Flat above a shop with a epc rating of f!

[motheroreily]

I was just hoping to offload my thoughts! And perhaps get some wisdom. Or maybe to be told I'm too fussy!

I am hoping to buy a 2 bed flat. My budget is small. There is a house with a garden i can afford but it needs alot of work. It also has a flat roof, secondary glazing and is grade 2 listed. I ruled it out because i just dont have the money for everything that needs to be done.

Anyway, now I've seen a flat. But it is above a shop and has an epc rating of f. It's a modern flat. Should this be alarming?

I live in a flat above shops. Bought long before EPC ratings were a thing, but I love it. Large flat with big rooms and central location. Some mortgage companies won't lend depending on what the shop below is, but you get a lot of space for your money.

I just googled and EPC ratings are stored on the government website. Mines was an E when I bought it, but would be D now after some works. It fine. I pay £72/mth combined gas and electric.

It lost my post briefly, epc assessors use a set program to do an epc. It is limited to a standard type of build/box ticking and sometimes can't cover/handle a quirky build or type of heating. Huge failure of the epc set up no fault of the assessor. It could therefore mean that the flat does not really deserve an f rating i.e. it defaults to that iyswim. Speak to agent they should have more info, we always did when it happened to one of our properties (retired now).

Thank you. That's reassuring . I'll definitely ask the agent.

I rent a flat now. Not sure what the epc is but it breaks my heart when i see the cost of heating one room on my smart meter.

F is really poor energy efficiency (in fact, it will be illegal soon to let a flat with a rating lower than E, I believe). Go and see the flat again and work out what you can do to improve it - for example, is there a loft hatch, if so, laying insulation is very easy and cheap and will make a huge difference. Some of it may be down to an old boiler or not having thermostatic controls on the radiators. Non-LED lightbulbs also bring the rating down so look at the certificate in detail and see where in particular it is falling down and whether it is something that is easily solvable. Remember, as a leaseholder (which you are likely to be in a flat above a shop), you will not have the right to put in double glazing or works that interfere with the fabric of the building.

Agree that the EPC programme used is rot. My house is assessed as E, but at the end of the report it says the construction of my house (solid stone walls) is outside the parameters of the inspection and I need to find where I could use cavity wall insulation (on the aforementioned solid stone walls, ergo no cavities). As we did all our insulation pre the need for EPCs and dh did it, it couldn't be taken into account as we had no receipt from a registered tradesman to prove it had been done. I'd had a new boiler put in, but he wasn't interested as it wasn't a combi condensing one (unsuitable for my house anyway).

Thank you for your advice. I asked the agent if I could see the full EPC certificate and am waiting for it.

The flat has storage heaters and I wonder now if it doesn't have mains gas so have asked about that too.

Pretty sure EPC certificates go on a central register - if you have the full address you should be able to access it yourself.

I would do some research on how you might improve the EPC for the property - the certificate itself should have some pointers, if I remember rightly from the one I had issued a while back? Work out some costs for the stuff that needs to be done, and see whether they look realistic/possible.

Thank you so much I didn't realised I could find it online. These are the recommendations:

1Increaseloftinsulationto270mm
2Cavitywallinsulation
3Increasehotwatercylinderinsulation 4Lowenergylightingforallfixedoutlets
5Fanassistedstorageheatersanddualimmersioncylinder

I had storage heaters before and never managed to work out how they worked.

The way SAP calculations (which is what EPC's are based on, effectively) are done is quite simplistic and badly flawed in some situations.

If I remember correctly, they assume heat loss through party walls and floors, whereas in reality it is likely that the properties below and to either side are themselves likely to be heated to a similar level, most of the time (heat flows from hot to cold, and the rate it does so depends on the difference in temperature... so if there is very little difference in temperature either side of a party wall or floor, very little heat will be lost in either direction).

If you've got flats to either side and a shop below, and the SAP calculation assumes that the walls and floors are uninsulated, then the calculated result is going to be pretty terrible, whatever you do. The actual energy efficiency performance may be considerably better.