What does my EPC rating include?

An EPC is a document that specifies the energy efficiency of your home. ‘EPC’ stands for ‘Energy Performance Certificate.’ It evaluates several parts of your house and determines how efficient they are. Your property will receive a letter grade ranging from A to G. Your EPC certificate will also show you where you may save money by improving your house and what grade you could get.

What’s included in my EPC rating?

• Rules on letting this property

This section of your EPC certificate will inform you whether or not you may rent or let your property depending on the EPC grade.

• Energy performance rating for this property

On a coloured scale, this will show you your property’s energy rating as well as the prospective rating on the same scale. Our example that we’re looking at is rated at a C with a potential rating of a B.

• Breakdown of property’s energy performance

The next section is the breakdown of the property’s energy performance. . This is where they explain how they arrived at the aforementioned rating. Wall insulation, roof insulation, window quality, heating and controls, water heating, lighting, floor insulation, and secondary heating are all evaluated and scored as very good, good, medium, bad, or very poor in the table.

• Environmental impact of this property

This will tell you how many tonnes of CO2 your property emits every year, how much the average home emits, and how much CO2 this property has the potential to emit. This section also includes a caution that if you implement the suggested adjustments, you may be able to lower emissions by x percent each year. 

• How to improve this property’s energy performance

 In this section  shows the assessors comments on how you can improve your overall rating.

Our potential grade for the example we chose is a B. But how are we going to do it?

Getting floor installation is one of the assessor’s recommendations. It then displays the normal installation expenses, which are £4,000–£6,000 in this example, with a typical annual savings of £39. It will then show you what your rating will be once you’ve made these modifications.

Another suggestion is to install solar water heating, which normally costs £4,000–£6,000 to install and saves £36 per year on average.

• Estimated energy use and potential savings

The anticipated yearly energy expenditures for the property are next section on the certificate. Ours, for example, shows a cost of £686, with a possible savings of £110 if the home owner follows the aforementioned recommendations. “The projected cost reveals how much the average household would pay in this home for heating, lighting, and hot water,” most certificates will state. It is not dependent on how the people who live on the property utilise energy.

The expected savings are based on following all of the recommendations for improving the energy efficiency of this home.”

The following section under this one concerns heating. “Heating a house normally takes up the majority of energy expenditures,” says the disclaimer once more.

This section displays how much energy is required to heat this property each year, as well as how much energy is used for hot water.

• Contacting the assessor and accreditation scheme

Finally, the certificates identify the assessor and include contact information in case you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding your EPC certificate.