What evidence of improvements is required for BER assessor?

I received the following repsonse from SEI today.

Thank you for your e-mail.

It may be best if you discussed this with a BER assessor (registered to assess all dwellings) prior to doing the work to ensure that you keep all necessary records for this particular dwelling to ensure that you obtain the best possible BER while sticking to the rules set out by SEI. The list of registered assessors is available under http://193.178.2.42/SearchAssessors.aspx

For your own information the DEAP survey guide under http://www.sei.ie/Your_Building/BER/BER_Assessors/Technical/DEAP/DEAP_2008/DEAP_2008_Survey_Guide.pdf details for BER assessors the type of information they would need when providing actual data (rather than the more pessimistic defaults) for a dwelling.

As a general comment, the more detail and record of the work done, the more likely a BER assessor will be able to legitimately provide credit for that work.

Apologies for the delay in replying to your query.

Regards,

BER Helpdesk
Sustainable Energy Ireland
Telephone:1890 734 237
Email : info@ber.sei.ie
Website: www.sei.ie/ber
Sustainable Energy Ireland promotes and assists the development of sustainable energy.
SEI is funded by the Irish Government under the National Development Plan with programmes part financed by the European Union.

The link they quote is actually incorrect. Use this instead:

[broken link removed]

theengineer said:

The whole thing is not very good.
How could one be an expert after 5 days of a course?
I spent weeks working with u-values, many years ago, and there is a bit in it.
Ok they use software.

The real joke is no one checks on the work of the builder.
I have encountered houses which were passed by engineers for loans, and had no insulation in the attic. There should be at least 12 inches there i think.

However the idea is good
It is way too expensive for a ber cert at present, 300 seems to be the price they charge, my feeling would be it should cost no more than 100.

Sorry ber guys, a 5 day course just is not good enough.
as regards the electrical controls is the heating system ,no one checks to see if they are even wired up.

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Here's something that no one seems to be aware or no one has thought to mention. There is not a single assessor out there who has yet passed the SEI assessor exam. Reason being it has not been set yet!
I have to agree with theengineer there is a lot in it but it is too open to people who have no idea of what they are doing.

PADDYBOY99 said:

Here's something that no one seems to be aware or no one has thought to mention. There is not a single assessor out there who has yet passed the SEI assessor exam. Reason being it has not been set yet!
I have to agree with theengineer there is a lot in it but it is too open to people who have no idea of what they are doing.

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just to clarify....

assessors have been trained to do assessments on 'new' dwellings. This involves data gathering from plans and info provided, and input into software. In order to register as 'new dwelling' assessor that HAVE TO PASS an exam. So all registered assessor have passed an SEI exam on the DEAP.

Some assessors have done a follow-on 'existing' course, and most new assessors do both courses together.

There is very little difference in the methodology between new and existing, its the data gathering that is different. An existing assessment requires an on site visit to confirm and clarify the input details.

Yes, it is correct to say that a national exam for assessors to become 'domestic energy assessors' (ie both new and existing) has not yet been scheduled, but that does not mean automatically that registered assessors are unable or incapable of carrying out a proper assessment.

This exam has not been set by SEI and will not be scheduled till at least April. Give them a buzz and they will confirm the same.
The system is presently open to people giving ratings who know little or nothing about construction and building fabric.

olddog said:

Why cant buildings be rated by experiment - as in :

- Heat inside of building to 20C ( for example ) above ambient ( dont want to do this in summer ! )
- Turn off heat source
- Measure amount of time that it takes for temperature to fall by 10C ( for example ) above ambient

With this information a thermal time constant for the building can be computed

with a simple data logger it would be possible to monitor many rooms individually and so establish locations of 'warm' and 'cold' rooms

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Old Dog has a good point. Surely Existing Buildings should be assessed by how much heat / energy the envelope loses (together with how much is input), rather than a standard value for dwellings of that era. What happens if it is non - standard construction?