Express-EPC update

Since my blog in August Express-EPC have paid some of the money they owe me. However, they still owe me money for the rest of the EPC's I did in June or July.

It's not clear from the payment which invoices they have paid but I know how much they still owe. I have contacted them to point this out and am waiting to hear, I'll let you know what happens.

It seems I am not alone; I have received emails from other assessors who state that they have not been paid by Express-EPC either. Let's hope that this situation is resolved in the near future; however we will keep reminding them of the amounts we're owed.

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.

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.

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.

This week I've been up to York for a meeting of a working group called Renewable Building TWG. A summary of the meeting will appear on the group's page.

The group exists to facilitate the development of the renewable building products supply chain in the UK and members come from agriculture; or are suppliers, distributors or manufacturers of renewable building products; or designers and builders; as well as Government and researchers from academia, SMEs and large companies.

Since the group formed, some members were involved in a demonstration project, 'The Renewable House', built at BRE Innovation Park, Watford (pictured here). The house used renewable materials to deliver a low cost, affordable house that meets Level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes through materials. Group members have also been involved in other projects such as the strawbale houses at Waddington referred to in my April blog. Other members of the group manufacture and supply products based on renewable materials such as sheep wool or hemp insulation, wood fibre boards and others.

How does your garden fare?

We have had some prolonged dry spells this year already, in central and southern England in particular. So how do you cope with dry spells in your garden?

In our own garden we try to keep water needs to a minimum; our water is metered and it just seems crazy to put high quality drinking water on the garden. You wouldn't pour bottles of mineral water over the garden, so why use tap water, which is of similar quality? We collect rainwater, but there is a limit to how much you can save in water butts, so we don't want to create a big watering need as this can take some time with a watering can.

Our main strategy is to have perennial plants in the garden, these are well established and their roots tap into underground water supplies. Plants in our garden have to be fairly tough anyway as there are mature trees in our neighbour's garden on our north boundary and they take quite a bit of the water.

In addition, we have not only one rainbarrel on each downpipe, but two in series, and if there was room we would have more on each downpipe. During a rain shower lots of water comes off the roof and into the downpipe - what doesn't go into rainbarrels just goes straight into the sewer system. Therefore, if we collect as much as possible it can be used to water the garden and it doesn't contribute to the flood risk created by excessive run-off of rainwater. Thanks to my former colleague, Phil Wildbore, for this bit of inspiration.

We never water the lawn in summer when it's dry. OK a well-tended green lawn looks wonderful, but grass is adapted to dry climates and actually survives a drought much better than some other plants. It will always come back when the rain returns, so just look after it well in other ways and it will reward you.

We do have some hard surfaces around our garden. By far the largest part of these is covered with gravel, rather than tarmac or paving. This is also a good strategy because gravel soaks up rainwater, which is then available beneath the surface for the beds and lawn. Where there are impermeable surfaces the rainwater will run off, be lost to the garden and contribute to localised flooding problems.

It's been illegal for some time now to put down new impermeable areas in your garden. I've noticed the impact of this in our locality as people are opting to have gravel drives rather than paved drives. Our drive is looking worse for wear after several years and at some point we will have to consider one of the new permeable surfaces to replace the present tarmac.

I'll keep you posted!

Mechanical ventilation - to use in summer or not?

Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery is great for the cooler months, you get that fresh air feel without having to open windows and without losing all that heat you've built up with your central heating.

The question is though, should you leave it on during the summer or should you rely on opening windows? If you leave it on then it is using energy to ventilate your home, although with a summer bypass function there will be no heat recovery. The other advantages include not having insects coming in to bite at night or buzz around your food, and it reduces the disturbance from the inevitable increased noise in summer - planes flying, children playing, barbeques in the garden.

But it does use energy and you could just open the windows to create air movement and a cooling effect.

The first year we had our system we kept windows shut and the MVHR switched on - we knew the horrors of a fly infestation and didn't want a repeat! In a hot spell it was quite hot in the house, but then it would have been hot if we opened the windows; the MVHR certainly didn't act like an air conditioner.

This year we are using windows and blinds during day to keep sun out and allow fresh air in; we're putting up with daytime insects. Once there are lights on in the evening we close all the windows and use the MVHR to ventilate the house and that's successfully kept away the mosquito bites!

We try to keep our electricity bills down in other ways, i.e. nothing is left on standby, broadband is turned off when we're not using it, we use a laptop rather than a pc and this is put on standby if not in use for more than 10 minutes and turned off at other times when not being used.

So maybe the MVHR is our electricity indulgence, along with the fridge/freezer and phone. However, used intelligently we feel it contributes to good ventilation of our home without excessive energy use.

Has anyone else out there had experience of using these systems in their own home?