EPC ratings, upcoming changes, and how it affects house buying now.

ProDave

There are some important and potentially expensive changes in the law coming down the road, that are likely to affect people who own a house with a poor EPC.

The original EU "Energy Performance of Buildings" directive, some 15 years ago which is what gave us the EPC in the first place, has provision for forcing upgrades to existing buildings as well as how new buildings are built, by certain dates.  So at some point owners of old poor buildings WILL be forced to make energy efficiency improvements. Not only to new buildings but existing buildings.

Part of the change is a new way of defining the EPC ratings as energy used per year per sq.m of a building. Rating A is less than 50kWh/m2 is very efficient, B is 50 - 90 kWh/m2 and is good etc all the way to G rating which is in excess of 450 kWh/m2 which is considered a heat sink.

Come 2050, all houses will be forced to be carbon zero.  That is going to be some BIG and expensive upgrades to perhaps as much as 75% of the UK's generally poor housing stock.  If you think that is too far in the future to bother you, then  by 2030 you must demonstrate a 55% reduction in greenhouse gases. So that is probably fewer houses affected, and less drastic upgrades to start with, but it still looks as though in the next 7 years a huge percentage of the existing UK housing stock will need some upgrades.

I have been saying for some time I would not personally buy a house with a poor EPC rating unless it was very much cheaper than a similar house with a good EPC to cover the cost of most of the upgrade works, and then treating it as a total fabric upgrade and total refit.

This is all coming from the EU who are still updating and refining the terms of the Energy Performance of Buildings directive, and it will come as a major irritation to probably just over 50% of the population that even though we have left the EU, we are still bound by the terms of this directive so still have to follow it.

I post this here as there is nothing about this being discussed in the main stream media in the UK.  It is being discussed in other EU countries.  I don't want in a few years time to be reading posts along the lines of "nobody warned me buying a poor house was going to turn into a very expensive money pit"

[Deleted User]

In the short term this will push developers to build even worse houses. Smaller floor space, fewer and smaller windows.

They will make the insulation worse too. Many new builds suffer from moisture build up due to inadequate ventilation.

ProDave

[Deleted User] said:

In the short term this will push developers to build even worse houses. Smaller floor space, fewer and smaller windows.

They will make the insulation worse too. Many new builds suffer from moisture build up due to inadequate ventilation.

If the EPC rating measure changes to being based on energy used per square metre, that will if anything encourage builders to build larger houses.  The ratio of external wall and ceiling area (where heat is lost) to internal volume gets better as a building gets bigger.  So for a given insulation value in walls floors and ceilings, a larger house will have a lower energy use per square metre than a small one, so the larger house would have a better EPC rating.

ComicGeek

Energy use per square metre is meaningless if what we are trying to do is reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Energy usage, carbon emissions and running costs are all different things to measure.

Domestic EPCs are based on an energy cost scale, commercial EPCs are based on a carbon emissions scale - neither are based on energy use per square metre. Any future changes also have to allow a direct comparison to 'old' EPCs less than 10 years old, so I can't see any radical changes happening. 

A change from gas boilers to air source heat pumps (the government's main drive) is also not going to provide any improvement in current EPC ratings for most properties due to the gas vs elec energy costs used in the EPC calculations - a scale based on carbon emissions would see a massive improvement though, so I wouldn't be surprised if the government realises they can achieve a massive improvement by just changing this.

Gavin83

ProDave said:

I post this here as there is nothing about this being discussed in the main stream media in the UK.  

That’s because it’s nothing more than hearsay or guesswork. There’s no way this is happening anywhere close to the scale you’re suggesting.

I certainly wouldn’t be worrying.

RelievedSheff

[Deleted User] said:

In the short term this will push developers to build even worse houses. Smaller floor space, fewer and smaller windows.

They will make the insulation worse too. Many new builds suffer from moisture build up due to inadequate ventilation.

Many new builds don't suffer from moisture build up because they do have adequate ventilation and their owners know how to use it.

Insulation is getting better for new build houses, not worse. The latest building regulations are a huge leap forward from the last reiteration. 

New build are required to have a minimum opening size of window and back ground ventilation per room. They can not stray away from those requirements.

The new build we bought 4 years ago has far better insulation properties, far better back ground ventilation and a bigger number of larger windows than our previous 1930's semi. It makes for a much more pleasant atmosphere to live in.

RedFraggle

Why are we bound by the EU directive?
Directives are enshrined in UK national law as statutory instruments (in this case The Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) Regulations 2012).