Energist - Part L Compliance Experts - Blog

Last week’s blog talked about how the new coalition Government in England and Wales will be abolishing the Home Information Packs for people who are looking for move or sell their house.

Within a week of Cameron taking over, the documents have already been suspended – after Eric Pickles (our new Communities Secretary) brought an Order to Parliament this morning. The packs will now be scrapped completely in due course.

As mentioned previously, the Energy Performance Certificate will still be required – this document, which shows the energy efficiency of a building – must be produced before it can be sold or leased. The reports last for ten years and are issued as standard for all new buildings.

It is less widely known that commercial buildings (everything from pubs to offices, warehouses to care homes) also require Energy Performance Certificates when sold or leased. Publicly owned buildings (such as schools, hospitals, police stations) are required to show a Display Energy Certificate at all times, if they are over 1,000 square metres.

Just to clarify, an EPC shows the predicted energy use of a building based on a site inspection or from architectural drawings (if it’s new). The certificate uses the A-G scale as you would find on white goods. A Rated is good, G Rated is bad.

A DEC certificate shows the actual energy use, and is based on fuel bills from the last twelve months. So logically, if you go into a council building and look at their certificates, the EPC says the building should be a C-Rated, but the DEC says it’s actually F-Rated, you know people aren’t switching the lights off at night!

If you own an existing commercial building, and have been asked to produce an EPC, you’ll find it is much harder to locate an energy assessor to complete your site surveys. Domestic Energy Assessors need additional qualifications in order to assess a commercial building – you’ll also find having commercial surveys done is more expensive… as the buildings are generally far more complicated.

Within the Energist assessment team, we have fully qualified Commercial Energy Assessors who are able to produce EPC and DEC reports for existing commercial buildings, as well as SBEM and BREEAM assessments for new builds. Our commercial team can also produce Daylighting Calculations, Energy Statements and Air Testing.

For more details about how Energist can help you with your commercial building projects, contact our Customer Support team on 08458 386 387.

It’s the document you’ve all been waiting for!

The 2010 Part L legislation has now been released. The books, which will not come into force until October, cover the ‘conservation of fuel and power’ in England and Wales building regulations.

The Government has released this a few months early so the building industry can get itself prepared for the oncoming changes, which will affect SAP and SBEM calculations, Energy Performance Certificates, Air Leakage Testing and the construction of new buildings and extensions alike.

Previously on this blog, we’ve already talked about some of the changes to the SAP calculator, this is a different document which will again come into force in October. The SAP methodology and Part L go hand-in-hand.

The biggest change we will notice, as expected, is that the way the Target Emission Rate is calculated is being changed… there are going to be two different methods. For SAP calculations, the TER will be calculated in the same way, but with a 25% reduction on the current regulations. This will mean new houses will need to be built more efficiently to comply.

For commercial buildings, the TER is going to be worked out in a different way to more accurately reflect the building it is being measured against. This should help to eradicate the ‘issue’ currently with SBEM that allows buildings to fly-through when air conditioning is used… A 25% reduction is also being added.

Maximum U-Values are also changing, but only on SAP. From October, all external walls must be 0.30 or lower, all roofs must be 0.2 or lower and glazing must be 2.0 or lower. In addition to this, party walls are going to be introduced into the calculations for the first time. Party walls must achieve a U-Value of 0.2 or lower.

This doesn’t apply to commercial buildings, which will use the same U-Value limits as before. Bearing in mind the lower emission target, we’re expecting developers will need to build elements far lower than these maximum values in order to comply. Maximum U-Values are also being lowered for domestic extensions.

The frequency of Air Leakage Tests is being increased, and a ‘confidence factor’ is being introduced – this is quite a positive term, when you realize it’s a way of penalising plots which are not tested.

For example, if you have ten identical plots and four are tested. The other six will need to use the average result plus two. So, remembering the air leakage limit is ten, if your average air test figure is higher than eight, any plots which are not tested will record a value higher than ten, which will not comply.

The procedure of Part L is also being tightened up – when a building is completed, you’ll have just FIVE DAYS to present the As Built reports and Energy Performance Certificate to Building Control. Also, design SAP and SBEM reports will need to be submitted to Building Control before the development is given the go-ahead by the authority.

I don’t want to re-write all hundred-or-so pages of Part L, but there are plenty of other changes being brought into effect regarding Part G, lighting and thermal bridging to name but a few.

If you would like more information on how the changes to Part L are going to effect your business, and how we can help, contact Energist UK on 08458 386 387.

At Energist we have long suspected that there is a lack of awareness about the legal requirement to have a CEPC when a commercial property is being marketed. This requirement became mandatory for all commercial properties on 4th January 2009 but research published recently by NHER confirms that awareness of this is patchy.

NHER contacted 108 agents about a specific property they were marketing. Of these 108 contacted 88 (81%) did not have a CEPC for the property.

And of these 88, almost half said that they didn’t believe or didn’t know that they needed a CEPC. Another third said they would get the CEPC when the property was sold.

At Energist we can turn CEPCs around within 10 days but to help those customers who weren’t aware of the requirement for a CEPC and need one urgently we also provide a letter of intent to show that the CEPC is in progress. To find out more visit our website http://www.energistuk.co.uk/commercial/CEPC or call 08458 386 387 and ask to speak to our CEPC team.

To read the full report from NHER click here http://www.nher.co.uk/pages/about/nher_news.php

We have received an update from the Government on the Legislation governing the way that Commercial Energy Performance Certificates are produced and how the data is gathered. These changes will affect everyone who is accredited to produce Commercial EPCs.

We will publish more information here on the blog once the details have been clarified. If you have any questions you can email us on epc@energistUK.co.uk or call 08458 386 387 and ask to speak to someone in our EPC team.

Visit our website for details on our CEPCs: http://www.energistuk.co.uk/commercial/CEPC