EPC RATING

[Nixpix1]

Hi ladies

Im living in a property that is D rated for EPC and its awful. There is no insulation in the walls or the roof of the building. We have spent the last few days of snowmageddon freezing. On a normal cold days the heating allows for the only the rooms. To heat up to 16/17 degrees and without it it can drop to as low as 14. As soon as the heating goes off, the cold comes in and the heat leaves.

So I wanted to ask if anyone has a D rated property but finds it livable without having to freeze/better living conditions. All the properties we are looking to move into seem to be D rated. A few hit the c rating but there are not many.

Well, if you're looking at period houses then they are dreadful. It was the reason I fell out of love with them quickly.

If you get a fixer upper, you could do a lot to improve them: install double/triple glazing, board internal walls with insulation or insulated plasterboards, insulate the loft, cover drafts floorboards with carpets or at least big rugs etc.

You can also install bigger radiators + a more powerful boiler but that will obviously mean greater bills. When we lived in a 5 bed period semi with original windows, the heating bill (new rads and boiler) came to over 1k+ for 2 or 3 months when I decided to keep it comfortably warm at all times. Current house is 1920's and massive (almost double the previous one) but it has double glazing and we've added some insulation. It costs a fraction to keep it toasty.

We live in a D-rated rental at the moment. The windows (look like new double glazed) are really poorly fitted and let in lots of cold air. I can keep the place warm, but our gas/elec bills are ridiculous!! I recently switched to Bulb to reduce the previous British Gas bills.

Do you receive any tax credits/other benefits at all? You may still be able to get free insulation in a rented property (sorry, assuming you are renting, please correct me if not!):
www.government-grants.co.uk/insulation-grants-for-landlords-with-tenants
Might be worthwhile asking your landlord otherwise, as loft insulation isn't very expensive and could help if there is nothing there at present.

I do receive tax credit but I won't be living here for much longer. Apart from the poor insulation and heating problem, there is drain blockage, leaking pipes in the kitchen from somewhere, the boiler leaks, there is a rat problem. Just awful. Seems like landlord made it look nice but has never fixed any problems properly. I'd rather move put than be on the landlords back a million times to get one job done.

My last place was bliss, rented but bliss. Landlord did any work needed to be done ASAP and just a nice decent person.

The rating doesn't mean much, they mostly make assumptions based on the age and type of the house, then look in the loft.
There's no testing for draughts or checking if the insulation is correctly installed.
Our place I believe is E rated or maybe D is a 4 bed semi with no one next door and it was costing 3 pounds a day in the recent cold snap with heating on all the time but varying the set temperature.

Ah, ok. I would suggest, for your next place:

• Look at the boiler, avoid anything old. (We have a Worcester which is apparently a good make?)
• Look in the loft - if they've not bothered to insulate I would think they probably wouldn't bother to do other jobs as needed

I don't think the ratings are that great at telling you how warm it will actually be - our flat was E rated but actually quite toasty as we got lots of heat from the downstairs flat.
Is your current place drafty? If you can block any drafts that might help. Hope you are warm soon, its miserable being cold.

We've got solid brick walls and the last few weeks have been freezing. I was on the phone to my energy company and they said its possible that solid wall insulation grants might come out soon so keep an eye out.

If you get tax credits, it may be possible that the rented property you live in, or move into, can have energy saving things done- loft insulation, cavity wall insulation, more efficient boiler, under schemes which energy companies are required to run with the aim of reducing carbon emissions.

This all got a bit contentious on another thread today.Mostly I think from those who don't understand it. PM me if you want more details. I don't work for them.I just can't be arsed with pointless MN arguments.