Healthy Homes – changes to ventilation standards

13/09/2022

he ventilation standard now allows properties with certain continuous mechanical ventilation in kitchens and bathrooms to meet the ventilation standard.

If your home was built with a continuous mechanical ventilation system, to meet the standard it must:

  • be designed to vent extracted air continuously from residential property to the outdoors, and for a kitchen or bathroom, extracts the air directly from the room, and
  • have been installed in the property or a tenancy building that first received building consent on or after 1 November 2019 and was part of that original building consent, and continues to meet the requirements of the building consent.

Alternatively, if your home has been renovated and now includes a continuous mechanical ventilation system, to meet the standard, the system must:

  • be designed to provide ventilation for multiple rooms and to continuously vent extracted air to the outdoors, and
  • extract air directly out of the kitchen and bathroom, with an exhaust capacity of at least 12 ℓ/s in the kitchen and 10 ℓ/s in the bathroom. The actual flow rate may be varied (manually or automatically), in response to the demand for ventilation.

Recirculating systems (products like HRV and DVS systems), or fans that do not extract to the outdoors are not suitable to meet the ventilation standard.