"Carbon neutral" home receives 'F' ratings
It has been said that an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) would largely be ignored by both home-sellers and buyers alike. Not so for Mr Glen Graham, whose proclaimed "carbon neutral" home - featured on the Energy Savings Trust (EST) website - recently attracted an F rating for both efficiency and emissions.
Last month, Mr Graham wrote on an old blog-post (reprinted below) about how, after having paid £500 for a Home Information Pack (HIP), he removed his home from the property market until its poor EPC ratings were investigated by EPC provider, Energy Reports and Surveys Limited (ERS), the EPC division of LMS.
The rising influence of the EPC - Good and bad news
As far as I am aware, this is the first public report of a property actually being withdrawn from sale, purely as a result of its EPC rating.
In an email to this site, Mr Graham explained why:
Because the brand new (£3,000) heating/hot water system is an absolute selling point for any environmentally aware would-be buyers, so we were losing one of our major selling points.
Whilst I'm sure most buyers don't look too closely at energy reports anyway, a very bad one would attract their attention and would be a point they would use when making a lower bid (I know I would!).
Which, on one level, ought to inspire industry confidence as it signals the early rising impact of the EPC in shaping the expectations of home-sellers and buyers; made more acute in today's tough housing market.
But Mr Graham's experience highlights several "expectational" deficiencies, including:
- service and complaints resolution;
- the Energy Assessors' understanding of what Mr Graham claims was "basic stuff like thermostats and timers";
- and, the limitations of the RdSAP in calculating against 'high spec' properties.
RdSAP to full SAP
Commenting on the poor EPC ratings, Russell Osborne, Managing Director of Northgate Land & Property - the accreditation body overseeing the Domestic Energy Assessor (DEA) appointed to audit Mr Graham's home - said the property might be one that would benefit from a full SAP survey.
Northgate has offered to look at Mr Graham's case but may now be too late: According to his latest email to this site, last week, Mr Graham has now decided to "stay put" because despite several attempts to speak with someone at ERS Ltd, no one suitably qualified has got back to him. And now the property he wanted to buy has been sold to another buyer.
"Despite a promise for their 'Technical Manager' to call me," Mr Graham wrote, "more than 3 weeks have gone by without another peep out of the company concerned."
"We took the house off the market pending resolution, but far too much time has now gone by and we've decided to stay put (the house we were particularly after has gone now anyway unsurprisingly)."
No one was available to comment at ERS in time for publication.
Astonished at "lack of very basic knowledge"
Mr Graham's greatest dissatisfaction, though, was with the DEA conducting the survey.
In the first of several emails exchanged with this site, he wrote: "I've felt obliged to flag it up to your site because I was genuinely astounded at the lack of very basic knowledge. I think the word astounded honestly describes how I felt - we expected (and pay) for a professional service - this was like going to court and finding out that your solicitor only has a GCSE in Law!"
"This was not just as regards my own [heating] system, but about some very basic principles which apply to all common domestic systems."
Mr Graham's original comment on this site is reprinted below (unedited):
I recently decided to sell my home. Coughed up the required £500 for the HIP pack. We have a 2 month old state of the art wood burning central heating system - it is so carbon neutral that my home is actually featured on the Energy Saving Trust website!
We contribute NIL Carbon from our heating and hot water now (it's all from replanted forests within 10 miles of our home) and we pay under £50 a year (yes, you read that right - we have a licence to extract as much waste timber as we wish).
The assessor who came out did not understand anything about the central heating! He thought the time switch (circulates the water through the radiators at set times) actually lit the fire!
He lists Timer, thermostats and TRVs on the system as poor and inefficient! He actually rates the hot water & central heating (remember 0 - yes zero carbon contributed) as "Highly polluting"!!
I have been in circles contacting the firm. I am astounded at the lack of knowledge - I mean, we are talking basic stuff like thermostats and timers having to be explained by me to him!
I still find it hard to believe, and we've had to take our house off the market as the energy rating is so utterly incorrect and misleading.
I can't find one person in the company who understand basic stuff even (I've spoken to 5 so far!).
Truly an astounding amount to be charging for so little knowledge. My 10 year old understood more about it than the "surveyor"!!
Summary warnings
There are several warnings and wake-up calls in Mr Graham's tale:
- It's not enough to just know your basic NOS
- RdSAP needs upgrading (rumoured to be in discussions) - Particularly as DEAs will increasingly encounter homes rated against the Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH) in the future.
- Get adequate DEA Terms and Conditions sorted, because...
- How long before a similar case is legally challenged? When a circa £70 EPC risks a homeowners' financial future and/or possible career, anomalies become financially-viable to contest. You have been warned.
Related: EPC v Passivhaus: The Clash of Standards
Tags: energy-performance-certificate, Domestic-Energy-Assessor, dea-terms-and-conditions, northgate, ers-ltd
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