Energy Performance Certificates

ps2010

mmm N79, you seem to have a lot of faith in the legal system – and lots of time and money on your hands to drag your assumed claim through the courts.

Also, it is not paying 'over the odds', it is paying a proper fee. The current fee levels, as I have been told, are not sustainable.

Again, I was assuming that readers of money saving expert were more longterm thinkers than this.

If you think that it is financially 'advantageous' to go through the courts, which you must be honest, may not decide in your favour, (and financially cripple you) or to simply pay a decent fee (£10-20 more than the cheapest) from the outset and therefore ensure a proper report – then you are confused.

And actually, you may not get the same liability, different accreditation bodies have different levels of PI and PL insurance. The better ones (whose members are far less likely to work for peanuts) will indeed have adequate cover – the others, those that have sprung up over night and proclaimed themselves training experts, sometimes do not. And then your claim turns into a court room battle between insurance companies/ and high-end lawyers versus you and your solicitor.

Good luck.

tbs624

ps2010 wrote: »

Yes, I am saying exactly that. It is a job like any other, if you pay someone a decent fee, they are more likely to spend more time on the job than if you pay them peanuts. If the property in question could be in one of two rating bands, then a simple mistake could see that property drop to the lower band – easily.

Why would a simple mistake be more likely to result in a lower band? It may be that a simple mistake actually sees your Band *rise*, so not only do you get your cheaper EPC, you get a lower potential tax liability.

The fact is that a good proportion of buyers couldn't care less about EPCs, and I'd venture to suggest that the figure for non-interested Ts is even higher.

ps2010 wrote: »

With regards to lighting, tungsten lamps are actually heaters not a light source, as approx 92% of the energy used is given off as heat rather than wavelengths in the visible spectrum. Is it not idiotic to use a heater as a light source, when there are so many more efficient light forms available?

Many of us have happy student memories of enjoying the heat output from the bulb in our anglepoise lamps

ps2010 wrote: »

Yes, it is rather silly that an item that is easily removed is incorporated within the EPC report, but if energy saving lighting were left off the report then the Daily Mail et al, would be criticising the technical reach of the report for leaving such an obvious thing out. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

When our Euro MPs and our UK MPs start walking everywhere, restrict their "necessary flights" and start ensuring that their office lights don't stay on all night we might begin to listen to them on "green" issues. Much of the "energy efficiency" of a building is affected by occupant lifestyle.

The pushing of EPCs is a prime example of "looking busy, doing nothing"

ps2010 wrote: »

Thirdly, I am an energy consultant who took the DEA training many years ago as the flexible hours suited my other study's time patterns. I very rarely do them these days.

See my previous comment about those who defend EPCs tending to be those who have undertaken DEA training........

ps2010

tbs624
I shall answer your questions one by one:

No, because the software is set up so that it is 'naturally pessimistic', if you miss something and simply use the default option, then this gives a worst case scenario for that particular choice.

I'm sure you do, but times have changed.

It is not a question of you 'beginning to listen', when there is a financial perspective attached to many of the environmental ratings that are already in use (and those coming shortly, and there are quite a few!) then you can stick your head in the sand but you'll lose money.
Even without taxes being linked to ratings, the Low Carbon Transition Plan states that fuel prices will rise by 60% in the next 5-6 years.
Also, with the mothballing of a number of electricity generators and the indicated doubling of electricity demand, we are in for electricity blackouts by 2016!
Also, we are expected to import up to 76% of our gas by 2016, from countries such as Russia (which has shown itself to be bullish regarding its energy), the agreements of which will be pegged to trade agreements, thereby adversely affecting businesses across the country.

Moving on from this, with regard to occupant lifestyle, would it not be unfair to penalise people who are 'doing their bit' but happen to live in old houses (at least 60% of our housing stock was built before ANY insulation was used) and therefore they would be unfairly 'taxed'. Again, I think the Daily Mail et al would have ALOT to say if the Government went down that unjust road.

Are you FINALLY starting to see the picture?

I have shown you the political, economic and the practical reasons why we must start reducing our energy demand (I haven't even mentioned Global Warming you will notice). An EPC is ONE of the measures by which a building can be compared with another building, in an effort to kickstart a reduction in energy. This is just the bedding in period, this is by no means 'it'.

Perhaps the reason those of us within the industry are defending EPCs is because we spend most of our time reading reports and economic studies rather than getting our 'information' from high street newspapers.

sonastin

The house I am buying has an EPC (as it must do). The EPC says that the energy efficiency of the central heating and hot water systems are "good". The overall rating is 56. It recommends that the rating of the property could be improved by: ugrading the heating controls, adding more loft insulation, fitting energy saving light bulbs, installing solar panels. If these measures were installed, the energy rating could go up to as much as 66.

Now, to me this demonstrates the limitations of the whole "standardisation" of the scheme because it reads pretty much the same as every other EPC I've seen. However, because the software is so rigid, it misses the reality of the problem with this house...

