MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
Although we have been blessed with the suspension of the HIPs, we still needed to get an EPC for our house sale.
What a load of rubbish it is!
Among the three "improvement recommendations" is:
"Photovoltaic panels".
We have a NE aspect roof and get direct sunlight around 30% of the day. In summer. In winter we get none! Idiot!
And for some reason the assessor's calculation tells us that our house has "potential" to cost £15 per year more in heating! Superb recommendation there!
Rather than enforce this expensive and silly bit of pan-EU legislation there should be a £20 one-off exemption certification scheme for houses over 80 years old. There's no chance this house is ever going to have "internal or external insulation" fitted to improve it's rating (victorian cottage in a conservation area). And it's already maxed out on low-energy lightbulbs and TRVs.
Load of bureaucratic twaddle.
How much does this new scam cost ?
£94 for someone to punch some irrelevant numbers into a software calculator and print off a meaningless proforma report. 🙁
You can get them for £45.
And its not new, its the part of the HIP that still has to be completed under EU law.
EPCs are pretty much useless. The recommendations are from a drop down menu from the software so to be fair, the assesor may not have had much choice. The industry is seriously pushing for the renewable energies even though the repayment period for many things like PV panels is >100 years.
The DECs are much more useful but are not required by law for anything other than public buildings. They're not required at all according to the EPBD.
What were the other 2 recommendations - lightbulbs and wall insulation?
What was your score ?/100 ?
When we bought our house they recommended fitting cavity wall insulation, despite the fact we don't actually have any cavity walls. 🙄
They do seem to have very little basis in reality.
The victorian building where I work has a 'c' rating which I think is amazingly high. It doesn't account for the hot water taps that stick on pouring gallons of boiling water into the drains, the large single glazed sash windows or the cast iron victorian radiators which pump out a huge column of hot air over the West of Sheffield which is a boon for gliding clubs and large winged birds alike.
Wiredchops, a C is a pretty good rating and will probably be exclusively due to the fact that it's entered as a naturally ventilated and non air conditioned building (is it?). the DECs would account for the actual energy usage (taken from utility bills) and is far more useful as a tool to assist building owners and occupiers to reduce consumption.
backhander, that explains it, certainly no air con, which was apparent during last weeks heat wave. Had always wondered how this building was apparently better performing than the plethora of fancy new buildings nearby which have 'e' or 'f' ratings but seemingly much more thought with regards to energy saving.
I trained in this. After the training (scam) company went tits-up and I found out there's no work anyway, I can tell you that in my experience, having done several real assessments as part of my portfolio, the criticism that the EPC is a load of simplistic bollox, is essentially....
Correct.
Bit like the government that thought it up. 👿
I do commercial EPC's and when doing reccomendations I can create my own or eleberate on existing ones in the software.
I think the house ones are a good idea but I imagine there are a lot of under qualified assessors just ticking boxes in software packages without a knowledge of the industry.
Woppits right. I'm in the industry and did one day training (due to experience) with CIBSE and got my accreditation (got TM44 too). The EPCs are complete sh1t and no mistake.
certainly no air con, which was apparent during last weeks heat wave
And there's the rub.
I can see the point of all new builds having to be built to certain energy standards, and when people buy they should be able to compare one house against another.
However for old houses it is a completely useless piece of info. Last year I sold an 1860's house, and guess what, it did crap in the scoring. I bought a 1930's house which again didn't do that great! However I knew that when buying an older house I would expect it not to be as energy efficient as a new one... oh well
Comments about installing energy saving bulbs could save x £'s per year are not really that helpful (because surprisingly I knew that before)
I think the accuracy of the rating depend very much on the care taken by the assessor. There aren't a lot of inputs (13 inputs + dimensions) but if the wrong assumptions are made end result is pretty useless.
I've seen really bad post war system build housing score >70/100 with dodgy old boilers.
Our one told us to replace the boiler with a better one that used more gas per annum and therfore cost £32 more to run, on top of the installation cost.
Bit like the government that thought it up
Didn't it come from the EC?
Randomly i am having one done as i type. Its £55 , and as its a radio rental is required by law. As if the prospective tennants are as daft as brushes not to work out a combi boiler, central heating and double glazing wont be cheaper than sash windows and a few 3kw dimplex heaters scattered around the place.
can i produce the Fensa certificates, hell no. They are dg windows, does it make a huge difference if they are 1995 or 2005, I very much doubt it.
Our rating was 48E with potential for 49E (whoopdeedoo)
Its a Victorian quarryman's cottage in a conservation area. Nobody who owns a yogurt maker should consider buying it.
Using the SAP 9 software and using an "As designed" approach, the new Barn conversion Im building comes in at 90+ and an Environmental Impact of 99.
Suck on that Sting! 😉