Carlow BER Cert for grant application

The Carlow BER Cert was performed on a house receiving an SEAI grant. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) allocate a number of different grants if your house has been built before 2006. The most popular and effective from a cost perspective of the grants are the attic and cavity insulation upgrade works. SEAI will provide the homeowner a grant of €300 for cavity wall insulation and another grant of €300 towards attic insulation along with a BER grant of €50 towards the BER. There are many insulation contractors in Wicklow and Carlow working in tandem with the grant applications which can do the insulation upgrade work for as little as €549 but they keep the grants.

We do many of these grant application BER ratings for insulation and plumbing contractors and homeowners. SEAI provide a form called a declaration of works (DOW) to the applicant, this form will have to be signed by the insulation contractors and the homeowner. The BER assessors will then take the DOW after the upgrade works have been done and fill in the information regarding efficiency upgrades to the house. We will provide SEAI with the efficiency improvement from the insulation upgrade or the heating upgrades made to the house. We will also publish a new BER for the homeowner to keep. The DOW is then given back to the homeowner or the insulation contractor to be returned to SEAI.

Carlow BER Cert Survey

The house that received the Carlow BER cert assessment, received attic insulation and cavity wall insulation upgrades with grant aid. The cavity wall had a cavity of 50mm that was pumped with a bonded bead. The cavity can be measured from the meter box. This additional wall insulation nearly doubled the U-value of the wall from 0.60 to 0.31 of a U-value.

The attic received 300m of insulation and ventilation in the soffits. The attic hatch was draught-proofed with draught stripping and insulated with 100mm ridged insulation. The would ensure the house was 100% draught stripped. 

The house was constructed in 2003 but it had received a number of upgrades throughout its lifetime. For BER purposes we have to assess the quality of the windows and find out the year that they were manufactured. For this Carlow BER Cert, the windows were manufactured in 2008, the window had a date stamp in the cavity of the glass. If the homeowner had no additional information about the windows the BER assessor will use default U-values of 2.2 for this window type.

We also assess the efficiency of the house heating systems. This house had an open fire with a back boiler that heated the radiators only and a 90% efficient oil boiler. In terms of efficiency the oil boiler is extremely efficient but if the open fire was replaced with a stove it should increase the rating by 1 to 2 grades. 

As can be seen above the back boiler baffle is left half open, this will allow warm air to leave the house very easily when the fire is not lighting.

After the Carlow BER cert assessment survey was finished which took 2 hours to measure and survey, the information is inputted in DEAP, which then calculated the ber cert for the Carlow house.

The house received a BER cert of C2 but the client was provided a list of options to help them determine how to improve the BER cert.

The list of option to improve the ber cert included:

• Remove or replace the open fire with an efficient stove or block up the fire permanently
• Install 100% energy efficient lighting
• Install a lagging jacket on the hot water cylinder
• Install thermostats in the house

If the options listed above are performed correctly, it would increase the BER cert for the Carlow BER rating to a BER B3.

We also offer a service at a reduced rate to reassess the house in Carlow after the listed option have been installed to republish the BER after another BER survey.

Contact Us if you want an SEAI grant application processed or a Carlow BER cert.

BER Assessor for all Carlow Towns including Fennagh, Hacketstown, Rathvilly, Ardattin, Ballon, Borris, Bunclody, Garyhill, Kilbride, Killeshin, Muine Bheag, Tinryland