How/Is It possible to upgrade 3 bedroom semi detached house from BER D1 to A Rating ?

JIM OSCAR

We are planing to buy our 1st house in Ireland . We are confused with 3 bed semi detached (used/old) or go for a brand new apartment. When i checked in ON daft.ie & myhome.ie all 3 bed semi detached houses are D1 or C1 BER ratings .Brand new apartment wil cost you 320,000 and old 3 semi detached house around 250-300,000 Euros(1990 around) . my doubt is
1. Is it worth going for brand new apartments ?
2. Going for old and is it possible to change BER from D1 to A( A3 AT LEAST) ?
3 How much cost is involved to change BER from D1 to A( A3 AT LEAST) ?
4. IF YES THEN ANY RECOMMENDATIONS OR COMPANIES DOING IT?
4. Any experience or in same situation ?

Ush1

1.Depends of a lot of factors. Plan for family, size, price, etc...
2.Anythings possible but I'd imagine fairly difficult and expensive. For A rating you're nearly at passive standards. See here: http://www.seai.ie/Publications/Your_Building_Publications_/Passive_House/Passive_House_Retrofit_Guidelines.pdf
3.Hard to say but I'd imagine tens of thousands anyway.
4.I don't know any off hand but the SEAI registered companies I'm sure could give a quote.

Fkall

JIM OSCAR wrote: »

We are planing to buy our 1st house in Ireland . We are confused with 3 bed semi detached (used/old) or go for a brand new apartment. When i checked in ON daft.ie & myhome.ie all 3 bed semi detached houses are D1 or C1 BER ratings .Brand new apartment wil cost you 320,000 and old 3 semi detached house around 250-300,000 Euros(1990 around) . my doubt is
1. Is it worth going for brand new apartments ?
2. Going for old and is it possible to change BER from D1 to A( A3 AT LEAST) ?
3 How much cost is involved to change BER from D1 to A( A3 AT LEAST) ?
4. IF YES THEN ANY RECOMMENDATIONS OR COMPANIES DOING IT?
4. Any experience or in same situation ?

I would doubt it is possible to move a semi D from D1 to A3.

GavMan

Apart from insulating the attic/loft and walls, You'd probably need to replace windows with new double or triple glazing if they aren't there already or are really old. You'd also need to make sure you've a very modern heating system which would include Radiators, new boiler, new hot water cylinder.

All that is a very costly exercise just to save at most a couple of hundred quid a year. It would take you years to recoup the initial outlay of money. By which time you would need to start all over again anyway as things begin to get old and break down

Peterx

It does depend on your preferences and what you think of future proofing (either family or selling on) but I would always pick a house over an apartment in the Irish context.

• Irish people love houses and distrust apartments. Look at daft/myhome - 3 bed semi-D's are in high demand and should you wish to sell it will sell.
  
• They are currently no management fees in most housing estates. An apartment block with lifts will have a hefty service charge.

Parking at your front door as opposed to in a car-park is fantastic


Anecdote alert -
We bought a 1964 house with no insulation, poor windows and a old boiler with single skin radiators so enjoyed a more dramatic change then your 1994 house should give.

Gutted it. Fitted internal drylined insulation. Attic Insulation. New condensing boiler and new high efficiency radiators. New double glazed windows.

The comfort in the house is astounding.
We still only in the B range. The extra effort and cost for A rating was not worth it for us.

(I didn't have the budget or see the value in triple glazed windows, the important thing is how they are fitted and sealed to the fabric of the wall. The heat loss through any window is higher than an insulated wall)

The internal wall insulation is a total pain in that you have to gut the house back to the bare walls but the advantage now is that the fancy new radiators heat airspace we live in very quickly and the newly plastered walls all look great.

We are not heating external walls now. (the downside to that is we have no thermal storage mass to speak of)

If you can, really really focus on the house having a southerly or south-westerly facing back garden. The pleasure and mental well-being to get from watching the sun stream in the back window is worth the premium.

