In our opinion every home needs continuous mechanical ventilation. EVERY HOME.
Alice Peacock, who works as a social worker with the healthy housing programme, travels around the Bay helping vulnerable families in mouldy houses.
“It’s in everyone’s homes – but it is just particularly bad in some homes where it is a lot harder to ventilate the home – if they don’t have mechanical ventilation – if they don’t open their curtains,” she said.
Otago University professor of public health Philippa Howden-Chapman said she was not surprised by the number of damp houses, saying it’s been like that since the 1990s and blames the high cost to heat homes.
“Because we are a temperate – not a tropical country – we need to heat our houses and because the electricity prices have been rising for residential people – it tends to be the last thing on the list,” she said.
She was concerned about the tens of thousands of kids admitted to hospital each year because they live in mouldy – damp homes.