SAP costs

[Onoff]

Assessments based on assumptions without recorded/measured data.....might as well chuck a dice. Seems the mass builders pay scant attention to detail. How many of them would you see on the scrounge because they're a metre short on airtight tape? Their subbie would just leave it out.

[ProDave]

 

To show the futility of (especially) RDSAP EPC's, I will recall the house I saw for sale described by the estate agent as an "Eco House" and describing all it's energy saving features. Then at the bottom of the page it stated EPC: D

 

One has to wonder sometimes....

[Jeremy Harris]

My personal example with RdSAP was our own house (our old one).  As an exercise in learning to drive FSAP (not hard to pick up) I decided to put the numbers in for our old house.  We'd added extra loft insulation, cavity wall insulation, new'ish double glazing, a condensing gas combi boiler and I'd made my own blower test rig and used it to find a lot of the air leaks and seal them up.  It came out with an EPS of D, not bad for a block and brick bungalow with solid floors, little wall insulation and no underfloor insulation at all. 

 

I offered to give the estate agent my FSAP file, or the printed off worksheet, so they had realistic base data.  Instead whatever data was put in RdSAP gave the house an apparent EPC of C, which has to be garbage, as I know full well that it would be pretty difficult to get it up to band C, without major work.

 

 

Edited May 16, 2017 by JSHarris

[ToughButterCup]

So, if I intend to build and stay in the house (until people in white coats take me out) , we don't need a SAP done?

[Guest Alphonsox]

6 minutes ago, recoveringacademic said:

So, if I intend to build and stay in the house (until people in white coats take me out) , we don't need a SAP done?

 

Building control require SAP data at the design and as built stages. I'm not sure what the requirement for an EPC is.

[Jeremy Harris]

You can do the design SAP yourself, building control will happily accept a design SAP from anyone, in my experience (mine were great about accepting my own design SAP, very encouraging in fact).

 

I'd strongly recommend doing your own design SAP, not so much to save a modest amount of money, but because you will learn a lot more about the energy-critical aspects of your particular build, allowing you to focus attention on whether there are some easy wins.

 

When it comes to the as-built SAP, again you can do the work, but the fly in the ointment is that the damned government won't accept anything but data submitted by someone who's never seen your house and has got all the data from you in the first place................

 

I found a SAP assessor that was happy to just take my FSAP file, add his name and number to it and lodge the certificate.  He charged me £100 plus VAT for what may, possibly, have been half an hours work, but there was no way out of it.  On the positive side, having modelled the house in SAP, my own simple heat loss spreadsheet and PHPP, I did gain a very good understanding of where the energy the houses uses/generate goes.

[Gone West]

My BCO was happy to accept my PHPP results instead of as designed SAP.

[Guest Alphonsox]

3 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

I found a SAP assessor that was happy to just take my FSAP file, add his name and number to it and lodge the certificate.  He charged me £100 plus VAT for what may, possibly, have been half an hours work, but there was no way out of it.  On the positive side, having modelled the house in SAP, my own simple heat loss spreadsheet and PHPP, I did gain a very good understanding of where the energy the houses uses/generate goes.

 

Did he also file an EPC for you ?

[Jeremy Harris]

33 minutes ago, Alphonsox said:

 

Did he also file an EPC for you ?

 

Yes, that's all he did, just add his name and number to the FSAP file I'd created and lodge the certificate.  In my view, there should be a way to allow self-builders to lodge their own certificates, as there's no real reason that an assessor has to do it, all the raw data is available on the worksheet for anyone to check at any time.  Self-builders don't have much of a motive for trying to adjust the result, either, as I suspect most are aiming for better build standards, in terms of energy use, than mainstream builders.

[Barney12]

Well my as designed SAP report has just come back. I used SAPS4U http://www.saps4u.com/

Our house design is far from a bog standard box and our quote was £180 (inc VAT) for as designed and another £90 (inc VAT) for the as built assessment.

I cant fault their service, they said it would take 10-14 days and it did. I've checked through the core inputs from the forms sent back to me and it looks very thorough and accurate. I must admit the level of detail sent back is a bit mind boggling but frankly I'm just going to send it to the LABC!

