From a home performance perspective, maintenance is crucial.  This article looks at New Zealanders’ underfunding of maintenance

We have a lot of money tied up in properties, but many of us are penny-pinching when it comes to maintaining them.

The Reserve Bank estimated at the end of June last year, households collectively owned equity of about $490 billion in housing, making it the largest store of household wealth. “If you owned a car worth $1 million, you wouldn’t dream of not servicing it, would you?”

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Solarcity have come up with a ‘price and technology breakthrough’ – they are combining solar panels with Panasonic’s lithium-ion batteries, allowing homeowners to store excess solar energy generated during the day so it can be used at night and when grid prices are high. Customers can add battery storage for an upfront payment of $2,500 plus a fixed monthly fee that covers all the company’s energy services.

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Meanwhile the Australian Climate Council predicts that “On the basis of a $10,000 battery system with a payback of 10 years, …half of all Australian households will adopt battery storage for their solar systems, with capacity growing 50-fold and the market’s value ballooning to $24bn.”

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A Sydney family has become the first of what will soon be many Australian households to install one of Tesla’s much-hyped 7kWh batteries, to store energy generated by the house’s 5kW solar system.

They have integrated the Powerwall with Reposit Power’s GridCredit technology to act as the “brains” of the solar plus battery storage system and allow it to interact with wholesale markets.

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This EBoss article looks at the complex issues of air movement, internal moisture and insulation in New Zealand houses.

Thomas van Ramsdoonk says “The biggest concern is for all the timber-framed houses with insulation — designs that added insulation but did not take into consideration internal moisture. These houses sit somewhere between older draughty (dry) houses and carefully planned system houses like a certified Passive House.”

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