Requirements for wood burners in properties less than two hectares

All new wood burners installed from 1 September 2005 on properties less than 2 hectares in size must have emissions of less than 1.5 grams of particles per kilogram of dry wood burnt and a thermal efficiency of not less than 65 per cent. These requirements are set out in the wood burner standards which are part of the National Environmental Standards for Air Quality.

Open fires, multi-fuel burners, pellet burners and wood-burning cooking stoves are not included in the definition of wood burner so are not covered by the wood burner standards.

For more information see the National Environmental Standards for Air Quality.

Most urban areas in New Zealand experience air pollution during winter. Our focus is on improving air quality in those areas. Urban areas typically have smaller property sizes and as there is no nationally consistent definition for an urban environment, a property size of less than 2 hectares was used. The standard two hectare rule applies throughout New Zealand including rural areas.

There are two steps a wood burner model needs to go through to be authorised:

1. The emissions and efficiency of the model are tested by a laboratory. The laboratory issues a test report which states the results of the test.
2. An independent body (Environment Canterbury or the Nelson City Council) physically checks the model against the test report and gives the model an authorisation number.

An alternative authorisation stream was introduced in June 2011 for models of burners that cannot be tested using the prescribed testing protocol. It enables burners to demonstrate compliance with the National Environmental Standards for Air Quality using a functionally equivalent method.

See Authorisation procedure for functionally equivalent methods [PDF, 495 KB].