Abstract:
Labour Party State Housing (LPSH) was introduced by New Zealand's first Labour Government, during a period in New Zealand history from 1937 - when the first house was built - until 1949. It was the first and biggest scale of mass housing in New Zealand's history, which set the precedent for housing models that followed. After the demise of Labours fourteen year term in government, the methodology of LPSH was adopted by private building companies who continued to build suburbs of 'group housing' that had slight aesthetic modification, but were built in the same way and of the same materials. Most New Zealanders are familiar with the LPSH typology, as throughout the country there are large neighbourhoods, and suburbs of these houses, standardised similarly enough to be recognisable (although this was not the intention at their concept.) The various house typologies that haves evolved since, haves added to their categorisation. Up until 1978, New Zealand housing had no legislation for the provision of insulation, which has left thousands of New Zealand houses suffering from cold temperatures, large amounts of energy being wasted in heat loss; and contaminated indoor air quality (IAQ) causing ill health of many occupants. A third of these are LPSH, which have unresolved problems since they were built - they are cold, damp and mouldy. The implications are that energy is being wasted due to heat loss that is transmitted through the uninsulated building envelope, air gaps, passive ventilation and electrical heating, which is wasteful of energy resources. These houses are problematic to occupant health, which places a hefty burden on government funds for hospitalisation, and financial loss through lost days at work and school. Although improvements of insulation and ventilation have sometimes occurred, they are often inadequate as they only address insulation to the ceiling and floor, omitting the walls and windows. These building elements need to be adequately insulated to complete a thermal envelope capable of retaining heat, maintaining indoor temperatures, as for the World Health Organisation recommendation and healthy living conditions. Alternative technologies can further improve comfort levels and indoor air quality of these houses, to the benefit of occupant health, government expenditure, and carbon emissions to assist New Zealand in meeting its commitments to the Kyoto Protocol. As a holistic approach to energy retrofit of LPSH seem to be still lacking in NZ, this thesis aims to identify correct and comprehensive intervention packages for this house type and to verify their feasibility in the national building market, considering both, their affordability and constructability. Practicing architects were interviewed to determine New Zealand common energy retrofitting practice for LPSH. The interviews identified how budget constraints, or lack of consideration limited the amount of intervention addressing higher levels of IAQ. Heat loss through air movement and lacking thermal insulation had not been addressed, to ensure adequate temperatures could be met, and maintained to the best possibility. To rectify the problem of heat loss - i.e. energy efficiency and comfort - the use of a continuous and airtight thermal envelope has been proposed in this thesis. The improved thermal performance of the proposed solution has been then verified using Risk Matrix evaluation and Homestar residential rating tool assessments. In conclusion this research found that LPSH philosophy originally used in its establishment of communities - sustainable neighbourhoods, blended communities, and houses that owners are proud of - provided sustainable living by current definition. This confirmed that LPSH has the potential to provide sustainable living in sustainable environments, thus substantiating the case for its retrofitting.