How much attention do you pay to the EPCs?

Dan-Dan

thedalmeny wrote: »

We purchased a new build property (4 bedroom detached) at the beginning of April, £192,000 list price which we got reduced to £182,000.

On the same estate they're now advertising a new build 4 bedroom detached which is 50sqft bigger (It's lounge is smaller, so is family room but bigger kitchen / dinner) but has no garage and no driveway.... For £197,000...

I'm very glad we purchased when we did tbh.

Thats great news for you , not sure what it has to do with the EPC topic though :think:

hazyjo

thedalmeny wrote: »

We purchased a new build property (4 bedroom detached) at the beginning of April, £192,000 list price which we got reduced to £182,000.

On the same estate they're now advertising a new build 4 bedroom detached which is 50sqft bigger (It's lounge is smaller, so is family room but bigger kitchen / dinner) but has no garage and no driveway.... For £197,000...

I'm very glad we purchased when we did tbh.

Not sure what it's got to do with the thread... but, anyway, that might not be because it's worth more, it might be that you were one of the first to buy (when the prices can be offered lower to get the ball rolling, as it were). Once they start selling, prices can go up. Or maybe they're not making enough and need to bump up the prices. Also, I wouldn't pay much attention to the asking prices, it's the sold prices that matter

Jx

ValHaller

Carys84 wrote: »

Chatting to a number of sellers, one of the things that has apparently let one property down was energy-saving bulbs!

This has been the case since the days of the HIP. Really, it does bring the EPC into disrepute. You cold argue that it encourages people to change the bulbs. If only for the duration of an EPC assessment.

Davesnave

Seabee42 wrote: »

If you really have super insulated your home I feel for you in this weather!

Oh dear! I wonder how those strange foreigners in Europe get on, eh? :eek:

lessonlearned wrote: »

The measures they suggest you take are often not only wildly expensive and impractical they can be counter productive. It is entirely possible to over-insulate a property, especially period properties - they must be allowed to breathe. Over-insulating can cause condensation which is one of the most common causes of damp. A damp property will cost more to heat.

I tend to agree with Seebea - just another silly box ticking exercise.

Yes, it is possible to mess up period properties and create problems with modern 'improvements,' but we mustn't assume that allowing old properties to breathe and measures to insulate them have always to be mutually exclusive.

Most people need to learn more. Maybe the EPCs are the Janet & John of the process, but we all have to start somewhere, as my first quote shows.

jc808

LittleMissAspie wrote: »

People say that but my house is very insulated (modern mid-terrace, yearly gas + elec bill approx £600) and it's quite cool in this weather. Definitely cooler than my parents' 1930s detached house and a LOT cooler than my office at work. Surely if heat can't get out easily, then heat can't get in easily either?

Exactly although if youve a large southfacing bay ewindow the room will heat up

thedalmeny

Damn posted in one thread

JustAnotherSaver

Gra76 wrote: »

This is how I view them. I certainly wouldn't let it sway me if we found the right house. It could have the lowest energy rating or the highest, I really wouldn't be bothered one way or another if the house was the right one for me and my family.

I agree with you in a sense.

However this is my concern:

Take all costs out of the equation & this house may very well be right. It may have the room for 2 parking spots that we require. The rooms may be big enough. The location is already fine as we know. The house may very well be spot on.

However, if the quoted running costs in the EPC are somewhere close to being correct (how correct are they?!) then that makes this house unsuitable as it currently stands because we simply cannot afford to allocate that much of our income just to heating alone. We could get a similar priced house with better EPC rating & instead of throwing £5k at heating (if that quote is somewhere near correct) we could save £4k of that & use it on leisure, entertainment, savings, or just anything else we may want to spend it on.


It's just a question as to how accurate these figures are?

And also how much is it to install radiators & the like?

vectistim

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

It's just a question as to how accurate these figures are?

SAP (the calculating engine underneath the EPC) provides a standard occupancy pattern, essentially it assumes that all households heat a dwelling to 21 degrees in living rooms and 18 degrees in bedrooms for 8 hours a day during the week and 16 hours per day at the weekend.

It also assumes a standard demand for hot water, to do this it calculated a theoretical number of occupants based on the floor area and it leaves this as a non-integer (eg: SAP may assume a dwelling has 2.36 occupants)

If you are reasonably close to this perceived average household then it should provide a reasonably close match, although the variation can be such that a particular household's energy bills in a house could be half as much, or twice as much as the SAP estimate.

The easiest improvements are generally loft and cavity insulation. If you are looking at a house without cavity walls and without mains gas available then it will be an expensive job getting it a high score. In that sort of case you will probably do better financially to make sure you close curtains as soon as the sun goes down, reduce drafts and buy some jumpers.

Collie_Collie

I think they are pretty useless. Another attempt to measure and standardise but one size doesn't fit all. My house was built in 3 stages over 50 + years so the construction varies and the EPC can't cope with that at all. Also,the person who came to do it made a lot of guesses/assumptions that where not really accurate. Didn't go into the loft for example just asked what was up there. Maybe if you compared several modern, exactly comparable houses they might work but in reality they don't. Sledgehammer to crack a nut comes to mind.

Dukesy

My house is the warmest house imaginable during the winter and the coolest in the summer. We do not struggle to heat it, and it holds heat wonderfully. It has stone walls that are, in some areas, three+ feet thick.

However, it rated extremely poorly on the EPC scale when we bought it. Why? Because it doesn't have insulated walls and floors, and only had eco lightbulbs fitted in 10% of light fixtures. Ridiculous - not worth the paper it's written on.