Green Deal MSE Guide Discussion

new2reviews

Coulsdon_Town wrote: »

You can have Green Deal with a prepay meter - see MSE Green Deal Mythbusters article (Near the top of it).

Thanks - Yes I saw that part of the article and thought it was wrong which was my reason for asking the question

Ardent_Monk

Hi,
I've just qualified as a Green Deal Advisor, I work for a consultancy that puts ethics at the heart of what we do (this isn't an advert just trying to give background!) and so did the advisor course to get a better understanding of the issues on both consumer and provider sides.
From my point of view it is going to be a very interesting six months, there are some serious issues regarding independence of advisors, e.g. When employed by a green deal provider that is also a green deal installer, and it concerns me that the opportunities for shortcuts and back handers by advisors are fairly significant. However that said I think it is a decent scheme for those who would otherwise not be able to afford the measures and hopefully will help address the co2 emissions from the existing housing stock. Fingers are crossed... :cool:

Gloucester_Lad

GDsceptic wrote: »

As anyone who has had an EPC done knows they are wildly inaccurate.
I'm a heating eng and just struggled to keep a straight face!
So the idea of shelling out thousands on the basis of this kind of guestimate is farcicle.
First up the whole thing is a gift to big business. Its so bureaucratic specifically to keep your honest small businesses ot of the picture.
Its well known that BG are not competitive, I'm only too glad for a customer to get a quote from them to make me look cheap!
So you can be assured that the select band of greeen dealers will be roughly twice the price of a local company.
But hey who cares its on the never never so you don't notice.
You could have a new boiler installed professionally for £1500, and put it on you mortgage at 5% is if nec. Or you could pay £3000+ and pay 10% compound interest for 15 plus years, potentially after the boiler has died - that £270 cashback is not looking so tempting now is it?
Worse still the accuracy of data for many contruction types in the models is highly questionable, meaning they may well seriously underestimate you houses current performance. This of course means you savings will be overestimated, and as I suspect a tendancy to inflate the price of measures to match the 'predicted' savings you can see the problem.
To cap it all your house will be saddled with a debt for overpriced underperforming measures that could be almost at there expiry date when you come to sell.
Bring back £150 cavity wall insulation from your energy provider.
Take my advice, speak to a local Heating engineer maximise you saving and minimise your cost and give the Green steal a wide birth.
I'm frankly quite surprised MSE is not more sceptical of this!

Well, I'd completely agree with you about the merits of getting your new boiler from a local plumber rather than from one of the big boys who will undoubtedly charge much more, typically 40% more.

However your criticism of the EPC is a bit harsh. The "wild inaccuracies" that make you smile I would guess are related to projected energy usage and potential savings following recommended upgrades?
Well you really should remember what was the original purpose of an EPC before it was hijacked and incorporated into the Green Deal system.
The EPC was originally introduced simply to give potential house buyers and tenants the heads up on the kind of running costs they could expect if they actually buy or rent the home in question. By simply checking out the EPC for each property a realistic efficiency comparisons could be made. That's all it was originally for.

The EPC energy usage figures are based on a standard occupancy model for the size of property in question. Now of course no two households use energy in the same way and many factors can affect energy usage. How many occupants, whether they are at work all day, whether they are retired and like the place a bit warmer etc.etc.
Those standard occupancy projected figure will therefore of course most of the time be wildly inaccurate because few people will conveniently fit the standard occupancy model but it does make comparisons between different properties more of a meaningful possibility.
Unless the standard occupancy model is used how, Mr. energy expert plumber, sorry heating engineer, is any comparison between different property energy inefficiencies remotely possible?

Where it's all gone horribly wrong is in using potential savings for the EPC based on the standard occupancy model as the basis of the Green Deal "Golden Rule". Given that no two households use energy the same way how can it be correct? How can those figures, coupled to the Golden Rule, possibly be trusted to ensure savings outweigh cost of upgrade? Simple answer is of course they cannot.
The EPC was never intended to do this, until the Green Deal hijacked it.

This example along with many other what will prove unpopular eliments of the "Green Deal" is what makes it such a poorly thought out, unnecessarily complex, and comparatively expensive pigs ear of a scheme. And I agree, stay clear of the Green Deal.

But Mr. Energy Expert Heating Engineer your dig at the "guestimated and farcicle" EPC is I'd say unjustified.
There is nothing wrong with the EPC system for sales and letting, which is what it's really intended for. It is only it's extended use within the Green Deal that is highly questionable.

NaughtySpot

This thread is very negative isn't it? Some quite aggressive posting going on which can make one feel stupid for even considering this.

Anyway; our assessment was done yesterday. A very pleasant man from British Gas was here for over two hours, and there was no hard sell from him at all which I'll admit to being surprised about. We were left with an EPC and we'll get a full report through the post sometime next week.

Advice was as I expected really; double glazing and a new boiler will make a good improvement. Also mentioned was under floor insulation and Solar Photovoltaics which I know very little about really.

The next step is to phone around some suppliers and see what they can do for us.

