I have been looking through posts on this site regarding CfSH and thought I would share my experience and some advice which hopefully people will find useful.
I am an architect and in the process of building my own house. I am a big fan of the CfSH in principle as it takes such a broad outlook on a property / project, something which all other standards seem to fail in. When looking at finding an assessor I was a bit taken aback by the price quotes, and consequently undertook the training myself to become an assessor as it would also be another string to my bow for my architectural practice http://www.pa-ad.co.uk/.
Through the training and my experience thus far it has become blatantly obvious that CfSH is great in principal but not in practice. I myself am going for level 6 on my project (http://the-old-lemonade-factory.blogspot.com/) but the extra cost involved is quite shocking, hence the reason it will never become mainstream. There are benefits involved such as reduced mortgage rates and exemption from stamp duty, as well as the personal satisfaction, a practical efficient and green home, but these do not help with the upfront costs involved.
I would say that levels 3 & 4 are reasonably easy to achieve, especially if you are going for some sort of ecohome, but 5 & 6 are hard to achieve and will come at considerable financial cost. An essential piece of advice would be to get someone involved who are competent with and have a good knowledge of CfSH at concept / planning stage. Leaving the assessment to the end could leave you with lots of stressful and financial headaches. It will also save you money, as you will be able to pre determine where you can score the amount of points you require and how do this economically - to revisit this afterwards can be very costly and extend the project time considerably.
I would also suggest that serious thought be given to why you want a CfSH rating as it is costly and with the higher levels quite restricting on how you design and build your home. I would even go as far as saying that unless a site is suited towards the CfSH criteria, it may be very hard to achieve a level 5 and impossible to get a level 6.
I hope people will find this info of some use.
Nigel
Comments
BTW Lemonade Factory blog looks like the start of something good. Will be following with interest.
RobinB
The truly daft thing is that I may well end up with a house that is, in reality, zero carbon and with very low embodied energy and water usage, yet only rates level 4, because other elements cannot achieve a high enough rating under the assessment procedure..
David
Financial benefits are from reduced mortgage rates (this is one but there are others http://www.ecology.co.uk/html/mortgages/discounts.htm), exemption from stamp duty (which could be a big saving) and the property will be an extremely efficient one. I don't think that it would add anything to the resale value of your house unless you are going for level 6 (zero carbon) which may appeal greatly to some people. It also acts as a good practice design tool but this has no consequence on actually getting assessed.
Thanks for the positive feedback on the blog. I have started the story of our project and will add installments each day over the coming weeks. I will also be adding news and images as and when. I have also done twitter @buildzerocarbon and facebook www.facebook.com/pages/The-Old-Lemonade-Factory/231090636959395 Will also be trying to get in press etc.
Nigel...
I've played around with SAP to try and get the DER/TER higher than 80%, but cannot get the 100% figure demanded for level 5, no matter what. The daft thing is that the house will have enough PV and solar thermal to meet its total energy needs through the year, I suspect, so will, in reality, be zero carbon.
A Code rating now is as mentioned generally a requirement for Social Housing developments or occasionally a planning condition from Local Planning Authorities for development of a given site.
Part of the problem for the specific example above is use of a heat pump as the heating/hot water system. By setting the main fuel type as electric, the Target Emission Rate is set much higher, albeit the DER will typically be well below this - commonly referred to as the 'Code 4 loophole'. However The actual DER is still quite a high number compared to say gas or a wood burner for main fuel. The Code 5 target is for a DER of zero, so the higher the start number - the more you need to do to get down to zero.
Code 6 is for DER of zero + cooking and appliances also compensated for (which aren't considered in SAP).
The only way to get to Code 6 is for lots of electricity generation - PV or wind typically - and lots of it.
There is also a requirement for a low Fabric Energy Efficiency target (ENE 2) - This bit is much easier to achieve(comparatively).
Whatever the wikipedia entry on CfSH might say, Codes 1 to 6 are all still doable I believe, but the ENE1 bit is set as mandatory minimum of L1A 2010 compliance, which equates to around the same level of Code 3 from previous version of the code. In practice though, most people look to achieve Code 3 or better if they do aim for a Code rating (Social Housing more commonly Code 4).
The code covers a lot more than just the energy and CO2 emissions requirements.
Jon
I were to fit a dirty, high emission, wood burner, sacrifice all that airtightness for the sake of having a flue and all that entails and use a non-sustainable (in this part of the UK) fuel like wood I could get a higher Code for Sustainable Homes rating?
Barking mad or what..................
As the house neared completion I spent a day "scoring" the house against the revised CfSH that had just come out. It was looking good, we could tick lots of the non-building performance related boxes e.g. near a bus route, bike shed in the garden, storm water attenuation etc. etc. When I contacted a company to get the real assessment I discoverd it was no longer required.
I hadn't heard about the zero rate stamp duty for level 6 but doubt we'd be quite there even with the new PV. If/when we ever do decide to move on I'll see if it's still valid.
