SAP costs

[RichS]

Firstly sorry if this is in the wrong section, couldn't really find anything that mentioned SAPs.

 

Anyhow, what is a fair cost for SAP calculations. I have just contacted an on-line firm and this is their response,

"Our fee to provide the design and as built SAP calculations would be £90 + VAT. We would charge £40 + VAT for the EPC"

Now I'm not sure what I was expecting but at £130 + VAT that seems a pretty decent price to me. Anyone know better??

Edited May 10, 2017 by RichS
Clarity

[richi]

I guess so. I paid £45 (no VAT) for an EPC in 2012.

[Jeremy Harris]

37 minutes ago, richi said:

I guess so. I paid £45 (no VAT) for an EPC in 2012.

 

That would be for an RdSAP on an existing house, maybe for the purposes of sale or getting the FIT, rather than a full SAP, I'm sure, as I couldn't find any assessors that were under around £120 +VAT for a full, as-built, SAP and lodged EPC on a new build when I was looking around.  I ended up doing the design and as-build SAP work myself, then paying £100 + VAT for an assessor to lodge the reports I'd produced using FSAP, after he'd added his name and number to them................

[RichS]

8 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

That would be for an RdSAP on an existing house, maybe for the purposes of sale or getting the FIT, rather than a full SAP, I'm sure, as I couldn't find any assessors that were under around £120 +VAT for a full, as-built, SAP and lodged EPC on a new build when I was looking around.  I ended up doing the design and as-build SAP work myself, then paying £100 + VAT for an assessor to lodge the reports I'd produced using FSAP, after he'd added his name and number to them................

 

Hmmm, that makes the price I've been quoted seem even more appealing

[jack]

If it's for an as-built SAP, that's a more than reasonable price.  It's so low that I'd be making sure everything will be done properly.  For example, what happens if you don't reach the required numbers on the first run through?  Is there a surcharge for each round of recalculation?

 

I paid quite a bit more to get ours done, because we had a lot of "odd" (according to most SAP assessors!) features on our house (PV, waste water heat recovery, triple glazing, unusual twin-stud construction technique, etc).  I'm sure I could have had it cheaper, but they'd have cut corners and made a lot of assumptions.  

 

Having spent a lot of time and effort trying to reduce the amount of energy we used, I wanted to get a SAP assessment that took all of that into account and gave us a nice high number!

[Jeremy Harris]

11 minutes ago, jack said:

Having spent a lot of time and effort trying to reduce the amount of energy we used, I wanted to get a SAP assessment that took all of that into account and gave us a nice high number!

 

Me too!  The reason I did the SAP calcs myself was primarily to make sure that they represented EXACTLY how the house was built, with no assumptions. 

 

My decision was as a direct result of Grand Designs, and a debate on another forum, which caused me to dig out the design SAP for a supposed "eco house".  Rather shockingly, this new build "eco house", with loads of PV, solar thermal etc, had a SAP (2005) EPC rating of F, believe it or not!  As it happens, the SAP worksheet was on line as well as the EPC, so it was easy to dig around in the numbers.  It looked to me as if the assessor had never even looked at the plans and spec, let alone the way the house had actually been built.  FWIW, I corrected the more glaring errors, using just the information from the TV programme, and came up with an EPC of G..............

Edited May 10, 2017 by JSHarris

[Guest Alphonsox]

I did the design SAP myself and registered it with building control, I intend to provide the "as built" data to an online assessor to register for me. 

As a purely hypothetical question,,,, does anyone ever check up on these figures with an onsite inspection ?

 

[jack]

The only assumptions that went into ours were a couple of junctions where worst case, rather than actual, values were used. I doubt it made much difference to the final number.

 

The assessor did say that we had the highest EPC he'd ever calculated, which was nice. I got the feeling he does a lot of stuff for developers though, so perhaps that result isn't so surprising!

