Does this change the EPC?

[Citygirlrurallife]

Put an offer in on a house that was accepted, it has an EPC of A

had survey etc and the solar panels and Tesla battery don’t work and haven’t worked since 2018. We sent an electrician round who can’t do further investigations without owner permission so we would have to get it fixed upon purchase. But does that mean the EPC certificate is invalid or at least not an A? Google is not helping me and I’ll try the council tomorrow morning but thought I’d see if anyone knows while I wait for the lines to reopen!

No, it does not. An EPC is based on a home's potential, not what it is actually doing at the time an EPC is done. You could have a fully bust central heating system and boiler than does not work and it wouldn't make a jot of difference to the EPC.

They are utter nonsense.

Wow really?!

That's true but you should probably consider asking them to get this fixed or reducing your offer ?

Yup. EPCs are basically smoke and mirrors for the government to be able to say they are looking after the environment, e.g. not allowing landlords to rent out properties with an EpC lower than an E because it would cost too much to heat.

But.. they check NOTHING.

We moved into a house in July last year that had an EPC of E 40, so it was one point above being legal to rent out. The EpC said it would use 26,500 kWh per year. But the EPC guy doesn't check that radiators are working, and they have an online chart to look at the supposed efficiency of boilers, without being made to check said boiler is running at the efficiency their chart said it is.

Guess what happened? We got through that KwH estimate in four months. Actual consumption if we had allowed ourselves the luxury of warmth would have been 100,000 kWh per year, which is absolutely outrageous.

Then the cost of heating oil tripled, and we figured we really didn't fancy spending £1250 a month to heat it during cold winter spells, so we left.

Like I said. Smoke and mirrors. Lots of deceptive people in the industry, poorly paid too. Once they do the journey, inspection and report, they are basically earning minimum wage.

I have seen houses over measured by 40%. I have seen a house which is a set of four walls of a former cow shed with no roof have an EPC of G1, 'with the potential to reach 99.'

Sure, it could reach that if you spend 150k on it and literally had a wind turbine in your back garden. Idiots.

Anyway, if you are worried about the raging because a Green mortgage depends on it, don't worry. They won't check whether anything is working.

EPC malarkey is utter nonesense. I bought a flat 2 years ago with an EPC rating of C. Sold it earlier this year and although they are valid for 10 years was told it had to be renewed when marketing the property. It came back as a D when absolutely nothing had changed. I challenged the survey and he changed it back to a C!

So there’s prob no point in asking for money off based on the EPC then?

Well since solar panels and batteries are expensive (looking at perhps 10-15k if they need replacing ) then I think you're entitled to ask to knock off the price of making good to restore a true A rating. I imagine if an assessor came and you actually said"these don't work" they would probably not get included in the score. AFAIK they are based on as is rarher than potential.

They would still get included in the score. It's based on potential, not actual. I promise I have looked into this in great detail.

But Op should ask for money off for the expensive stuff that's not working, esp if they didn't tell them it wasn't working during viewings..

The EPC assessor doesn’t have to check anything is working. It just needs to be there. So if it’s there it’s assumes to be working.

Seems quite grey - we got them looked at by an electrician but there’s a limit to what he can do until he starts doing if that makes sense, so we’ve asked for some money off for worst case scenario of having to replace, which gives us wiggle room to negotiate

I went on the EPC assessor course during lockdown and qualified. The course was full of dumb arses, and they told us during the course that no one would fail. And no one did fail despite half of the, being dense and having no knowledge of construction at all. It’s a total joke.

EPCs are useless. I had an grade II listed flat and the EPC inspector gave it a grade too low to rent. He suggested double glazing and economy 7 radiators (it was an all electric building). I said the listing prevented changing the windows, and that I had put in state of the art infrared electric heating. He said he 'had no box for that kind of heating'. I felt like saying: Are you a computer? Are you just ticking boxes or can you think for yourself? So he suggested I install a second meter for the heaters. As it happened, there was a redundant second meter (which he missed). It wasn't hooked up to anything, but I took a photo of it and he changed the rating. Stupid on every level.

I'm just going to add my experience of the farce that is the EPC. Our house has evidence (filled holes in the wall) that it once had cavity wall treatment. We know - from thermal imaging etc - that the cavity wall insulation has failed in certain areas.But because the holes are there, the EPC 'Surveyor' simply ticks the box to say that it has CWI. That meant we didn't qualify for any of the government grants to improve the insulation of our house - despite the existing insulation having failed.