Talk:Energy Performance Certificate (United Kingdom)

I have removed commercial spam and kept relevant links on advice on EPCs. Peterlewis (talk) 10:29, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I have expanded the section previously entitled The A-G scale; it's now split into two sections, A-G scale and Recommendations. I've also added some further information about the recommendations, including citation links to the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes archive, and the CLG page on accreditation schemes. LinniR (talk) 19:59, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

DOes anyone know what the figures refer to... is it an actual score or is there a unit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.207.102.10 (talk) 15:53, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

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Criticism: EPCs have less quantifiable value than the cost of the system?

I endeavoured to add a relevant topic to the "Criticism" section but another editor removed it. I agree that no sources were cited; but this is also true for some other areas in the Criticism section.

Here's my point:

- One area of criticism, covered in the article, is that EPCs can be misleading

- A second area of criticism, not yet covered in the article, is that EPCs have little or no utility.

Here's what I mean by "utility" - in economic terms, a government imposing an additional mandatory burden on house sellers, should demonstrate that the EPCs drive different behaviour from house purchasers due to the environmental impact awareness the system of EPCs creates. The EPCs should either (a) influence buying decisions or house prices; or (b) lead new house purchasers to invest in environmental improvements. The reason many estate agents regard EPCs as (to quote one recently) "useless administrative burden", is that they are "entirely ignored and unread". Perhaps a reader can provide a citation for a statistically valid study which DISproves this criticism? Can it be shown that EPCs create more value than the £100m or so (survey charges, government overhead, estate agent overhead, time to supervise property access etc) which the present system costs to operate?

Perhaps another editor can find a better way to word this encyclopedically. It is certainly correct that EPCs are criticised for adding no actual, quantifiable value.

Additionally the same editor removed a correction of the cost of EPCs from "£60" to "£60-90". I believe the original £60 excluded 20% VAT, and for some homes understates the cost (I have a recent invoice here for £90 and others are higher). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Helpfuledits (talk • contribs) 20:55, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

There are people doing 'energy performance certificate' inspections for £35 and no vat. In fact, they should only charge vat if they are vat registered and many aren't due to a turnover of less than £70,000 a year. Let's face it, to achieve a turnover of £70,000 a year, they'd have to do a minimum of 6 surveys a day, constant, at £50 a time. (unless, of course, they do the energy performance certificates in addition to other business)

92.239.90.145 (talk) 14:48, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Wall thickness
Am removing the opinion that ''The EPC suffers deficiencies in attempting to evaluate the energy efficiencies of houses. For example, it takes no account of wall thickness at all, so that some very thick and thus insulating walls in older houses count the same as though they were only two bricks thick.''. This is an incorrect understanding; wall thickness adds thermal mass, not thermal insulation. 85.210.197.199 (talk) 11:32, 4 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Adding extra layers of bricks to walls does improve the wall's insulation. The addition of thermal mass means that the wall will take longer to reach equilibrium. Once equilibrium has been reached however, the flow of heat through the wall will be:
 * Q = k•A•ΔT/L
 * where
 * Q = heat flow
 * k = coefficient of thermal conductivity
 * A = area
 * ΔT = temerature difference
 * L = wall thickness
 * If the value of L is increased, then Q will decrease implying better insulation.


 * I have reinstated the sentence, but have reworded it to clarify why the insulation is better. Martinvl (talk) 12:47, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Requested move 17 April 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: per the discussion below, I have moved the page to Energy Performance Certificate (United Kingdom) for the time being, and I have marked the lowercase redirect Energy performance certificate as "R with possibilities." Hopefully, an interested editor can turn that article into at least a stub, allowing the uppercase redirect to head there with a link to the UK page. Dekimasu よ! 18:25, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Energy Performance Certificate → Energy performance certificate – "Energy Performance Certificate" is for a particular building. In general it's "an energy performance certificate". In scholarly papers, the phrase in the plural form is in most cases not capitalized. Wipur (talk) 15:28, 17 April 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Dekimasu よ! 17:04, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Support. There seems to be no consensus in scholarly works or official documentation (both an EU study and UK Government documentation refers to it in its capitalised form, but Directive 2002/91/EC shows it in lower case in English). To some degree, there may be need to distinguish between (a) the specific set of schemes required by that directive, and (b) the wider concept of an energy performance certificate, but I think that's starting to tread into WP:CRYSTAL territory. For now, a more pressing concern is expanding the English article beyond the UK implementation of the requirement. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 15:48, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment. As a side note, given both the requested name change and the almost entirely UK-specific scope of the present article, is it perhaps worth moving the current article to something like Energy Performance Certificate (United Kingdom), and then creating a new article at energy performance certificate to cover the more general concept (or at least the EU requirement)? Sorry to muddy the waters, but this way could address the fact that all the edit history relating to the UK legislation would be lost by a move and future split; if the article is expanded enough that the UK information doesn't outweigh other information, then it'll be long enough that a split would probably be required. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 11:17, 19 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.