Cut heating cost replace open fire with heat pump

Get rid of your open fireplace, replace it with a heat pump and you will cut your home heating costs by hundreds of dollars each year.

That's the main message on day two of The Southland Times' three-part series Becoming Energy Efficient.

With so many southern homes lacking even basic insulation and some still using coal fires as the main source of heating our home heating bills are the highest in the country.

Check out the cost comparisons on Page 18; it could save your household hundreds of dollars this winter. And if you don't already have a heat pump there is no better time to get one. The Southland Warm Homes Trust is offering subsidies to households throughout Southland to have homes insulated and/or fitted with heat pumps.

During the next five years the trust will have the funding to refit up to 6000 homes, reducing household heating costs and improving the quality of life in the south.

Heat pumps are by far the most efficient, and cheapest, way to use electricity to heat a home, but they must be used sensibly. The Times published some horror tales late last year of people who had pumps installed getting huge electricity bills because they had run them all day, every day.

Invercargill woman Bronwyn Borland was one of those whose monthly electricity bill jumped from $240 to a whopping $738.92 and, after at first believing the bill had to be a mistake, came to realise that the big bill was the family's own doing.

As Contact Energy communications manager Jonathan Hill explained, the Borlands were running a heat pump and a night-store heater 24 hours a day, seven days a week as well as using other appliances such as a clothes drier.

"This kind of energy consumption will result in large bills. No matter how efficient an appliance might be, they all need to be used carefully to avoid large increases in bills," Mr Hill said.

This week the Invercargill Licensing Trust, The Southland Times and the Southland Warm Homes Trust are conducting a ballot giving readers the chance to win a seriously cheap deal on a full home insulation.

The home insulation package includes insulation under the floor and in the ceiling, subject to access, and while the usual cost of ceiling and under-floor insulation is around $3000, 80 lucky Southland homeowners will pay only $600.

Fill in the coupon on this page, bring it or post it in to any Southland Times office and you could be one of those winners.

The Southland Warm Homes Project team will also accept entries at the Home Show at Stadium Southland at the weekend.

- © Fairfax NZ News