On July 17 you ran an opinion piece by Brit Bunkley in which he discussed the effects of living in unheated homes. He referenced the Healthy Homes Guarantee Act, which had some errors of fact.
"... Indeed, unlike the majority of developed nations, no legal minimum heat requirement bylaws exist in New Zealand for the workplace, rented homes or public venues.
"The recent Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill is a step in the right direction, but it falls short, regulating for only half the equation, insulation, while it is silent on the other half of the equation, heat.
"No minimum heating requirements exist within the bill and, unlike most regulated bylaws overseas, heating costs are borne by the (often struggling) tenant."
In fact, the Healthy Homes Guarantee Act seeks to regulate for a number of minimum standards, one of which is heating and an achievable indoor temperature. The others are for insulation, which he rightly mentioned, and for moisture ingress, drainage, ventilation and draught-stopping.
These are designed to make rental homes warmer and drier and as a result healthier.
Mr Bunkley may have been thinking about the Residential Tenancies (Smoke Alarms and Insulation) Regulations 2016 which require all rental homes to have a minimum level of ceiling and underfloor insulation by July 1, 2019.
The healthy homes standards will be implemented through regulations that will be developed over the next 12 months, and will be informed by public consultation to ensure that tenants, landlords, and construction industry experts have an opportunity to get involved in creating robust minimum standards.
A discussion document on the healthy homes standards is expected to be released in the coming months
CLAIRE LEADBETTER
Policy Manager, Housing and Urban Branch
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
Rising costs
The word is out officially. The Statistics Department tells us what we all know, that the cost of running a home has risen — again! Their figure is 3.1 per cent, but watch that ratchet up as higher petrol prices and rates hit pockets and purses.
All goes to endorse Social Credit's observation that households suffer not so much from a low-wage economy as a high-cost economy. Something that unions and the Government need to admit if we are achieve more fairness in the distribution of incomes, let alone reduce the drain on our budgets caused by having to service public as well as private debt.
A reminder that most of this lucrative debt is owned overseas.
Surely neither the unions nor our Labour-led Government want to keep donating so much of our wealth to those one percenters. Sadly, the evidence is otherwise.
HEATHER MARION SMITH
Gisborne
Electrotherapy
Interesting reading in "Museum Notebook" (Chronicle, July 7) , titled "Electrotherapy tool for relieving pain", by Sandi Black, museum archivist. It reminded me of my own experiments with electrotherapy years ago, as an electronics technician.
I built some "alternative therapy" machines being touted by "snake oil" merchants — I wondered if they worked. Circa year 2000, these machines "guaranteed" to cure aids, cancers — anything.
I also had an article published in British magazine Everyday Practical Electronics (December, 2003), titled "Electrotherapy — a brief history", which included some of my experimental projects along with the history.
Electrotherapy machines that "cured everything", I built and tested on me were:
The Dr Hulda Clarke "zapper" (as she called it) ? — no result, no evidence of any internal "cleansing" which should have happened, even for a healthy person like me, as per the claims made by "Dr" Clarke (she was eventually prosecuted by US authorities for fraudulent claims).
The Dr Beck "Blood cleaner"? — built it and used it as per instructions across a wrist vein. Before I could see if it too might give me a "cleansing" of my internal "plumbing", I suffered a severe reaction of muscle cramps in legs and arms.
I can guarantee it was doing something to my blood all right, but "cleaning" it? I think not. Had to spend hours with hot water bottles across my muscle groups as I vowed not to rely on Dr Beck again.
I also built a Kirlian "aura" camera. It claimed to indicate onset of illness before any other method available (1940s). It might have had a genuine chance of fulfilling its claims, except medicine as a whole overtook its potential usefulness.
Besides, the Kirlian machine was always going to be problematic due to many variables one had to control for (and of which I was only able to "design out" a few in my highly sophisticated modern circuit).
I don't have any of that stuff now. Left it all behind in the rubble of Christchurch.
STAN HOOD
Aramoho
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