Winter heat progress encouraging

Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee says he’s pleased with progress being made by Fletcher Construction to replace the primary heat source in earthquake damaged homes.

Fletcher Construction took up responsibility for the replacement or repair of heating equipment in March, and has progressively increased the rate of delivery.

“Upward momentum is continuing, with 3,935 priority cases completed by yesterday, 16 May,” Mr Brownlee said.

“Fletcher Construction anticipates an installation rate of about 120 appliances a day from now on, which means well over 4,000 priority cases should be completed by the end of this week.

“This is a considerable achievement given the size of the challenge and the complexity of many cases, where work must be done in sequence with emergency repairs.”

As well as installing replacement heating Fletcher Construction moved quickly following the February 22 quake by re-allocating staff to deliver over 9,700 emergency repairs to Christchurch homes, making them weatherproof and safe for occupation until permanent repairs or rebuilds can begin.

The winter heating programme works with homes where the primary heat source has been taken out of action by earthquake damage. Heating is restored through the provision of heat pumps or solid fuel burners.

The programme is prioritised to meet the needs of the most vulnerable people first, so there has been a concerted effort to identify cases involving illness, old age, pregnancy, disability or other relevant factors.

Government and charitable agencies have worked together with Fletcher to achieve this, matching data from EQC claims and other sources to the agency information to identify priority cases.

There is a considerable workload involved in this process – for example, Fletcher has a call centre dedicated to this work, which has made some 75,000 outbound calls to homeowners or residents. To date, 19,600 claims have been dealt with.

Many claimants have opted to settle with EQC and make their own arrangements, and 9,963 have been allocated to receive heat appliance installation or repairs.

“Fletcher reports a lead time of only about two weeks for installation of heat pumps once orders are placed; however the lead time for installation or repair of solid fuel burners is at least eight weeks.

“There are fewer installers in Canterbury for solid fuel burners, and the burners take much longer to install than a heat pump.

“So far about 35 per cent of homeowners involved have opted for solid fuel burners rather than heat pumps. I’m told the expected delay in installing solid fuel burners is made clear to homeowners when they choose that form of heating, so they’re making an informed choice,” Mr Brownlee said.

Fletcher Construction is one of a number of organisations working with the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) on rebuilding greater Christchurch and its surrounds, and supporting the welfare of its residents. For more information visit www.cera.govt.nz