Energy perfomance certificates

[jocelyn plummer]

Whilst exploring a valuation of our property from 3 local Agents, :wink: :wink: we asked about EPC's and got 2 different versions:
One quoted £70, valid for 10 years,to be produced within 21 days, another said £50 valid for 2 years,to be produced within 28 days, the third was not asked.

Which is it? Of course if I had remembered to ask the third Agent I would probably have the answer!! :roll:

 

[Flyfisher]

Isn't this part of the HIPs thing that was/is going to be cancelled?

Also, I don't understand why an EPC would really have a validity period. I can understand that a householder might improve their insulation etc, in which case it would be in their interest to get another EPC survey, but I can't imagine anyone would reduce their insulation etc.

Anyway, I think the whole issue is being looked at from the wrong perspective and I think it's outrageous to start penalising householders for not having double-glazing or loft insulation or whatever. It's energy consumption that matters, not energy efficiency per se.

Houses already have built-in energy performance devices - they're called gas and electricity meters.

 

[robgil]

how do they penalise people for having inefficient houses? they will throw the book at me , hard! my house is about as efficient as a square wheel.

 

[Flyfisher]

Just you wait:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertynews/7899920/Climate-change-buyers-face-tax-penalty-for-poorly-insulated-homes.html

. . . and I'd bet it won't be long before EPCs are used as part of council tax assessments, even though they are fairly useless anyway, in their present guise at least:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertyadvice/propertyclinic/7590776/Dont-waste-your-energy-on-eco-certificates.html

This whole issue is about as much to do with combating climate change as speed cameras are for making the roads safer.

Cynical? Moi?

 

[robgil]

so how do they 'rate' a house? do they take into account that it is made from clay from the garden , straw from local farmers and timbers from trees felled 500 odd years ago? i think not.
what about listed houses? will they be penalised as well? personally i think its a load of old carp pushed out by the media to get a reaction but if it were ever to become gospel id be screwed.
and if people do have inefficient homes but off set this in other ways do they take this into account?
if they were to do it properly they would penalise individuals for having high carbon foot print life styles and environmentally unfriendly impacts through their lifestyles, not their houses. i could have the greenest home in the country then go to work in a 30 year old tax free tank doing 3 gallons to the mile to my job where i make stupid luminous jesus replicas in my big earth unfriendly factory.
how can you hold a house responsible for its owners lack of environmental awareness?

 

[jocelyn plummer]

HIP's have been discarded (thank goodness) but EPC, still viewed with equal cynicism are required, and apparently need to be produced within a certain time frame of the selling process.

 

[TimM]

We actually found HIPs rather useful when attempting to buy our house (on the third try). Shame they didn't actually speed the process up in any way at all...

The EPCs are a Europe-wide thing, and couldn't simply be swept away with the rest of the pack. Although they are blindingly obvious and rather crude tools, I think for the vast majority of houses they have some validity - anything that will help make it more obvious that insulating your house is a good idea (I mean it is unbelievable that there is still a retrofitting cavity wall insulation business).

The question is how can they be made give weight to things like embodied energy? Is this really a reasonable thing to do - just because your house is old, does it give you the right to have a large carbon footprint?

 

[Flyfisher]

I tend to agree that the embodied energy argument is not terribly valid in this context. What's done is done. My gripe is that everyone seems to be pussy-footing around the real issue of reducing energy consumption instead of tacking it head-on with the mechanisms that already exist - meters and fuel taxes.

Unfortunately, I suspect that as long as government sees 'green' as an opportunity to establish and expand a whole new industry sector and thus contribute to improving and growing the national economy (completely counter-productive in terms of reducing national energy consumption) then we'll be seeing a lot more 'encouragement' to spend lots of money improving our homes, changing our cars, building new railways etc etc. All this new economic activity may well be good for the economy but it won't help reduce our national energy consumption.

It's a big problem.

 

[AMc]

Also, I don't understand why an EPC would really have a validity period. I can understand that a householder might improve their insulation etc, in which case it would be in their interest to get another EPC survey, but I can't imagine anyone would reduce their insulation etc.

AFAIK they show the current and potential performance of the house on a scale of A-G. As building control standards for new and refurbished houses are tightened then more buildings will end up in the A rate, but if there is scope to revise the standard then you can effectively downscale to suit the latest Passivhaus at A and extrapolate downwards. The alternative being the A, A*, A**, A*** mode used in school exams.

As a mechanism for informing a house purchaser about the potential cost of a house to run they're a very blunt instrument indeed. You would be much better off asking to see a years worth of utility bills. I also strongly doubt that the difference between an A or G rated house would outweigh location or price in purchasing decisions for most people.

However as a mechanism to eventually gather a reasonably accurate audit of all the housing stock across the whole EU and extrapolate the broad energy consumption demands now and in the future and the potential for performance improvement - I can see the logic. It's unfortunate that the cost of this is borne by people renting or selling houses, but as everyone has to conform then at least the burden is spread reasonably. The alternative would have to be a compulsory survey of all property which would be very unpopular and expensive. If we don't as a country and as the EU have any idea how much energy we use and will need to use in the future then planning for the necessary capacity and stimulating the reduction in current usage with for example subsidised insulation would be pure guess work vs. what I suspect is mildly informed guesswork now.

There was a thread on HIPS which was moved to the often visited "Top Topics" forum - last posted in September 2009
http://www.periodproperty.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7872

 

[Flyfisher]

As a mechanism for informing a house purchaser about the potential cost of a house to run they're a very blunt instrument indeed. You would be much better off asking to see a years worth of utility bills.