JIM OSCAR

Hi Peterx ,

Thanks for yor reply. I think it is better to go for old house and do some modification . Just wondering how much would it cost for all this in total if its 3 bed semi detached house Overall Floor Area: 98.5 Sq. Metres (1,060 Sq. Feet)?
Fitted internal drylined insulation.
Attic Insulation.
New condensing boiler
new high efficiency radiators.
New double glazed windows.

Cuddlesworth

JIM OSCAR wrote: »

Hi Peterx ,

Thanks for yor reply. I think it is better to go for old house and do some modification . Just wondering how much would it cost for all this in total if its 3 bed semi detached house Overall Floor Area: 98.5 Sq. Metres (1,060 Sq. Feet)?
Fitted internal drylined insulation.
Attic Insulation.
New condensing boiler
new high efficiency radiators.
New double glazed windows.

Your talking about gutting the house here. That could easily be 20k upwards.

gaius c

Thread kind of puts a perspective on Firhouse 3 bed semis with BER's of F looking for 300k+

Depending on the house, modernisation can both be expensive and negatively impact the space available inside the house.

draiochtanois

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ted1

It's possible but the financial payback is equal to Never.

Uno my Uno.

As mentioned above an A3 rating is exceptionally high, many new builds don't achieve that rating. is there a specific reason why you want a home so highly rated? might a lower rating meet your needs?

I would think that a C Rated house would probably be reasonably comfortable to heat and live in and probably already has double glazing and insulation. Anything you do on top of that would be designed to improve efficiencies, heat the house faster, reduce bills etc. Whether you want to do that is a cost benefit analysis that is entirely unique to you.

Better to find a house that you are happy with or that requires an acceptable amount of Modernisation instead of picking an arbitrary rating such as A3 when in fact you may find that a lower rating is perfectly satisfactory.

JIM OSCAR

Thanks , Uno my Uno. thanks for your valuable information . C Rated house would probably be reasonably comfortable to live . i think . Thanks again

draiochtanois

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ted1

draiochtanois wrote: »

I'm not entirely sure about that.

Having lived in a G rated building when we purchased a new house a condition was at least a B rating.

We filtered on BER rating and didn't view anything under B.

So maybe not payback on utility bills but on capital appreciation.

Well from working as an energy manager and having a MSc in the area I can tell you that you ruled out akot of good places. There are plenty of flaws in the BER process

draiochtanois

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ted1

draiochtanois wrote: »

BER is essentially how much energy is required to heat, light, etc

And sure maybe it isn't a perfect process but it isn't without merit.

€500+ electricity bills get old real fast.

Telling me you have a MSc doesn't tell me anything about your knowledge but it tells me a lot about your character.

Not many people get 500+ bills.
Buy a g house, replace all lamps with LED, get yourself new appliances and you'll have the same electricity usage as an A rated house. ( few people have electric heating)

It doesn't take to much to sort out your plumbing either.

The BER is based around keeping the house at the same temperature, when you out there is no need to maintain the house, similar if your asleep you do t require that same temperature.

No one I know comes anyway close to the kWh usage that the BER stays they'll use

draiochtanois

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MayBea

We were given the following quote from the builder to renovate G-rated house, here it is if anyone's interested:
Electric = 6,000
Plumbing = 8,000
Floor insulation = 5,000
Bathrooms = 5,000
Wall insulation = 4,000
Plaster = 3,000
Decoration = 2,000
Flooring = 2,000
Carpets = 2,000
Windows = 2,500
Front door = 1,000
Attic conversion = 14,000

All before the VAT, which is an additional 13.5%.

ted1

draiochtanois wrote: »

For someone who has an MSc you seem to miss an important point

BER is the calculated energy use for space and hot water heating, ventilation and lighting based on standard occupancy

It's not just electricity

It's electricity and other heating.

It seems like one of the problems with the BER process is the self acclaimed BER experts ...

And I covered both electricity and heating.

gaius c

ted1 wrote: »

Not many people get 500+ bills.
Buy a g house, replace all lamps with LED, get yourself new appliances and you'll have the same electricity usage as an A rated house. ( few people have electric heating)

It doesn't take to much to sort out your plumbing either.

