Are you looking to improve your property’s energy performance certificate (EPC) rating?
Whether you’re thinking about selling your property, or letting it out to tenants, your house or flat is always going to be more desirable with a higher EPC rating, and I find that most of my clients can achieve this with a new boiler.
Below, I’m going to tell you some of the benefits of replacing your old boiler with an A-rated, energy efficient model, as well as some other ways you can improve your EPC.
What are the benefits of a better EPC rating?
A higher EPC rating typically means that your home is more energy efficient (in other words, using less energy), and so household bills be will lower – along with your carbon footprint, so everyone’s happy.
This is particularly attractive for those looking to buy, as your EPC will be included in your home report – and a higher rating from a good boiler brand such as Worcester Bosch or Vaillant could even help increase your home’s value.
It’s also good if you’re thinking of letting out your property; after all, tenants are more clued up now, and know it’s more cost effective to pay an extra £100 a month in rent whilst saving £170 in fuel bills – which can easily happen with differences in energy efficiency.
How can a new boiler help?
As an experienced heating engineer, I regularly come across a lot of old fire and back boilers, as well as general open-flued cast iron boilers still in use today. These can be G-rated with as low as 65% efficiency, so upgrading to an A-rated boiler with around 92% efficiency is really a no-brainer.
Installing a new high efficiency boiler could make it easy to jump two bands – so if your home is currently G-rated, it would become E-rated, and so on. However, if your home is C-rated, jumping to a B rating can prove a bit trickier and could involve having to carry out other measures, too.
My advice here is to look at the long-term, and realise that investing a bit of capital in these measures now will help save you money on a monthly basis – or add value to your home if you’re looking to sell. Also, you’ve got to remember that fuel and heating costs are likely to rise substantially over the next 10 years.
What else can you do to improve your EPC rating?
Of course, there are a range of other improvements you could try to help improve your EPC rating. The biggest ones include:
- Removing or disconnecting old, inefficient coal effect fires
- Double or triple glazing
- Loft insulation
- Solid and cavity wall insulation
- Upgrading to low energy lighting (LEL)
Bear in mind that although you can take these measures to help improve your home’s energy efficiency, some of it will really come down to how old the property is and how it was built.
I personally lived in a house where I fitted an energy efficiency boiler, replaced the windows and insulated the loft. This made a difference, however there were still leaks and drafts from the floorboards and skirting boards. It wasn’t until we moved to a larger home which was very efficiently built that we realised what could be achieved.
Our new property is 40% larger, however the fuel bills are around 30% cheaper, so that’s quite a difference!
Conclusion
I hope this blog post has given you a better idea of how a new boiler could help you improve your EPC rating, and the potential benefits this could bring. Remember, the final results will vary depending on the age of your home and how it was built (along with any other improvements that have been made over the years).
Why are you looking to improve your EPC rating? If you have any specific questions or need a bit more help, please feel free to leave a comment below, or get in touch with me directly. I’d love to hear from you!
