BER C1 with single glazed windows

looking at a house at the moment. First thing i noticed was single glazed windows and a BER rating of C1, how is that even possible? The inefficiency of single glazed windows surely drastically increases the yearly kW consumption

Anyone have similar or know the answer?

Cheshire Cat

Have you seen the report? Have come across quite a few unrealistic BER ratings on Daft and myhome. During the viewing it usually turned out that they hadn't got a report yet and just pulled a number out of a hat.

xper

Presumably it is technically possible to score a C1 rating on the BER calculation if lots of the other factors considered score very highly. This just underlines (again) the fact that the BER rating is a very crude 'on-paper' exercise with lots of gross assumptions built-in to estimate the energy consumption of a building. And it is overall energy consumption it is concerned with, not just heating or something as hard to define as comfort or cosiness, hence things like having 100% energy efficient lighting will boost the rating but do feck all to keep you warm on a windy winter night.

The BER report itself, which you should download and read for any house you are remotely considering, will give you a bit more detail but not much more. The evidence of your own eyes tends to trump anything it can tell you and everyone knows that single glazing is a significant issue for heating, draft exclusion and noise prevention.

alwald

Can the report be downloaded for free from a website? The only website I found is the SEAI and I Can see the BER result but there is no report to be downloaded.

Cheshire Cat

Cheshire Cat wrote: »

Have you seen the report? Have come across quite a few unrealistic BER ratings on Daft and myhome. During the viewing it usually turned out that they hadn't got a report yet and just pulled a number out of a hat.

I looked up the cert number and it is a cLC1, shocked as only 1 out about 10 windows is double glazed

mcbert

alwald wrote: »

Can the report be downloaded for free from a website? The only website I found is the SEAI and I Can see the BER result but there is no report to be downloaded.

I've been wondering about this. I thought the reports including recommendations were available on seai site, thought I downloaded a few, but I don't see them anymore, only the basic certificate details.

alwald

mcbert wrote: »

I've been wondering about this. I thought the reports including recommendations were available on seai site, thought I downloaded a few, but I don't see them anymore, only the basic certificate details.

I downloaded 2 in the past, they contained quite few pages and details (between 10 and 15 on top of my head). But like you I am unable to find them now.

xper

Actually, yes, this appears to be a thing now. When I look up my own house, the link to the report is no longer shown on ‘details’ page. Wonder if this is a GDPR related change (warranted or not).

Markcheese

In one sense, if you're looking at buying the house, you're gonna be able to factor replacing the windows in the price... Which would be harder to do with ****ty old double glazing.

cruizer101

I was only trying to look up the BER cert for my house recently and couldn't see the option to download where I was sure I had in the past, luckily I found it in downloads folder from a previous time and assumed I must have got it elsewhere.
But I was pretty sure had got it from the SEAI website, they must have changed their policy.

It does seem mad that you could have single glazed and C1 BER, you would wonder how high you could get it with a windows upgrade.
But yeah BER is to be taken with a decent pinch of salt, its a bit of a box ticking exercise.

Ray Palmer

BER is better than nothing but realistically it not much better. Two different C1 ratings could be considerably different.

Tow

Have have seen C1 on a building the Corpo were selling and had no glass in half the windows. Those which had glass were old single glaze steel frame and those with no glass had the 'corpo steel' shutters bolted across them. You have to wonder.