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Monday 16 August 2010

Express-EPC I haven't been paid!

I noticed today that Express-EPC have dropped their price for an EPC from £39.95 to £29.95. Does no-one ever question how they can run a call centre, accounts department and get domestic energy assessors to do the work for such a low price? I don't suppose clients give it a second thought. They don't seem to mind having to pay up front, with no guarantee they'll get their EPC at the end of it - if the process goes wrong with Express-EPC then they may have to find another assessor to do the work.

The reason Express-EPC are so cheap is that they set up a bid for each job, whoever puts in the lowest bid gets the job. The bid can be anything from £1 to the price Express-EPC advertise on their site; this guarantees them a margin every time. OK that's not great for assessors, but clients are probably happy so long as the job is done quickly and they get an EPC.

However, Express-EPC are bad payers! They say that they will settle the account for domestic energy assessors in 30 days. Not true, I now have 6 invoices outstanding for the period 23 June to 12 July and not one has been paid. They actually responded to my chasing of payment by sending emails stating that 3 invoices had been paid. Not true, I've not received a penny.

I'm probably not alone in this experience; they are likely to be other assessors who have not been paid. I hope they are not taking on any more work from Express-EPC.

Be warned!

And to all those people out there needing an EPC for sale or rent of a house or flat; cut out the middle man and go direct to your local Domestic Energy Assessor, an accredited professional giving you a fair price.

Monday 09 August 2010

EPC's - Getting rid of the Cowboys


The Government department with responsibility for EPC's has finally made a move to tighten up the requirements so that the cowboys will find it harder to continue their bad practice.

There have been so many anecdotal stories of "the assessor was only there for 10 minutes" or "they didn't go up in the loft despite there being a loft ladder". These assessors have saved time on surveys by using the "unknown" or "no access" options on the survey form, so that the software made a default assessment based on the property age. Most of the EPC's they generated were almost identical.

Not only was this dishonest practice, but it meant that those householders who had made energy saving improvements to their home weren't getting the right score and banding for their property. This puts them at a disadvantage when selling or renting their house - if a house appears to be more expensive to heat than an otherwise very similar house, then surely anyone renting or buying would opt for the cheaper to run house.

As energy prices get higher the cost of heating a home is going to become more important. It's nice to move into a house with a modern bathroom or kitchen, but then if it's not to your taste you may opt to change it anyway, which is a one-off capital expense. Whereas a poorly insulated home means that your heating bills are unnecessarily high year on year, this expense doesn't contribute to the cosmetic improvement of your house, and lots of the heat is just leaking to the outside - you may as well burn money.

A properly assessed EPC will give you the information you need to choose well in terms of energy efficiency of a home and how it can be improved further.
Even though the cost of EPC's has really dropped some of us still strive to provide a really professional service and produce high quality EPC's.

So CLG please carry on getting tough on the cowboys and introduce some credibility to EPC'S.

Tuesday 27 July 2010

Passivhaus

Last week I went on an AECB CarbonLite course on understanding the Passivhaus standard, principles and methodologies.

It was a really good day for learning what the standard means and getting an introduction to the software. It's encouraging that there is also a standard for renovation, not just for new build. It's great that it's possible to build new houses to a high standard of insulation and airtightness with proper ventilation that will use 75% less energy for heating than a conventional new build. However, we can't build new houses quickly enough to replace all our existing houses and we probably wouldn't want to. Therefore, if we are to have comfortable homes that don't cost a fortune to run then it's important to renovate our existing housing stock to a high standard, so that they are warm, properly ventilated and with good air quality.

One issue I have is that all the emphasis is on the use of energy post-construction/renovation to heat the house; the embodied energy in the materials used is not considered. This is something that must assume more importance in future so that there is a reduced energy demand to produce construction materials and build houses.

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