 

14 minutes ago, Alphonsox said:

As a purely hypothetical question,,,, does anyone ever check up on these figures with an onsite inspection ?

 

No idea - certainly not that I've ever heard of. 

[Jeremy Harris]

I'm pretty sure that assessors rarely, if ever, look at a build.  The prices they charge just don't allow enough for a site visit.  They rely wholly on the information that's given to them by the builder/architect/air test company, which does rather beg the question as to whether they are worth the paper they are written on..................

 

In essence it's a box-ticking exercise for all those builders who are only interested in getting an acceptable chit so they can sell their houses.  I think the only people that probably care about being accurate and making sure the SAP results reflect reality are self-builders. 

 

The sad fact is that house buyers don't seem to give a damn about EPC certificate ratings, they are more interested in the price, the area and the kitchen and bathroom bling.

Edited May 10, 2017 by JSHarris

[Bitpipe]

43 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

I'm pretty sure that assessors rarely, if ever, look at a build.  The prices they charge just don't allow enough for a site visit.  They rely wholly on the information that's given to them by the builder/architect/air test company, which does rather beg the question as to whether they are worth the paper they are written on..................

 

In essence it's a box-ticking exercise for all those builders who are only interested in getting an acceptable chit so they can sell their houses.  I think the only people that probably care about being accurate and making sure the SAP results reflect reality are self-builders. 

 

The sad fact is that house buyers don't seem to give a damn about EPC certificate ratings, they are more interested in the price, the area and the kitchen and bathroom bling.

 

Agree - our assessor was based in Manchester and did the whole thing from drawings and other documents. We needed a 'quick and dirty' SAP before we'd even got to first fix to hit the FIT deadline just before it plummeted in Jan 2016. He was able to rate us as a D prior to any airtightness test etc.

 

When we'd finished the build and could provide boiler details, air tightness certs etc, we got an A.

[billt]

11 hours ago, JSHarris said:

The sad fact is that house buyers don't seem to give a damn about EPC certificate ratings, they are more interested in the price, the area and the kitchen and bathroom bling.

 

And quite rightly too. The EPC rating is completely without meaning to the average non-technical house buyer; it doesn't relate in any meaningful way to the energy costs of any particular house, which would be the only interest they would have in it.

 

The EPC/SAP rating is completely without meaning to the technical house buyer. One would assume that it relates closely to the energy usage and hence cost of running a building, but it doesn't. As far as I can see it is supposed to correlate with some not clearly defined environmental cost of energy. That results in completely bizarre ratings where the type of fuel used and any renewal energy generation scheme completely outweighs the standard of insulation and construction.

 

If you want an A rating use mains gas and have 4kW of PV. Everything else has minimal effect on the SAP score.

[Stones]

Have to agree with a lot of what @billt says above.  When we built our last house, I was very disappointed to find that despite the high levels of insulation (U values for walls and roof were 0.1) and a heating energy requirement of a few thousand kWh had a lower score than the developer built house we were then living in which was built to minimum regs of the time (2005) and had a heating requirement 5 times higher.  That house had mains gas whereas the new build didn't.

 

It struck me then as it does now, that the system was designed to make mains gas seem the best and most 'eco' fuel source, simply because it is the primary fuel source for the majority of homes.  

 

When we came to sell that house, we had an EPC which had been issued when our PV was installed.  In Scotland, we still have to get a home report done, and I remember telling the surveyor I had a valid EPC.  He point blank refused to use it and said he would not issue the home report unless he had refreshed the EPC, his arguement being there could have been changes made since it was issued.  The new SAP overwrote the old one on the register.  No changes had been made to the house but the result of his EPC was slightly different to the one before.  

 

Given EPC's are only valid for 10 years, what's going to happen to all of the EPC's that members have worked to get top notch results.  I stand to be corrected, but my understanding is that future assessments would be based on rdSAP, which being based on a lot of assumptions, risks devaluing the result previously obtained.

