Improving energy efficiency of house

[sxturbo]

Hi all,

I've recently read that the government are thinking of forcing households to have an EPC rating of at least C.

Article here https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money...-1-7-million-homes-owners-face-penalties.html

Mine currently has an EPC rating of D, but can be made to be a B.

This was rated when i bought the house 2.5 years ago.

The house already has cavity wall insulation and double glazed windows. There is insulation in the loft, the hot water tank is already well insulated.

Since moving in, I have installed a high efficiency boiler, an opentherm smart heating system, changed all the bulbs to LED ones except the strip lights in the garage ( I have plans to remove these).

I've found the copy of the EPC for the house when I bought it, and it appears some things have been wrongly assumed, (I know the property has cavity wall insulation as I've seen it first hand when drilling through.)

I don't think I will realistically be able to get the EPC to a B as one of the recommendation was to insulate the solid concrete floor (the cost of this I'm pretty certain would never be outweighed by the energy efficiency I'm sure)

 

[sxturbo]

These are the recommendation from the surveyor.

It's quite an expense to get the property to a C grade by the sounds of things..

 

[Swwils]

If you have access to the roof space additional insulation there is an easy (but not nice) job.

The EPC can only be as accurate as the information provided.

If you want to make a noticeable difference, regardless of EPC; hunt down any cold air draughts!

 

[foxhole]

The article actually says thousands of home are not able to achieve band C.

 

[cdbe]

I've recently been replacing the roof on my house and have noticed a few "issues". Firstly, the cavity wall insulation, installed about 8 years ago. It has settled in the cavity - in some areas it was nearly 600mm from the top of the cavity:

Secondly, the loft insulation, also done 8 years ago, there is a gap of 3-400mm in the eaves where there is no insulation:

In the second case I understand the potential for interfering with ventilation, but this can be managed with care (and in my case not an issue as roof was not felted).

Basically, I had an uninsulated area of about 800mm all the way round the top of my house and I can imagine heat pouring out, I think the only reason we didn't have extensive condensation was that the house was so "leaky" in other areas.

I read recently that the predicted energy savings from these measures are not actually been realised - I can see why, when you compare my (presumably fairly typical) installation with the "laboratory" version on which the figures are based.

Obviously 99% of people have no interest in their EPC - if they did, and compared their actual energy consumption to that predicted they would have a shock.

I would be interested to know if the BRE (or whoever does it these days) actually gets out of their labs and compares before and after energy consumption in real houses, where there are issues like mine, or where people flatten their loft insulation when they board it out, or turn up their heating a bit because the new boiler is cheaper to run.

 

[Lower]

Hi all,

I've recently read that the government are thinking of forcing households to have an EPC rating of at least C.

Article here https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money...-1-7-million-homes-owners-face-penalties.html

Mine currently has an EPC rating of D, but can be made to be a B.

This was rated when i bought the house 2.5 years ago.

The house already has cavity wall insulation and double glazed windows. There is insulation in the loft, the hot water tank is already well insulated.

Since moving in, I have installed a high efficiency boiler, an opentherm smart heating system, changed all the bulbs to LED ones except the strip lights in the garage ( I have plans to remove these).

I've found the copy of the EPC for the house when I bought it, and it appears some things have been wrongly assumed, (I know the property has cavity wall insulation as I've seen it first hand when drilling through.)

I don't think I will realistically be able to get the EPC to a B as one of the recommendation was to insulate the solid concrete floor (the cost of this I'm pretty certain would never be outweighed by the energy efficiency I'm sure)

Your post made me look back at our EPC which was done 10 years ago. It was an F with the potential to get to an E if we replaced all bulbs with LED (which we've done anyway).

It's a 1920's build, solid walls, suspended floor house built in such a way that every room bar 2 has 3 outside walls. Its fully double glazed already and has 300mm roof insulation so short of insulating all the internal walls which would mean moving all the doorways, we're never going to get to a C.

 

[JP_]

Just do what you can - how are they going to police this? Say you have insulation below the concrete floor, change your light bulbs, say there is insulation in those pitched roof sections - lots of "assumed" in the list, which means a bloke was paid to walk around the house and guess what was there.

Or spend thousands ripping your house apart and upgrade on the off chance the insulation police will turn up in 5 years.

Is the hose warm and comfortable to live in, and energy bills affordable? If so, why change. I have been adding insulation to my house, but I had no insulation in the solid walls or suspended timber floors, so relatively easy to fix myself - and the whole house needed redecorating and new floors anyway.

 

[Notch7]

I wonder what the long long term solution is?

my guess is the majority of people live in housing stock that was built between 1850 and 1980: Ie Victorian, Edwardian, pre war, post war, ex council houses from 1950s and 1960s, then more recent housing estates of the 1970s and 1980s.