The boiler is in a detached garage. The previous owner attempted to "attach" the garage by building a wall across the gap between the 2 (about 3 ft). The pipes (heating, hot water, gas) all run across the back of this wall ON THE OUTSIDE. Now, correct me if I'm wrong but surely running your hot water pipe 3ft outside is not "good" energy efficiency practice. Surely moving the boiler inside the house, or as a minimum lagging the pipes carrying heated water outside, would make more impact on the energy efficiency of this property than putting energy saving light bulbs into rooms where the lights are rarely switched on. What difference is it going to make changing the heating controls when the water getting to the radiators is going to be tepid at best.

As an earlier poster said, this is a good idea badly implemented. By standardising the system so rigidly, diligent assessors have no mechanism to incorporate non-standard set-ups into their assessment. Less diligent assessors will just ignore the unusual aspects. The certificate is meaningless because you can't use it to compare houses that in any way deviate from "standard".

ps2010

Hi Sonastin.
your point is a valid one – to a degree.
Yes, the EPC is standardised quite rigidly, but this has been recognised and is slowly being improved upon, more elements are being added, though to be honest, the calculation stays roughly the same. But I think there is talk of enhancing this and therefore allowing a more accurate calculation of non standard houses.
But, all methods of comparison must use some degree of standardisation and therefore some non-standard elements will fall through. That's the nature of comparison.

Non-standard houses can still be assessed using the current EPC datasets, it's just that the result will not be quite as accurate as for standard houses.
I do not think that a whole scheme is 'meaningless' just because it fails to calculate to the same accuracy a small number of non-standard houses.

Getting back to your example, I think in my 4 years of surveying domestic and commercial property full time, I have only come across this example maybe once or twice.

Therefore, in terms of priorities for the programmers of RdSAP (the software used) I don't think that including an option for external hot water pipes should be high on their list of problems to resolve, do you?

sonastin

I think if you've already come across it once or twice in 4 years, it isn't as rare as you're suggesting.

I think that there are more "non-standard" houses for sale than "standard" - anything built before the Building Act 1984 brought building regs to the masses and anything that has had any sort of work done on it will more than likely have features not picked up by the software.

The more assumptions that are made, the less accurate the conclusion. There is no point in comparing one inaccurate result with another inaccurate (in a different way) result. So you can't use EPCs to compare anything in a meaningful way. Which leads me to conclude that they are meaningless.

The changes to the software are too little too late because there are thousands of meaningless EPCs already out there, valid for several years to come...

Bananamana

Had the EPC not been imposed by european directive, while the HIP was domestic, I suspect it would have been done away with as well

Davesnave

Unlike some on here, we had other priorities when selling our house than agonising over the £60 paid for the EPC.

The guy who did it was thorough and seemed to be very conversant with local properties, their history, construction etc. having done other surveying work in the area when he was full-time. Though we'd rather have kept our money, we were satisfied that the assessment had been carried out well.

Though our EPC came out much as expected, we were then looking at a very different type of house as our next property, namely Welsh farmhouses built a few hundred years ago. On some of them, we we'd see a score of around 1-20 (Band G) but the Potential score would also be similar, or even identical. Surely this is unlikely, as even the addition of some loft insulation & double glazing, or the addition of ground source heating would have a measurable effect?

As you can see, we didn't purchase in Wales, nor did we buy a period property. What we ended up with has much the same kind of EPC as the house we left, but now we have a lot of free fuel!

PasseySam

We are currently in the process of buying a house and hadn't considered the EPC as we thought it had been done away with along with HIPs.

As it seems to be a legal requirement for house selling, what are the implications for us (or the sellers) if there isn't an EPC to go along with the sale?

We are almost to the point of exchange and don't really want to rock the boat at this late stage, especially as like many people we aren't convinced that the EPC is a true reflection of the energy efficiency of the property as they seem to be done so quickly and follow such generalised guidelines rather than being specific to the house itself. So we're not overly bothered about getting an EPC in this instance and would most likely have to get another when we come to sell, especially if we make changes to the property that may affect it's efficiency - what problems would/could we encounter if we don't have an EPC or should we insist that one is done before we exchange/complete?

Thanks

Bananamana

PasseySam wrote: »

We are currently in the process of buying a house and hadn't considered the EPC as we thought it had been done away with along with HIPs.

As it seems to be a legal requirement for house selling, what are the implications for us (or the sellers) if there isn't an EPC to go along with the sale?

We are almost to the point of exchange and don't really want to rock the boat at this late stage, especially as like many people we aren't convinced that the EPC is a true reflection of the energy efficiency of the property as they seem to be done so quickly and follow such generalised guidelines rather than being specific to the house itself. So we're not overly bothered about getting an EPC in this instance and would most likely have to get another when we come to sell, especially if we make changes to the property that may affect it's efficiency - what problems would/could we encounter if we don't have an EPC or should we insist that one is done before we exchange/complete?

Thanks

there would be one with the agent. Unless it's private and been overlooked.

It's the seller's reposnibility to do it before exchnage. Failure to do so, and if they get found out, there is a £200 (ish) penalty fee.

As a buyer the risk is minimal as its the seller's obligation.

You will only need one if you sell/ let the property and the one the seller would do lasts 10 years.