This is a good opportunity for us I feel. As another poster wrote earlier, when we bought this house energy efficiency wasn't even thought about, and an EPC wasn't available anyway.

Yes we will pay over the odds (probably) for the work being done, but the other option is to do nothing as there is no way we could afford to have this done anytime soon. If you are happy with this decision then this could work well for you.

As for those posters saying support your local tradesman etc; this is all well and good if they will even return your call and turn up to quote! I struggled to get a plumber to service my boiler when we moved here and ended up doing a service contract in the end, and I had a leaky pipe two months ago and again the same problem so extended the service contract to include plumbing. I also have some building work that needs doing and no-one is interested. At least the big companies come when they say and do the job for you...

Me_fishy_u_chippie

Coulsdon_Town wrote: »

Whatever you think of Green Deal (and i'm not defending it wholeheartedly), the whole point is that the likes of 'Mr Poor-Pleb' don't need any money to do it. The Green deal measures, if approved and meeting 'The golden Rule' - pay for themselves.
As UseLessEnergy said, Green Deal is only one financing option.
It's not compulsory. But if you have no spare cash it's there to use if you want to improve your home/ make it much cheaper to heat. Clearly there are major cautions around the quality of the assessor's visit, the quality of subsequent works etc etc.
But it can make sense for comfortably off people to invest and save huge heating costs in the long run, and they do. It may also make sense for those with no cash to use the scheme to put the improvements in place without there own cash. they then have a home without draughts/cold air currents/condensation or whatever the problems were. And even if they are no better off in cash terms in year one, as energy costs rise they will be, because 10% (say) on an £800 annual fuel bill is less than 10% on a £1200 annual fuel bill.

Coulsden town - I am not taking issue with you at all, but lets be honest, a saving of £120 a year, or £2.3 a week, wont even buy Mr Poor Pleb a pint a week!

The whole point I am making is clear and straightforward. Those people with the least energy efficient houses tend to be those who are unable or unwilling to pay for upgrades. By "offering" a loan like an olive branch, with no upfront costs to the householder but backloaded penal interest rates attached, is the sting in the tail. That is why this deal is a dog!

The money, our money, paid by taxation into the coffers of the Treasury is then given to a company in this case, GDFCo, whose members generate monumental profits - to shareholders, to be loaned back to the taxed, at punitive rates of interest - lining the back pockets of the middlemen and the shareholders of the member companies.

It is iniquitous.

Here is my suggestion; I feel it would be fairer and a much more appealing "deal", if the middlemen, GDFCo, (BG, Goldman Sachs et al) were either cut out altogether or, the interest rate capped at a "reasonable" rate say, half of what the assessment indicates would be saved. This would give meaning to the Golden Rule. IE the "savings" are shared - that way Mr Poor-Pleb pays a reasonable rate of interest on delivered savings, the middleman makes a reasonable rate of interest AND the providers are motivated to make the greatest possible savings(as the middlemen make more dosh and the government hits greater carbon reduction targets) not the fastest buck!

Lets face it - a guaranteed interest rate without a guaranteed return, just a wishy washy Golden Rule, not worth the paper its written on, is another government endorsed "thieves charter". Every Australian sportsman knows - rules are there to be broken.

This fish believes in equality not exploitation of the weakest and neediest.

Right I'm off to the fish farm!

new_owner

NaughtySpot wrote: »

Advice was as I expected really; double glazing and a new boiler will make a good improvement. Also mentioned was under floor insulation and Solar Photovoltaics which I know very little about really.

This I think shows how bad this assessment (GD) can be.

Unless you live in a green house with boiler that no longer works I would be surprised if you ever see any return.

Windows typically amount to around 10% loss (80% of this is from drafts on old single glassed windows)

Unless you boiler is no longer working or is undersized for the house then replacing a working boiler never makes sense.

As for solar .... I would sugest that that you really look at this. If you discount any feed in they just dont measure up.

So all in all I would say that you have loss'd two hours. Did you pay for this?

50Twuncle

You don't get "Something for Nothing"
I would avoid this scheme like the plague !!

To start with - who is going to buy a house with a debt linked to it ?
Then there's the "inspection" fee - who will vet these "inspectors" and who says that what they say/do is not going to be linked back to a specific company

"RUN RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN - YOU CAN'T CATCH ME, I'M A GREEN DEAL MAN"

NaughtySpot

new_owner wrote: »

This I think shows how bad this assessment (GD) can be.

Unless you live in a green house with boiler that no longer works I would be surprised if you ever see any return.

Windows typically amount to around 10% loss (80% of this is from drafts on old single glassed windows)

Unless you boiler is no longer working or is undersized for the house then replacing a working boiler never makes sense.

As for solar .... I would sugest that that you really look at this. If you discount any feed in they just dont measure up.

So all in all I would say that you have loss'd two hours. Did you pay for this?

