July 13, 20188 yr 29 minutes ago, newhome said: Nothing there for my postcode. No reports exist for that postcode Different register in Scotland I believe https://www.scottishepcregister.org.uk/
July 13, 20188 yr Still doesn’t have my house or the new build next door. The other side has a score of 34 (listed cottage) and the strange Swiss chalet looking house at the farm behind has a score of 21 ?
July 13, 20188 yr 1 hour ago, newhome said: the strange Swiss chalet looking house at the farm behind has a score of 21 That can’t be right as it wouldn’t meet building regs and it’s brand new !!
July 13, 20188 yr I see a house up the road has just had it's EPC re done. It used to be heated with an E10 electric boiler. The EPC was re done because they changed to an oil fired boiler. That was the ONLY change. The new EPC shows than annual KWh for space heating at HALF what it used to be. Please explain that to me? I would expect it to be exactly the same unless they improved the insulation, just a different, possibly cheaper fuel now?
July 13, 20188 yr 15 minutes ago, ProDave said: Please explain that to me? They should be using more energy as the boiler will have a lower efficiency than resistance heating.
July 13, 20188 yr 1 hour ago, PeterW said: That can’t be right as it wouldn’t meet building regs and it’s brand new !! Nope it’s about 70s / 80s looking at the decor.
July 13, 20188 yr 3 minutes ago, newhome said: Nope it’s about 70s / 80s looking at the decor. Thought you meant that new one ..!!
July 13, 20188 yr Just now, PeterW said: Thought you meant that new one ..!! No, the one across the back where the farm is. LPG and storage heaters is the only heating in that. The new one next door doesn't have an EPC either. They have an oil boiler and radiators.
July 14, 20188 yr 6 hours ago, newhome said: Nope it’s about 70s / 80s looking at the decor. Edited July 14, 20188 yr by Ferdinand I can’t believe I just said that aloud.
July 14, 20188 yr I’ve just found my EPC, it scored 37 an F. can I apply for any grants to improve it? mind you I demolished the house 16 months ago, but would anyone know! Edited July 14, 20188 yr by Triassic
July 16, 20188 yr On 13/07/2018 at 20:40, daiking said: Can you not just search by postcode? https://www.epcregister.com/reportSearchAddressByPostcode.html A top tip. I just searched for mine, this current 2500 sq ft rental property has a band E EPC rating. The estimated heating cost is £8700 over three years which is close to what we actually paid once electric rad top up heating is factored in. The details in the report are correct though the quoted 75mm of loft insulation is a bit optimistic. Edited July 16, 20188 yr by epsilonGreedy
July 16, 20188 yr Author Just got the EPC, and can confirm it's a joke. I've run the house real spec through the Stroma software and have an EPC using that of C71. The one I've just received gives an EPC of D58. The only obvious error I can see straight off is that the floor area is out (not sure how he made that error, as he didn't measure anything at all in the house, and I gave him a scale drawing with the floor area marked on it, as measured using AutoCad). The new EPC has the energy costs as around £200 a year more than they really are, so clearly something's awry there in what he's actually entered on the worksheet (our actual energy costs tally reasonably well with the C71 value). The assessor has used exactly the same software as I have, from Stroma, so had he just put in the same data as I did he'd have had the same result. Not sure where he's screwed up, as there's no worksheet to look at to trace the errors. Just sloppy work, pretty much as I suspected from his approach to the job - money for old rope, really. I'm sure it won't make a jot of difference, as no one buying houses takes any notice of EPCs anyway...
July 16, 20188 yr I'm surprised that you're surprised! Are you sure that they use the same software? I had an EPC done a few years ago (though not lodged) and the results were somewhat worse than the full Stroma software calculated. The assessor (who seemed competent to me) said that the rd(reduced data)SAP restricted their inputs. In my case, as we have a log boiler the rdSAP only allows for a fixed 55% efficient boiler where the reality is over 80% and the full software lets you use declared efficiencies. Of course GIGO applies.
July 16, 20188 yr rdSAP allows them to modify values especially if it’s non standard. You can’t modify a declared product but if it’s not in the database you can add it. The ones that bug me though are the energy efficient light questions as it’s banded (or was) into 0-25%, 50% and 75% - there is no 100% choice ..! But I’m not surprised they don’t bother to get it right as @JSHarris says - no-one reads them ..!!
July 16, 20188 yr Author 7 minutes ago, billt said: I'm surprised that you're surprised! Are you sure that they use the same software? I had an EPC done a few years ago (though not lodged) and the results were somewhat worse than the full Stroma software calculated. The assessor (who seemed competent to me) said that the rd(reduced data)SAP restricted their inputs. In my case, as we have a log boiler the rdSAP only allows for a fixed 55% efficient boiler where the reality is over 80% and the full software lets you use declared efficiencies. Of course GIGO applies. Yes, the EPC I have is marked as having been produced by the Stroma software. RdSAP does restrict a lot of inputs, but given that I can't see any of the input data, except the floor area (which is 10% greater than it should be), I can't judge where the input errors have been made. RdSAp doesn't allow for the actual boiler efficiency, I know, it makes an assumption based on the age of the unit. It does the same for glazing as well, although in our case the age of the glazing coincides with the actual mean Uw that RdSAP assumes, so the error shouldn't be there. FWIW there is now a 100% low energy lighting option, and that seems to be one aspect he got right.