The BER is based around keeping the house at the same temperature, when you out there is no need to maintain the house, similar if your asleep you do t require that same temperature.

No one I know comes anyway close to the kWh usage that the BER stays they'll use

Ted1
I'm fairly sure you were at the centre of the last big discussion about BER and you're right that debating the distinction between B2 and C1 is a somewhat pointless exercise but going from a BER F/G house to a C1 house will allow for considerable savings in utility costs. That's the purpose of it: a crude indication.

draiochtanois

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L1011

draiochtanois wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Moving any rating of house from electric heating to gas alone will have a massive impact on bills - but won't hugely change the BER on its own.

It's too rough and too fakable to even consider it a crude measure beyond maybe three grades - far off the multiple it presents

alastair

We live in a Victorian end-of-terrace, and I'd expect our BER is pretty dreadful (single glazed in the main, lots of drafts, 1300 sq feet or thereabouts, selective internal insulation with new drylining, gas-fired central heating with a condensing combi-boiler). Never had an electricity bill anywhere near €500, and doubt that the combined lekky and gas bills get anywhere near that, except in the worst of harsh winters. Average bill spread over the year is certainly far short of that.

ted1

gaius c wrote: »

Ted1
I'm fairly sure you were at the centre of the last big discussion about BER and you're right that debating the distinction between B2 and C1 is a somewhat pointless exercise but going from a BER F/G house to a C1 house will allow for considerable savings in utility costs. That's the purpose of it: a crude indication.

But the OP is looking at going to A thats what he is asking, the other poster said he excluded everything u see a b from his search ( remember you can change a rating but not location )

ted1

draiochtanois wrote: »

G to B2,
80 sqm to 145 sqm,
> €500 electricity to < €150 electricity and gas for the same period

where are you getting the €500 from? No one I know has bills like that.

Ignore the cost, what kWh were you using compared to now

ted1

MayBea wrote: »

We were given the following quote from the builder to renovate G-rated house, here it is if anyone's interested:
Electric = 6,000
Plumbing = 8,000
Floor insulation = 5,000
Bathrooms = 5,000
Wall insulation = 4,000
Plaster = 3,000
Decoration = 2,000
Flooring = 2,000
Carpets = 2,000
Windows = 2,500
Front door = 1,000
Attic conversion = 14,000

All before the VAT, which is an additional 13.5%.

The BER really doesn't have much relationship with those figures.

beauf

You have no way of knowing if the building is constructed to the required standard.

The_Conductor

Moderator note:

Guys- I would just like to remind people- if you disagree with what someone posts- refute the post *without attacking the poster*.

MayBea

ted1 wrote: »

The BER really doesn't have much relationship with those figures.

Absolutely.

But I got an impression this is the figures the OP was actually looking for, rather than to just update the BER certificate.

Peterx

Nobody would gut and modernise a home on the purely financial payback alone.
The keyword there is home though - I lived in the 1964 version of our house for two winters before we fixed it up. The difference really is night and day in terms of standard of living.

For a rental property you could not justify the time, effort or money we spent on this place. For a home it makes complete sense.

If I can a chance I will try to see the old gas bills v. new but unfortunately it will be not be properly indicative as we just put up the cold as the heat was escaping through the fabric of the house as quickly as we were putting it in. That doesn't happen any more.

I know I am 100% about choosing a house over an apartment but the flipside is that a modern apartment will be very comfortable and easy to maintain at a reasonable temperature

Supercell

When we bought our house (small detached bungalow) it had a BER of E2 which we brought up to a C3. The difference was like night and day in terms of living . At E2 in winter the house was warm for about 5 minutes after the heating went off then cold again. Now its hours and a gradual temperature decline. I would never ever consider buying a sub C3 rated house again unless I had the money to remedy the insulation after purchase, once was one time to many.
To say the BER is worthless is daft, its not perfect but most definitely is a pretty good crude indicator if you are going to end up miserable and poorer next winter!