I think you would have to be incredibly dense for a GD assessment to throw up any surprises on your own home. I see the assessment as a means to an end to be able to qualify for it. Yes I paid for it, and again as it's the way to qualify for the GD, that's okay to me. If I had a newer house with modern windows and a 5 year old boiler I wouldn't have bothered.

Our boiler is 20+ years old and terribly inefficient, and the only reason our gas bills aren't sky high is I am careful with it's use.

I don't believe the 8% heat-loss due to single pane windows, it feels like a lot more. One room is double glazed and the difference is amazing.

It's not just about saving £££ on our energy bills either, it's about being warm in your own home. If we can make these improvements and it not cost us much more then I'm all for it. We can't extend our mortgage, and a traditional loan is out of the question, so for us this is a good thing. It's a shame there is so much negativity surrounding something that for some people can make a difference to their home.

NaughtySpot

21Twinkle wrote: »

You don't get "Something for Nothing"
I would avoid this scheme like the plague !!

To start with - who is going to buy a house with a debt linked to it ?
Then there's the "inspection" fee - who will vet these "inspectors" and who says that what they say/do is not going to be linked back to a specific company

"RUN RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN - YOU CAN'T CATCH ME, I'M A GREEN DEAL MAN"

From a personal point of view our GD assessor didn't plug British Gas at all.

I think the house linked with debt thing can be looked at two ways; yes there is a debt linked to it, but it is more efficient and the work is already done. People are stretched to the max these days for mortgages and probably have no money to make these changes themselves, and at least it's a known quantity.

If I was buying I would have to think about it but it wouldn't put me off totally.

I suppose it's a bit like buying a leasehold property; these have a debt permanently attached to them that needs to be considered, and I wouldn't buy a leasehold property. At least the GD will be finished one day.

I think I'll step away from this thread, I was trying to share my personal experience so people can make a decision for themselves, but this doesn't seem to be the way this thread is going .

Gloucester_Lad

NaughtySpot wrote: »

This thread is very negative isn't it? Some quite aggressive posting going on which can make one feel stupid for even considering this.

Anyway; our assessment was done yesterday. A very pleasant man from British Gas was here for over two hours, and there was no hard sell from him at all which I'll admit to being surprised about. We were left with an EPC and we'll get a full report through the post sometime next week.

Advice was as I expected really; double glazing and a new boiler will make a good improvement. Also mentioned was under floor insulation and Solar Photovoltaics which I know very little about really.

The next step is to phone around some suppliers and see what they can do for us.

This is a good opportunity for us I feel. As another poster wrote earlier, when we bought this house energy efficiency wasn't even thought about, and an EPC wasn't available anyway.

Yes we will pay over the odds (probably) for the work being done, but the other option is to do nothing as there is no way we could afford to have this done anytime soon. If you are happy with this decision then this could work well for you.

As for those posters saying support your local tradesman etc; this is all well and good if they will even return your call and turn up to quote! I struggled to get a plumber to service my boiler when we moved here and ended up doing a service contract in the end, and I had a leaky pipe two months ago and again the same problem so extended the service contract to include plumbing. I also have some building work that needs doing and no-one is interested. At least the big companies come when they say and do the job for you...

Yes "NaughtySpot" the tread is a bit negative but not unjustly so I'd say because the Green Deal scheme is really a dog of a scheme. It will turn out to be very much a lost opportunity to provide a vehicle for home energy efficiency improvement. I predict this failure will result in a loss of credibility making the better scheme which must inevitably follow also less likely to succeed.

You seem content to pay over the odds suggesting that the alternative is to do nothing. Well that's not how I see it at all.
There is nothing in the Green Deal that is impossible to do outside of the Green Deal. In fact I'd suggest that in all cases going your own way in getting efficiency improvement done will work out far more economically viable.

Go your own way and:
You won't pay inflated prices from the likes of British Gas and the other big boy installers.

If you borrow you can do better than 7%, why not a mortgage extension (2% to 4%) or even a personal bank loan (about 5%) and of course the loan will be much smaller if you use a local trades person.

The better financing arrangement will mean energy bill savings much much sooner. That Green Deal boiler will be ready for replacement by the time you've paid for it and I seriously doubt the whole exercise will have saved you any money at all even if the Golden Rule actually works, which I also seriously doubt.

No problems if you move, simply pay off the loan as part of the house sale transaction and no Green Deal loan early repayment penalty charges. Just like you would if you were still paying for a new kitchen at the time of sale, I see no difference.

You also mention you're having problems getting a local plumber interested in giving you a quote and that surprises me because I had no problem finding one although I did have to wait a week or two before my new boiler was fitted. They we very busy because their price was approaching a thousand pounds less than British Gas for the same boiler with the same guarantee.
That's a lot of money. I'd try a bit harder to find one if I were you.

However at the end of the day it's your money and your choice but I just don't like seeing people relieved of there cash unnecessarily by installation outfits and financiers clearly just profiteering while Government sits by and condones it all out of incompetence, naivety or just they simply don't care what the costs are to the consumer.
All you have to do to prevent this is put a bit of effort into organizing the project yourself and you'll save a small fortune.
Your choice?