I guess of those the 1980s builds may have 50mm Jabolite under the screed, all the rest will be solid floors or suspended with no insulation.


Houses can be improved with: cavity wall insulation, loft insulation, double glazed windows, new gas boiler
beyond that, anything else is very expensive to retrofit.



The solution is either government grants to upgrade existing housing stock or start to rebuild.........I cant see either happening.

I suppose if energy gets ever more expensive and new build gets more energy efficient, people will be encouraged to move into new houses.

 

[Lower]

Just do what you can - how are they going to police this? Say you have insulation below the concrete floor, change your light bulbs, say there is insulation in those pitched roof sections - lots of "assumed" in the list, which means a bloke was paid to walk around the house and guess what was there.

Or spend thousands ripping your house apart and upgrade on the off chance the insulation police will turn up in 5 years.

Is the hose warm and comfortable to live in, and energy bills affordable? If so, why change. I have been adding insulation to my house, but I had no insulation in the solid walls or suspended timber floors, so relatively easy to fix myself - and the whole house needed redecorating and new floors anyway.

Our gas and electricity bills combined come to just under £2k a year which doesn't seem too bad for a large 4 bed house built in the 1920s.

Heating is always set to 20 degrees with nest thermostats, and the only time the house feels cold in the winter is when it's windy.

I'm sure that the environmental cost of upgrading the house would outweigh the benefits.

 

[Diver Fred]

They are 'attacking' landlords and let property first. All new lets from 2025 the building has to be at a minimum EPC of 'C' or the Landlord has to prove they have spent £13k5 on energy improvements or it's a listed building. All existing lets that requirement applies from 2028.

The let property I have has an estimated cost raising the EPC to a classification of 'C' approaching £40K. Just can't afford it.

What is happening is that 'small' (i.e. private) landlords are selling up either when tenants leave or the tenants being given notice to quit. Very few will sell with tenants in place as that reduces to value of the property even more.
I've heard comment that it will apply to all sales from 2035 and eatable value some time after that.

I can see this destroying the rural letting first as so lets many are old buildings without access to mains gas (which is the one heat source that the EPC people like).

There has been changes to the energy efficiency of solid walls to improve those figures but at the same other changes where made that reduce the efficiency of other parts of a house structure.

 

[Swwils]

It's a catch 22. No guarantees whatsoever that a new house will be better.

The "performance gap" is very real and that will not change unless this stuff is explicitly inspected and cared about during any work, including new builds. The lack of care and knowledge is nothing short of shocking accross the industry, especially when doing it correctly in terms of energy use would require no extra time, effort or cost at those build stages. Its very difficult to make doing it properly valuable to the builder on the ground, why on earth would they know that PIR insulation doesn't have a constant resistance value and loses significant performance under 10C? There is no incentive structure.

The catch all solution would be to achieve 100% carbon neutral energy supply or better - at that point it doesn't matter how much energy you use. (This is a really difficult thing to do nationwide in the timeframes needed.)

The cost of a real heat loss survey is decreasing dramatically thanks to modern technology. The monitoring technology to measure heatloss in every room is now small, cheap and connected - this then gives you real data about the house to work with, rather than a guesstimate EPC.

 

[sxturbo]

The house is lovely and warm, in all honesty it's the best house for efficiency I've lived in,

The bills are low too, only £75 per month for gas and electric and we don't live like hermits.

Just reading the article got me thinking

 

[JP_]

£75/month is amazing. I pay about £140/mo, 4 bed bungalow with 2 kids.

 

[sxturbo]

£75/month is amazing. I pay about £140/mo, 4 bed bungalow with 2 kids.

Mines a 4 bed semi, but 2x adults and 1x 4 year old.

 

[sxturbo]

I wonder what the long long term solution is?

my guess is the majority of people live in housing stock that was built between 1850 and 1980: Ie Victorian, Edwardian, pre war, post war, ex council houses from 1950s and 1960s, then more recent housing estates of the 1970s and 1980s.

I guess of those the 1980s builds may have 50mm Jabolite under the screed, all the rest will be solid floors or suspended with no insulation.


Houses can be improved with: cavity wall insulation, loft insulation, double glazed windows, new gas boiler
beyond that, anything else is very expensive to retrofit.



The solution is either government grants to upgrade existing housing stock or start to rebuild.........I cant see either happening.

I suppose if energy gets ever more expensive and new build gets more energy efficient, people will be encouraged to move into new houses.

I don't think any of the options are truly feasible now that we are discussing it.

Personally I don't like new builds because they are rarely freehold these days, and there is usually a grounds charge. We looked at a new build before we moved into our current house, and the ground rent was around £250 per month, plus a shared cost should anything major be required to the roads and paths etc.