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if you want to live in Otara I believe you should be permitted to do so, and build/buy whatever type of home/dwelling/hovel you can afford to, even if it is nothing more tan a garage to live in.

If you should then choose to slowly improve it over the years (adding insulation if you wish) then the government should not stop you doing so, but neither should they money from me to pay for your insulation, simply because we have an ETS to please.

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Oh, very amusing. Tax is a problem to the person paying it, just as interest rates are. And what you do with tax does indeed matter. Which is why tax payers are interested to see how it is spent. How it is spent is debatable, which is why we have these discussions.

With regard to insulation – great idea. I advocated a long time ago we resign from Kyoto and spend the equivalent dollars on energy efficiency (bowing to the inevitability of a socialist government, then we should at least try to keep the spending sensible).

However, I’m not in favour of simply making stuff free – that’s unfair to the people that pay taxes and pay full price to insulate their homes in advance. Providing the programme is a rebate/offset offer, covers all initiatives for home energy efficiency (double glazing, ceiling insulation, solar panels, water tanks, waste recycling systems etc) then it’s a good idea.

I’m also not against State Homes being improved in this way, should be good for the health of low income families.

However, I’m against trading this for signing the ETS. We (NZ) are being screwed with this ETS legislation, and rushing it through as was the EFB is a mistake.

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I can fully insulate my home (1930’s bungalow) for less than $10,000 DIY. Double glazing might cost a lot more than that since we’ve got sash windows. I think that is probably a fairly typical cost for older homes. About what a newish Jap import will cost.

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Imagine you see two choices:

1) Get a HUGE mortgage and buy a $400,000 insulated house.

2) Build (yourself) a $20,000 motorhome, or a $50,000 uninsulated house, and live in it for 8 years while you save.

Which of those two options is genuinely better for your health???

In most cases it will be option 2.

Our pioneers/ancestors were not hamstrung by the tax burdens, by-law constraints and social guilt-trips that face our young people today.

The ETS (no matter how many chickens you buy, or how much insulation you pay for) puts the lives of our young people in the hands of money traders.

Shylock WILL take his pound of flesh.

It is time to look backwards at the way our pioneers lived and realise that it is foolish to try and regulate for perfection, when it actually takes many years effort to build the ideal lifestyle.

If your own kids get a payout that buys them some insulation, that means someone else is going without, in order to pay for it.

Eventually the chickens will all come home to roost.

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The problem then is one of cost. You cannot accurately cost any house repair until the cladding, roof and gib has been removed and the “guts” is exposed.

Replacing all old with new means your costs are accurate and fixed. In fact a bonus might exist when the timber, copper, etc is recovered and sold.

You also inconvenience the tenant the least. Having a tenant moving out for three months while their house is totally renovated is not good for those getting to work, school, etc. Means a double shift.

Extra costs will be incurred for property storage, temporary accomadation, extra transport costs,etc. if the tenant has to wait 3 months for the refurbishment to be completed.

Unless off course you permananetly move tenants out of their old into a newly refurbished (or new) house. Can see a lot of tenants kicking up a fuss as they may have to move out of their area permanently.

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> “for every dollar spent on the insulation programme, the return will be about $5″

> If thats a reasonable statement, then why the heck hasn’t the government had a programme going for years to reap the rewards available of that investment…

because it’s not a return to the government, it’s a return to the householder. Governments fund roading projects with government money based on a private-sector return like that because the road funding system is set up to grant funding to projects based on their private return. But they won’t take into account private gain for public expenditure if they don’t have a bureaucracy set up to make investments on that basis.

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“By the way, the way to NOT do the job properly is to rip the lining out and insulate etc from the inside. To achieve best practice you need to take the cladding off the outside and to fix up wiring, plumbing (esp water heating) etc while you are in there. Then insulate, reclad, double glaze (non aluminium joinery) etc.
Do it once,do it right.
Same applies at re-roof time, take off old roof, do everything that needs doing in the ceiling space, re-roof.”

Totally agree but you are going to have to rip the gig of INTeRIOR walls to insulate/sound prood those.

Commented on another tread that it would be cheaper to demolish these old houses (some most be over 70 years old) and install new ones. Modular construction, all the bells and whistles.

That way you also inconvenience the tenant the least. Move the tenant out to temp accomadation (possibly a furnished house so that the tenants proporty simply goes into storage for a week)

Monday the truck removes the old house, Tuesday site works, Wednesday new house dropped on the section, Services are hooked up on Thursday, Tidy up Friday, tenants shift back Saturday.

All new houses are built in a factory to modular construction.

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The 5:1 is the gross return in 2025 when the programme ends. If we went very, very conservative, discounted all the dollars and assumed that most of the energy saved would be clawed back by other uses, we still estimate a 2:1 return as the worst case scenario.

Why the hell haven’t we done it before, indeed!!!

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If thats a reasonable statement, then why the heck hasn’t the government had a programme going for years to reap the rewards available of that investment…

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Business attempts to mould the will of the public in order to make a profit, the state follows the will of the public to get re-elected. Fortunately there are still many businesses, run by many people, selling many solutions. Thus there are likely to be as many good solutions as there are bad solutions. That hasn’t been the case where the state muscles in and becomes the monopply supplier of solutions.

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And much as I’d like to agree that state involvement shold be “small and discrete”, actually, that’s a red herring. The state’s involvement is not the point. Well insulated housing is the point. The state’s involvement should be no less and no more that what’s required to get the most insulation possible into the most houses as possible. An effective state gets involved wherever and whenever it needs to. That’s the point. Business is fussy and will only go where the money is. States serve public interests.

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Liberty scott: u benefit from my welfare. And yes, incredible as it may seem, I benefit from your welfare.

Like many selfish people, you need to understand that “investment” can work at many levels, social & national, not just individual.

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The problem with your idea Liberty Scott is that this is one of those instances where people are not logical and wouldn’t go for the most logical option. While insulation may have those financial benefits, it also has large upfront costs, and it can cause massive disruption (imagine having to rip out the walls in your house, one room at a time). Of course, people in rented accommodation do not have a choice, and usually, landlords don’t spend money on insulation as they do not benefit.

That is actually the one issue I have with the pure market ideology – people are not always logical and do not always work in their best interests. That is why we need the state in places, although I do agree, it should be small and discrete.

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Bollocks. Middle class debt is due to a petulant and peculiarly NZ middle class expectation that owning a house is an automatic short cut to having everything you want right now, all “leveraged” (how I feel for that poor mis-used word) off a single capital assett.

Retailers, banks, and what’s left of the finance companies don’t exactly do much to help the situation either.

When will you droll trolls get that tax is not the problem, it’s what you do with it that matters?

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