Energy Performance Certificates

[joan1957]

Can anyone advise. We have currently bought another property which needs total refurbishment. The assessor is coming around this week to do EPC as instructed by vendors solicitors. My point is: this house will probably be given a G rating but in a few months later when windows, central heating loft insulation is completed it will probably score A. Can you defer the certificate until it meets the the top rating.

Thanks

[Selkirk]

As I understand it. This is a requirement by law nowadays, a complete waste of money in this instance but a waste of the vendors money. Once you have done the work get your own certificate.

cheers

Selkirk

[Melboy]

No. The EPC reflects the condition at the point of the property going on sale and is information for the prospective buyer.

If you make improvements and then rent or offer your property for sale again then a new EPC is required.

Mel.

[paul622gol]

Can anyone advise. We have currently bought another property which needs total refurbishment. The assessor is coming around this week to do EPC as instructed by vendors solicitors. My point is: this house will probably be given a G rating but in a few months later when windows, central heating loft insulation is completed it will probably score A. Can you defer the certificate until it meets the the top rating.

Thanks

Some advice for you here, I am an accredited DEA and run a property maintenance and management business. If a property has been assessed and for example turns out to be G banded, then the addition of a typical landlords upgrade in my experience such as double glazing, an A rated condensing boiler upgrade and loft insulation will probably only take the property up 1 or 2 bands. An uplift from a G to an A band is not possible in practice, it would require an enormous investment from the landlord. Generally speaking the only way a huge uplift in the energy efficiency of a house can be achieved is if the walls are cavity filled if they are of cavity construction, or internally or externally insulated in the case of solid walls. Remember that glazing typically only accounts for about 10% of the surface area of a typical housing stock semi detached house and so for example if you had 100% heat loss through your present windows and changed to windows with no heat loss (not possible but serves as an example) then you will only have reduced the overall heat loss by 10% by upgrading the windows. It would actually be more thermally efficient to fill in all unnecessary windows, sounds daft but it's true, this is why apartments score higher generally. The addition of loft insulation only scores for about 2-4 points depending on the size and construction of the roof and so unless the property is near the threshold of a new band, say E to D then that upgrade will not uplift the rating band. The claims bandied about by various companies (no names) by using them to upgrade your roof insulation are wildly exaggerated. It is also dangerous to just throw rolls of 250mm insulation over a loft space, access to the house plumbing and electrical circuits has to be safely preserved for emergencies. When a house gets assessed and the DEA can see that the current owners clearly use the loft for domestic storage and there is evidence they access it regularly and move the contents around, the DEA can at his or her discretion remove or alter the recommendations to upgrade the loft insulation.