EPC rant

Finally I have finished the project I have been working on for a few months. Yes I know that on the 11th January I said I had "at least another week" and it has been nearly 4 weeks, but I am sure you know how wishful thinking goes.

I have been working on an energy performance certificate for a hospital building. Members of the EU will know something about this - it is where you determine an A to G energy rating for buildings. There is an example below. Great for new buildings, but not so easy for existing ones.

I spent 4 days on surveys, looking at almost every room. This was followed by over a month pouring over my notes, the 700 photos I had taken and drawings of the building. This was just to work out the information I needed to enter into the calculation software. Then it has taken me 3 weeks to enter all that data into the software and get an energy rating for the building. The final task of producing the recommendations, that the occupier will receive and could help them to improve the building and reduce their carbon emissions, took.......30 minutes.

It is appalling really how distorted this legislation is. It would make so much more sense to simplify the calculation for large buildings and to put more emphasis on providing decent recommendations, that are specific and contain all the facts and figures, so that someone might actually read them and consider it worthwhile to implement them. I could do that if I didn't have to spend so long on the calculations and providing evidence of every single step.

Truthfully, I did spend a couple of days running some additional calculations for the recommendations, because I would just be too ashamed to give my client the standard bunch of one-liners that is all I legally have to provide. But really I know that it could be sooo much better.

Anyway the project and my rant are now over. I have something fun for my next post. It is called "Tastes better than Bear's" and will be posted very soon ;-)