EPC rant

keystone

Most of the assessors are "box tickers" they haven't the faintest idea what they are doing or why. Government should have suspended these stupid things at the same time as the rest of the Home Information Pack. Why didn't they? Pandering to the GW lobby thats why. :mad:

Cheers

MX5huggy

Doozergirl wrote: »

Totally true. We hadn't quite finished a house when we ordered the EPC. The super insulating windows that far exceed building regs count for nothing at all - just a tick in the 'double glazing' box. You can have crap 30 year old aluminium leaking ones or brand new super ones; makes no difference. No points for integrated energy saving appliances, but the fact that there were no light bulbs in the pendants yet meant we were marked down 6 points for not having energy savers!

OP, I really wouldn't stress about it. The only painful part is handing over the cash.

Your EPC person is wrong, they should have identified that the windows where since 2002 and therefore get a u value of 2.0 older DG gets given 3.1 single 4.8.

Page 90 onwards of this shows the procedure and calculation method http://projects.bre.co.uk/sap2005/pdf/SAP2005_9-83.pdf

That was used up to the middle of the month SAP 2009 is now used.

Doozergirl

MX5huggy wrote: »

u value of 2.0 older DG gets given 3.1 single 4.8.

Interesting to know! Still pointless as the windows' actual u value is 1.1! I thought even BR now was 1.8?

MX5huggy

Since Oct 2010 it's been 1.6 or WER band C or better.

The problem is how does the assessor know if the units are filled with argon, air or Krypton.

You could get a full SAP done where there is more flexibility to use actual figures but the result would be almost exactly the same. As tinkering at the edges, window uvalue, number of CFL etc bulbs makes only minor changes in the final result.

mbga9pgf

Windows form such a small area the difference between 1.1 and 1.8 will make very little difference to your average U value anyways. Its the U value of the walls, floors and ceilings you need to sort to get a good value.

We recently installed 8 metres by 2.6 metres of 80mm PIR insulating board internally on our 2 course solid brickwork.

U value of 4.2 including existing DG now down to average of 0.22. Window average U value used in calcs 2.4

Richard_Webster

In order to make the system at all workable the government had to make decisions about how much could be checked. They couldn't get involved with things that took time - so if,as someone has already said, a low energy bulb is there it doesn't matter if it doesn't work - you still get the credit for it.

Similarly a central heating boiler is judged on its type - not on whether the particular boiler even works - so the first EPC I had anything to do with was for a bungalow in the country with an oil central heating boiler which did not work - but (being of an older type) it was rated as "average".

They were so keen to get the system working that they didn't bother to think through how useful it would be in practice.

DVardysShadow

keystone wrote: »

Most of the assessors are "box tickers" they haven't the faintest idea what they are doing or why. Government should have suspended these stupid things at the same time as the rest of the Home Information Pack. Why didn't they? Pandering to the GW lobby thats why. :mad:

Cheers

As someone who does think Global Warming [GW] is an issue, I don't think the EPC is particularly helpful. It is so broad brush and riddled with inconsistency as we see here, that I regard the EPC as discredited.

Doozergirl

mbga9pgf wrote: »

Windows form such a small area the difference between 1.1 and 1.8 will make very little difference to your average U value anyways. Its the U value of the walls, floors and ceilings you need to sort to get a good value.

We recently installed 8 metres by 2.6 metres of 80mm PIR insulating board internally on our 2 course solid brickwork.

U value of 4.2 including existing DG now down to average of 0.22. Window average U value used in calcs 2.4

Well, that's done too. The whole Victorian Section has insulation board inside at a cost of something stupid like £35 a panel (75 square metres of it :eek:) , the solid floor dug up and insulated, insulation stuffed between the joists to the cellar and the first floor and inside every stud wall! Loft as well is stuffed with it. Half the house is new build so that's even better.

Anyway, the upshot is that the bills over the winter were the same as another house we own which is 800 square feet smaller in floor space and has ceilings a whole 1m lower in much of it. So it does work. But no one cares and it's still a C. So next time, you can give me the D rating which the other house gets, and I'll run with it. No one cares in the slightest!

I have no idea how you calculate the u value of a house.

mbga9pgf

Find the total sq. meterage for the entire property. Determine U values for each component eg wall/ceiling/floor/window. then calculate fraction that each component contributes as a fraction of the size of the element vs the total. Multiply this against the component U value.

Add up.

Average U value.

Donwlighters are Uber bad by the way on the top floor. Draughts in the cold roof space and you cant insulate over them

nearlynew

keystone wrote: »

Most of the assessors are "box tickers" they haven't the faintest idea what they are doing or why. Government should have suspended these stupid things at the same time as the rest of the Home Information Pack. Why didn't they? Pandering to the GW lobby thats why. :mad:

Cheers

I agree about the "box ticking" but the government had no choice - the EPC is required under EU legislation.

But what they could have done is detach it from the house-buying process.