What is the EPC rating of your house? How do you find it?

[firsthome1]

Hi all,

Interested in a home with a D EPC. FTB.

What is the EPC of your home and how do you find it? What's a D rating like?

You need an inspection unless there’s a current certificate for your property, if there is they should all be available on the .gov website. I think D is pretty normal for an older Propert to be honest - but i am not an expert

The report should give you more information than the grading, it will tell you why it is graded that way and what potential it has - have you seen the full report?

https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate

The new build flat we rent is just a B.

It’s absolutely freezing due to large floor to ceiling windows. The radiators and water are electric. The former absolutely eat electricity. We haven’t switched them on all winter - instead drying clothes on a heated dryer and warming rooms using a fan heater (which also eat electricity but at least keeps you warm for a while).

EPCs are fairly pointless. They just take the individual information to come to an overall sum, in theory we have cavity wall insulation, decent glazing, led lightbulbs. But in reality, it’s rubbish.

Check how old the certificate is and whether any work has been done on the property since. We discounted a property because it had an E. Turned out the sellers had put in all new boiler and radiators. If we’d realised sooner we wouldn’t have been beaten to it by another buyer.

Meant to say we found it helpful to compare with pics from the previous ads on Zoopla

I live in a well insulated cheap to heat 1890s terrace with double glazing and my EPC rating is D which is standard for houses that age and type. I asked the EPC guy who confirmed this and said I couldn’t get higher as there’s no insulation in the walls. I have neighbours on both sides who provide plenty of insulation!

It’s all a load of bollocks really. My neighbours single glazed house which costs way more to heat than mine has the same rating.

EPC’s confuse me. We watched someone do the ‘assessment’ for DP’s parents’ house and he just measured up one of the big rooms, took photos of the radiators, and looked at the windows. We offered to show him the loft (with its extra high insulation) and he said it was ok and he’d just put down the highest amount he could on the form.

Not really sure what they’re supposed to be doing but it seems like a dated way to measure energy efficient.

Same

Just sold my parents’ house.

Double glazed throughout, cavity insulated, well insulated loft but not ground floor. 20 year old gas boiler. EPC rating was D.

We haven't got one as we moved in in 1997 and they didn't come in until about 2006, but I guess it is probably D.

Most older properties will be D, I had a look on our street on the website and it is a mixture of properties which are mostly 1930s and a few modern ones. The very new block of townhouses are B, the more modern semis are mainly C but some D, and the 1930s houses are all D and E, the ones that are E seem to have older wooden windows.

You could potentially have issues in the future if you want to rent the property out if the EPC rating is E or D, as the government has proposed that all rental properties need to be C or above by 2028. However they are incredibly bad at actually sticking to any of these green housing proposals anyway and as PP noted its impossible to get above a D in some situations where there are no cavity walls etc so really they need to put some exclusions into these proposals if they do actually go ahead.

The EPC calculation is also currently weighted towards gas heating being better than electric which doesn't tie in with the push for heat pump technology so its going to have a big overhaul at some point to bring in line with the wider decarbonisation proposals.

it was originally brought in as part of a housing pack so was a bit of a slapdash job like a lot of these things are but the government seem quite focused on these now but haven't made any improvements to how they are done. It's like most things, half a job

Hmm... I'm not saying someone fiddled that EPC, but I've never worked on a project where an electrically heated apartment got over a C. They must have used such incredibly high insulation, especially if there are floor to ceiling windows!

EPC D is the lowest I entertained when I was renting (did so for over a decade) I did have a E rated flat and the drafts drove me crazy.
I've lived in D and C rated flat and semi-detached house. Both with electric heating. They were ok, but I did need the heating on a lot, pretty much all the time I was in the house during the winter (aside from sleeping).

I now live in a B rated terrace house with gas heating. It keeps a regular temperature of around 18°C most of the year, without an additional heating. If I'm cold then heating on for 30min to an hour keeps it around 22°c for ~4+ hours after I turn the heating off.

In the 10 years since I've owned my house, I've replaced all the exterior doors and windows, reinsulated the loft, replaced the roof and liner, added a log burner, renewed the gas boiler and resolved the damp in the sitting room wall.

