• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Mission impossible ?

RogerS

RogerS

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We're on the move and looking at where to relocate to. The one thing that has really brought it home to us (and it's not rocket science) is just what a mountain there is to climb in terms of making some existing houses more energy efficient. EPC ratings of 24 are quite common. Taking a look at the 'suggestions' to improve matters shows often a payback period in a decade or more !

For example....

Screenshot 2024-07-02 at 07.35.21.png

Screenshot 2024-07-02 at 07.35.49.png

Of these, Steps 1, 5, 6 and 7 are easy to do and no-brainers. Step 9 is worth investigating further especially if one can tie in to a house battery and make use of a lower cost night tariff. The rest ? Not a chance. We won't live long enough ;)
 
The whole EPC scheme is a joke. Not only do they giving impractical suggestions for improvement but the grading system has not caught up with newer tech.
Recently i was faced with an all electric flat where the previous brain donor owner had removed all the storage heaters which led to an appalling EPC because it assumed non E7 tariff and hence peak rate water and space heating.
When i looked into it and spoke to an assessor. If i fitted a modern efficient heat pump that too would be rated as poor because it used peak rate energy. To get a good rating I needed to fit a “lot20” night storage heater a technology that belongs in the past as when it runs out of stored energy will turn itself in to a peak rate fan heater!
 
I assume that you are talking about a financial payback period? Even a carbon neutral payback is donkey’s years.
Anyone who says that the cure for eliminating fossil fuel is to insulate every British home is either a bit dim or is one of the many cowboy installers.
 
9fingers said:
The whole EPC scheme is a joke....
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This couldn't be more true. It's an absolute joke.

Bear in mind that the software doesn't allow them to take account of the actual amount of insulation in a new-ish house. It automatically defaults to the building regs requirements for that year. There is no box to tick for triple glazing. A mechanical ventilation system is counted as a major negative, despite it being a major positive in energy consumption terms (no trickle ventls, and vastly reduced ventilation heat losses).

I built a house around the turn of the century which was the second most energy efficient above ground house in the country. It cost about £70 a year to heat. It was initially rated "D" on the EPC, but after a whole lot of kerfuffle it was uprated to "C". I ended up having a long exchange of letters with Grant Shapps, the minister concerned, but it amounted to "sorry, your situation is an outlier and we're not fixing the system to account for it"..
 
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Mike G said:
This couldn't be more true. It's an absolute joke.

Bear in mind that the software doesn't allow them to take account of the actual amount of insulation in a new-ish house. It automatically defaults to the building regs requiremnents for that year. There is no box to tick for triple glazing. A mechanical ventilation system is counted as a major negative, despite it being a major positive in energy consumption terms (no trickle ventls, and vastly reduced ventilation heat losses).

I built a house around the turn of the century which was the second most energy efficient above ground house in the country. It cost about £70 a year to heat. It was initially rated "D" on the EPC, but after a whole lot of kerfuffle it was uprated to "C". I ended up having a long exchange of letters with Grants Shapps, the minister concerned, but it amounted to "sorry, your situation is an outlier and we're not fixing the system to account for it"..
Click to expand...
I agree with Mike, when i worked for a social housing providor we carried out works to older properties to increase teh insulation and reduce heating costs to tenants. We were forced to remove some systems that the tenants were delighted with in favour of more expensice to run systems as the EPC ratings mean the properties failed on the Scottish Housing Quality Standard which meant the properties would be unable to be relet.
 
We don't even need 7 as the heating's set to about 17deg C (or lower) and we both wear layers including an Oodie - Rob
 
Mike G said:
This couldn't be more true. It's an absolute joke.

Bear in mind that the software doesn't allow them to take account of the actual amount of insulation in a new-ish house. It automatically defaults to the building regs requirements for that year. There is no box to tick for triple glazing. A mechanical ventilation system is counted as a major negative, despite it being a major positive in energy consumption terms (no trickle ventls, and vastly reduced ventilation heat losses).

I built a house around the turn of the century which was the second most energy efficient above ground house in the country. It cost about £70 a year to heat. It was initially rated "D" on the EPC, but after a whole lot of kerfuffle it was uprated to "C". I ended up having a long exchange of letters with Grant Shapps, the minister concerned, but it amounted to "sorry, your situation is an outlier and we're not fixing the system to account for it"..
Click to expand...
Oh, thank goodness someone agrees with me. The tick box system (and the ‘qualified’ people that are used to enforce it) is utterly unable to deal with non-standard properties. Ticky-tacky boxes may be fine with the algorithm (although I have severe doubts about that too).

We have some neighbours, who, like we do, inhabit a category A (your grade 1) castle. EPC rating: 1. Yes 1 out of a hundred. A garden shed would do better. It’s still a liveable dwelling. Quite a nice one, actually.

And we have the SG EPC rules for landlords (which keep changing). Now just think what this is going to do to the supply of rental properties – Edinburgh is full of Georgian flats that cannot in any way be made to achieve the made-up standards. I am not going to cut 300mm holes at 1000mm distances so blown insulation can be put between the lathes and plaster and stone walls. I mean what could possibly go wrong with that?

The last time I looked at the regs, you could get out of it by getting three quotes that showed it would be over £10k (this is Scotland remember, I think the proposals in England were £5k for the same proposition. Obviously, we are wealthier than the sassenachs) to get to the required standard.

I sense a business opportunity. £100 for a quote, and it will be above £10k. One could have three companies registered in different locations. Only problem I suppose is if anyone actually wants you to do the work…
 
They told us when we moved that if we installed low energy lighting the EPC would go up a category, despite there being only one light in the whole place that wasn't already low energy. They did however miss 24' of single block wall between the bungalow and the garage that should have been cavity wall under the regs. when the property was built.
 
And thank God for Google. We've been pouring over estate agent's websites for days now. Looking for something period, open outlook, good size garden and without anyone around. So this popped up today from our OnTheMarket alerts.Screenshot 2024-07-03 at 17.59.05.png

WooHoo I thought. Wow look at the garden.
Screenshot 2024-07-03 at 17.59.13.png

Wonder what the back looks like ?

Screenshot 2024-07-03 at 17.59.23.png

Oh dear...it's the one of the right.
 
Just to be sure Roger, are you aware that Google Lens will give all details and price etc of the things you are posting up here in about 5 seconds? This one for example is in stoke lacey and has 32 photos, floorplan and price.
Dan pointed this out to me when we were buying a house for offspring.
 
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