Independent home energy consultant?

Hi,

Have a nagging feeling that our home is not terribly energy efficient. I reckon we're losing heat and paying too much for energy, possibly due to draughty windows, inefficient rads and/or other factors.

Can anyone recommend an expert who can come out and examine our home and offer recommendations?

Don't want to get an auctioneer who's only recently got a BER qualification as s/he might have little practical knowledge of heating systems and how matters might be improved.

Don't want a heating or window salesman either as they're going to angle for the sale.

Do independent consultants exist in this area? (Ratoath, Meath.)

Thanks.

I had this done last year by a very nice guy - his website is www.bercerts.ie he is located in Navan.
Don't remember exactly his experience, but you can read his qualifications on his website. It is definitely not a taxi-driver recently re-educated to home energy consultant..

He did came up with some obvious and some less obvious suggestions, but I think the power in his advice and report was a) to see what you rating your house has now and what rating your house will have if you act on his advice and b) just to have all the potential opportunities written down in one report for reference.

He has a network of contractors that he would recommend and to be honest dealing with them was a pleasure as well- all very professional. The fee for the assessment you can get back through the SEI grant scheme, but enough posts on that in this forum.

Just to be clear - no connection with this firm

[broken link removed]

I often refer people to

Tom Loughran [broken link removed] has a blower door and thermal imaging camera.

I sometimes collaborate with him on larger commercial building audits, so there may be a slight conflict of interest on my part. However the thermal imaging will identify all the leaks and cold bridges. Interestingly one huge heat loss that people are identifying lately is the amount of heat that is lost between boiler houses outside the thermal fabric and the house. They didn't need a camera for this, it became obvious when the path between the boiler house and the garage stayed frost free during the recent cold snap.

Highly recommend Alan from [broken link removed]

He's done a few for me at this stage, he's very efficient, found his pricing excellent and very good follow up service.

No connection with him apart from being a happy customer (except for when the reports came out :-(

Roy

frash said:

[broken link removed]

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I recently took advantage of this initiative (since it's essentially funded by Joe Taxpayer) and the guy who came out was very thorough, informed and informative. He spent over an hour going around the house, talked me through all the obvious things, suggested a few not-so-obvious things and will be sending out a detailed report in the coming weeks. No sales pitch. You don't get a BER cert at the end but, Liam, I get the sense that you're not interested so much in having the piece of paper as in simply finding out where you can/should make changes in order to improve your home's energy efficiency.

For example, my guy also mentioned a few options in relation to wall cavity insulation (ours is the 50mm styroboard standard in the mid-90's) which he said they're not allowed recommend officially — 'but if it was my house, I know what I'd do...'. I don't know whether this is true of all the engineers, though.

All in all, worth every penny I didn't pay for it.

DrMoriarty said:

You don't get a BER cert at the end but, Liam, I get the sense that you're not interested so much in having the piece of paper as in simply finding out where you can/should make changes in order to improve your home's energy efficiency.

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Absolutely right. I intend leaving the house in a wooden box so the BER cert isn't really of much interest. As you say, I'm just interested in ways of making it more energy-efficient and lowering my gas bill. Judging by the most recent one (which admittedly did cover the Big Freeze, Christmas etc.) I should probably investigate having my own dedicated pipeline laid from the North Sea or wherever they're sourcing gas these days.

Thanks to all for the very helpful replies.