OT_043: BRANZ Bulletin 676 (2022) — Complying with H1 (Energy Efficiency), Housing & Buildings ≤300 m²

OT_043: BRANZ Bulletin 676 (2022) — Complying with H1 (Energy Efficiency), Housing & Buildings ≤300 m²

Source

https://www.branz.co.nz/pubs/bulletins/bu676/ — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)

Summary

BRANZ Bulletin 676 (2022) is the practical compliance guide to the H1 5th edition of the New Zealand Building Code’s Energy Efficiency clause, which from 3 November 2022 set materially higher thermal-envelope (insulation) requirements for new housing and small buildings. It introduces the revised six-climate-zone framework and sets out the new minimum construction R-values for roofs, walls, floors and windows. For Neobiome Intelligence it pins down the current NZ code baseline — the thermal performance a standard new build must achieve — which is the reference point (building_standard = standard, heat multiplier 1.00) against which the model’s high-performance and Passive House options are measured.

Key claims

- claim: "Bulletin 676 explains compliance with the H1 5th edition (Energy Efficiency) for housing and buildings up to 300 m². From 3 November 2022, building consent applications using H1/AS1 and/or H1/VM1 must use the new requirements. The previous climate-zone scheme has been replaced — there are now six climate zones."
  source_location: "§1.0.1–1.0.5, §1.0.x (p.1)"
- claim: "New minimum construction R-values (H1/AS1 5th edition schedule method, Table 1): roof R6.6; wall R2.0 (R1.9–2.0 depending on construction); floor R2.5–R3.0 depending on climate zone; windows and doors R0.46 in climate zones 1–2 (higher in colder zones), with a transitional R0.37 applying nationally from 3 Nov 2022 to 1 May 2023; skylights R0.46 (R0.37 transitional) and otherwise assigned the roof value R6.6 in the reference building."
  source_location: "Table 1; §2 (walls), §3 (windows/skylights), §4 (floors) (pp.2–4)"
- claim: "MBIE states that the new insulation requirements aim to reduce the energy needed to heat new homes by up to 40% compared to the previous (4th edition) requirements."
  source_location: "§1.0.3 (p.1)"
- claim: "The changes are most significant for roofs, windows and floors, with a staged implementation — some element requirements were phased in to 1 May 2023 (housing consents lodged before then could use the previous roof/wall/floor minimums)."
  source_location: "§1.0.3–1.0.4, §2.0.2 (pp.1–2)"
- claim: "Compliance can be shown three ways: the schedule method (each element meets or exceeds the Table 1 construction R-value), the calculation method (a notional reference building / building performance index, BPI), or the modelling method (H1/VM1). Window/wall glazing is limited (e.g. ≤40% of total wall area in the reference building; skylights ≤1.5 m² or 1.5% of roof area)."
  source_location: "§1.0.6, §3.1.1, §1.0.8–1.0.9 (pp.1–3)"

Neobiome Intelligence relevance

• ④c building_standards — the baseline row. Bulletin 676 fixes the current NZ code thermal envelope — roof R6.6, wall R2.0, floor R2.5–R3.0, window R0.46 — which is the model’s standard building_standard (heat_demand_multiplier 1.00) OT_043. The MBIE “up to 40% less heating energy than the previous code” frames the scale of envelope-driven heat reduction, and is the reference against which the model’s high_performance (×0.55) and passive_house (×0.15) multipliers — sourced via CR_017 — are measured. This firms the baseline; CR_017 remains the above-code multiplier/capex source.
• D04 — concrete build target. A Neobiome community build must meet (and to hit the model’s heat reductions, exceed) these R-values; combined with the HEEP2 cold-bedroom finding (OT_042), it argues for a whole-house high-performance envelope rather than code-minimum OT_043.

Research targets

Documents to retrieve

• The pilot’s H1 climate zone (Nelson/Tasman — likely zone 4) confirmed from the H1/AS1 zone map, to pin the zone-specific floor and window R-values (the climate-zone map in this bulletin is presented as a figure only).
• The full H1/AS1 5th edition Table 1 with all six climate-zone columns (this bulletin summarises the headline values; the per-zone schedule is in the AS1 document itself).

Research gaps

• The actual heat-demand reduction (kWh/hh/yr) of building to high-performance/Passive House above this H1 baseline at the pilot location — partly covered by CR_015 and the model’s ④c multipliers, but a NZ-specific above-code energy delta would firm the 0.55 / 0.15 figures.

Connections

Links to

Sources (3): CR_015 · CR_017 · OT_042

Referenced by

Sources (7): CR_017 · OT_044 · OT_131 · OT_132 · OT_133 · OT_134 · OT_135

Concepts (2): Healthy Housing — Warmth, Dryness & Wellbeing · Low-Carbon & Bio-Based Construction

EDT domains (1): D04: Sustainable Habitat & Building Technology