EPC D rating

[SRE]

Has anyone had any more thoughts about the EPC's? Leads for Trade are advertising leads that are guaranteed to get a D rating for £150 - I'm tempted to ask one of my customers with solid walls and oil central heating to ring so they can get a guaranteed D rating.

 

[Eco Deal]

Why not ! Hate lead gen places robbing f####kers
Sell old leads !!!

 

[grandfortune]

IS everyone now going on the EPC course.?

 

[finchy]

which one is that >? I thought it had to be an independant EPC survey. Unless you do them for your competitors it wont be any good ?

 

[SRE]

If you have a look at a list of DEA assessors for your area you'll find loads near you that will do it for £50. The key will be to build a relationship with them. I can't see how you will be able to do it yourself and to be honest I wouldn't want to anyway - it's a lot of work for £50. I'd rather spend the time marketing.

I think the trade bodies should be producing a calculator that gives an indication of rating to help us out - we pay them enough. The EST one is quite useful but you can only do it on one email, so you can't do it for your customers. If they do it themselves then EST reports tells them to get 3 quotes. I don't need to encourage my customers to do that!

 

[TedM]

Just setup a new googlemail account for each quote.

 

[SRE]

Now there's an idea .....

 

[finchy]

Just spoke to a business friend who is an experienced EPC assessor, explained the whole EPC and the differenc in D FIT rate to E FIT rate. I think after speaking to him that the only why our business model will work is for us to do an EPC whilst we do a survey. Customers want an accurate price/return without to much hassel, having two surveys (EPC and PV) will send them running. Also with the knowledge of EPC we can offer simple changes that would increase the rating.

We just need to get around independant... but I need clarification about that as being a EPC assessor you have to abide to a code and get audited.

 

[TedM]

Finchy, I'm not sure where you have seen this requirement for an independent EPC? I haven't read this in any of DECC's announcements.

 

[finchy]

No I havent read that either but was under the impression that it had to be ....

 

[whinmoor]

I can't see a problem with the Solar PV company providing an EPC (using its own in-house DEA) as part of the handover documentation. The EPC will be more relevant as it will include details of the PV system. Maybe conducting the EPC survey at the time of commissioning is the way to go?

 

[SRE]

Has Decc actually provided any guidelines yet? I want to make sure that customers who can't get the D rating are installed before end of March and those who will are installed after.

 

[finchy]

Great I can see that working whinmoor. However looks like I've got the short straw to do the qualification, my CV is going to look so diverse !

 

[JulianC]

Maybe conducting the EPC survey at the time of commissioning is the way to go?

Possibly not the best time to find out the property is E rated. ;-)

 

[whinmoor]

@ JulianC - I guess you need to conduct an "informal" EPC survey when pricing up the PV system?

Yes, we also need to find an in-house DEA first. Only two realistic candidates in my company so it's probably going to be me.

 

[finchy]

Yeah I would say you do an informal survey, which would see which other extra's are needed. I would expect to give the customers the completed survey in the Handover pack.

 

[SRE]

I might be a bit out of touch but I trained to do EPC's about 3/4 years ago. It takes ages to do the EPC - a lot longer than a pv survey and it takes more time again to put it all into the software. If you're in the customer's house longer than 2 hours you're in breach of the REAL and if you spend your time doing the EPC how can you sell to your customers?

It takes long enough as it is to do a decent survey and keep on top of the software without adding EPC complications to it. Only my opinion, but my background is in the energy efficiency industry and I worked with EPC's and previous incarnations of it with SAP and it's a load of extra hassle you could probably do without.

Maybe a good idea to go out with an assessor and see how it's done before you jump in and pay loads more for training and have to put up with even more monitoring from outside bodies.

 

[SouthWalesDEAs]

I am a fully accredited Domestic Energy Assessor working in South Wales (I've also got my 17th Edition and Part 'P' as well ).

The cost of qualifying including the training course, tools, overnight accommodation whilst at training course, diesel, etc.... costs over £2k. It takes quite a few EPCs before you really know what you are doing and this may have a substantial effect on whether you will sell a PV array or not (as you must get that all important 'D' rating)

My advice would be to contract out to a local DEA who will charge between £50- £100 per job and build a good relationship with them.

ALTERNATIVELY, maybe you should use the DEA as the salesman. Quite a lot of us have done the PV surveyor course as free CPD for our DEA accreditation and as a DEA can carry out the EPC therefore eliminating the customer having to be inconvenienced by having two people (the salesman and the DEA) visit there home. It also means you dont have to 'employ' two people

I'm on - [email protected] if you need any advice