What is an EPC and how could it save you money?
With the cost of living continuing to spiral and even more pressure being put on our incomes, we thought we would take a quick look at how you can save a little money at home.
We’ve all seen the newspaper and online articles about turning off televisions at the wall and making sure you only boil the right amount of water in the kettle, but the truth is these seemingly minor actions can make a noticeable difference to your monthly outgoings.
When it comes to the property world, the biggest indicator of energy usage in a home is the EPC, or Energy Performance Certificate, but what is an EPC, what does it mean and how can it help save money?
Well, the EPC isn’t a new thing, it’s been mandatory to have an EPC before selling or letting a property from as far back as 2007, but if you’re not familiar with them let’s take a look…
In simple terms an EPC is an assessment of how energy efficient a property is. The EPC looks at several factors including build type, age, levels of insulation, double glazing, heating, and heat loss.
Without going into much detail, the property is assessed by a qualified Domestic Energy Assessor and given a rating on its energy efficiency on a scale of A to G, A being most efficient and G being least. You can see an example of an EPC graph below:
You can see from the graph that EPC’s provide two ratings, current, and potential, and it’s this aspect of the EPC rating that can help save you money.
Along with the current energy efficiency, the EPC provides recommendations for improvements that can be made to the property to help increase its energy efficiency and therefore lower monthly energy usage and help save on bills.
For the most part, these recommendations are common sense and based around increasing insulation, uprating or installing double glazing, installing energy efficient heating systems, and adding solar panels where applicable. Some of these suggested improvements are quite high cost, but EPC’s may also recommend relatively ‘cheap’ improvements, such as adding radiator valves to control the temperature in specific rooms or installing a room thermostat to automatically control the heating system, these improvements can cost as little as a few hundred pounds but save you a decent amount over time.
It can certainly pay to take a look at Energy Performance Certificates for ideas on how best to reduce your monthly energy bills, for example, a property going from a band D to a band C could see you save over £400 per year. But what else can help reduce your bills?
According to research, the three most energy hungry appliances in the home might surprise you…
They are:
Tumble Dryer
Washing Machine
Kettle
So reducing the use of these will have a big impact on your energy bills.
According to the Yorkshire Building Society, if everyone in the UK line dried their clothes during the summer instead of using a tumble dryer, it would save as much as £375 million a year and cut electricity consumption by 2600 GWh.
So whilst it looks like higher energy bills are here to stay, there might be a few things we can do to help.
As always, if you need any advice about the property market, selling, buying or renting a property, just get in touch with your local Hannells team. You can find your nearest branch here.
