Ber cert dishonest

C

cb330

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hi, we'd be grateful for insights: we bought a house in 2015 on the basis of a ber cert saying it was a C2. We'd come from a C2 house and assumed - incorrectly on hindsight - that it would be a warm house. However on finding that we were frozen over the winter (and continuously sick), we got in a reputable heating and insulation company who said at best that the house is a D2. We have got two other companies since who have said the same, and one of them was a ber assessor as well. We are talking about 4-5,000 to get the house up to a C2. I have since got very ill and am out of work, but we need to get the house insulated and warm before the winter sets in. Is there any point trying to take this up with the auctioneer, or vendor? We feel very cheated. Any tips gratefully appreciated.
 
Check the BER report on the SEAI website for your current house and see if the C2 rating is correct, or the property was falsely advertised.
In case of false advertising, get in touch with auctioneer and vendor.

You can find it here: https://ndber.seai.ie/pass/ber/search.aspx either via the MPRN or via BER cer tnumbers.

If the BER report is apparently correct, get your current assessor (who says it is D2 only) to point out where and why he differs, and then bring it up with the original BER assessor and the SEAI as apparently something is very wrong!
 


Thanks, we did have to access the BER Cert ourselves from the SEAI website as it was never passed on to the solicitor. It also says a C2. Yes, I can get the current assessor to do an evaluation for us and this can be the basis for our complaint, but even at this what are the chances it will get us somewhere? Will the original assessor get a wrap across the fingers and nothing else? I suspect the vendor was involved here too, if we are right, is there any route other than a costly legal one? Has anyone else been in a similar situation and got any comeback? Ideally the vendor should be paying for the difference in BER ratings?
 
Don't have answers for your questions. I guess you would need to get a new BER assessment done first, and if it is really different from the previous one, I'd recommend raising a complaint with the SEAI in any case.
Also, I would definitely go back to the vendor and EA and raise the issue with them as well.

Someone has clearly made a mistake then, and it will just be the case of finding out who is going to pay to rectify it. Depends a lot on the different stakeholders in your case.

From the SEAI site: [broken link removed]

Agreed Terms for Dispute Resolution
If a dispute arises between you and your Assessor in relation to the BER, you should as a first step attempt to find a solution together through dialogue. If that fails SEAI recommends that the matter be referred to arbitration under the Arbitration rules of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. Although SEAI has a comprehensive Quality Assurance (QA) scheme in place, we do not carry out audits on request from homeowners. SEAI will only undertake an audit on a BER certificate on foot of a complaint if they feel there are sufficient grounds to do so. SEAI can only deal with homeowner complaints if they are received in writing.
 
By any chance did you employ a surveyor, what did his report say about the house, windows, etc?
 
What would/should be a ballpark charge on a BER assessment for the average size family house?
 
cb330 said:
Is there any point trying to take this up with the auctioneer, or vendor? We feel very cheated. Any tips gratefully appreciated.
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I doubt there profit in pursuing this. BER results can vary depending on who carries them out and are therefore virtually useless. BERs were just a sop to the Greens when they sold their soul to FF in 2007. You should probably just get on with it.
 
Gerard123 said:
By any chance did you employ a surveyor, what did his report say about the house, windows, etc?
Click to expand...

Very good point. If there is a big discrepancy, your surveyor should have triggered that there was something off in the BER.
 
A BER cert is no more definitive than an NCT test, where one tester might pass you and the next tester might fail you.
 
Thanks for Replies. No, we didn't employ own surveyor to do a BER cert as we trusted that they are fairly uniform. Should two assessors a not come out with the same rating? We did contact the BER assessor who gave the C2 and he said that a good quality condensor boiler and an energy efficient gas fire in the sitting room would both put the BER rating into the mid C range. Our insulation companies and BER assessor say this is not the case. Both versions can't be true.
Another point he made is that information he received from the vendor concerning the walls led him to give a good rating but that another third party might not see it the same way. Is this not making the whole process a farce? Essentially there has been nothing done to the walls but the assessor was willing to "believe" information that wasn't correct. The point behind this is that we paid for a C2 house and we haven't got a C2 house, is that itself not something that the SEAI would take up? Are there not standards in place to keep the very system transparent?
 
The BER is not a real test, the rating is derived indirectly from assumptions about the features of the property. At no point is the actual performance of any feature of the property actually established.
That said, it does seem strange that the ratings could be so divergent.
Either the original cert involved flawed assumptions about the property, or incorrect application of those assumptions in generating the rating.
 
michaelm said:
I doubt there profit in pursuing this. BER results can vary depending on who carries them out and are therefore virtually useless. BERs were just a sop to the Greens when they sold their soul to FF in 2007. You should probably just get on with it.
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A lot of people value high BERs, and rightly so they are very meaningful. Actually quantifying actual loss from a house is going to more expensive and perhaps not pratical.
 

The assessment is non-invasive, so the assessor will take the word of the person who employs them as to what level of insulation is in the walls, or under sub-floors. What detail for these elements did your assessor use? If not 100% accurate, then your result is likely off too.

cb330 said:
The point behind this is that we paid for a C2 house and we haven't got a C2 house, is that itself not something that the SEAI would take up? Are there not standards in place to keep the very system transparent?
Click to expand...

So you say you didn't employ a surveyor to carry out a BER, but I presume you did get one to carry out a full survey before purchase? Did they point out any potential issues? Did you make it clear the energy rating was so important to you?
 
Does it make a difference if the Ber is carried out by a surveyor or someone trained up as a Ber assessor? After all the criteria for the rating should be the same.
 
"Is there any point trying to take this up with the auctioneer, or vendor? We feel very cheated."

Caveat emptor - OP has no come back

And they did not buy this house relying exclusively on a BER Certificate - if the BER was sooooooooooooo important, they would have got their own assessor / architect/ engineer out.

The going rate for a BER is between €100 and €200 - I don't think I'd rely on a BER Certificate exclusively if I wanted to make sure I'd be warm in my house.

mf
 
moneybox said:
Does it make a difference if the Ber is carried out by a surveyor or someone trained up as a Ber assessor? After all the criteria for the rating should be the same.
Click to expand...

Even two trained assessors can come up with quite different ratings. As mentioned above, some of the details that need to be entered into the calculator are not obtainable from a visual inspection. So an assessor working for the homeowner will base their input on the details the homeowner gives them, another assessor without the knowledge of what the owner said might assume very different values yielding a different result.
 
Yes, we did get an engineer out MF1. He made no comment on the BER rating however. We took the C2 rating at face value. I think the whole system makes not much sense if one can't see some degree of similarity between ratings, if we had bought a house that was advertised as a D2 and had been a C2 it wold be very different. Thanks Leo for comment, it seems to us that the vendor didn't supply true information as there hasn't been anything done to the walls at all that would warrant better values. I agree with caveat emptor but supplying inaccurate information is a completely different story.
 
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