It is infinitely warmer, whatever the EPC rating says.

Sorry it got 80/100 which is C. B is 81.

I’m almost certain the walls don’t have whatever they say they had. I contemplated challenging the EPC when we moved in, especially when it got down to 12 degrees in the kitchen living area, last winter. But I couldn’t be bothered. Almost certain the developers put pressure on the EPC assessors to pass these off as C to avoid the new govt regs coming in. Maybe it’s the new cladding scandal.

It was an E when we bought it, we’ve changed the windows and external doors but not sure if it would make a D yet due to the heating source (oil) and the bathroom extension.
It’s an old thatched cottage though, it’s lovely and cosy on the whole now.

Last house was a B-it had air source heating and was boiling. I’d still rather live in the E!

The amount of rental houses that are available will go down when they all have to be C and above.

I wouldn't be surprised!

This is what I mean about checking how old the certificate is and what improvements have been made. If you sell presumably you’ll get a new one done.

I wrongly assumed that the person comes along with an infrared camera and looks at how much heat is escaping the property! I was very naive. Even the guy doing the EPC on our London flat said its all a farse. We replaced non-working storage heaters with energy efficient, slim line ones from Norway. (no gas supply). He said we'd have gotten more points for the storage heaters!

The flat was long with small windows at either end, and completely enclosed on every other side by other flats. In summer, we had fans and even an air con unit on as it was a sweat box. In the winter, we rarely had any heating on. Only a few days over Christmas each year when our down stairs neighbours went away! It was rated a D, despite barely needing any heating at all!

I saw the EPC being done on our last house (individual new build). The things they did to get the rating they wanted were unbelievable. Completely unethical and made the whole thing nonsensical and the council building control were there watching! It’s all utter cobblers.

I’m all for energy efficiency (I’m a long standing electric car owner) but EPC’s are nothing short of a racket.

EPCs are fairly useless. They just tick boxes and make assumptions. I've argued with the inspectors on more than one occasion - I had the latest most energy efficient electric heaters installed but because there was no 'box' for it other than old fashioned electric heaters I was downgraded and he suggested I get a second meter in for them. As it happened I did have a second (redundant) meter which for some reason he failed to see, but I sent him a photo and voila it passed.
@ThankmelaterOkay I'm amazed a B rated property is so poor - that should be up there.
Period properties often can't have cavity insulation, windows can't always be double glazed. I would take any EPC as a rough guideline only.

I had a LOT of problems with an old landlord, and as a result I have spent far too much time studying EPCs and I can promise you, they are utter bollocks.

The assessors get paid as little as £35, sometimes that involves several hours round trip plus doing the report.

Something like 65-70% of them are inaccurate.

They don't regionally vary them in the slightest. You could be on an island big enough for one house and get battered by wind and it would be rated the same as an inland location that is sheltered.

They don't test heating systems to see if they work, which is useless for renters. They don't look closely at boilers either, which is important for good heating.

40% of the time they get the house size wrong. I have seen 2500 sq ft houses listed as 1500 on EPCs (in sq meters).

If they have no way of knowing if you have floor, wall or loft insulation, they guess.

They frequently lack changes to houses, improvements, extensions.

Our last house was an E40 - the lowest possible score they can have whilst being legal to rent. We got through the 26,500 kw annual estimate in 4 months. That house was so cold that we completely abandoned the ground floor after six months.

Our current EPC is a C. It's a 10 year old self build, our landlady built it.

So, whilst it is in theory very energy efficient, because there is no accounting for location or measuring weather, it couldn't tell us that we will get absolutely hammered by wind on one side of the house for 7-8 months of the year and get through four tonnes of wood on top of the EPC's general annual kWh estimate, which, this time, is more reasonable.

I have also lived in a B rated flat but because the underfloor heating was faulty, it used up twice the annual kWh in that home, too.

To say use it as a guideline only would be honouring the system with far more accuracy than it deserves.

The only really way to guage energy use is to talk to the owners about their consumption, their energy use habits and what the house is made of and hope they are being truthful.