to think a minimum epc of e is shocking and landlords should stop moaning?

[woodencoffeetable]

new rules for renting out homes are coming soon. landlordzone link

aibu to think that it should be higher? at least a c?
and that landlords should stop moaning that it is sooo expensive to get to a dismal level of e?
e basically means not insulated & single glazing.
imo that's not an acceptable minimum.

e does not necessarily mean single glazing.

not new - this has been coming for years, the only change is that from April it will be illegal to rent any property below E - ie. landlords either get an exemption, The bar is set low due to accommodation shortage. And of course tenants have a choice not rent chilly damp shitholes, even in London. THAT is how you stop slumlords.

However social housing providers are exempt, and also will be for the new electrical safety regulations. So that tells you which tenants are really considered second class citizens and will continue to have to live in shitholes with no recompense.

while the Guardian/shelter propaganda is fun, it doesn't tell the whole story.

sorry - didn't complete a sentence.

'landlords either get an exemption, improve the place (not always possible) or evict'.

It doesn't just mean that. My epc was really low because of elctric heaters.

It also covers how quickly a property heats up and then loses the heat.

I agree single glazing should be sorted, but not all properties are insulated in cabity and roof

social housing providers are exempt, and also will be for the new electrical safety regulations.

poor (literally) people!

My old house was an e! it was insulated in the roof above the loft bedroom and had double glazing throughout.

If someone had suggested pumping shite into my yorkshire stone walls id have told them where to go. Wouldve improved the epc perhaps but caused no end of damp problems i expect.

I dont think its as straight forward as you think it is.

poor (literally) people!

You don't have to be literally poor to live in social housing

Its really hard to get above a C with electric heaters and there are lots of rural places with no gas mains nearby. I do think something needs to be done to stop landlords failing to maintain properties though, some of the places i rented in London years ago didn't even have working heating!

Not to mention gas isn't really used in apartments anymore either. Some of our recent projects have air source heat pumps and get A ratings but same build with electric heating and no renewables would get a C.

Epc's are ridiculous. Given points for LED. Our house had solar panels, air source heat pump etc and only got a C. It was insulated all over as well.

when we sold our house in the uk last year the epc was done by the estate agent's photograph.
that explains a lot of the variation...

EPCs are babble and I'm not surprised to hear the above story.

no property to my agent's knowledge ever gets an A. My rental is a C and tenants have said that they often don't need to run the (gas) heating as it gets too warm. (Midlands 1970s semi). The EPC suggests a wind turbine in the back garden, bet the neighbours would love that even if it didn't sit in the shelter of a hill.

London is of course full of shitholes because demand is so high that anything rents. There is theoretical enforcement but in practice none as councils have no money.

Depends on the building. Defra's head office invested millions to get up to an E! Single-skin walls and uninsulated ground floors can make even flats energy-inefficient with nothing the landlord can really do if they don't own the whole block.

What would be useful would be a quick resolution service where tenants could contact say Environmental Health, saying they think their landlord is taking the piss, and then an order is made to do xyz that can be taken to court if not complied with.

EPCs are not worth the paper they're written on. Mine recommended cavity wall insulation when the property doesn't even have cavity walls . The assessor also didn't look in the loft but wrote 'no loft insulation- assumed'. Money for old rope.

I've just been doing some research on this as had a bit of a panic about our rented house. If your house is listed, and has therefore been exempt from having an EPC then that exemption still applies under the new regulations, unless it has previously had a voluntary EPC, in which case it gets a bit more complex. There's also some grey area around non listed houses in conservation areas which were previously exempt but not seem to not always be, but I'm not 100% clear on the details of that.

We rent a listed property and I was concerned about how the new regulations would affect us. Luckily the exemption remains in force.

I think it depends on the house. My 1930s semi was an E it wasn't damp or that cold although it cost a bit to heat. It was solid brick walls and high ceilings I think that was a big factor. Not a lot I could do about either

E is not shocking. My house has d🤷
Double glazed, insulation, loft insulation, central heating-gas. It's warm. We spend very little on heating compare to others, yet we got D.

My mum, in another EU country, got G😂 She was fuming. Fully refurbished few years before
Super insulation, new double gazing, very expensive ecological heating. Our central heating turned on once a day and it was below 0 outside. House held temperature wonderfully. Fucking G.

I have brand new windows and doors on my flat and it is super cheap to heat. I got a new epc before renting it out and it only went up from E to D.

My house got an E. It has single skin walls so can't have cavity wall insulation. It has double glazing and loft insulation, and LEDs in 8/11 bulbs. The total cost of gas and electric is about £45 per month. So it doesn't really tell you that a property is a catastrophe to heat etc?

That would make a lot of older properties pretty much Uber table without major works. Our house is rated F. It’s actually perfectly fine. It’s never boiling but it’s warm in winter to the point that I often have to turn the heating down.

My old house was an e! it was insulated in the roof above the loft bedroom and had double glazing throughout.

If someone had suggested pumping shite into my yorkshire stone walls id have told them where to go. Wouldve improved the epc perhaps but caused no end of damp problems i expect.

I dont think its as straight forward as you think it is.

Substitute Cornish stone walls for Yorkshire and bingo! I've just looked at the EPC for our house, recommending cavity wall insulation - find me a bloody cavity in solid walls then! Double glazed throughout, but we lost on having solid walls (feature of a period property), not having mains gas and using oil, (feature of living rurally), not having a certificate for the insulation (dh did it before EPCs were dreamed of), and me not being willing to rip up the floors in the attic to show what was there.

I had to pay for that crock of shit report to boot!

Having lived in a over insulated home in Belgium, where the house didn't cool down in summer, I prefer to stick on a pair of socks and a fleece if I'm slightly chilly here. Older houses are built to breathe, not be to passive house standards.

I agree that as long as the rating is as haphazard as in the examples above, there is not much point in it.

but generally I think it's a good idea in principle.

I rented an E property once. Single glazed, very old windows, and all electric. The minute you switched the heating off, the warm air disappeared. The electric bill was well over 400 every quarter.

We are now renting a much larger, D property with double glazing and gas central heating and it feels so much warmer. Gas and elec bill is currently 95 per month, but that's estimated, and all our readings are under the estimates.

I would never rent an E property again, to be honest. Even just putting in double glazing would have made all the difference.

Most places could get oil heating even if gas wasn’t available. Electric heaters cost a lot to run don’t they?

We had single glazing in our house, we got half the house done a few years ago and are now getting the rest done. House is not very well insulated although hoping to get the loft done at some point. We don’t consider our house to be a shithole.

That link suggests landlords could get some help towards the costs. Why is this when people who own their own houses have to pay the full costs unless they’re on quite a low income?

It would be better to have set standards instead of EPC.
For example
Rental property must have double glazing, insulation (most suitable one to the property), x quality electric and gas and dump survey.

Donna My house has full double glazing throughout, and oil fired central heating, yet was still given a E becuase we didn't have gas, and no cavity wall insulation because the walls are solid stone, so no cavities to fill.