We have completed hundreds of rentfit.co.nz Healthy Homes Standards Reports for owners and property managers.

The Healthy Homes Heating Standard requires the main living room of a rental property to be able to be maintained at a minimum of 18°C on the coldest day of the year.

We assess the property using the Tenancy Services assessment tool, which provides the required kilowatts for the room.

We have had several customers commission contractors who have installed heat pumps that are below the required kilowatts from the assessment tool. This means that when we update our report the heating component for the property, it still does not meet the required level of the Healthy Homes Heating Standard.

Worse still, the Standard states that you are only allowed to top up heaters that were installed before 1 July 2019 so, for these undersized heat pumps that have been installed after 1 July 2019, the owner has to remove and replace them with the correct sized heater.

While we don't install heat pumps any more, our advice is:

• Contractually specify the minimum heating kilowatts that you need to be installed by the contractor.
• Require the contractor to specify the heating kilowatts on the quote they provide you (they don't always do this).
• If a contractor advised you that you do not require this size heat pump, you should refer them to the heating assessment tool via the link above.

• Kevan
• 15 April