Green Deal MSE Guide Discussion

Cardew

monstereyebrows wrote: »

I am am an Energy Assessor and trainee Green Deal Advisor.

Sadly I fear that many will experience being let down by the Green Deal assessment like the poster above.

If you are having any issuse with the Green Deal please PM with the details and I may be able to give some useful advice.

Why a PM and not on this website for all to see?

vm2pensioner

But what did anyone really expect from a scheme like this? It's a repeat of the house seller's pack fiasco. You pay a lot of money unnecessarily for the bleeding obvious!

monstereyebrows

Cardew wrote: »

Why a PM and not on this website for all to see?

Its because they are likely going to provide information that may not want others to see.

Richie-from-the-Boro

monstereyebrows wrote: »

I am am an Energy Assessor and trainee Green Deal Advisor.

Sadly I fear that many will experience being let down by the Green Deal assessment like the poster above.

If you are having any issues with the Green Deal please PM with the details and I may be able to give some useful advice.

As a long standing MSE member Join Date: 06-04-2006 why would you want to give MSE advice to a 1st time newbie poster off site and away from scrutiny of the group?

No person should go offsite for advice from a salesman

Richie-from-the-Boro

monstereyebrows wrote: »

its because they are likely going to provide information that may not want others to see.

.................dup

pd001

Cardew wrote: »

Why a PM and not on this website for all to see?

Agreed...
we all need to see, and maybe indeed benefit, from the advice given by monstereyebrows

Ecodave

Dingle1979 - as the last few posters have said, there is no need to go to private message to get further advice, plenty of people are lining up to give you their 2peneth worth.

I can tell from your post that you were/are confused about the Green Deal process. You make reference to the 'free' items that are recommended on the report, well I am afraid that these are not free. They may require no upfront cost, but they aren't free, far from it. You will have to pay full price for these items, some (all?) of which you would be able to locate outside of Green Deal for cheaper than paying the associated charges.

The Recommendation for an upgrade to your boiler will be to upgrade to a more efficient regular boiler, not a combi boiler as you presume. So the other recommendation regarding the cylinder jacket is perfectly valid. (It would be valid anyway, as the EPC would not presume that you would take up the recommendation to get a combi as opposed to a regular boiler, so would still recommend improving the cylinder jackets insulation)

One aspect that you have pointed out, that is getting a lot of criticism (rightly), is the cost price estimates. Some of them appear to be wildly out. They are supposed to be "ball park" figures, which if an enquiry extends as far as the Advice Report being submitted to a Provider, would be firmed up into accurate quotes. I think you would find that some of the costs on the EPC would be too cheap, some too expensive. And some about right.

I note from the list of recommendations that you have posted that you don't mention wall or loft insulation, the 2 key measures that will deliver big savings to houses, that are also cost efficient. As these are absent, I would suggest that you were never a good candidate for Green Deal in the first place. What exactly were you hoping to get from the process?

monstereyebrows

Only trying to help those who have had an assessment that is inappropiate for them and their property.

But to give people an idea how the scheme works.

Say you wanted just a new boiler your old one is approx 60% efficient (open/balanced flue) the pridicted saving per year from the energy saved is say £100 you then have an in-use factor that would reduce the figure by 25% £75. You can only have the loan for a period upto the lifetime of the measure (in this case a boiler being 12 years) Therefore 12 x £75= £900 this is without the interest (7%) so the actual amount you could use to partialy fund the boiler is going to much less than the £900 say £600 (clearly this does not meet the Golden Rule). This means if the cost of the boiler installed by a Green Deal Provider is £3600 you would have to find the £3000 either from your own pocket, loan or maybe finance from the Green Deal Provider.

However if you dont have say Cavity wall or loft insulation the payback period for these are much shorter and effectively you can use these measures to extend the credit available therefore the Green Deal Provider maybe able to put a plan together including the boiler, CWI/Loft insulation whereby it may reach the golden rule and all can paid out of the savings of the three items.

However so many people are having assessments done that clearly from the start are not going the help they thought to fund the energy saving measures.

Some have reported they wanted double glazing but the saving can be very small for example I have 3 bed eot house pridicted saving from single to double glazing £55 per year less in use factor 15% £47 per year times the lifetime ( I think D/G is 20yrs) 20 x £47 £940 thats without the interest so would be less.

So if you wanted a new boiler and D/G you could not fund it on a Green Deal only partially. The rest of the funding would have to come from another means. But if you had CWI and loft insultaion in the calculation then more funding would be available on the Green Deal.

It would appear that most people having assessments want in particular new boilers or D/G but clearly they are going to be disapointed.

Hope it helps a little.

moneysavingsimon

Good mythbusting review of the Green Deal. My overall summary is one of confusion and I think this in itself will put most people off. The one benefit I see is the cashback but I have a feeling from reading the other posts that this will be written off as there is the cost of the initial assessment and the highly anticipated inflated prices for the installation (I woud pay off in full rather than pay 7% interest). I think this will fall flat on its face in terms of uptake so will wait the next scheme which will hopefully simplify the objective of improving the energy efficiency of old houses.

Simone_Nelson

We got the assessment and we were hoping for great improvement on our existing Economy 7 deal with Eon - we do not know how old the 5 Storage Heaters are in the house we moved into in July 2011. Having paid £115 our Assessor spent a very long time filling in his forms - he told us he would transfer this to the official computer software when he got home. Seemed a shame he did not have it on a Laptop to start with!

After week of not hearing anything we phoned up and got the assessment immediately by email. Sadly it seemed to imply that we were already under the average spend for a house of our size with little room for improvement other than insulating our floor for a possible £29 annual saving. Or installing gas central heating at £4,000/£7,000 - we had already said that at our age we were not prepared for the disruption never mind the cost.

Not daunted we decided to contact the 'local' providers. Well there were none really local - we are in Newcastle - the nearest in Leeds was not interested if they had not done the assessment. Doncaster a message on the phone to say they were unable to handle our call - so far they have not called back.

Currently we use 77% of our energy on the Economy 7 tariff - which of course gives us little flexibility or control. We are minded to do away with five storage heaters - Dimplex XL5N (cannot find out their age - any help on this would be useful) and substitute with a 3 kW Cadiz Oil Free Radiator/Convector in our lounge - if this solves the problem we may buy smaller Cadiz Heaters for elsewhere. BUT we have to make the leap to do away with the Economy 7 tariff in order to get a cheaper daytime rate. Because of the high level of overnight charging overall our tariff works out to be less than 9p per unit - quite cheap in fact!

I doubt we would get the £150 per storage heater cash back if we were not replacing like with like?

So we have spent £115 to learn little and so far find no provider to help us further!!!