Thanks for the info!
RobinB
As someone said earlier in the post, if you get a 'switched-on' C4SH Assessor in at the beginning, it is not much effort at all, just a bit beyond Building Regs for L3 and L4.
However, as a post-build exercise, almost impossible, and very expensive, retro-fits cost way more than if they were planned for! :cry:
Some people don't appreciate that the C4SH also covers the building process as well as the building itself, and is designed to improve the whole construction process. Whether this is sensible or not is open to debate.....?:devil:
Also, our biggest problem as C4SH Consultants is explaining to small developers/builders, that it is designed for biggish developments, 40 dwellings plus, and does not sit well with a single dwelling construction. There (in my opinion) should be let-outs or exemptions/defaults for self-build single dwellings.....
Cheers...:smile:
On a point of principle I would liek to get to CfSH level 5, preferably 6, but it seems even a small timber passivhaus with as much solar thermal and PV as possible, rainwater harvesting, no fossil fuel consumption on site, low embodied energy, provision for bike storage etc will struggle to get above level 4.
The idea of CfSH is admirable, but the the way in which it has been defined seems biased against those who want to make a one-off zero carbon house, particularly if they are trying to do this in a community with very poor (read virtually non-existent) public transport.
Yes, as you probably realise, you cannot get C4SH L6 with the 'dwelling' alone, you need the other bits around, the Considerate Constructors Scheme, Home User Guides, Ecology Reports etc etc... These are over and extra to a single dwelling, just not worth it.... the C4SH hs been badly implemented in my opinion, but then if you look at who has been 'driving' it, perhaps not that much of a surprise....:shamed::shamed:
Cheers...:smile:
Sigaldry the problem I am having is with the FEE which I think is incredibly hard to achieve at the level 5 & 6 requirements. I had to pull the SAP workings to bits to find out how to improve mine. Turns out that the cold bridging was the issue.
I think it is a prime case of where the code is flawed it is pushing you down an avenue that you have to do a particular thing to get points when I believe it is not necassarily the best or greenest solution. I have put so much time and money into getting level 6 I am not going to sacrifice changing to a different heating system. This is also a good example of when knowledge of the code is invaluable at design stage. I spent a long time to come to the conclusions of what is best.
The problem is using electricity!
I sympathise with your problems.... the C4SH is not well suited for self-build or single plots; it has been designed primarily to influence larger spec-built and main-stream developments. I am not an apologist for the C4SH in any way, but without it, no one is going to drive upwards the standards in domestic dwellings in the UK? Nearly every developer we have met or worked with in the last few years only is concerned with maximising profit at the expense of the people who end up living in their dwellings. They all winge about increased levels of insulation eating into their profit margin....:devil:
However, once we have explained the aims of the C4SH to builders/owners involved in self-build, for Level 3 it is not much more than Building Regs., and little beyond.
Perhaps your bad experiences are due to lack of information at the outset, and your Assessor(s) not being fully conversant with SAP and Building Regs?
I have seen some C4SH pre-Assessments that are rubbish, they bear no relation to the proposed dwelling, and if left intact would lead the owners into a minefield, of retro-fitting and expensive 3rd party reports, that cost money for no benefit other than a paper Certificate! :devil::devil:
I am not trying to blow our own 'corporate' trumpet, but we try to show our clients the most cost effective way to whichever Level they wish to acheive, and so far it seems to be working.
Cheers... :neutral:
Love it. :bigsmile:
(Tongue_in_cheek_mode) You're not a developer, are you...? :bigsmile: (Tongue_in_cheek_mode off)
I regularly drive past a development that stalled when the housing market crashed (the developer just mothballed the site overnight, leaving it as an ugly eyesore for the past couple of years). Recently they've finished a handful of houses and are pushing them hard. The big banner on the main road proclaims "50% more energy efficient homes". I've been down to look at them and they barely scrape through current building regs.................
If we had a new house market like that in Germany, for example, where self-build, or at least customer build to order, is the norm, then there would be consumer pressure for quality. As it is, people have no choice when it comes to a new homes, they either buy crap from Barrats or crap from Persimmon (or one of the others).
One major problem is that there has been precious little support from the government to encourage self build. This strikes me as odd, as the best way to revitalise the building industry would seem to be to put money into the small businesses that are at the heart of it, via incentives to self-builders. Any incentive that is focussed primarily at the big developers will primarily be used to increase their profit margins, not increase skill levels in the industry and get people into a trade.
If I was a cynical old git I'd think that the building industry lobby may well have intervened to convince government that they should direct help in their direction.............
It seems to me that the only way to get a house done to a decent spec is to either a) do the construction supervision yourself, though this assumes you know what to look at or b) get tradesmen in from Germany or Switzerland to do the job.
I maybe being a bit pessimistic but with all the courses, certifications, controls that tradesmen have to go through where is the quality?
Jonti