Low-income families warming to initiative

Stacy Squires

WARM AND COSY: Lee-Anne Kilgour at home with her children Moana, two, left, Jacob, four, George, six, Samuel, 10, and Matthew, 12.

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Christchurch Hospital patients with respiratory problems use enough energy each year to keep the power flowing in a town the size of Kaikoura.

Launching the Warm Families project in Christchurch yesterday, Orion New Zealand chief executive and Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) chairman Roger Sutton said that energy use was one of the hidden costs of cold, damp homes.

Warm Families is an initiative by the Community Energy Action Trust, Orion, MainPower and the Canterbury District Health Board, with help from EECA. It aims to spend up to $5 million a year from 2010 insulating and heating the homes of low-income Cantabrians.

Research has shown that insulation and energy-efficient heating such as heat pumps significantly reduce the risk of respiratory illnesses.

A pilot project is under way involving 100 homes where a child under 12 suffers from a chronic respiratory condition. Eventually the project should warm up more than 2000 homes and help 10,000 people to lead healthier lives.

Sutton said Christchurch had always been a leader in offering help.

He said his home used about 8 kiloWatts (kW) of energy a day compared with about 680kW a day by each bed in Christchurch Hospital, taking into account all the hospital's energy-intensive equipment.

Hospital respiratory physician Mike Epton said patients presenting with respiratory diseases not all necessarily caused by damp homes were responsible for about 9000 bed days a year.

Sutton calculated that was the same amount of energy used annually by Kaikoura.

Not using that amount of energy each year would save the hospital about $27m.

Hornby mother-of-five Lee-Anne Kilgour said insulation and a heat pump installed in her family's uninsulated, three-bedroom weatherboard house by Community Energy Action a year ago had changed their lives.

Three of her children, George, six, Jacob, four, and Moana, two, had since stopped suffering from asthma. Before that, George had been in hospital several times with chronic asthma and Jacob and Moana had had to use ventolin.

The trust had mostly paid for the conversion but she had given $250 towards the work, she said.

"You don't know you're putting up with it until you get something better.

"It was very cold, quite damp and obviously it is just ideal for asthma to develop.

"I was just looking for options to try and keep us warm as it was so cold. I happened upon them, looking up the internet, one thing led to another, rang them up and made inquiries. They were very helpful.

"Our heat pump and insulation has made a huge difference to our home. It is dry and warm and we have had no serious asthma with my third son, (and) my two younger ones have no symptoms at all.

"I'm amazed at the difference something like that can make to the health of your children."

- © Fairfax NZ News