 

12 hours ago, JSHarris said:

...which does rather beg the question as to whether they are worth the paper they are written on..................

 

My experience is quite simply no.  Unless and until they form the basis of local taxation, then they will remain irrelevant to most.  If they were to be used, I suspect a good deal of revision would have to go into the methodology used and the penalty attached to houses that do not use mains gas (especially in areas where main gas is not available, but other supposedly environmentally friendly forms of energy are).

 

[Jeremy Harris]

The most ludicrous example of how daft SAP EPC ratings are in the real world was with a chap who was doing a new build next to some old stables.  The house had a couple of large outbuildings, on which was fitted 50 kWp of PV.  The EPC came out at A136!  It's discussed in this thread on the AECB forum: http://www.aecb.net/forum/index.php/topic,5124.0.html with me being just a wee bit critical about the EPC and its fitness for purpose.

Edited May 11, 2017 by JSHarris

[Guest Alphonsox]

In our case we were heading for a good EPC A-rating using a 4Kw PV array. The removal of RHI in Northern Ireland means the PV is no longer financially viable. This will drop us down to a high B.

[Jeremy Harris]

IIRC, taking our PV out of the SAP calculation reduced our EPC score by around 10 points.  We would still have been in Band A, but wouldn't have had the silly rating that's over 100, so fairly pointless.

 

On the subject of fuels, I have a feeling that the current iteration of SAP may be a little different to the version we used, and may well not have such a strong bias towards mains gas, as I think the emission factors were changed, as was the way PV contribution is calculated.  I suspect it still errs on the side of giving a better result for mains gas, but then that's reasonable, as mains gas is generally the most efficient fuel for providing heating and hot water, and still beats the average performance for heat pumps, both in terms of cost and emissions, I believe.

[RichS]

So as the general consensus seems to be that the SAPs are really a waste of time and effort, but necessary, would it not make sense for the Design Stage calculations to just meet or slightly exceed the required standards.

I ask this as I understand that your final As Built results must at least meet or beat your Design Stage calculations. Doing it this way surely would make life simpler as beating the minimum requirements should present no problems.

Or am I missing something??

[Jeremy Harris]

25 minutes ago, RichS said:

So as the general consensus seems to be that the SAPs are really a waste of time and effort, but necessary, would it not make sense for the Design Stage calculations to just meet or slightly exceed the required standards.

I ask this as I understand that your final As Built results must at least meet or beat your Design Stage calculations. Doing it this way surely would make life simpler as beating the minimum requirements should present no problems.

Or am I missing something??

 

As the SAP rating can be whatever you want it to be, because, as a self-builder it's you that gives the assessor the data, then you can pretty much do what you want, as the only thing that's actually checked is the air test certificate!

 

You can download FSAP from Stroma for free, fill in all the data, make sure you get whatever rating you want (not that I'm suggesting for one moment you might possibly put the wrong figures in, by accident.............) and then just send that lot of data off to the assessor.  It's all a bit of nonsense, really, as short of someone deciding to come and do a fairly intrusive survey, to look at things like wall and roof insulation thickness and type, the only fairly obvious things that could be spotted are the glazing probable spec and the air test certificate.  I strongly suspect that the big builders never do a survey of their as-built houses, as they are constructed, to make sure they get accurate data for the as-built SAP.  They almost certainly just put some acceptable numbers in to get the certificate, and they don't need to air test the majority of the houses they build, either.

Edited May 11, 2017 by JSHarris

[mvincentd]

my quote 1 month ago;

[RichS]

16 hours ago, mvincentd said:

my quote 1 month ago;

 

 

Jeez,

Yours must be printed in gold !!!!

 

 

[Clive Chitty]

As a SAP Assessor I was very interested to spot your discussion. A few comments:

1. The price RichS was quoted can only be described as rock-bottom. I would struggle to do a decent job on anything much bigger than a shoe-box for that much money.

