Can External Wall Insulation Improve your EPC Rating?
A lot of people look to improve the value of their homes in terms of aesthetics - updating the kitchen, bathroom, etc. However, people often overlook how much improving the EPC rating of your property can increase its value. There are many ways you can do this, and installing EWI is one of them.
We often talk about how external wall insulation can increase the value of your home, whether it’s through the improved external appearance or the dramatically increased energy efficiency. In actual fact, by law, every property that is built or sold needs to have an EPC rating. This stands for Energy Performance Certificate rating and essentially means that your home is rated on a scale from A to G for how efficiently it performs - A being amazing and G being terrible.
The EPC of your property can have a direct effect on the value of your property. This is because if someone were to buy your property rated at a G level, then they would have to spend more money on it to improve its energy performance and increase its comfort. On the other side of things, if you were to invest in improving the EPC of your property, then subsequently you could benefit from its increased value.
Higher EPC ratings and property value
Energy prices are going up and up every year, and as a result people are a lot more willing to invest in a property which will cost them less in the long run in terms of energy bills, so improving your EPC rating is a sure-fire way to improve the saleability of your property (it’s also great for the environment by reducing your carbon footprint). The good thing about external wall insulation is that you get to increase the value of your property through improving your EPC, whilst at the same time increasing its appeal due to its improved aesthetics.
We see a lot of people installing EWI onto a whole range of properties with different aesthetics and different EPC ratings looking to get increased energy efficiency with EWI installations. The most common property that we see installing EWI are solid walled properties with really low EPC ratings. EWI can increase your EWI rating by 10-20 points or more. According to the government website, if you are a homeowner in London and you raise your EPC rating from a G to an E, you can allegedly increase your property value by around £41,808 (based upon average sale prices in the region).
Another useful thing about EWI is that you can install the insulation boards in varying thicknesses. This basically means that the thicker the insulation boards you install, the more thermally efficient your house will become. So you can choose the amount of insulation you’d like to install to the exterior of your property based on how much you want to raise your EPC rating by and how much you are willing to spend. You can also install EWI onto just one wall, so if part of your house is solid walled and the rest is cavity insulated then you can certainly externally insulate the solid wall section with EWI.
People whose properties are already fairly high up on the EPC rating scale may just want to just go for a 20mm insulation board. On the other hand, if you are on the opposite end of the scale, rated at a G, then you can install insulation boards up to a thickness of 100mm. 100mm of EPS installed to the exterior walls of your property will more than likely boost your EPC rating dramatically.
Nevertheless, we will say that if your property is really low down on the EPC scale then external wall insulation alone won’t be a one-stop solution to raising your EPC. You will need to have other energy saving methods in place, such as loft insulation, working in conjunction with the EWI. It seems very obvious, but if you install EWI but then leave your loft completely bare of insulation, then it’s essentially the same as wrapping your house up in a coat but leaving the hat off - the heat still has an enormous escape route through the roof and your EWI won’t be as effective. As a result, your home won’t be very energy efficient.
It’s all very variable from case to case, so definitely get your property assessed and see what is recommended for you!
Will EWI make my property compliant with MEES?
The MEES (Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards) legislation basically dictates that from the 1st of April 2018, landlords with tenants who are renewing/beginning a contract after 1st of April will need to ensure that their properties have a minimum EPC rating of an E or above. This has caused quite a stir because a lot of landlords are confused as to how they can improve their EPC ratings to comply with the MEES. As a result, we’ve had quite a few phone calls about whether or not external wall insulation will be able to bring their properties up to an E rating.
If you need to raise your EPC rating and you’re concerned about how you can do this, then solid wall insulation is a great way to go because it acts as a thermal envelope for your entire property. We really recommend that before you go ahead with installing external wall insulation you hire a surveyor to check out your property in order to give you the green light to go ahead with EWI in time for the MEES.
Once you’ve had the property checked and approved and are looking to move forward with your installation, then give us a call! Here at EWI Store we have a large team of approved installers all over the country who we can put you in touch with and who will be able to advise you on what thickness of insulation to go for and which coloured renders to choose. Installing external wall insulation is a really great investment and is likely to draw more tenants in for the future. This is because if your property is cheap to run then it will attract more tenants.
The good thing about EWI is that it takes a really minimal amount of time to install (two weeks depending upon the weather). It also causes no disruption to the inside of the property because all of the work is done to the exterior, so if you have current tenants living in the property there shouldn’t be a massive disturbance. If your property is situated along a busy road, this may be something that is considered to be undesirable from a tenants point of view. Our Mineral Wool insulation system vastly improves the acoustics of a property and reduces the amount of sound entering your property.