Ready for winter

One thing that a lot of immigrants from America and the U.K. struggle with here is the lack of heating/warmth in houses. For reasons that are still not clear to us 10 months after arriving, Kiwis don't put a lot of stock into warming their houses. This seems to be changing, and newer houses will at least have insulation and sometimes double glazed (2-pane) windows. That's great for keeping warmth in, but doesn't really get the house warm in the first place. It's still really common for a house to have no form of heating at all. If that's the case, you have to buy plug-in radiators or install your own heating system. Lots of houses have wood-burning stoves to heat them, but this will only heat the room with the stove in it (usually the living room), and the rest of the house will either be cold or will have plug-in heaters. Central heating seems to be nonexistent in houses.

When we moved into our house in February, the only form of heating it had was a night store heating unit.

It's basically a radiator. We understand it's filled with bricks and weighs about 2 ton. It draws energy at night (when power is cheaper) to heat the bricks, and then slowly releases the heat all day. We've never actually turned the thing on though, and really have no idea how well it works. The quirky thing is that it's located in the dining room - so we could have a nice toasty dinner, and then retire to the living room to freeze. No thanks.

We knew we would need a more comprehensive heating strategy this winter. The answer: heat pumps.

Heat pumps are kind of like window air conditioning units, except they attach to the wall rather than hang from a window, and they blow both hot and cold air. They are the "modern" heating option in New Zealand.

We got in touch with a heat pump installation guy who Gareth knows through his work. He came to the house with his glossy brochures and sold us not one but TWO heat pumps: one for our living room and one for our hallway/bedrooms. We went for one of the more powerful Fujitsu models for our lounge (9 kW), and a smaller one in the hallway.

The heat pump is mounted to the wall on a bracket, and the hoses run to the outside where there's another unit with a fan in it.

We were told this would be a one-day job, but in the end it took 2. There was also some involvement by Action Alarm, after heat pump installer guy accidentally blew a fuse that knocked out our alarm system, requiring a visit from another repairman. But in the end, we got there. And now we bask in the warmth of our giant heat pump.

Autumn is here, and winter is just around the corner. We are ready, winter. Bring it.