L1011

Some stuff pays back on a quicker scale as well as the comfort but the comfort is definitely #1

I've an early 70s house that had been modernised on the cheap in the early 1990s - 125mm of attic insulation that had collapsed under weight in some places, single glazed aluminium windows. Was using roughly 1200l of kero a winter to heat it.

Replaced the windows and a door with high-grade double glazing for a bit under 3k (from memory) and brought the attic to 325mm self-done for maybe 150 quid. Oil consumption is down to maybe 600l - I've not dipped the tank yet as there may still be a few nights of heating if the weather stays terrible.

Clearly if I could afford the windows and insulation I could afford the extra kero; and I'd take a guess that the house is at best up to a C3 from an F now but its at the point where I don't see the point of any further changes to heat/air handling for now.

I am however replacing the lighting with LED fairly rapidly as my partner cannot operate a sodding lightswitch both ways as far as I can tell - everything gets left on - so that would have some BER impact but nothing huge.

ted1

MayBea wrote: »

Absolutely.

But I got an impression this is the figures the OP was actually looking for, rather than to just update the BER certificate.

Well without seen the state of the building and the quality of the materials been used.
Your figures are for a renovation not to upgrade the BER. Electrics don't need to be replaced. Carpet can be 100 euro or 100,000. Bathrooms can also vary greatly in price .eyc, etc

beauf

Supercell wrote: »

When we bought our house (small detached bungalow) it had a BER of E2 which we brought up to a C3. The difference was like night and day in terms of living . At E2 in winter the house was warm for about 5 minutes after the heating went off then cold again. Now its hours and a gradual temperature decline. I would never ever consider buying a sub C3 rated house again unless I had the money to remedy the insulation after purchase, once was one time to many.

To say the BER is worthless is daft, its not perfect but most definitely is a pretty good crude indicator if you are going to end up miserable and poorer next winter!

There is a BIG difference where you do the work to your own property, you know what you've done. You've no idea to what standard other properties have been built to.

http://passivehouseplus.ie/news/government/unpublished-seai-report-showed-systemic-building-control-failure.html

http://www.independent.ie/life/home-garden/homes/the-berfaced-lies-our-inaccurate-energy-ratings-30257397.html

What this means is you should not assume the BER is correct. You should assume its wrong. Then get everything related to the BER checked yourself, (r an expert) to see if the property is built to a good standard, the regulations have been adhered to. That its reasonably energy efficient for the price.

It no good looking at bills on their own either. The previous occupants might never been at home that much, or traveled a lot. You've no idea of their usage patterns would be similar to your own.

MayBea

ted1 wrote: »

Well without seen the state of the building and the quality of the materials been used.
Your figures are for a renovation not to upgrade the BER. Electrics don't need to be replaced. Carpet can be 100 euro or 100,000. Bathrooms can also vary greatly in price .eyc, etc

I don't know the quality of materials to be used for renovation.
As I previously stated I never mentioned BER rating in my original post :

We were given the following quote from the builder to renovate G-rated house

.
Carpets cannot be €100, unfortunately - the cheapest I found for a 16 sq m room was €600.
Big portion of G-rated houses we saw did need the rewiring, as they don't reach the electrical standards such as for rcd protection, earthing etc.

draiochtanois

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ted1

draiochtanois wrote: »

That was my electricity bill.

Over the heating months Sep - Mar I'm saving well over a grand, with some smaller savings over the rest of the year.

.

Your heating wasn't set up correctly, you could have stuck in oil of gas.
1kwh gas= 5c. Condenser boiler approx 90% eficcent
1kwh elec = 20c

draiochtanois

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beauf

Be handy if you could put all the info in one post rather than spreading over half a dozen.

Out of curiosity why can you not put in oil or gas. Was it cost, or they won't approve it, on the ground of the impact of the modifications to the building. I assume none of the current technologies for heating, are historically correct.

Not sure how we went from 3 bed semi to listed building.