Pricing does depend strongly on size and complexity, and I always ask to see drawings before quoting. EPC's are subject to random audits according to a strictly enforced sampling regime, and must be within 4% of the auditors independent calculation, so an assessor who cuts too many corners won't stay in business for very long.

2. SAP Assessments are always based on drawings and notes, and never on a site visit.

3. SAP is designed for the general housing market, and can only be described as a "blunt instrument" when applied to anything like Passivhaus. Even the most conscientious of assessors will struggle to find ways to accurately represent some of the technologies used and performance levels achieved, using the approved software. If the manufacturer or installer hasn't seen a need to get what they produce tested and approved by BRE, then the SAP assessor may have no alternative than to use some very inferior default figures. You need SAP to show Building Control that you are following Building Regulations - but don't expect it to tally with the performance predicted in the Passivhaus design documents!

4. A SAP rating over 100 isn't silly - it means you are getting enough energy from renewables to more than cover your needs, and on average have some to spare (eg to feed back into the grid).

5. Whether a SAP rating and EPC fairly represents an actual dwelling comes down to the honesty of the builder/developer and how well Building Control do their job. My impression is that some Building Inspectors are much better than others. I'm sure there is some abuse of the system, but generally an EPC has to be a good idea, as it may be the only thing that gives prospective house buyers a handle on the likely running costs of their shiny new home.

 

 

 

[jack]

Welcome @Clive Chitty, and thanks for such a comprehensive first post.  

[ADLIan]

As another energy assessor (among other things) +1 to Clive Chitty.

 

SAPs are now considerably more complex/time consuming if a correct assessment of the linear thermal bridges is done.

[Onoff]

No offence..."energy assessor"...that's a real job then?

 

Surely you need data AFTER the house has been up and running for a year or so to see how much has been spent / saved. 

Edited May 16, 2017 by Onoff

[ADLIan]

Offence taken.

Bear in mind that SAP is not a detailed design tool. It is simply the Govt's preferred method of showing compliance with the Building Regs by assessing energy use under standardised conditions.

[Jeremy Harris]

26 minutes ago, Onoff said:

No offence..."energy assessor"...that's a real job then?

 

Surely you need data AFTER the house has been up and running for a year or so to see how much has been spent / saved. 

 

The problem is that it's a government-created scheme that has no real teeth and which is pretty easy to circumvent in the real world.  A walk around any big development will see gaps in insulation, absent cavity closers, poor airtightness detailing etc, it's normal, and will all be covered up so no one will ever see it.

 

I made a point of looking closely at two large developments near us, that I pass most days.  The build quality for all the hidden stuff isn't great, and last winter I went around with the thermal camera and that showed large areas of missing insulation, or air leaks causing parts of the outer envelope to be heated from inside the house.   I'm not the only one to have commented on this, Paul Buckingham wrote a paper here: http://www.aecb.net/publications/we-must-change-our-disgraceful-approach-to-build-quality-or-wave-goodbye-to-energy-savings/  and a follow up article here: http://www.aecb.net/still-taking-disgraceful-approach-build-quality-waving-goodbye-energy-savings/ that shows that poor build quality is still commonplace.

 

In defence of energy assessors, they, of course, rarely, if ever, see the houses they are assessing.  They have to assume that they are being given accurate data.  Whilst an sampled audit may possibly spot things like the wrong type of windows or doors, or missing loft insulation, it will not pick up 90% of the hidden defects within the structure - there is plenty of evidence to show that these are many and varied.

 

Ideally, energy performance should be a great deal simpler, especially for second hand homes.  I've long thought that the RdSAP is a complete and utter waste of time and money, as it almost certainly bears little resemblance to reality, and can so easily be "adjusted" (and it is "adjusted", I've personal experience!) to give a result that makes a house look "better" in a set of sales particulars.  It would be far better for sellers to be required to provide the last couple of years worth of energy bills, as at least that gives a more accurate estimate of the house energy usage.

Edited May 16, 2017 by JSHarris