on a builders report.

An easy way to check for failure is to see if the seals have cracks, look ‘gummy’ or liquid, have any gaps, rips or tears or, the most obvious of all, simply don’t have complete coverage.

Also keep an eye out for moisture between panes of glass if you have double or triple-glazed windows. If you can’t wipe it away, or it looks ‘foggy’, check the seals.

The same goes for hinges; unaligned hinges that have rusted or warped can create gaps in the seal for your window, increasing the workload on existing temperature control devices.

One last note: ensure that your sealants aren’t immersed in water. While the material might be silicone and water resistant, they aren’t water impervious, and regular immersion after rain can result in sealant failure and subsequent gaps in the thermal envelope of your home.

If you notice this happening, consider adjusting the angle of your window sill to encourage the rain to drop off, rather than pool.



Extractor fans

Extractor fans are useful for dispersing condensation from bathrooms, kitchens and laundries that can encourage mould growth, but ensure that you don’t vent them into the ceiling cavity—all you are doing is moving the mould problem to a harder-to-reach place!



Storm windows and double glazing

Windows account for between 20 and 30 per cent of all heat loss in a home—only an uninsulated roof is worse.

Double glazing or storm windows can be an effective solution. Double glazing reduces heat transfer via inert argon gas (or similar) between the two panes, while storm windows reduce air movement into and out of existing windows, so there is less of a draught.



Choose the right heating for your home

Not all heating is made equal, nor are all heating methods suitable for your home. Some of them simply won’t heat a large house, while others are unnecessarily powerful and expensive compared to a smaller one.

Choose one from our guide and ensure your buyers aren’t having to factor in the cost of ripping out the existing heating system and/or installing a better suited one when they move in.


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