Agreed.

However as a mechanism to eventually gather a reasonably accurate audit of all the housing stock across the whole EU and extrapolate the broad energy consumption demands now and in the future and the potential for performance improvement - I can see the logic.

I don't dispute the value of energy consumption figures, but surely these are already well known and obtained from highly accurate sources - meters.

If we don't as a country and as the EU have any idea how much energy we use and will need to use in the future then planning for the necessary capacity and stimulating the reduction in current usage with for example subsidised insulation would be pure guess work vs. what I suspect is mildly informed guesswork now.

Agreed. But again, as a country, surely we already have very accurate figures for household energy consumption? We should also have very accurate historical trend data, a pretty good idea of the energy performance of the various types of housing stock and their numbers, and very good data for the energy performance of new houses built to the latest building regs.

Even if we wanted to improve the dataset for existing housing stock, enforcing EPCs only for house sales seems like a very poor method since it will take ages to cover the entire housing stock.

But I do take your point that a compulsory survey for all houses would be very unpopular.

 

[AMc]

But again, as a country, surely we already have very accurate figures for household energy consumption? We should also have very accurate historical trend data, a pretty good idea of the energy performance of the various types of housing stock and their numbers, and very good data for the energy performance of new houses built to the latest building regs.

I think the granularity on energy consumption for heating vs. other uses is probably quite poor. I would imagine that you could obtain meter readings, but to then determine which house has 2 meters and 3 bedrooms vs. 3 flats with 1 meter etc. etc. would be complicated. Plus there are community heating schemes etc that would be very difficult to measure.

As making renters/sellers get a certificate per dwelling you get a nice tidy dataset, complete with the potential improvements and that is available across the whole EU. I suspect a broad dataset was the primary aim and HIPS simply offered a comparatively low effort way to meet that commitment. The relatively slow build in information isn't ideal but you can probably make broad brush generalisations using postcodes etc.

Long & short - I think the EPC was a data collection exercise not a way to improve the experience of buying or renting a home.

 

[robgil]

so , if the government want to push us towards making our homes more efficient will they be offering us any help to do this?
for instance my roof needs a weathering coat and ridge , this will be very expensive and one of , if not the most expensive job i need to do here.
to insulate the roof would mean a re-thatch and quite possibly more work on the underlying timbers , boarding out , possibly a re plaster/daub inside, i really dread to think how much this would cost. then there is the loss of historic fabric in the house , its a trade off i suppose.
i am all up for insulating houses but i dont think people should be penalised because they cannot afford to insulate. insulating a modern house is a completely different story from insulating a house like mine , and because my house isnt listed then i fear insulating would involve lots of damage to the old house.
i do hope to do my walls though when i fix the render , depending on how much render i need to fix , ive been looking at this stuff , its thin enough to fit beneath the render and seems to do the trick.

http://www.insulation-actis.com/produits.php?p=3&l=3&gamme=0&rub=40

 

[Flyfisher]

so , if the government want to push us towards making our homes more efficient will they be offering us any help to do this?

Yes, of course. They won't tax you if you bring your house up to standard. That's helpful isn't it? :wink:

More seriously, do EPCs take into account the type of heating systems installed? For example, if a house only has wood burners and/or solar heating, does the insulation really matter that much? The house will be carbon neutral whatever its thermal performance.

 

[jocelyn plummer]

EPC is a pain in the you know where. Anyway, going online sorted it, got my own deal , avoided a higher cost which of course is commission to the Estate Agents.

Folks, It's a 'wait and see' this time, not going to tempt providence! :wink: :wink:

Our Market Town is awash with excitement and an Estate Agent is working very late tonight. :wink:

 

[worms]

ive been looking at this stuff , its thin enough to fit beneath the render and seems to do the trick.

http://www.insulation-actis.com/produits.php?p=3&l=3&gamme=0&rub=40

Better read this thread first!

 

[Penners]

When the EPC was prepared for the house that we sold last year, the "expert" surveyor was talking to me about the construction of our 18th century house. I explained that it was oak framed, with a skin of render on the outside and plaster on the inside. I knew that there was mineral wool insulation between the two skins, so I asked him whether he would accept my word on this.

"I'm sorry," he said (in that superior "I'm-actually-not-a-bit-sorry" way), "but I'm only allowed to energy-rate the property according to the construction method that would have been specified by the Building Regulations on the date when the house was built."

Give me strength. :roll:

 

[jocelyn plummer]

I know, the whole thing is a complete farce.

 

[Flyfisher]

"I'm sorry," he said (in that superior "I'm-actually-not-a-bit-sorry" way), "but I'm only allowed to energy-rate the property according to the construction method that would have been specified by the Building Regulations on the date when the house was built."

While I have absolutely no doubts about that story, is the surveyor actually correct about this? Surely that would imply it's not possible to improve the EPC of any house, no matter how much was spent on improving its insulation.

 

[biffvernon]

You would be much better off asking to see a years worth of utility bills.

That's an interesting thought. Completely wrong I fear, as different people's behaviour, and the effectiveness of their underwear, is a bigger factor than the structure of the house.

The big factors are things like whether every room is kept heated or just the one or two that are constantly used; the temperature maintained, whether this temperature is maintained 24/7 or just when actually wanted, whether one leaves the front door open while chatting to the milkman.

(Milkman? You still get one?)

 

[Moo]

according to the construction method that would have been specified by the Building Regulations on the date when the house was built.

So presumably it's up to the inspector chappie to imagine the regulations that would have been in place then, and rate the house accordingly.