 

The magic number?

 

 

The assessor has said in his notes that we can probably improve the scores when we have a bit more detail about the MHRV/GSHP heat exchanger. When I submitted the assessment info I didn't have the data to hand so it was excluded. 

 

 

[jack]

Nice work!

[Jeremy Harris]

1 hour ago, Barney12 said:

The assessor has said in his notes that we can probably improve the scores when we have a bit more detail about the MHRV/GSHP heat exchanger. When I submitted the assessment info I didn't have the data to hand so it was excluded. 

 

 

 

There's a sort of daft bit of standard stuff that goes on the bottom of the as-built EPC that you'll find very amusing when you get yours done at the end.  Our chit has this bit of complete daftness at the bottom:

 

Apart from the fact that we're right at the bottom of a deep valley, which makes a wind turbine a completely insane idea, look at the return on investment for solar water heating (something we already have via the PV array, excess generation diverter and Sunamp PV, anyway).

 

Taking a mid-range indicative cost of £5,000, and a saving of £65/year (directly from the above certificate), it would take nearly 77 years to recover the investment, not taking account of regular maintenance, repair and replacement of parts.........................

 

These certificates really are bonkers in so many ways.

 

[Sigaldry]

As with anything in life, your mileage will vary sadly, depending on who does your calculations, how conscientious they are, how good the tool is they use and the quality of the information that they receive.

 

Costs can vary significantly, some overcharge (in my opinion), some undercharge and quality may suffer as a result (don't get me started on RDSAP/DEA produced EPC's where the assessor has to travel an hour each way, do a survey, write it up with all necessary supporting information and gets offered a pittance for doing so - the EPC will be worth very little in that circumstance and even with auditing from accreditation schemes that's an issue.

 

I posted a good while ago on greenbuilding forum that the latest version of SAP is very much fit for purpose, but that its purpose is  assessing compliance with the energy and carbon emission requirements of the Building regulations and for providing a methodology for comparison of performance of dwellings (assuming the compared dwellings are occupied in accordance with the assumptions that SAP is based on).

 

Those assumptions have a purpose, because we (people) aren't the same - so one person will heat a home 24 hours a day at 26 degrees - some will even have a good reason for that, others will heat to the minimum. The same house could be occupied by one person, a couple, a small or larger family and will do so in differing ways. SAP and the EPC allows you to compare two similar homes and gain a general understanding of their comparative energy efficiency, running costs and carbon emissions from heating, hot water, lighting etc - it's not perfect, but it's not awful.

 

The Zero Carbon Hub’s review of modelling tools in 2010 noted that no modelling tool can perfectly represent the real world, but overall concluded that SAP actually compared well with other modelling tools available (and that included PHPP).

The key issue I feel, is whether the inputs that go into an as-built assessment can be relied upon - which is a whole other matter. Better validation of inputs is needed.
Through the build process, there needs to be more evidence and feedback built in whenever changes might occur to capture these / ensure compensation for poorer performance inputs is made. Accommodation of quality assured processes needs to be considered.

 

The data that goes into an EPC is assessed / audited by an accreditation scheme and assessors will get pulled up if there are deviances. Is it perfect, no.

 

Saying that anyone can do a SAP is a misnomer - anyone competent can do so, many people aren't however competent to do so. Equally anyone could in theory do a U-value calculation, the number that can do so competently is somewhat smaller (following all appropriate conventions, standards and using the right values for materials).

 

A good energy assessor will not make assumptions (or only very few, they will deal in certainties and evidence and explain the issues and complexities, they will understand thermal bridging and junction detailing, have an understanding of heating and hot water systems, ventilation requirements and systems, photovoltaics, solar thermal etc, etc - but not all will be competent and even the most competent in life can make mistakes. Competency costs - but so does incompetency.

You also need to be clear that an energy assessment will be very unlikely to ever match how a dwelling actually performs in use, once real occupancy and building use comes into play.
 

