DBER EXAM

PAL100

Has anybody recently done the Domestic BER exam, I have heard from two assessors I know it is more difficult, they both failed by a whisker but still failed. I have looked at the new online prometric trial exam and that does not seem too difficult. Any thoughts please, I will be doing the exam in a few weeks.- thanks

sydthebeat

ill be doing it too, so id be glad of any opinions on it.

what i found with the last few tests were they were full of ridiculous 'off the wall' rare scenarios, and not meat and bone of general assessments. Hopefully the new arrangement is better.

Metric Tensor

I have coming up in about 3 weeks as well! (Have to do the NDBER too.)

Haven't looked into the new exam yet. I agree with syd and would add that the previous exam was designed to catch you out in some places and in other places the odd question used to be so badly phrased as to make two answers possible.

One of these answers would be clearly the expected one but the fact that other questions were designed to catch you out meant that one was never sure.

Metric Tensor

OK lads.

Did the exam yesterday. Passed without much difficulty in the end.

In layout and style is is exactly the same as before.

I had syd's comments in mind and I think that there was less of the ludicrous "off-the-wall" scenario type questions - the majority of them seemed to be regarding things an assessor might reasonably expect to come across. Don't be fooled into thinking that makes the questions easier though - there's still plenty of nuanced items and questions that can trip you up!

As I was working my way through it I was thinking to myself - this has gotten a little easier if anything. I answered all the questions sequentially and marked the ones that I wasn't 100% sure of to review at the end. When I went to review them I realised I had a lot more marked than on previous exams and as I reviewed the marked questions I realised the exam wasn't as handy as I thought it was!

So to summarise:

• Exact same layout and style as before
• Perhaps a shift towards questions that are more real life
• Felt it was not as difficult on first read through but turned out to be the same level of difficulty or slightly harder

Hope that's of some help!

PAL100

I did th exam during the week and to be honest I found it more difficult than the last time, I too did what I knew first and went back over marked questions. I ended up getting 78% but nearly blew it because I began to run out of time and rushed the last 15 mins, I had to finish 10 questions so I ended up getting 50% in the last section. So time management was an issue. An example of how the exam has changed is, in the last exam you were shown a photo of say a TRV and maybe room stat asked to identify them or similar questions, now the same kind of questions will show a programmer & cylinder stat (I think that's what was shown)and the question was about the effecency adjustment factor for the items in the photo. Looking back now I think the number of questions I knew straight off the bat was less than the last time so I ended up looking up a lot more questions this time and almost ran out of time.
So my advice would be to watch the clock and don't spend too much time on any one question.

sydthebeat

doing this test today... is there an online practise for it? though i saw something about that when it was announced

edit: found it... some of the questions are pretty weird !
how are you supposed to know the answer to this?


its pure guesswork as its down to whether theres MHRV or not etc

Metric Tensor

Totally agree - there's not enough information to give a proper answer AND that is the whole reason for the DEAP program in the first place. To do a uniform set of calculations and get rid of inconsistencies and guesswork!

It really annoys me that you are expected to guess the answer to questions such as that and in other cases where the answer is much more constrained they expect you to tick the "not enough information" box.

caesarthechimp

In one of the more recent technical bulletins, Dec 2014, they recommended taking a look at the sample dwelling in TGL 2011 which has a spec capable of passing the Regs. So I did that at the time, and now that spec looks familiar. A checking of Appendix E in the regs, which is available in the exam, confirms this. Then, knowing that an A3 is about the minimum rating that would pass those regs, I'd guess A3 for that question.

So there is a difference between a "wild guess" and an "educated guess" where you can apply a bit of knowledge and logic to arrive at an answer.
I think its fair enough to include some questions which could be answered by someone making an educated guess. The unthinking assessor who runs through assessments all the time by simply ticking boxes for default eras probably has no idea at all what the BER result for that spec would be. Or if the exam gives a couple of choices, choose the one that just about achieves compliance.

sydthebeat

I agree caesar, to an experienced assessor the rating should be pretty obvious.
however my main issue is that the BER scheme is based around being so stringent so as not to allow guesswork, therefore a competency exam shouldnt have guesswork associated either.

anyway i passed the exam last week, but im totally convinced 2 of the questions were wrong.
there was a P/A calculation question that made no sense, it was a mid terrance dwelling so the P/A was around 0.25 but the lowest choice was 0.45

caesarthechimp

sydthebeat wrote: »

anyway i passed the exam last week, but im totally convinced 2 of the questions were wrong.
there was a P/A calculation question that made no sense, it was a mid terrance dwelling so the P/A was around 0.25 but the lowest choice was 0.45

Congrats on passing the exam
I agree that your P/A estimate sounds right there. Its a pity they don't give a printout of the answers you got wrong, showing the correct answer. Then you could go off and look it up, and maybe learn something. Or else lodge a complaint if you thought they were the ones who got it wrong.

I'm not sure "guesswork" is the right word for what is involved in answering these types of questions. It involves the assessor having some level of expertise and knowledge that they can call upon.

I think the guy who knows nothing about new-build, and is in and out of an existing dwelling in half an hour with a few overall measurements, ticking all the defaults as he goes, is going to find it increasingly difficult to pass the exam as time goes by. And if that means the end of the €99 BER I'm all for it.

cailin8

mickdw wrote:

In the mercedes case, given 2 drivers that can repeatedly get down to a few 1/1000s of a second of each other, a believe tyre pressure alterations could be enough to swing results by a half a tenth either way. Do I believe hamilton will get beaten overall this year - possibly. It's Rosbergs best chance but if hamilton starts out with 3 straight wins this year, his chance will be gone.

sydthebeat wrote:

I agree caesar, to an experienced assessor the rating should be pretty obvious. however my main issue is that the BER scheme is based around being so stringent so as not to allow guesswork, therefore a competency exam shouldnt have guesswork associated either.

sydthebeat wrote:

anyway i passed the exam last week, but im totally convinced 2 of the questions were wrong. there was a P/A calculation question that made no sense, it was a mid terrance dwelling so the P/A was around 0.25 but the lowest choice was 0.45

Just did the exam for the first time. I did the online practise exam which I found challenging enough but passed the exam comfortably on the day. I had that p/a also and got 0.252. Could there actually be a mistake in the question?

I had one other question I found confusing, a picture of a red brick wall asking the wall build up.. I took a wild guess on that one.
I found the exam mostly ok overall , a ctrl+F feature was essential!

sydthebeat

cailin8 wrote: »

Just did the exam for the first time. I did the online practise exam which I found challenging enough but passed the exam comfortably on the day. I had that p/a also and got 0.252. Could there actually be a mistake in the question?

I had one other question I found confusing, a picture of a red brick wall asking the wall build up.. I took a wild guess on that one.
I found the exam mostly ok overall , a ctrl+F feature was essential!

yeah that read brick one was slightly awkward, however if you recognised the coursing as "flemish bond" its most likely a solid brick wall

HOWEVER! it is possible build a cavity wall outer leaf in flemish bond using a snap header

if it was a cavity wall it would be more likely a "stretcher bond" build


but yes, its a problematic question

cailin8

Thanks sydthebeat, very informative!

JohnRyan01

cailin8 wrote: »

Just did the exam for the first time. I did the online practise exam which I found challenging enough but passed the exam comfortably on the day. I had that p/a also and got 0.252. Could there actually be a mistake in the question?

I sat the exam today and got 68%, a fail. But that question came up about the P/A.

I also got approx 0.25. And the lowest option available was 0.45.

I am appealing it.