Essential Guides And Advice Energy Performance Certificates

Date Published:

22/05/2008

I've been writing a lot about HIPs recently, and there has been much bad press in particular about the Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), specifically that the assessors (Domestic Energy Assessors or DEAs) are not well enough trained to carry out their jobs and that a bad report could negatively affect the sale of your home. I invited a DEA around to assess my home, so I could give you the rundown.

By Lucy Searle

The Visit

The DEA started by taking photos of my property from the front and back; she also took note of the age of my home, its size in cubic metres, what material it was built from, and whether it was terraced, semi-detached or detached. My house is late Victorian brick and was naturally built without any kind of wall insulation- a few points off there then, but it is terraced, so only two sides of it are external, or what she called "part of the heat loss perimeter".

We then went and looked at my boiler, which is a new condensing boiler (so I scored points there); the DEA noted down the model number and SEDBUK code (SEDBUK stands for Standard Efficiency Database of Boilers of the UK). She then moved around the house to check whether I had thermostatic radiator valves (which I do) and a room thermostat (ditto, more points).

The DEA also checked out our hot water supply. Again, the immersion is a new one, so I scored well there.

Loft Or No Loft?

After that, I was asked if I had secondary heating anywhere, electric or gas fires for example, and whether my loft was insulated. The upper floor of my house was built into the eaves, so there is no loft. I told her that the roof insulation had been checked when we put in Velux windows, and that I know these particular rooms hold their heat well.

However, because DEAs fill in what's basically a multiple choice form, there is no box which says "there is no loft, but the roof's well insulated". The result was that she had to tick a box which said "no access" (ie, to the loft), which means my "phantom" loft shows up as uninsulated, because the software defaults to the worse case scenario.

For the record, if you do have a loft space, the assessor will check that your insulation sits properly positioned between the rafters, and will look at its depth, but they merely do a "head and shoulders job" rather than climbing right in and pulling up every piece. If your loft is boarded, you may be able to get away with just showing off a section, otherwise it may show as "no access".

Extra Points

Once that was done, the DEA asked whether I had double glazing (I don't, and I live in a conservation area, so theoretically, I'm somewhat limited- points off there). She then moved around the house checking the heating controls, specifically whether I had a room thermostat (I do) and thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs), which allow me to control- and lower the heating in rooms that aren't in use or don't need to be as warm as, say, the living room. Again, I've got new radiators throughout, and I had TRVs fitted on each one (points back on for those).

We also talked about floor insulation, and I told her that we had had the floors insulated between each of the storeys- both to keep heat in the various rooms (ie, to stop it rising to the top of the house), and to deaden noise. I was told that this is not measured- although it did then show up on the EPC as "no insulation".

Lastly, she took a note of how many energy-saving light bulbs we have around the house. Like many householders, I'm replacing my old stock of normal bulbs with energy-saving ones as they run out, so I've got about half and half (points off, could try harder.