Room to Improve (v2)

you

Agreed its a piece of paper you need to have to sell your home, but many people are extremely sceptical about the reliability of these ratings.

BER ratings are based on how a house was supposed to have been built, not on how it actually was built. I know some semi-d houses built 40 years ago and there was supposed to be insulation in the wall and there was not. Nobody was looking, nobody checked when it was being built. The builders sometimes take / took whatever shortcuts they could. Hell, empty cement bags were sometimes thrown in to concrete mixers, instead of insulation put in walls. How can a BER assessor know without damaging a building. And how does he / she measure for draughts / airtightness?

Quote "Jeff Colley, editor of 'Passive House Plus' magazine, cited the example of Ireland's first certified passive house, which was built in 2004 and yet only received a fairly average BER rating of C1. However, in practice a certified passive house consumes energy at a rate of about 15 kilowatts per square metre per year – well within A1 range. A 'passive house' is a home which has had its air leakages cut and its insulation levels cranked up to super strict standards as laid down by a German-based organisation. The passive house institute will not allow you to use the term unless your home not only complies with its uber tight regime, but also unless you have had its notoriously rigorous inspectors around to insure that it does what it says on the tin."

https://www.independent.ie/life/home-garden/homes/the-ber-faced-lies-our-inaccurate-energy-ratings/30257397.html

As another poster above said, it can’t be great when Dermot rocks up in his coat and talks about how freezing a particular house in an estate is, when the other houses nearby were built to the same standard.

You can be very sure what happens on site is often not what was on the plans. There is basically only self regulation here : it is not like the UK where there is building control / regular inspections by "the authorities" / council during build.

Yes it is not unknown for a cement bag to go in to a cement mixer and to end below floor level / foundation. in some houses I know built some decades ago there was **** all concrete in the floor, never mind insulation where it could not be seen in the house. It is what people do not know that keeps them happy. I am not saying all builders were cowboys....but some took the easy way out and saved thousands on materials, sure why would'nt they when they could get away with it? Why employ an expensive skilled person the whole time when a glorified labourer could sometimes do something with less materials and cover it up?

In the UK at the moment Authorised officers of each local Building Control Authority inspect on a regular basis, and have delegated powers to:

• scrutinise proposals and inspect works in progress.
• serve enforcement notices on owners and builders for non-compliance.
• institute proceedings for breaches of any requirements outlined in the Acts, or any regulations made thereunder.

You say a UI is not far away, I remember Gerry Adams saying that at the time of the GFA in the 1990s and he said there would be a UI in time for the 2016 commemorations. Maybe in another 100 years we will get Building Control back.

FrancieBrady, will you stop trying to divert the thread. I was replying to a post from Charles Babbage.

Anyway, back to Room to Improve. You would miss it on a Sunday night, it was good TV, but I was reminded about it by a piece in the paper this weekend (Saturday 17th Feb).

Please can keep this thread for Room to Improve or at least house construction related matters. I posted about the article in the paper at the weekend about Room to Improve, to try to stop posters like you constantly attempting to de-rail the thread.

https://www.independent.ie/videos/revealed-the-room-to-improve-projects-that-were-built-without-planning-permission-z000367433/a1479491268.html

Rubbish. It is not true the "majority of houses" "dont have the proper planning permission or required retention."

If what you said was true, how do these same houses get sold / get new buyers / mortgages? One of the things solicitors look for is compliance with planning permission.

Is that all? Only 11,000 in 5 years? I suppose most people try to have full planning permission before undertaking building work, especially if they read "It is an offence to do work that requires planning permission, without having planning permission. This offence can carry very large fines and possible imprisonment. However, if a genuine mistake has been made, it is possible to apply for planning permission to retain an unauthorised development."

Not the point. Another poster wrote / claimed that the  "majority of houses" "dont have the proper planning permission or required retention."

Of course most houses have planning permission, because of one the things a solicitor will check / have to check when it changes hands / someone gets a mortgage and buys it is if it has proper planning permission. And if not, has retention been successfully obtained.

No bank or building society would accept the security of a building which is not planning compliant.