The SAP is done at design stage before you start work (or it should be); If you propose changing things, it should be updated and checked before doing them and at the as-built stage for a completion certificate, which BCB wont give without the EPC (usually), there shouldn't be any assumptions, just known's, which the customer and builder should know and be able to evidence - a site visit would be lovely, but almost all on construction assessors don't do them (some will), but you'll pay for it and those assessors are mostly general surveyors/architects who also offer other services. If there's sufficient evidence, a site visit won't necessarily be any better or worse than well evidenced documentation. You often can't see how something went together once it's been done anyway.

 

Garbage in = Garbage out (GIGO); If you enter rubbish and construct rubbish, you'll get rubbish.

Edited May 19, 2017 by Sigaldry

[Guest Alphonsox]

Welcome to the forum and thanks for the detailed post.

I think the reason for the negative or ambivalent views here regarding the As-Built stage SAP/EPC come from the fact that it provides nothing to most self builders. Most of us here will have thought long and hard over the tradeoffs during the build process. The houses we have built we intend to live in not to sell on. The as-built SAP tells us nothing new and hence the fee for an EPC seems to be dead money.

[Jeremy Harris]

4 hours ago, Alphonsox said:

Welcome to the forum and thanks for the detailed post.

I think the reason for the negative or ambivalent views here regarding the As-Built stage SAP/EPC come from the fact that it provides nothing to most self builders. Most of us here will have thought long and hard over the tradeoffs during the build process. The houses we have built we intend to live in not to sell on. The as-built SAP tells us nothing new and hence the fee for an EPC seems to be dead money.

 

 

Very true.  Part of the problem is that there are just so many people holding their hands out for cash from self-builders.  On a per-house basis, self builders pay massively more for assessments, consultants etc, purely to tick some box in some overly bureaucratic process that is of no net benefit to them at all.  Taking our build as an example, we were asked to cough up for the following:

 

1. A flood risk assessment that was barking mad, as the house is on a steep slope (but within a flood risk post code), with an estimated cost of between £2000 and £6000.  I got around this by discovering that you don't need to show any form of accreditation to do this and can get the source data from the Environment Agency, so I did my own, which was accepted, and saved a great deal of money (I reckon that I "earned" around £200/hour for doing this!).

 

2. We were advised to use a Planning Consultant when we first approached the planners, as the plot had a pretty chequered planning history, with several refusals.  I just sat down and read loads of local planning applications, got a feel for the way the system worked, and saved a fair bit of money by submitting the application myself (no objections, PP granted pretty quickly, without going to committee).

 

3. We were initially asked to provide an Ecological Assessment, as the plot is within an AONB.  This would have cost another few hundred pounds, and again was pretty pointless, as the plot was covered in spoil from two developments further up the hill.  Again, I managed to get around this by writing my own assessment and getting the planners to remove the requirement.

 

4. At the design stage I was first asked to get an energy assessor to provide a design SAP.  Given that I'd designed the house, modelled it on my own heat loss model and PHPP, this seemed to be another cost that wasn't going to add value.  I spent a few hours getting to grips with the way SAP worked, first using a big spreadsheet, then using FSAP.  When I spoke to building control they were more than happy to accept my own design SAP, so that was another chunk of money saved.

 

5.  For completion, I needed to get an as-built SAP, which was dead easy, as it was just a matter of updating the design SAP with some minor changes (change of MVHR model, actual air test result and change of heat pump model).  All told the as-built SAP took me at most 10 minutes to complete.  However, I wasn't allowed to lodge it, as that can only be done by an approved assessor, so I had to fork out £100 + VAT for an assessor to just add his name and number and lodge the EPC.  I know he didn't take long on it, as I emailed him the FSAP file and he emailed me back the completed and lodged paperwork within two hours.  He hadn't changed a single item on the SAP data itself, so this was just a complete waste of money for me.

Edited May 20, 2017 by JSHarris
typos - only just spotted them.............

[ADLIan]

Thanks Sigaldry for the excellent overview of SAP and how it relates to the Regs and compliance.

 

Unfortunatley the view of quite a few on this forum re OCDEAs is summed up here, posted after one of my posts;

 

On 16/05/2017 at 14:40, 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. 

