The H1 Schedule Method is gone.

If you lodge residential building consents in New Zealand, the most-used H1 compliance shortcut just disappeared. The 6th Edition of Acceptable Solution H1/AS1 came into force on 27 November 2025, and the headline change is blunt: the Schedule Method has been removed.

There is still a transition window. The 5th Edition Amendment 1 is valid for applications up to 26 November 2026, but it is closing fast. As of mid-2026 that leaves roughly five months, and any design you start now will almost certainly be lodged under the 6th Edition. It pays to be across the new rules before a Building Consent Officer (BCO) is across them for you, in an RFI.

Here is what actually changed, the traps that tend to generate requests for further information, and how to keep your H1 documentation clean.

What the 6th Edition changed

Under the 5th Edition you had three pathways to demonstrate the thermal envelope complies: the Schedule Method, the Calculation Method, and the Modelling Method.

The Schedule Method was the simple one. You matched each element (roof, wall, floor, window, door) against a table of minimum construction R-values for your climate zone, ticked the boxes, and you were done. It was popular precisely because it required no maths. It was also blunt: it forced high insulation into individual elements regardless of how the building performed as a whole, which often over-specified and added cost.

In the 6th Edition it is gone. Residential work (and other buildings up to 300 m²) now demonstrates compliance through the Calculation Method or the Modelling Method. The six climate zones introduced in 2023 carry over unchanged.

A few of the underlying changes matter more than the headline:

• Minimum construction R-values are now stated directly for roofs, walls and floors other than slab-on-ground, rather than being derived as a percentage of the reference building. Cleaner to read, but it means the numbers you were carrying in your head from the old reference-building approach may no longer line up.
• The slab-on-ground minimum construction R-value was removed from the Calculation Method. Slabs are now handled through the heat-loss balance rather than a hard element minimum.
• The framed-wall method was revised to better reflect timber-framing thermal bridging. As a consequence, the wall R-value in the reference heat-loss equations was reduced. The NZS 4214 citation was also modified to make the thermal-bridging calculation requirements clearer. In plain terms: how you account for the timber in your walls now matters more, and a nominal batt R-value is not the construction R-value.
• The 40% glazing rule is retained. If glazing exceeds 40% of the total wall area, the Calculation Method is no longer available to you and you move to the Modelling Method (H1/VM1).
• Multi-unit and mixed-use buildings can now be treated as having either a single thermal envelope or multiple thermal envelopes when using the Calculation Method.

So what is a "schedule" now?

This is where the language trips people up, so it is worth being precise. Two different things share the word "schedule":

• The Schedule Method was the abolished compliance pathway. That is gone.
• A construction R-value schedule is the document that lists the computed construction R-value of each element in your envelope. That is not gone. In fact the Calculation Method depends on it: you cannot run the heat-loss balance without knowing the real construction R-value of every roof, wall and floor build-up.

So the deliverable has not changed. You still produce a schedule of construction R-values to lodge. What changed is that you now have to calculate those R-values properly (including thermal bridging via NZS 4214) and show they balance against the reference building, rather than reading a single number off a table.

The traps that trigger RFIs

Across the consent data we have analysed, H1 energy efficiency is a recurring driver of further-information requests, and the 6th Edition adds new ways to trip up:

1. Quoting a batt R-value as the construction R-value. A wall with R2.6 batts is not an R2.6 wall once you account for timber framing. The revised framed-wall method makes this gap more visible, and it is exactly the kind of thing a BCO checks.
2. Reusing an old slab assumption. With the slab-on-ground element minimum removed, slab performance now flows through the heat-loss balance. Designs ported from a 5th-Edition template can quietly fall out of compliance.
3. Slipping past 40% glazing without noticing. Large windows are easy to design in and easy to under-count. Cross 40% of wall area and the Calculation Method is no longer available. Lodge it anyway and you will get the file back.
4. An incomplete construction R-value schedule. Missing or unstated build-ups are one of the most common, most avoidable reasons a consent stalls. If the BCO cannot see the R-value of an element, they ask.

How to lodge cleanly under the new rules

The workflow that holds up:

1. Confirm your climate zone (1 to 6) and that glazing is at or under 40% of wall area. Otherwise you are on the Modelling Method.
2. Compute the construction R-value of every roof, wall and floor build-up using NZS 4214, accounting for thermal bridging, not the nominal insulation R-value.
3. Check each against the directly-stated minimums and run the heat-loss balance against the reference building.
4. Produce a complete construction R-value schedule that a BCO can read at a glance, with no gaps.

That middle step is the slow, error-prone part: turning a drawing set into correct, thermal-bridging-aware construction R-values and a lodge-ready schedule. It is what the ConsentIQ H1 calculator does for you. Upload your drawings, it reads the construction R-values off your sections and specs, you confirm the assumptions, and it produces a 6th-Edition construction R-value schedule. It is free to try, and it is built on a deterministic NZS 4214 engine rather than a guess.