What's particular about heating a Lower Hutt home
Lots of gas and plug-in heaters still in use
Alongside heat pumps, 47.47% of Lower Hutt City homes used an electric heater and 19.48% a fixed gas heater in the 2023 Census. Gas is piped here: Powerco bought the Hutt Valley and Porirua gas networks from AGL Energy in June 2001.
State house suburbs on the eastern side
New state housing went up along the eastern side of the valley in the late 1940s, from Waiwhetū to Taitā. Before that, most of the lower valley's homes were in Petone, central Lower Hutt and Eastbourne.
Salt on the harbour edge
BRANZ puts everything within 500 m of the coast, harbours included, in exposure zone D, its high-risk band for wind-blown sea spray. Petone's foreshore streets and the Eastbourne bays are the obvious examples.
Wet, damp winters
NIWA's normals give Gracefield 1,206 mm of rain a year, with July the wettest month at 168 mm. EHINZ found 22.6% of people in the Capital, Coast and Hutt Valley health district lived in a damp home in 2023, above the national 20.6%.
Houses, flats and a mild climate zone
In 2023, 29,808 Lower Hutt City households lived in separate houses and 9,009 in joined dwellings such as flats and townhouses. MBIE's H1/AS1 puts the city in climate zone 3, a zone milder than Upper Hutt's.
The jobs most likely to come up in Lower Hutt
Swapping a gas heater for a heat pump. The PGDB says homeowners can't take out or alter a gas appliance: that's gasfitting work. Connecting the heat pump is a registered electrician's job. A tidy quote covers both trades, or says plainly which one it leaves out. See our gas heating page.
Taking the warmth past the lounge. Plenty of those late 1940s state houses have one warm room and cold bedrooms. A multi-room heat pump, one outdoor unit feeding several indoor units, is the usual answer when the bedrooms sit close together.
Clearing the damp. If the windows still stream once the house is warm, look at home ventilation in Wellington. A ventilation specialist will check whether your joinery and roof space suit positive pressure or balanced heat recovery.
What we'd do
Our take for a Lower Hutt house
If a gas heater is near the end of its life, we'd get a heat pump quoted before paying for a new gas one, with the gas capping listed in writing. Near the harbour, we'd want the corrosion coating named on the quote. And in a damp house, we'd sort ventilation alongside the heating rather than buying a bigger unit to fight it.