Do portable heaters count for the Healthy Homes heating standard?

No. Portable plug-in heaters do not meet the heating standard, whatever their wattage. The standard requires fixed heating devices in the main living room, capable of reaching the healthy-temperature benchmark on the coldest local days. A plugged-in column heater beside the couch is warmth, but it is not compliance.

Why the standard insists on fixed

Portable heaters leave with the tenant who bought them, get moved to bedrooms, and are among the most expensive ways to buy a unit of heat, which means in practice they get used sparingly while the house stays cold and damp. Fixed heating makes warmth a property of the house rather than of whoever currently owns a heater. That is the standard's whole theory.

What qualifies instead

• Heat pumps, the usual answer, sized using the official assessment tool.
• Fixed electric heaters with adequate capacity.
• Wood burners and pellet burners, which suit colder districts where they are already the local habit.

Whichever type, capacity is the test: run the heating assessment tool on tenancy.govt.nz for the address and keep the result. A fixed heater that is too small fails the same standard a portable one does, just more politely.