 

Yes offence was taken. Onoff knows nothing of my experience, qualifications and how I operate. It may interest him to know however that the majority of my clients are self builders with 'repeat' work from recommendations. Some want to just pass Regs others are interested in going beyond Regs - in this respect I get heavily involved in the detailed design.

 

@JSHarris The assessor used to complete your as built and lodge the EPC is probably in breach of the rules of his accreditation body those rules relating to lodging of EPCs. A risk he takes! Not something I would ever do - I would walk away from any request to do this.

 

@Alphonsox Unfortunately the EPC is a legal requirment. The cost to lodge on completion is minimal within the costs indicated above for whole SAP assessment, consultancy works & as built version and fades to nothing of the overall build cost.

[Jeremy Harris]

3 minutes ago, ADLIan said:

@JSHarris The assessor used to complete your as built and lodge the EPC is probably in breach of the rules of his accreditation body those rules relating to lodging of EPCs. A risk he takes! Not something I would ever do - I would walk away from any request to do this.

 

 

Maybe, but then, realistically, how could any assessor add any value as far as I was concerned?  After all, I'd done the design SAP, updated that to reflect minor changes during the build to produce the as-built SAP, and so all the work was already done. 

 

What's the difference between me emailing an assessor all the base data, and emailing an assessor an FSAP file with that same base data already entered?

[Onoff]

So enlighten me please!

 

After the build do you go around with a thermal imaging camera and check for leaks?

 

Or is it that you specify the design and the assumption is that they build to this? 

 

What I'm trying to get at is are all the boxes ticked based on what should happen on the build as opposed to what does?

 

Really not meaning to be offensive.

 

 

 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

15 minutes ago, Onoff said:

So enlighten me please!

 

After the build do you go around with a thermal imaging camera and check for leaks?

 

Or is it that you specify the design and the assumption is that they build to this? 

 

What I'm trying to get at is are all the boxes ticked based on what should happen on the build as opposed to what does?

 

Really not meaning to be offensive.

 

 

Any sampled audit check is, as far as I know, purely a visual inspection. 

 

There are two stages, first a design SAP, which is based on how the house is intended to be built, and which is only held on file by building control, then an as-built SAP, which is supposed to be an accurate representation of how the house was actually built, with things like the measured air permeability, rather than the design target air permeability added, plus any other changes made as the house was built incorporated (in our case, I'd changed the model of MVHR and the heat pump from those originally specified).

 

I'm pretty sure that any audit wouldn't go so far as to include a thermal imaging survey.  I went around a new development last winter with a thermal imaging camera and it showed lots of missing wall insulation, a lack of insulation (or bad air leaks) in several dormer windows and what looked like air leaks around windows and doors.  Every house was much the same, and I looked at around 30 houses all told; the major defects (like the heat loss through the dormers) was common to every house on the development.  I'd watched these houses being built (I drive past the site every day, and there's always a traffic queue there, so I get a good look), and I'd already spotted missing insulation and insulation fitted with large gaps, which was the only reason I went around with the camera when they were completed.

[Onoff]

I've only been in one house built to as I understand Passivhaus standards and the attention to detail was quite clear. That was I'm sure down to the meticulous nature of the self builder who's own house it was having done his research. Lets face it he'd have achieved that without having to pay for what some might term a stealth tax on self building.

 

As said here the mass builders get away with I guess inaccurate assessments. Lets face it if the government was really actually interested in low carbon developments they wouldn't have dropped the FITS rates. Still, it creates a few jobs and gets a few quid in the coffers I guess. There's no way there aren't people jumping on the bandwagon with this. Just look at the rogue PV installer & cavity wall installer stories.

[Jeremy Harris]

Sadly I'm absolutely sure you're right.  I may be just a bit cynical, but I can't help but think that some of these government schemes are partially dreamt up as a way of creating new jobs. 

 

The government decides that, instead of enforcing building regulations to reduce energy consumption, by tightening the existing inspection regime (which is clearly a bit lax - there is a fair bit of evidence that shows this) they will invent a new requirement, laid over the top of Part L1a, that needs more accredited people to run it (this is not in any way an attack on energy assessors - they are just taking on a government-mandated role). 

