Out with the old

June 27, 2009
It's a home heating revolution coming by way of council edict to a living room near you. Geoff Collett looks at the move to remove thousands of old, inefficient woodburners from Nelson homes in an effort to end the city's winter air pollution. --------------------
There may be nothing like a roaring fire to warm the cockles of your heart. But there's surely nothing to make the blood boil quite like the feeling that bureaucracy is going to interfere with your right to light that fire.
So at least some of the temperatures rising around Nelson city this winter are less to do with the pleasure of chucking another log into the woodburner, and more the result of householders finding themselves caught in the biggest ever shake- up of the way city residents can heat their homes.
By the end of this year, woodburners that pre-date 1996 will officially cease to exist - meaning, if you've still got one in your living room and you live in one of Nelson's many pollution- prone neighbourhoods, you won't be allowed to light it ever again.
More recent models - those installed before 2003 - will have to be shut down for good by the start of 2013.
About 2500 households are faced with having to stop using old woodburners and stumping up thousands of dollars for a new heating appliance that meets the council's rules.
It's a boom time for the city's home heating industry. But it's not making for happy householders.
Some are finding plenty of reasons to be grumpy: maybe because their perfectly good old burner is being pensioned off before its time is up; or because installing a new burner is going to mean disruption, reorganisation and pricey alterations to their homes.
They are having to find several thousand dollars at a time when the economy is in a deep trough - all because the council has said so; and, some fear, there is no guarantee the rules won't be changed again in future.
Although the city council is offering interest-free loans (repaid through the rates bill) to ease the pain, they come with a raft of constraints and conditions.
The council knows some people are upset, acknowledges its environmental educator, Jo Martin, who is at the frontline of the home heating project.
But it is confident it is fighting the good fight against pollution caused by woodburners.
It would much rather people replaced old burners with electric heat pumps, or super-low- emission pellet burners, but its stance seems to be at odds with much of the affected public.
At times over the past year, the number of people choosing to replace an old woodburner with a new one was so high (up to 85 per cent of all the replacement appliances) the council became concerned it wouldn't be able to meet its pollution targets.
Lately, things have settled down but new woodburners are still the choice for about two- thirds of those households affected; heat pumps are in a distant second place (about a quarter to a third of replacement appliances); way back, only being embraced by a tiny proportion, are pellet fires and a smattering of gas fires.
Martin says Nelsonians' enthusiasm for woodburners is much greater than in Christchurch, which has had a similar crusade against woodburners for several years.
But some aren't surprised, including Tim Miller, of Tim Miller Plumbing, one of two approved suppliers of woodburners and pellet fires to householders who have signed up for the council's loan-finance deal (known as Pay As You Heat). Woodburner owners don't want to give up the natural radiant heat of a wood fire, he says.
Another retailer, Warren Grubham of On Fire in Tahunanui, says partly it's people wanting to stick to what they know and partly a suspicion of new technology, especially technology reliant on electricity.
The other council-approved supplier for woodburners and pellet fires is Day's Plumbing in Richmond. Its manager for the contract, Alex Bint, says the company is seeing "from one extreme to the other" in people coming to it to replace their burners.
"A lot of people coming in are very anti it, " he says. "They feel that the council is making them do this."
But at the other extreme are those who "think it's the best thing since sliced bread - they get a new woodburner and their house insulated, and they can put it all on their rates bill".
"The people that are unhappy are extremely unhappy, " admits Martin. "But what I usually come back to is that this solution is a pragmatic solution - it's something that makes sense to most people . . . even if they don't like it."
She's referring to people's acceptance that large parts of Nelson have a winter pollution problem, and the council's plan to bring it under control.
The council has been navigating its various air quality rules and regulations through the resource management process for more than five years, and open fires were banned across the city as of January 1 last year.
Mostly, the exercise has been greeted with surprisingly little fuss - surprising, at least, to anyone familiar with the virtual civic war that raged for several years in Christchurch over that city's attempt to rein in its pollution by cracking down on fireplaces.
Martin says the main controversy in Nelson has been with those who feel that the council's plan doesn't take enough notice of industrial pollution. But what some are now having trouble with is accepting that maybe their old woodburner is part of the problem.
As Grubham puts it, a woodburner is usually a nice thing to sell, for the pleasure it brings to a home. But the fact that people are being regulated into making the change "has turned it into a bit of a grudge purchase" for some.
Tim Miller has had a similar experience. While he has only just become an approved supplier, he has quickly learnt that the customers are "captive clients", not necessarily thrilled to be in the market for a new burner.
Murray Sinclair of the city's longest- established fireplace dealer, P&M Fireplaces, sees all manner of fishhooks in the shake-up, for retailers, households and the wider community.
Like Grubham, he looked at the deal the council was offering retailers to become approved Pay As You Heat suppliers and dismissed it.
To keep the price of the approved burners as low as possible, the retailers were expected to slash their margins; that, combined with the paperwork involved, meant it wasn't worth the effort.
As it is, all the woodburner retailers are flat out keeping up with demand, as many people decide to buy their new appliance without the council loan, but Sinclair predicts that in years to come, homeowners who have shopped around for a bargain deal now might regret it when they need to have their burner serviced or repaired.
Martin says the loans are a liability on the council's books for the 10 years before they are fully repaid, so it needs to keep costs down. The limited range of burners offered under the Pay As You Heat scheme is partly because the council insists they are extra-low-emission, less polluting than the maximum limits set by existing rules.
Martin says the council does not think that encouraging more heat pumps will put undue strain on the city's electricity supply.
She reasons that many woodburner owners already use electric heating such as oil column heaters when they don't want to light a fire. If they get a heat pump, they will have more efficient electric heating and can do away with those back-up heaters.
But Sinclair says encouraging heat pumps means the money spent on electricity will go out of the community to big power companies, whereas woodburners support local businesses such as firewood merchants.
Meanwhile, there's the question about whether the rules that the whole scheme is based on may yet shift. Grubham says it's a concern raised by some of his customers.
Environment Minister Nick Smith has announced a review of the requirement for polluted towns and cities to improve their air quality by 2013.
That deadline was a driver for the city council's plan, but even if the target is now moved, Nelson Deputy Mayor Rachel Reese argues that the council "started doing something about air quality because we do have an air quality problem".
"The decision to act wasn't made because the Government was telling the council to do something. The council did something, in full consultation with the people of Nelson, for good health reasons."