Source: Radio New Zealand
Images showing rot in beams and exposed wood and peeling paint on window frames. Branz/supplied
About 90 percent of homes in New Zealand are in need of immediate maintenance, with the total cost of the work thought to be $27 billion, research has found.
Centre for Research, Evaluation and Social Assessment (CRESA) – with Building Research Levy backing – is running a project aimed at helping owners keep their homes well cared for in an affordable way.
CRESA’s research director Kay Saville-Smith, told Nine to Noon, the 90 percent figure came from a variety of resources including the latest condition survey done by the centre along with other research it had done.
Saville-Smith said any home that did not operate well, for example, losing heat or getting too warm counted as being in need of maintenance.
The risks associated with an unmaintained home were that it could become damaged during any adverse weather events.
Older homes were likely to be in need of repairs, Saville-Smith said, particularly if the home had not been well maintained on a regular basis.
She said while new builds were less likely to need immediate maintenance, they were not always suitable for the conditions and environment of where they had been built.
Old weatherboard homes for example with wooden window frames, were pretty straightforward to maintain, Saville-Smith said, but for many houses things were not so simple.
“Homeowners, particularly as they age, get less and less willing and sometimes less capable of some of the work.”
Over the years, there had been many design periods which used lots of different sorts of cladding and roof tiles, she said, and every different type of cladding on a home moved in a different way.
Different cladding moves in different ways. (File photo) 123RF
“The main thing consumers can do when choosing homes and designs is to understand and think about these things.
“You want a resilient home not one that just looks a bit flash.”
She said it was also important for homeowners to remember low maintenance did not mean no maintenance.
AUT Professor of Construction Management John Tookey, said a lot of general maintenance which needed to be done on homes was relatively small including clearing gutters, touching up paint, checking for gutter cracks and treating surfaces.
He said problems arose “when the outside gets inside.”
“If you don’t maintain, issues can become serious,” he said.
At this stage, Saville-Smith said she did not have data on how much people were paying to keep their homes maintained but they were working with housing providers to get a better idea of this.
She said CRESA wanted to work with designers and housing providers as well as the building industry on how to build better, more resilient homes.
Tookey said the biggest barrier for homeowners with maintaining their houses was finances. Everything from mowing grass to trimming trees came at a cost if someone was being hired to do it.
The next thing it came down to was skills and an ageing population, he said.
“We’ve become increasingly a victim of our sedentary lifestyle.”
His advice for homeowners who did not have access to a lot of funds was to “focus on the small stuff”.
That included using treatments on wood and touching up the house with paint.
He said by the time a problem was big enough to get someone in to fix it, it was going to be expensive.
“Deal with small problems before they become big problems and have a regular budget for maintenance.”
Tookey said it was good to try and set up one day each month where you can do maintenance around your home.
Coming into winter, Tookey said it was good to prepare your home by making sure there were curtains to keep in the heat, along with insulation under the floor and in the roof. He suggested purchasing a dehumidifier to take the moisture out of the air was also good.
Saville-Smith envisioned a checklist of home maintenance for a number of different styles of homes which could be given to homeowners.
She hoped the project would be able to get out the door within 18 months.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
