Frequently Asked Questions

We are an altruistic business passionate about helping individuals, whānau, and communities live more sustainably and in healthy homes.

Our core business is to provide free home assessments. Anything about sustainability and living in a healthy home, we love to visit and share our knowledge. Our advice is tailored to what your needs are, it could be energy savings, water conservation, waste, concerns about mould, renovating, building new, lowering your carbon footprint, and more. We also provide community workshops, sharing DIY knowledge, healthy homes knowledge and sustainable living knowledge. In addition, we have lots of sustainability and healthy home related projects. For example, being involved in organising the Enviro challenge for schools and the Green Drinks networking events for businesses.

While we offer a wide range of home assessments, our most popular assessment is our housing performance assessment. This service involves an assessor visiting your home and checking your insulation, heating, moisture ingress, draughts, and more. A key part of the visit is the sharing of information on keeping warmth in, preventing mould, heating options, how to effectively air the whare out, and making your home operate efficiently and sustainably.

Depending on your situation, funding and the donations we receive, we may also be able to support with: curtains, heaters, insulation, kids beds and clothing, advocacy with landlords, minor home repairs, draught proofing, blankets, heating, and more.

Sustainability Options has a vision that every home can maintain 20 degrees at night winter. The 20 Degrees collaborative vision works to improve living conditions for whānau across the Bay of Plenty by contributing to their health and well-being through home assessments, repairs, education, and collaboration. To find out more about our vision, check out our 20degrees.org.nz website.

A ‘home’ means a lot of things to a lot of different people… like comfort, safety, and relaxation. When we talk about a ‘healthy home’, we mean this, plus the ability for a home to maintain 20°C on a cold winter's night, with no dampness or mould present in the whare. A healthy home supports good health and wellness, by being warm, dry, well maintained, and well performing.

We don’t have any criteria for our free home assessments. Our home assessment service is available to anyone in the Bay of Plenty, including Tauranga, Western Bay, Eastern Bay and Rotorua areas.

Our goal is to help you live sustainably in your home, with your home: performing well, being healthy, having a low environmental impact, and being cost effective to maintain and run.

As an altruistic business providing independent expert advice, our services are free. We have made a commitment to share our knowledge for free, with anyone who invites us to do so. Our services are funded by donations, projects, grants, contracts and other commercial work. We do not sell any products, though we may make recommendations based on independent research about housing performance.

Depending on your situation, funding and donation availability, we may also be able to support with: curtains, heaters, insulation, kids beds and clothing, advocacy with landlords, minor home repairs, draught proofing, blankets, heating, and more.

If you or someone you know could benefit from our services, you can contact us using the ‘Contact’ button at the top of this webpage. Or you can phone us at 022 156 1027 or 022 497 2529. Or you can email us at: 20degrees@so.org.nz.

One of our home assessors will visit your home and have a conversation with you about concerns you have with your home, and aspirations you have around sustainability. Based on your concerns and goals, our assessor will provide practical, tailored advice, that could be around: improving energy efficiency, water conservation, waste management, renovating, building sustainably, and improving the health of the home through ventilation, heating, insulation, managing moisture, and more.

We will also journey with you to try to resolve barriers preventing your home from reaching 20 Degrees. Depending on your circumstances, this could include advice, advocacy, education, referrals, product installation, and/or repairs and maintenance support.

No, we do not. Obtaining a Healthy Homes Standards certification for a rental property is optional for property owners. There are many companies that will provide certification for a fee, we are happy to provide the knowledge you need for free. Our healthy home assessors have completed Home Performance Advisor (HPA) training and understand the Healthy Home Standard requirements for rental properties and the intention behind them. Our assessors provide education and an action plan to help your home to be warmer, drier and healthier, based on housing performance. If you are a landlord, we will share what is necessary to reach these requirements, as well as how you can get your rental to be as healthy as it can be for tenants, but we don’t provide certification.

No, this is not something we have appropriate expertise in.

Depending on the donations we have, we can sometimes support whānau with smaller items like segments of insulation and portable heaters. However, we do not supply, sell, or install insulation, heat pumps, or wood burners. We subcontract these jobs out to professional installers, as well as coordinate with relevant government programmes.

No, you don’t need landlord consent. We always recommend letting them know we are coming around, as good communication is key in any relationship. As our focus is on you and the health of your whānau, our visit and assessment is a service to you. During our assessment we may come up with recommendations that your landlord could or should take, and we will also advise of the changes in behaviour and activity you can do yourselves. If you would like support in advocating to your landlord on our identified recommendations, we can do so - with your consent.

Lots of people ask us this question! Thank you for asking. If you would like to contribute towards our mahi, think of it as ‘paying it forward’. Any donation you make, helps us to help another whānau/family/aiga. There are many ways you can get involved to help us make a difference to whānau in need across the Bay of Plenty.

If you would like to contribute as an individual, we have a Give A Little page where you can make a financial contribution. You can also donate old items such as heaters and curtains. It also helps to spread the word about our free service, so we can help more people. You can also get in touch with us to get involved in some community initiatives.

If you want to contribute as a funder or business, please get in touch to have a chat with us, as we love to collaborate.

You can contact us using the ‘Contact’ button at the top of this webpage. Or you can phone us: 07 544 1882 / 022 156 1027 / 022 497 2529. Or you can email us at: service@so.org.nz.

Yes definitely. We contract, consult, do project work, collaborate and love to work with businesses or organisations. If it’s about sustainability and helping people live more sustainably, we’d love to help. You can check out our collaborations at this webpage: https://www.20degrees.org.nz/our-partners/

If you’re interested in collaborating, please get in touch!

Check us out at our Sustainability Options Facebook and LinkedIn for general updates on our mahi! We also run the 20 Degrees program—you can stay updated on stories and tips and tricks through our 20 Degrees website and 20 Degrees Facebook.