From 10th September 2007 every home in England and Wales with three or more bedrooms now needs a Home Information Pack when it goes on the market. That requirement will extend to the remainder of the market probably before the end of 2007. The Pack includes documents such as searches, a sale statement and evidence of title plus an Energy Performance Certificate.

We all know a standard set of documents is required for the sale transaction so there is nothing new there. The element that is new is the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC): nothing like it has been available for domestic homes previously. The EPC has been introduced to make us aware of the energy we use in our homes and the carbon dioxide they emit.
Even though domestic homes account for 27% of UK greenhouse gas emissions, few of us really know how much of that we are contributing through the way we live in our homes. The EPC presents a simple estimate of how much it will cost to provide lighting, heating and hot water based on standardised assumptions about occupancy, heating patterns and geographical location. The amount of carbon emitted by the property is also estimated.
Estimates of how much it costs to pay for the energy used by a home is useful, but better still are the measures the EPC recommends for making improvements that will cut fuel bills. Recommendations are tailored to each home giving an estimate of how much you could save.
Recommended measures are split into three groups: lower cost (up to £500), higher cost and further measures. Lower cost measures are the things that will save you the most money in relation to the cost of the measure, such as fitting or improving insulation in lofts, cavity walls and on hot water cylinders plus draught proofing single-glazed windows and using low energy light bulbs. For example, the owners of a terraced house with two bedrooms could save about £83 per year by filling the cavity walls. £48 could be saved every year by fitting low energy light bulbs in a house with three bedrooms.

Higher cost measures relate to your heating system and may go so far as to recommend a new boiler or even to replace a heating system. Whilst costly, there are times when you are planning to make such changes anyway and the information in the EPC can help you to make the best choices. For example the difference between a standard gas boiler and a condensing gas boiler could mean savings of £68 per year in a detached house with five bedrooms.

Finally, the EPC lists further measures. These give the highest possible standards of energy efficiency in the home, but are expensive compared with the financial rewards. Solar water heating, solar generated electricity and double glazing are all further measures.

These examples of savings are taken from real Energy Performance Certificates, however the EPC takes into account a large number of factors so actual figures will vary from home to home.

Grants are often available to help with the cost of energy efficiency improvements. The Energy Saving Trust website www.energysavingtrust.org.uk provides a search facility that shows the grants available for each postcode.

Saving money on energy bills is attractive to everyone but let’s not lose sight of another big reason for saving energy: climate change. We keep hearing how the rate at which man-made greenhouse gases are produced has increased dramatically and this is causing the Earth’s temperature to rise more rapidly in a shorter period of time than it has for thousands of years. Here in the UK we have experienced record-breaking temperature highs, longer periods of mild weather and shorter winters. In the middle of winter last year, there was not a single patch of snow on the Cairngorms – something only ever recorded three times before.

Many people feel that saving energy in their one household will have no effect on climate change, but the combined efforts of us all really will make a difference. For example, if we all filled our wall cavities, we’d save about £720 million of energy a year. If each household installed three energy saving bulbs, it would save enough energy to run the country’s street lights for a year.

So...
why not have an EPC done for your home whether you are selling it or not? An EPC costs, for example, between £100 for a 1-bed property and £140 for a 4-bed property. Money saved by following the recommendations in the report could quickly exceed the cost of the report.

Please Contact us and we will be happy to discuss the situation with you.