 

We've seen exactly the same approach taken in other areas, too, like the Microgeneration Certification Scheme, that typically seems to add at least 20% to 30% to the cost of any applicable installation, often more.  In our case, a certified installation of our monoblock heat pump would have doubled the installed cost, an increase we could never have come close to recovering from the Renewable Heat Incentive payments that a certified installation would have allowed.  Are MCS accredited installers something special?  No, they have no better qualifications than those that any domestic heating company employees would need. 

 

 

[ADLIan]

All

 

Just to clarify a few points following the above posts

@JSHarris

New build SAP and accreditaion was introduced in the Regs in the mid 1990s and thankfully has avoided any Govt boom or bust schemes. Similalry it has avoided the marketing/sales hype & get rich quick promises such as rdSAP assessments, cavity wall surveys, solar panels & MCS. The size of the new build housing market dictates the numbers of OCDEAs. 10 years ago we were building approx 250,000 house pa, this more than halved after the financial crisis and no doubt sorted the wheat from the chaff.

My accreditation body rules warn against using data (either raw data or a suitabe file format) from a 3rd party - for all I know they may not be able to spell SAP never mind have read & understood the associated documents! Specifically when producing an EPC I must obtain all relevant data myself. I am sure other accrediation bodies will have similar rules

@Onoff

Please check the role of an OCDEA. If my client wants more input than this then no problem - but there will be additional costs.

An OCDEA has no power of enforcement, we can only advise. Enforcement is down to the BCO (a well trodden path on this site and in the industry) more importantly compliance with the Regs is down to the person/people responsibe for the building work (or the building owner). As mentioned before most of my clients are self builders so should supply all of the correct information to produce the as-built assessment and EPC.

 

As regards the volume house builders they are often self -policing which is wrong. Also because of their land banks many are still building to the 2010 Regs - I am currently working with one large housebuilder (not with their energy assessments) and was staggered to realise they are only now looking at how to comply with the 2013 Regs!.

 

Ian

[PeterW]

19 minutes ago, ADLIan said:

My accreditation body rules warn against using data (either raw data or a suitabe file format) from a 3rd party - for all I know they may not be able to spell SAP never mind have read & understood the associated documents! Specifically when producing an EPC I must obtain all relevant data myself. I am sure other accrediation bodies will have similar rules

 

Thanks Ian

I think this is a lot of the issue - you (and your profession) are part of an accredited body and have a set of standards and I expect SAP is a small part of your business compared to anything else. What there are is a lot of people who did the 2 day course and "got the certificate" who have jumped on every single bandwagon that has gone through town !!

 

A local "MCS energy assessor" near me was a "green deal assessor" before that he was a "cavity wall assessor" and I think sold double glazing.... you get the picture !

[Triassic]

I'll throw my hat in the ring here, having had six SAP assessments done in the last four years,  Added nothing, saved me nothing, complete waste of time. SAP is a worthless piece of paper. It is the conformance with building Regs that should be tightened. I'd rather assessors were retrained to carry out audits during the build process to ensure compliance.

 

Just to be clear, my SAP assessor was a first rate person. Prior to being a SAP assessor she was a Green Deal Assessor and prior to that a BSc educated researcher in environmental science. 

Edited May 22, 2017 by Triassic

[Jeremy Harris]

48 minutes ago, ADLIan said:

My accreditation body rules warn against using data (either raw data or a suitabe file format) from a 3rd party - for all I know they may not be able to spell SAP never mind have read & understood the associated documents! Specifically when producing an EPC I must obtain all relevant data myself. I am sure other accrediation bodies will have similar rules

 

 

In the case of a self-builder, then the data isn't coming from a third party, though.  I designed and specified our house, and did the building regs submission, so I was the one that would have supplied the base data to the assessor, had I opted to go down that route.  In my case, I opted to just send the assessor the FSAP file, together with the air test certificate (which was the only bit of independent evidence, other than my word), as he happened to use the Stroma software. 

 

I can't see how value was added for us, that's all; I'm not being critical of the role of assessors.