What is a Home Report Energy Report?

A Home Report must contain at least three documents:

1. A Single Survey,
2. An Energy Report
3. A Property Questionnaire

The Home Report Energy Report is designed to give an idea of how energy efficient a property is.  It is compiled by the surveyor who provides the Single Survey in the Home Report or by a qualified energy assessor.

The Energy Report comes in two parts.  The first part is an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), the second part features recommendations on what you could do to improve the energy efficiency of your home.

Why is an energy report important?  

The Energy Performance Certificate is a single page document which shows the energy efficiency rating of the property.  Much like the displays on household appliances, it rates properties on a scale from A to G with A being the most energy efficient. 

Although some modern houses may get close to an A rating, most traditional houses will inevitably be somewhere further down the scale.

The rest of the Energy Report provides detailed information on what could be done to improve the energy efficiency of the property divided in to ‘low cost'' and ‘higher cost' categories. 

It shows your estimated energy use per year, lists the main features of the property from an energy performance point of view (i.e. whether the windows are double glazed or not) and recommends measures that could be taken to reduce energy consumption. 

Most of the recommendations in the low cost category are likely to be improvements to insulation and installing energy efficient lighting.  More costly measures might, for example, be better heating controls. 

The Home Report Energy Report might also suggest more significant changes such as solar panels or double glazing.  The pilot version of these reports also showed the average cost of installation and how long it would take for any savings in energy bills to repay the cost of installation.  This feature has been dropped from the final version of the Energy Report.  Suffice it to say that owners should check how much they are going to save in energy costs before going ahead with a major energy efficiency investment.

Energy Reports are valid for 10 years, so once you have one - hold on to it.  If you make improvements to the energy efficiency of your home, however, you may want to get an updated version if you plan to sell your home within the 10 year period.

Read more about what getting a Home Report involves.