July 16, 20188 yr The last one I did, I asked for a data dump which was supplied in pdf form. But I have a regular EPC supplier which might help.
July 16, 20188 yr 1 hour ago, JSHarris said: Just sloppy work, pretty much as I suspected from his approach to the job - money for old rope, really. You have a concrete case to name and shame this rogue with the governing body.
July 16, 20188 yr Author 6 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said: You have a concrete case to name and shame this rogue with the governing body. I probably have, but he'll be one of hundreds who are just as careless. I know that a neighbour, who was getting a RdSAP done in order to fit PV and claim FIT, was told by her assessor that he'd just make sure the result was good enough for her to qualify. This was on a 1970's built house with wooden sash window frames, single glazing, night storage heaters for heating and just 100mm of very old fibreglass in the loft. At a guess it would really have been a Band F, maybe even a G, and there's no way it could have been good enough to qualify for FIT (for which you're supposed to be Band D or above, IIRC). Bit like a mortgage valuation we had done years ago, where the valuer asked how much we needed the house to be worth in order to get the loan we needed...
July 16, 20188 yr On 16/07/2018 at 08:58, JSHarris said: I'm sure it won't make a jot of difference, as no one buying houses takes any notice of EPCs anyway... I am sure in your case it won't. But you now (or very soon will) need an EPC of E or better in order to let a property. That is going to give a lot of landlords a big upgrade bill, or they are going to stop renting them and sell them. Either way I predict a glut of old low EPC houses that have a much reduced demand with landlords not wanting to buy them, and that will have to push their value down somewhat? Personally I would now not buy anything worse than a C unless it really was priced lower to compensate for the higher running cost, or the upgrade costs.
July 16, 20188 yr On 13/07/2018 at 21:37, newhome said: Still doesn’t have my house or the new build next door. The other side has a score of 34 (listed cottage) and the strange Swiss chalet looking house at the farm behind has a score of 21 ? That's because your building warrant would have been applied for before 9th January 2013. My house isn't on there either, but our warrant was applied for in 2012. However, the house across the road from me is on twice - with two different addresses. So, basically not reliable. No great loss. Colin
July 16, 20188 yr Author 1 hour ago, ProDave said: I am sure in your case it won't. But you now (or very soon will) need an EPC of E or better in order to let a property. That is going to give a lot of landlords a big upgrade bill, or they are going to stop renting them and sell them. Either way I predict a glut of old low EPC houses that have a much reduced demand with landlords not wanting to buy them, and that will have to push their value down somewhat? Personally I would now now buy anything worse than a C unless it really was priced lower to compensate for the higher running cost, or the upgrade costs. It's not that hard to get a better EPC on an older house though, and needn't even be that costly in the overall scheme of things. I'm not sure what errors the assessor made when doing this EPC, but I do know that the true EPC should be C71, rather than the D58 he gave it. That's a pretty big difference just from assessor finger trouble, or perhaps carelessness. Curiously, his EPC gives the potential improvement that could be made as being to C74, not that far off the true figure of C71. Overall there aren't any "easy wins" left with our old house. It has about as much loft insulation as is sensible, it has reasonably decent double glazing, the best CWI that could be installed and a boiler that is still a good choice today (and is still a current model). The next main benefit would be to get rid of the solid concrete floor, that has no insulation underneath it, as there is a heck of a lot of heat being lost through that, especially as the central heating pipes are embedded in it and run in a loop right around the outer perimeter of the slab. That's a major job, though, ans would mean ripping out all the floors, and taking out the existing central heating pipework, digging down and fitting insulation and perhaps replacing the radiators with UFH. Not a cheap or easy job, but realistically there's nothing cheap or easy left to do in order to make the house more energy efficient.
July 16, 20188 yr Fitting solar PV might be the easy fix for a landlord to boost an otherwise too low for rental EPC. And because the EPC is too poor for FIT's anyway, and they are so low now, might we see a lot of landlords fitting DIY solar PV just to bump up the EPC and not claiming any FIT?
July 16, 20188 yr Author 1 hour ago, ProDave said: Fitting solar PV might be the easy fix for a landlord to boost an otherwise too low for rental EPC. And because the EPC is too poor for FIT's anyway, and they are so low now, might we see a lot of landlords fitting DIY solar PV just to bump up the EPC and not claiming any FIT? I would guess so, it's pretty much what developers are doing. Lots of new houses being built around here have half a dozen PV panels on the roof, presumably because it's cheaper to fit them than bother to improve insulation or airtightness, so is an easy win to get through SAP... For landlords I'd guess it makes even more sense, as they can get the modest fit a generation payments for 25 years, for doing something they'd need to do to get their lettings up to the minimum required standard.
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